◄ What Does 1 John 3:3 Mean? ►

What incredible love God has shown to us that we should be called His children. Being born of the Spirit through faith in Christ and cleansed of our sin through His shed blood, demonstrates the incredible love and generous grace that the Father has lavished upon us - His children. God loved us so dearly that He not only sent Jesus to be our Saviour but He purposed to transform all who trust in Him into His image and likeness so that when we see Him, face to face, we will be like Him. What a glorious hope! And everyone who has this hope fixed on Christ purifies himself, just as the Lord Jesus is pure. 

Should we not... in astonished wonder, deep humility, and reverent praise, behold the matchless love and compassionate grace that has been poured out by the Father in such generous abundance on us - even making us His children simply because we have trusted the Lord Jesus as Saviour? Is this not the most wonderful blessing that exhausts our reasoning and passes our finite understanding - that we, who were proud purveyors of sin and hostile haters of God in the lust of our flesh, should be so treated?

Yet we read that when He came to take up His rightful position as King, His own people despised and rejected Him. They treated Him with acute animosity and deep hatred. He was so viciously beaten as to be unrecognisable and then He was cruelly nailed to the tree with your sins and mine laid upon Him. The world did not know Him then, and the world still does not know that He is God incarnate. He is the only Way to the Father, the only Truth about God, in Whom is Life eternal for all who trust in Him.

And we, who by rights should have death as our payment for sin, have been redeemed by His blood, given the free gift of salvation in Christ, clothed in His perfect righteousness, promised eternal life in heaven, become part of a new creation in Christ, and adopted into God’s own family. As children of the Father and joint-heirs with Christ, we have become children of light and have a glorious hope that is founded and fixed on Jesus, Himself.

He is the Hope of our calling for He has clothed us in His own righteousness and secured for us a heavenly inheritance! What amazing love has been bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God, and what an amazing hope we have in Christ: "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has the human heart imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him."

He is, indeed, the hope of our calling and He is our blessed hope, for there is laid up for all His children a heavenly heritage. And when He returns to take us to be with Himself, as He has promised, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. Jesus is our blessed hope. Indeed, Jesus is the hope of all the ends of the earth, but those of us who walk in spirit and truth and have our hope fixed on Him are purified – in the same way that He is pure.

The only way we fallen sinners can purify ourselves and be declared righteous, is to fix our hope on Christ by faith in His finished work on our behalf. Just as Jesus was identified with our sin and sinfulness, so we are identified with His righteousness and purity. And when our hope is in Him, and by faith we have trusted Him as our Saviour, we become increasingly like Him through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Like the Lord Jesus, we too are despised by this pagan world system and increasingly have become targets of ridicule and ill-treatment by a world which does not understand what manner of love the Father has towards you and me... who by faith in Christ have become His children and been made joint-heirs with Christ. One day the Lord Jesus is coming back to take us home and as sons of God, we will be made known to the world.

Let us hold firmly to this sure hope that is set before us, looking to Jesus - the Author and Finisher of our faith, knowing that those of us who have fixed our hope upon Him, purify ourselves just as Jesus is pure.

Heavenly Father, thank You for saving me by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus. Thank You that I have the blessed and sure hope of heaven in my future. I pray that in my life I would purify myself as I abide in Christ and become more like Him, day by day. Father, there are many in the world that do not know You and have not trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord. Use me to be a channel of blessing to show Your love to a world that is dead in trespasses and sins. This I pray in Jesus' name, AMEN.