In I John 3:1-3, the exclamatory interruption joyfully affirms that believers are children of God now. The use of the imperative expresses a desire to get their attention: See! Behold! The Father has loved (ἀγάπην) us enough to call us children of God, and, emphasizing the point, so we are. This maintains a consistent distinction between Jesus the Son and believers who are children of God.[1] In the prologue to the Gospel, those who receive him have been given “power to become children of God, who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). In Mt 5:9, Jesus says peacemakers are called children of God. The intimacy of the parent and child relation also suggests dependency and trust. He uses the word to express the fundamental relationship humans have with what defines their identity. In typical Johannine thought, one’s parentage is either divine or evil. Since the world does not know God, it does know us as children of God. The relation with the heavenly Father places the children of the Father at odds with the world. The way of life that identifies one as a child of God creates division. The transformed life of children of God changes the relation between them and the world. He addresses them as beloved (Ἀγαπητοί) and reaffirms they are children of God now, whereas prior to their entrance into the community they were children of the world. John 8:44 refers to children of the devil. The mood is the danger the world presents to “us.” Some within the community have revealed themselves to be dangerous (2:19). The writer is suspicious in a way that could lead to an unhealthy withdrawal from the world. He is drawing attention to a conversation the church of every time and culture needs to have regarding church and world, believer and unbeliever. The context forces recognition that some believers, some within the church, will want to identify with elements in the world rather than gain their identity through being children of God. We will be a part of various communities (family, work, interest groups, neighborhoods, political entities), all of which will form our identity over time. The Christian community is to be so important to us that it continually shapes us into children of God, which will create tensions with the other communities with which our lives intersect. Given the intensity that political involvement can demand, it can lead to a suspicious attitude toward those who do not agree with “us,” leading to viewing the other as morally reprehensible and can lead to violence. We may well sacrifice openness and learning from those different from us in favor of full identification with the moral superiority of the political community with which we identify. What if the politically other is a Christian? Here is a sign that we are gaining our identity more through our involvement in a political community than we do our faith community. John then asserts that God has not yet revealed (ἐφανερώθη) what we will be. An important theme of this text is revelation, which here is a future action of God. If they have undergone a change from their previous life to their present existence, how much more will they change when the Father reveals Christ, and they see him just as he is? As Jesus put it, the pure in heart will see God (Mt 5:8). Because we may see God, we shall be like (ὅμοιοι) God, for the vision of God effects transformation into divine likeness.[2] This is an important insight, for fulfillment is reached when Christians are like Christ, a likeness achieved when Christ is manifested. The coming or appearing of Christ in the future brings perfection for believers, a transfiguration that will enable them to see the transfigured Christ as he is.[3] The future will be a new manifestation of the love that has accomplished the gift of becoming children of God. John is offering a brief reflection on time. His point is that on the path in time, objects and people exist only in anticipation of what they will be in the final revelation that only the end can clarify. We can rightly refer to that end as eternity. The clarity the end brings is the entry of eternity into time. In the end, the distinction between time and eternity dissolves as time itself disintegrates into the fullness that eternity represents. In the end, the totality of life arrives, along with the true and definitive identity of the finite and temporal. The future is that toward which the finite and temporal aim. Therefore, the future becomes the basis for the lasting essence of each individual creature that finds duration in its time and place. Finite things must relate to their eschatology.[4] If we belong to God, if we are children of God, then we are to be like the one whose children we are. As children of God, we are to be like our Father. When the final disclosure brought by the end arrives, they will change even more to see Christ as he is. In the prologue to the Gospel, we read that Jesus, the Word made flesh, is the perfect image of God, the one who has “made him known” to the world” (John 1:18). The idea is that we see now in a dim glass compared with viewing the truth of their end clearly (I Corinthians 13:12). Allowing their lives to be guided by this hope purifies them, ridding themselves of attitudes and actions that are inappropriate of those in relation to the Father. They live in the love of God and have the firm hope of a glorious future. The revelation of this glorious future has not yet taken place.[5] The resemblance between the believer and Christ will be in the realm of righteousness. To be a child of God is to begin a journey in the faith that will lead to a more profound knowledge of who Christ is, in his fullness. Furthermore, this journey will lead to a deeper, personal, moral purity; the believer will become like Jesus. Ambrose Bierce once defined a saint, with some sarcasm, as “a dead sinner, revised and edited.” Yet, the statement has a degree of truth. God must revise and edit all Christians for them to enter divine glory.
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[3] J. Schneider, TDNT, V, 188.
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