3.15 -The Filial Character and Hope

Chapter 15 The Filial Character and Hope (1 John 2:28-29, 1 John 3:1-3)

Main Division of the Letter—Comparison of its two Halves—St John awaiting Christ’s Coming—New Testament Horizon—Confidence or Shame at the Judgement-seat—Pauline and Johannine Eschatology —“Begotten of God”—Doing the Vital Thing—The Righteous Father and Righteous Sons—“Look, what Love!”—To be, and to be called, God’s Children—Veiling of the Sons of God—The Hope of Glory —Internal and External Likeness to Christ—Vision presumes Assimilation—Purification by Hope.

―—―♦——— And now, little children, abide in Him;
So that if He should be manifested, we may have confidence,
And not shrink with shame from Him in His coming.
If you know that He is righteous,
You perceive that every one doing righteousness is begotten of Him.
See what manner of love the Father hath given to us,
Purposing that we should be called children of God;
And so we are!
For this reason the world knoweth us not, inasmuch as it knew not Him.
Beloved, we are now children of God;
And it hath not yet been manifested what we shall be
We know that, if He should be manifested, we shall be like Him;
Because we shall see Him as He is.
And every one who hath this hope set upon Him,
Purifieth himself, according as He is pure.

— 1 John 2:28-29, 1 John 3:1-3        

―—―♦———

HAUPT⁵⁹ is right in attaching 1 John 2:28 and 1 John 2:29 of the second chapter to the third, and in marking at this point a main division in the structure of the Epistle. “With the exception of μένειν at the beginning of the two verses,” he observes, “all the ideas in them are new and enter the Epistle for the first time”; and these “special ideas, touched here for the first time, are the ever recurring constitutive elements” of its secondhalf. “Φανεροῦσθαι is taken up again in 1 John 3:2-5; παρρησίανἔχειν is elucidated in 1 John 3:19-22; 1 John 4:17 f.; 1 John 5:13 ff.; ποιεῖντὴνδικαιοσύνην forms the fundamental thought of the first ten verses of chapter 3; ἐξαὐτοῦγεγεννῆσθαι [“born of him”] is not only repeated in τέκναΘεοῦ, 1 John 3:1 f., but also from 1 John 3:24 onwards is more closely considered. The thought announced in 1 John 2:28 is precisely in the same sense the theme of the next part of the Letter, as 1 John 1:5 was of that which has just closed.” The abrupt opening of 1 John 3:1 suggested to the chapter-dividers the break they have made there; but one has only to read on into 1 John 3:2-3 to find that the writer’s mind is following closely the vein struck at the close of the previous chapter; he is full of the thought of the Lord’s approaching “manifestation,” which excites solicitude for the state in which His people may then be found. The exclamatory ἴδετε of 1 John 3:1 is the sign not of logical discontinuity, but of emotional disturbance. Striking for the first time in his letter on the idea of the believer’s sonship toward God (γεγεννῆσθαιἐξαὐτοῦ, 1 John 2:29), St John falls into astonishment at the love thus disclosed in God, at the fact that God cares to be our Father and deigns to give us the name and status of His children. But he quickly comes round again, in the ἐὰνφανερωθῇ of 1 John 3:2, to the point of view assumed in 1 John 2:28; the “hope” which is held out in 1 John 3:3, of “seeing Christ as He is” (1 John 2:2) is one with the hope of standing before Him with “boldness in” that “coming” which the readers were led to expect in 1 John 2:28. The introductory words of address, “And now, little children,”⁶⁰ call attention to the prospect rising before the writer’s mind. With the watchword “abide in Him” St John opens the new line of appeal, as he closed with it his former protestation in the last words of 1 John 2:27. “Abiding in God” by retaining “the chrism” of the Spirit, who “teaches about all things” (1 John 2:27), the readers will not be led astray by the Anti-christs and false prophets appearing in this “last hour” (1 John 2:18-26). But more than that, by so abiding—by loyalty to the Apostolic message and to their own convictions of spiritual truth—they will prepare for Christ’s coming and will be able to meet Him without fear or same. They will thus make good their title to be the children of God, and will realize the Divine wealth of their inheritance, the glory of which is as yet marevealed; for they have in God’s fatherly love, and in the purity of Jesus reproduced in themselves, a pledge of the loftiest hopes. Such is the gist of the paragraph we are dealing with; and such appears to be its connection with the foregoing context, to which it is linked not only by the double “abide in Him,” but also by the foreboding “last hour” of verse 18 and “the promise of eternal life “ in 1 John 2:25, which led the way to the “coming” announced in 1 John 2:28.

At this point it is possible to take a wider survey of the course of the Epistle. From 1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 2:1-27 St John has been working out and expanding his conception of the fellowship with God, and in God, that is realized through the message brought by Jesus Christ, under the conception of dwelling and walking “in the light.” Over against the true light was set “the darkness” of sin, which combats it under every form of contradiction and deceit — in the individual soul (1 John 1:6-10, 1 John 2:1-11) in the world (1 John 2:15-17), and in the Anti-christian moitofnent that has developed within the Church (1 John 2:18-27). But from this paragraph forwards the fellowship of the soul and God takes on a more intimate character, a more vivid colour and a warmer tone, as it opens out into sonship toward God and brotherhood toward men. We no longer read of “light” and “darkness,” “the truth” and “the lie,” of those who “walk in the light” or “the darkness,” who are “of the truth” or “who lie and do not the truth,” who profess truly or falsely to “have known God,” but of “the children of God” and “of the Devil” respectively, of those who “have confidence toward God and do the things pleasing in His sight” or who “shrink away in shame before” Christ and suffer “the fear that has punishment,” because they “are of God “ or “are not of God” in either case. Thus in the progress of the Epistle the general gives place to the particular, the metaphysical to the psychological; the doctrine heard from the beginning, and the light shining evermore in the darkness, are represented now as a “seed” of God’s Spirit germinating amid the world’s evil growths and overpowering them, as a holy love and will working for salvation and winning their victory over hate and falsehood. This second half of the Epistle, like the first, sets out from the thought of the (φανέρωσις of Christ⁶¹—there His past, here His future manifestation; the first is that from which faith springs, the second is that to which hope looks; the first that which begins, the second that which completes the victory of God’s light and love over human sin. The stress of 1 John 2:28 lies not on the imperative, “abide in Him,” which is carried over from 1 John 2:27, but on the reason therefore—“that, if He should be manifested,” etc. “Christ is to be manifested in His promised advent,—when we know not, but it may be soon; and we must appear before Him, with shame or confidence. Abiding in Him, we shall be prepared whenever He may come. If the present should prove to be the world’s last hour and the Lord should appear from heaven while we are yet on earth,⁶² how welcome His appearing to those who love Him and who keep His word!” So the aged Apostle wistfully explores the future. His hypothetic “if He should be manifested,” echoes the “If I will that he tarry till I come!” of the Lord’s enigmatical saying about himself (John 21:22). After those words of Jesus, the possibility of His coming within the Apostolic era and while St John remained in the flesh, was bound to be entertained; and the prolongation of the Apostle’s life to the verge of human age might well encourage the hope of an early advent,—delayed indeed but to be expected before the veteran Apostle’s departure, and now therefore, possibly, quite imminent. That such an impression existed in the Church, in some minds amounting to a certain expectation, the reference in the appendix of St John’s Gospel seems to indicate. The preceding paragraphs have brought the Apostle’s readers to the verge of the last things. They see “the world passing away,” the Antichrists arrived, precursors of the great Antichrist who was predicted to arise before Christ’s return. Unbelief seems to have reached its limit, and faith to have attained its climax in the teaching of St John. It is a time of crisis, perhaps the closing hour of the Church’s trials. “The Judge is at the door”; Christ stands waiting to return. At any moment the heavens may open and He “may be manifested,” who is all the while so near us, walking unseen amongst His Churches.⁶³ The conditions of the time have revived the prospect of the Lord’s glorious return, and bring it near to men’s imaginations. The Christian man, susceptible to these impressions, will surely ask himself, “What if my Lord should now appear? how should I meet Him, if He came today: with joy or grief; with shame or rapture?” This is a test that Christ’s servants might often with advantage put to themselves. Not for His first disciples alone did the Lord say, “Let your loins be girt about and your lamps burning, and yourselves like unto men that look for their Lord, when He shall return from the wedding” (Luke 12:35 ff.). If suddenly the clouds should part and the unseen Saviour and Judge stood revealed, if the day of the Lord should instantly break on the world “as a thief is the night,” or if we should ourselves without further notice or preparation be summoned to His presence, amid the vast surprise could we then turn to Him a glad and eager face?

In this one instance St John writes of the parousia, as St Paul has done so frequently, and builds on the anticipation of a definitive return of the Lord Jesus. The fact that he does speak of it in this way, though but once, and that he lays a solemn stress on the expectation, proves his agreement with the prevalent eschatology of the Church. The saying of our Lord respecting the beloved disciple with which his Gospel concludes (John 21:22 f.), implies an actual “coming”: such words the subject of them could neither forget nor explain away; even supposing the Apostle were not himself the writer of the above chapter, it embodies a genuine Johannine tradition. This isolated allusion supplies a caution against the inferences frequently drawn from the presence or absence of this expression or that in a particular book, as to supposed variations of doctrine in the New Testament. It is said that St John conceived only of a spiritual coming of Christ and a moral and inward judgement effected by His word amongst men, so that the external Parousia and the great judgement-scene sketched in the Synoptic prophecies and in the preaching of St Paul were transcended in his doctrine and became superfluous. This passage and the kindred saying of 1 John 4:17 f. suffice to show that the Apostle drew no such consequence from his principles, that he felt no contradiction between the thought of Christ’s spiritual action upon mankind, with the gradual process of sifting effected thereby, and that of His eventual return in glory as the universal Judge, between this constant visiting and judging of the world and that ultimate “manifestation” and supreme “crisis” at the “consummation of the age,” which dominates the New Testament horizon generally. Here the Apostle John contemplates the coming of the glorified Jesus to the world in judgement, just as explicitly and formally as did the Apostle Paul when he declared, “We must all be manifested before the judgement-seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10). There is a difference, but it is that of emphasis and prevailing standpoint: St John dwells on the process, St Paul and others on the issue—he on the evolution, they on the denouement of the great drama of Christ and the World (compare pp. 67-68). The Gospel of John, in contrast with the others, spends itself in working out the development of principles and character. He traces the catastrophe of our Lord’s incarnate manifestation back to its antecedents eternal and temporal, showing how it was brought about by the moral forces operative in the world, as these collided with the character and the purposes of God disclosed by the coming of His Son; the tremendous issue, in many of its features, he rather indicates and takes for granted than draws out in detail. The Parousia and the Day of the Lord take in the theodicy of the Apostle John much the same relative position that the scenes of the Passion occupy in his Gospel narrative. They are held, so to speak, in solution throughout, and are presented in their latent preparations and prelude more than in their patent consummation, in root and growth more than in the ripened fruit.

Assuming in common with all who relied on the word of Jesus His return as the King and Judge of mankind, and contemplating the possibility of His near approach, the Apostle calls his readers to consider how they will face the advent; they must desire to meet their Lord with confidence of bearing (παρρησία)⁶⁴ and without the shrinking of shame. If found, when the Lord comes, out of Christ instead of “abiding in Him”—suddenly confronted by the dread Presence which John saw in the Patmos visions, and standing before His tribunal—they must be overwhelmed with confusion and struck dumb with shame. The great “appearing”—the goal of Christian hope and satisfaction—brings to the unprepared inconceivable dismay. This admonition is brief as it is affecting, and stands alone in St John’s writings (see however 1 John 4:17-18); but it recalls the purport of our Lord’s prophetic warnings given at length in the Synoptic discourses on the Last Judgement; and thewords echo the frequent appeals of St Paul to the same effect.

In prospect of this august and heart-shaking event, such as must dash all self-complacency and trust in human judgement, what is St John’s confidence for himself and for his children? This appears in the sentences that follow, in 1 John 2:29 and 1 John 3:1-2. The ground of assurance lies in the filial consciousness. Here is the spring of Christian happiness and courage in view of death and judgement, and of the eternal issues of human destiny.

We note at this place again how completely St Paul and St John are at one, and how surely they come round, by different paths, to the same central points of experience and of theology. St Paul’s exposition of the Christian salvation culminates in his doctrine of the believer’s “adoption,” in Romans 8:1-39; “if children, also heirs,” is the argument that reassures him against the counter-forces and measureless possibilities of evil looming in the future. “Beloved, now we are children of God!” is the ground on which St John stands in the same joyous certainty of a life eternal already won, that is rich as the love of God and sure as His almighty will. But the sonship in question, which is to supply the key-note of the Epistle from 1 John 3:1 onwards, is not affirmed at once; it is inferred, in 1 John 2:29, from the correspondence of character that unites the Christian with his God: “If you know that He is righteous, you are aware that everyone who does righteousness has been begotten of Him.” God, and not Christ, is the subject of the assertion “He is righteous”; for God is, in all consistency, the antecedent of ἐξαὐτοῦ (“of Him”) in the subsequent clause. Of “the Father” one “is begotten” (compare 1 John 3:1, 1 John 3:9 ff., 1 John 4:4 ff., 1 John 5:1, 1 John 5:4, 1 John 5:18 f.): this goes so much without saying, that in passing from 1 John 2:28 to 1 John 2:29, having in his mind the final and emphatic γεγέννηται, the writer makes the transition of subject unconsciously; he does not observe that the “of Him” of the second sentence is referred, without explanation, to a person other than that denoted by the “from Him” of 1 John 2:28 foregoing. For grammatical clearness, “God” should have been expressed as the subject of the new predicate “is righteous” in 1 John 2:29. The righteousness of God (1 John 1:9) and of Christ (1 John 2:1) is, however, so identical that δίκαιόςἐστιν (“He is righteous”) supplies by itself a link of transition; the subjects are practically identified in the writer’s mind; the idea of Christ in this connection melts into that of God. In Him God “is righteous,” to our knowledge. But if the assertion “is righteous” does not, “hath been begotten of Him” does involve distinction of Father and Son; one cannot extend the saying of John 10:30, “I and the Father are one,” to the point of making Christ also the begetter; when believers are said to be “born of the Spirit” (John 3:6, John 3:8), spirit is opposed to flesh and being “begotten of the Spirit” is tantamount to being “begotten of God” (John 1:13). The latter predicate, as it is here used, finds its interpretation immediately in the next verse: “Begotten of Him, I say; for look at the Father’s love to us!”

1. The first ground of confidence on which the Apostle would have his little children rest—a ground derived from the vindication he has now made of the Christian character—lies in the practice of righteousness. This proves a Divine filiation in the Christian man: “The doer of righteousness hath been begotten of Him” (1 John 2:29). St John seeks to encourage and calm his readers. The prospect of Christ’s coming as Judge of mankind is naturally fearful to the soul, calling up images such as those with which the Apocalypse clothes the Redeemer’s person. The Apostle knows that his children are leading worthy lives, and that most of them have no need for fear in this event. He bids them “take courage” (1 John 2:28), since their conduct shows that God’s Spirit is in them and their “doing” is such as Christ must approve. Under similar terms—dwelling now on disposition, now on conduct—St John has previously described the filial life; he holds up the same ideal throughout the letter: he who “walks in the light” (1 John 1:7), who “keeps God’s commandments” (1 John 2:3, 1 John 2:5), who “loves his brother” (1 John 2:10), who “does the will of God” (1 John 2:17), becomes now the man “who does (executes) righteousness” and who thus approves himself as “begotten of God,” in contrast with “the doer of sin” who is “of the Devil” (1 John 3:7-9). On the same principle, in 1 John 5:2, the one evidence of brotherhood that St John will allow is that of “loving God and doing His commandments.” Doing is the vital thing: sentiments, big notions, pious talk, go for nothing without performance. Not “word and tongue,” but “deed and truth” are what God demands in Christian men (1 John 3:18).

That God “is righteous,” dealing justly and fairly by all is creatures in all His relations with them and responsibilities to them, is an axiom of revelation.⁶⁵ The principle is laid down hypothetically (“if you know”), for the sake of the consequence to be deduced from it and not because of any real doubt (1 John 4:12, John 14:15, for the form of expression),—though indeed our knowledge of the surest certainties of Divine truth is subjectively contingent, and clouds may cross the sunniest skies of faith. From this axiom the consequence follows, which the readers are bound to recognize, that “every man of righteous life is God’s offspring.” In this argumentative form of statement γινώσκετε is better read in the indicative (you know, perceive) than the imperative;⁶⁶ the Apostle is making explicit what is already implicit in his children’s knowledge of God and of themselves.⁶⁷ Not only is God righteous, but He alone is righteous originally and absolutely. “None is good save One,” said Jesus, “that is God” (Luke 18:19). Human excellence in every instance is derivative—is “begotten of God.” Unrighteousness (ἀδικία, 1 John 1:9) is the characteristic of humanity apart from God; “the whole world lieth in the Evil One” (1 John 5:19). God is the source of all right-being and right-doing; apart from the Father of Jesus Christ, there is no righteousness in any child of man. It follows that the presence of a living, operative righteousness is the sign of a Divine sonship, of that pure filial spirit which breeds heart-peace and guarantees final victory. “Other tests of adoption are offered in the Epistle: ‘love’ (1 John 4:7) and belief that ‘Jesus is the Christ’ (1 John 5:1). Each one, it will be found, includes the others” (Westcott ad loc.). May we take this reasoning of St John’s in the full breadth of its application? Can we say that every righteous man is born of God—even if he be palpably heterodox, if he be an unbeliver, or a heathen? We are bound to do so. But we must understand “righteousness” and “unbelief” in the strict Christian sense. St John writes (1 John 2:29; 1 John 3:7) “the righteousness” (ὁποιῶντὴνδικαιοσύνην, not δικαιοσύνην)—that which deserves the name and has in it the genuine stuff, which “exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 5:20) and differs in quality and flavour from morality of that stamp; it means doing right by God Himself, first of all. When St Paul speaks of “Gentiles which have not the law doing by nature the things of the law” and “showing the work of the law written in their hearts,” of “the uncircumcision keeping the righteous demands of the law” and being thus “accounted for circumcision,” when he describes a type of man who is “a Jew in secret” and has a “circumcision of spirit” that is “in heart, not in letter,” and “whose praise is not of men but of God” (Romans 2:14 f., Romans 2:26-29), he asserts the existence in certain cases of a righteousness availing before God that cannot be labelled or authenticated, that extends beyond the pale of orthodoxy and refuses to answer to any of the stated and necessary tests of religious communion. There are moral paradoxes in the connection between faith and practice—cases of men who rise quite above their ostensible creed—that are baffling to our superficial knowledge, secrets of the heart inscrutable except to its Maker; their solution stands over to the Judgement-day. Certain we may be of this, that whatever righteousness shows itself in any man comes from God his Father, whether the channel of its derivation be traceable or not; that whatever light shines in a human soul has radiated from “the true light that lighteth every man,” whether the recipient knows the Sun of righteousness that has risen upon him, or the clouds conceal its form.

2. Behind the first encouragement lies a second. If the Christian believer’s right-doing evidences God’s paternal relation to him, this proves again God’s fatherly love bestowed upon the man. Over this the Apostle—here alone in his letter—breaks into exclamation; argument passes into wonder. “Look,⁶⁸ what a love the Father hath given to us!” The soul’s rock of assurance is God’s manifested love. If the final crash should come, if the ground should crumble beneath our feet and the graves open and heaven and earth pass away like a scroll that is rolled together,—in the thought of this shattering convulsion, to which our Lord’s prophecies led the Church to look forward and which a moment ago (1 John 2:28) was called up to the imagination, the heart finds refuge here. This anchor of the soul holds, through the wreck of nature. St John’s saying is St Paul’s in other words: “Hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God hath been poured out in our hearts” (Romans 5:5); or again, “I am persuaded that neither death nor life . . . nor things present nor things to come . . . will be able to separate us from thelove of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). The sense and emphasis of the words demand a pause at the end of verse 1a (after ὁ πατήρ and before the continuing ἵνα). Let the readers for a moment contemplate, as it stands alone in its wonder and glory, “the love that the Father has given” them! The clause that follows is not one of definition or explanation—as though God’s love consisted in giving us the name of “children.” How God loves men—to what length, and in what fashion—will be shown later; the ποταπὴἀγάπη [“what sort of love”] finds its exegesis in 1 John 4:9-14. Here we ponder the bare fact, put in the briefest words and brought home to experience⁶⁹—God’s bestowed and all-inclusive gift to us of His fatherly love in Jesus Christ.

Now the love of God, where it is lodged in the heart and its bearing fruit in a righteous life that mirrors God’s own righteousness (1 John 2:29), tends toward a certain mark for those who possess it: “that we should be called God’s children.” Unless we are to rob ἵνα of its purposive force, this clause imports a vocation still to be realized, an intention on God’s part, the aim of His love⁷⁰ reaching beyond actual experience. He has given His love; but that love means more than it can now give. “That we should be called” must be read in the light of the “coming” of 1 John 2:28, and by contrast with the words “and we are so” (of the true text), immediately interjected, and “now we are God’s children” in 1 John 2:2. “We are children of God”—the Father’s love has made us actually such already; we are to be called so⁷¹—pronounced and acknowledged as His sons and on this title summoned to the heritage. “If He should be manifested,” and “at His coming” (1 John 2:28; 1 John 3:2), are the tacit adjuncts of “called children.” This declaration is identical with what St Paul describes as “the revelation of the sons of God,” the event for which creation waits with strained expectancy (Romans 8:19),—the occasion when the Son of man, according to His own words, “will say to those on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34). These the Son of God will not be ashamed to own as brethren, “when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38); the owning of the sons of God by Christ and the Father before the universe admits them to the full rank and rights of children. This is the goal to which all the bestowments of the Father’s love look onward. That we shall be “called children of God,” being addressed as such and invited to the children’s place in His house, is a hope that maketh not ashamed (1 John 2:28). “Boldness,” indeed, will be theirs in the dread day who hear the Judge pronounce, “Come, ye blessed ones of my Father!” That sentence, however, will but declare the fact which already holds good. The words καὶἐσμέν, abruptly thrown out, correct the mistaken implication that might be drawn from the previous clause, as though the Divine sonship of Christians would be constituted at the Parousia. When the true bearing of the purpose-clause, “that we should be called,” etc., was lost and it was referred, as by most interpreters, to the present adoption of the saints (to the “adoption” of Galatians 4:5 instead of that of Romans 8:23), the eager assertion “and (such) we are” naturally dropped from the text; it appeared otiose and superfluous. But when St John’s κλῆσις is rightly understood, this καὶἐσμέν of the present fact stands out in relief against the purpose of future acknowledgement and investiture. What we shall then be called, already we are! “These are my sons,” God will say of His pilgrims coming home; they are His sons even now, but in exile and obscurity.

“For this reason,”⁷² the Apostle remarks, “the world knows us not.” The sons of God are at present under a veil, and their “life is hid” (Romans 8:19; Colossians 3:3); things are not seen in the true light, nor called by their right names. How should the world recognize us—“it did not know Him!” God was unknown to men—to the wisest and deepest in research (1 Corinthians 1:21)—and this was proved to the world’s shame by its treatment of Him in whom God was: “You know,” Jesus said, “neither me nor my Father” (John 8:19). “The rulers of this world,—none of them knew the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8) beneath the servant’s garb; they had no eye for the moral beauty and dignity of Jesus, for the Godhead in Him. For the same reasons the world ignores or despises His companions; they treat His Apostles, God’s messengers to them, as “the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:13). The more Christians were like Christ, the less the world appreciated them. They must not be surprised at this, nor take the world’s scoffs amiss; nay, Jesus bade them “rejoice and be exceeding glad,” counting this contempt their beatitude (Matthew 5:11 f.) and a pledge that as sufferers with their Lord they shall share His glory. Thus the whole of verse 1 goes to sustain the confidence of St John’s little children, who shrank needlessly from the thought of Christ’s near and sudden advent.

3. The assurance which the Apostle gives his readers is carried to its height, and their fears receive a full reproof, in the words of 1 John 3:2. Crowning the active righteousness of sons of God and their conscious experience of the Father’s love, they have, springing out of all this, the hope of sharing the Redeemer’s state of glory: “We know that, if He should be manifested, we shall be like Him.” This central clause of 1 John 3:2 is its vital statement. The first two clauses resume and interpret 1 John 3:1: “Beloved, we are now God’s children, and it has not yet been manifested what we shall be”—we are children away from home, wearing other names and the garb of exiles, awaiting our “manifestation” as the Son of God awaits His; our “call” to the filial estate, our full “adoption” and enfeoffment, is matter of promise not of attainment; it is a “hope not seen” (Romans 8:24). But it is a sure hope—“we know”⁷³ that it will come about, as we “know the love that God hath to and us” (1 John 4:16) and the fidelity of His promises (1 John 2:25); our guarantee is in the character of God, whom “the world knew not”—but “you know Him,” said Jesus to His disciples, “and have seen Him” (John 14:7; compare 1 John 2:14 f. above).

While the subject of “it has not yet been manifested” is given in the following “what we shall be,” φανερωθῇ is pointedly resumed from 1 John 2:28, the verse in which this train of thought took its commencement: “If He should be manifested”—the hidden but ever present Son of God and Judge of men—“we shall not view Him with guilty dread; nay, we shall be like Him!”⁷⁴ The awkwardness of referring, within the compass of seven words, the all but identical forms of φανερόομαι (“to be manifested”) to distinct subjects is relieved by the consideration that the two subjects are closely kindred and identified in the writer’s thought: that we shall be “and what He is—the glory of the redeemed and the Redeemer—are one in nature and coincident, in manifestation, since “we shall be like to Him” (compare 2 Thessalonians 2:14; 1 Corinthians 15:48 f.; Colossians 3:4; Php 3:21). This future likeness of Christians to Christ, along with their future call to the state and place of God’s sons, is for the present a mystery; it involves an unimaginable change in the conditions of human existence (1 Corinthians 15:51). “Not yet was it manifested what we shall be.” St John speaks in the past tense (ἐφανερώθη), referring to the great historical manifestation of “the life,” which he has summed up at the beginning of this letter (1 John 1:1 ff.), the revelation of the Incarnate Son. But through all this great disclosure the life of the hereafter remained under the veil; many wondrous secrets of God were made plain, but not this. The form of Christ’s risen body, and His appearances in glory to the dying Stephen, to Saul of Tarsus, and to John himself in the Apocalypse, might give hints and prompt speculations touching the state of the glorified; but they supplied no more. One thing “we know” surely it is enough: “We shall be like Him.” This stands amongst the certainties of Christian faith.

Ignorant though we are of the future state, how much we know if we are sure of this. Such final resemblance of Christians to their Lord appears to be involved in the Incarnation and in our Lord’s chosen title “Son of man,”—in the fact that He was “made in all things like to His brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). Christ has embarked Himself with humanity, has identified Himself heartily and abidingly with our lot, so that what was ours became His and what is His becomes ours. If He has left His brethren, it was “to prepare a place” for them, that they may be where He is (John 14:2-3). He has not gone to the Father by way of separating Himself from mankind, but has passed “within the veil” as “a forerunner on our behalf” (Hebrews 6:20). Jesus rose from the dead as “the First-begotten” and “first-fruit of them that fell asleep,” the “first-born amongst many brethren,” who will be assimilated to His external, as they are already to His internal and spiritual character, who will put off “the body of humiliation” for a worthier frame, a “body spiritual” and “celestial” and “of the same form with His body of glory” (1 Corinthians 15:20-57; Romans 8:29 f.; Colossians 1:18; Php 3:20 f.). St Paul’s teaching upon the mystery of the heavenly life of the saints explains this allusion of St John’s; it gives substance and content to the “likeness” anticipated here. This cannot be a merely interior and moral affinity; for the latter, as St John insists, is now attained and “as He is”—in respect of love and righteousness—“so we are in this world” (1 John 3:3, 1 John 3:22, 1 John 3:24, 1 John 4:17, 1 John 4:19, 1 John 5:18). “Now are we children of God”—that is one thing; “what we shall be,” is something further and distinct from this. The nature of the hidden likeness is indicated by the reason given for expecting it, in the last clause of 1 John 3:2: “because we shall see Him as He is.” The double Him of 1 John 3:2 must be Christ, who has been reintroduced by the clause, “if He should be manifested,” and not God whom “none hath beheld at any time” (1 John 4:12; compare John 1:18; 1 Timothy 6:16, etc.). Manifestation and vision are correlatives; “if” and when the Lord Jesus “is manifested,” His saints “ will see Him as He is.” But for vision there must be correspondence —new organs for a new revelation, eyes to behold the supernatural light of the Advent-day. Like sees like; so the pure in heart shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Such is St John’s reasoning. Christ is to be manifested, His disciples, as He prayed and promised (John 17:5, John 17:24; John 12:26, John 13:31-38, John 14:1-3), are to behold the glory which the Father has given Him and which was His eternally; but to be capable of this, they must be transformed into a state as yet undisclosed and endowed with powers like His own, with faculties of apprehension incomparably higher than those they now possess. “Then shall I see face to face” (τότεπρόσωπονπρὸςπρόσωπον, 1 Corinthians 13:12), says St Paul—face matching face, eye meeting eye. The transient foretaste of our Lord’s celestial glory which Peter and James and John enjoyed with Him in the Holy Mount, was overpowering to their natural senses; and if the vision prefacing the Book of Revelation was a veritable experience of the writer, he was well convinced that one must pass into a very different mode of being if one is to realize the present glory of Jesus Christ and to bear the weight of His manifestation. Accordingly St Paul, in speaking of the Parousia in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 f. (compare 1 Corinthians 15:50 and 2 Corinthians 5:1-3), implies that a miraculous change, simultaneous with the raising of the dead, will supervene upon the living saints to prepare them to meet their Lord. There isnothing that gives the Christian so exalted a conception of future blessedness as the thought of being in the Saviour’s company, admitted to the sight of His face and taking part in His heavenly service. Such approximation presupposes an environment and faculties incalculably enlarged and ennobled. “In treating of this final transfiguration the Greek Fathers did not scruple to speak of men as being deified’ (θεοποιεῖσθαι), though the phrase sounds strange to our ears “ (Wescott, quoting Athanasius, de Incarn. Verbi, iv. 22). As the Son of God humbled Himself to share our estate, so in turn He will glorify men that they may take their part in His. The other interpretation of ὅτι, which regards assimilation as the effect of vision (“we shall resemble Him, for to see Him as He is will make us such”), instead of the precondition for the sight of the glorified Redeemer, contains a true idea, but one unsuitable to the context. Westcott’s attempt to combine the two renderings makes confusion of the sense. Moreover, as he himself points out, γενησόμεθα (we shall become), not ἐσόμεθα, (we shall be, 1 John 3:2), would be the proper verb to express a consequent assimilation to Christ in the future estate of the saints, the growing effect of companionship with Him (compare John 15:8; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 3:14, etc.).

4. The future identification of state is prepared for by the present assimilation of character; and the hope of the former is a keen incentive to the latter. This is the purport of 1 John 3:3, which brings us round again to the ground of assurance laid down in 1 John 2:29. “Every one that has this hope set on Him” (ἐπ’αὐτῷ:⁷⁵ on Christ, in continuation of 1 John 3:2; the hope of seeing Him “as He is,” of witnessing and taking part in His manifestation), “purifies himself as He is pure.” Moral likeness of spirit is the precondition of the likeness to their Lord in body and faculty which constitutes “the glory which shall be revealed to usward” (Romans 8:18). The transformation works from within outwards, according to the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. The future body of the redeemed, as St Paul teaches, will be “a spiritual body,” fitted to the spirit that it clothes, whose organism and expression it is designed to be (1 Corinthians 15:42-49). Those who are like the Heavenly One in temper and disposition, will be like Him at last in frame and function. The ethical rules the material, which has no other use or significance but to be its vehicle. Place and state wait upon character and conduct “If any man serve me,” said Jesus, “let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be” (John 12:26). This imitation was enjoined in 1 John 2:6: “He that saith he abideth in Him (in God), ought himself so to walk even as That One walked”—words pointing to the earthly course of Jesus. What was there imposed as matter of plain duty and consistency, is here urged on the ground of hope and preparation. The vivid demonstrative is again employed—“that one is pure”; while ἐπ’αὐτῷ and ἐκεῖνος in this sentence relate to the same person (Christ), there is this difference: using ἐκεῖνος one looks away (“that one yonder”),—not to the present Christ waiting to be manifested, but to the historical Jesus, whose pure image stands before us an abiding pattern of all that man should be (see pp. 149-151).⁷⁶

The broad moral term δικαιοσύνη (righteousness), which defined in 1 John 2:29 the practical Christian character with its basis in God, is now substituted by the fine and delicate ἁγνότης (purity) exemplified in Jesus. Both adjective and noun are rare in the New Testament; this is the only example afforded by St John. The word does not signify a negative purity, the “cleanness” (καθαρότης) of one from whom defilement is removed (as in 1 John 1:7, John 15:3, Matthew 5:8, etc.)—which would never be ascribed to Jesus; this is a positive, chaste purity (compare 2 Corinthians 11:2; Php 4:8, James 3:17), the whiteness of virgin thought and an uncontaminated mind (compare p. 150). The purity of the ἁγνός imports not the mere absence of corrupt passion, a deliverance from baseness of desire and feeling, but repugnance thereto, a moral incompatibility with any foulness, a spirit that resents the touch and breath of evil. The man who hopes to be like Him as He is, must be thus like Him as He was. To see Jesus, we must follow in His train; we must catch His temper and acquire His habit of mind, if we are to breathe the atmosphere in which He dwells. The heavenly glory of the Lord Jesus that He shares with His saints, is but the shining forth in Him, and in them, of he purity intrinsic to Him and veiled in the earthly state of discipline. If this character is hereafter to be revealed, it must first be possessed; and to be possessed by us, it must be learnt of Him.