John has several reasons for writing this epistle, which is actually a letter, to the churches.  Back in chapter 2 vs 26, he mentions one of the most pressing reasons for writing them.  He said in vs 26 “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.”  Now we learned that “they” refers to false prophets and false teachers who John calls antichrists.  These are people who have come out of the ranks of the church, who claimed superior knowledge of spiritual things, but who are teaching doctrine which is the opposite of Christ’s gospel.

So what were they trying to deceive the church about?  I believe they were trying to deceive the church by presenting them another gospel, which was a fraudulent claim that you can have a relationship with God, that you can know God and receive life from God, but you don’t have to be concerned with the old fashioned ideas about sin and righteousness.  They taught that it was about an experience, a spiritual enlightening that doesn’t really have anything to do with morality or sin or the need for righteousness.  You could still be carnal and enjoy the lusts of the world and yet have salvation.

This skewed view of Christianity is still being taught today, by the way, in our modern culture.  There is very little concern today on the part of many false teachers in the church about sin and the need for righteousness.  A relationship with God is all that they teach, and when you examine their claims, you find that relationship is very one sided.  God sacrifices everything for us, but we sacrifice nothing in return. They teach that you can live in what the Bible calls sin and still be fine.  There is no need for repentance. There is no need to be righteous.  There is no need for a change in behavior.

But John says that cannot be true.  He says if you say you have fellowship with God and yet walk in the darkness, that means practice sin, then you lie and don’t practice the truth. He says if you love the world, then the love of the Father is not in you.  The point being that if you are truly a Christian, you will become like Christ.  If you really have fellowship with God, there is going to be a change in you, that results in looking more and more like Christ.  And John indicates that this is the test for how the church is to gauge the false prophets, how they are to test the spirits to see if they are from God.  If they claim to have fellowship with God, but their walk doesn’t bear witness of the fact that they have died to sin and walk after righteousness, then the church can know that these are false prophets and antichrists and they should not follow their teaching.

So John has been presenting a number of tests by which you can validate a person’’s Christianity.  And these tests also serve to assure you of your own salvation, or it should convict of your need of salvation should you fail the tests.

Today we are looking at another such test.  It’s kind of like the test we sometimes employ today in our society if there is a question about who is the father of a child. It’s called a paternity test.  They take a sample of the DNA of the child in question and a sample of the purported father, and they compare them to see if the child is really his or not. 

What John is proposing here is something akin to a paternity test.  The question is are they a child of God?  Are we a child of God? A lot of people claim to be children of God.  Some teach that everyone on earth is a child of God. But we don’t find that doctrine born out in the scriptures.  In fact, Jesus accused some Pharisees who confronted Him during His ministry of being children of their father the devil.  Paul in Ephesians 2 calls the world “children of wrath.” John in vs 10 of chapter three divides the world into two groups, children of God and children of the devil.  So not everyone then is a child of God.

To be a child of God, John says you have to be born of God. He mentions this necessity in vs 29 of the previous chapter, saying, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”  In other words, John is saying that the one who is born of God is like God in the sense that God’s DNA is righteousness, and if we are born of God then our DNA is righteousness.

But the question arises, what is meant by being born of God? The word John uses in vs29 is literally “begotten”.  That means they have had a birth experience.  It’s a second birth.  Jesus said in John chapter 3 vs 3 to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

So everyone on earth is born of their mother and father.  That’s the natural birth, what Jesus refers to as water birth.  But He says it’s necessary to be born again of the Spirit.  God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  So we must be born again spiritually and that happens through the Holy Spirit.  

Now how does that work?  First a person must recognize that they are a sinner, and that they are dead in their sins.  Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death.  When Adam and Eve sinned against God He said that they would surely die.  What died immediately was their spirit. And as children of Adam we are born dead spiritually.  Romans 5 says “by the transgression of the one, (that is Adam), death reigned through the one.”  And “through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.”  And “as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”

So through the obedience of Christ, many will be made righteous.  There is the equation that produces new birth.  We are made righteous by Christ’s obedience to the Father to offer Himself as a sacrifice for sin, as our substitute on the cross, bearing our sins upon Him, so that we might receive His righteousness.  2 Cor. 5:21 says, “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made righteous in Him.”

Listen, new birth is having your sins forgiven and having the righteousness of Jesus Christ applied to our account.  And because we are made righteous, the Holy Spirit is able to regenerate our spirit by His dwelling in us.  So we are born of God when we by faith receive what Christ did on our behalf.  John says back in John 1:12-13 “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name:  Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

That is what it means to be born of God. To be born again. By faith believing in Christ and HIs work on the cross and what He accomplished for us, we receive forgiveness of sins, the transference of His righteousness to our account, and the power to become sons of God.  That power is the Spirit of God that gives life to our spirit and gives us new life.  We are spiritually born not of man, nor by the will of man, but of God.

And John says what it means to be a child of God is a wonderful, tremendous privilege that can hardly be comprehended.  He says in chapter 3 vs 1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God.”  I think in some ways the KJV gives us a better sense of the wonder that John feels as he considers how incredible it is to be called children of God.  In the KJV it says “Behold! What manner of  love the Father hath bestowed upon us…”

It’s a phrase that indicates astonishment, wonder, incredulity at God’s love towards us. John doesn’t just say that the Father loves us.  But that He lavishes His love upon us. It’s extravagant, overflowing, super abundant love towards us.  It shows an action taken by the Father towards us.  It’s not just a sentimental feeling God has for us, but a tremendous act of love.  And the action that God took was He sent His own, beloved Son to die in our place for our sins so that He might make us HIs children.  John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.” Greater love has no one than this, Jesus said, that a man lay down His life for His friends.  God loves us with an everlasting, sacrificial, lavish love that surpasses anything we can imagine. Because He loves us and sent Jesus to take away our sins, we receive the right to become children of God.

That we might be called children of God!  What an incredible thing!  God looked upon us, who were sinners, who were hostile towards Him, who were undeserving and unlovable, and He chose us to be the recipients of His love.  It’s as if prospective parents come to an orphanage, desiring to adopt a child.  And they pick the most unresponsive child, the child with all kinds of problems, that has no redeeming qualities, but they fall in love with this totally unlovable child, and adopt him and love him unconditionally.  And then not only do they adopt him, but they give him an inheritance of all that they have.  As children of God, we are adopted as His children, and we are made co heirs with Christ. Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,  and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with [Him] so that we may also be glorified with [Him.]”

So to this tremendous privilege we are called children of God, John adds, “and such we are!”  We are now the children of God. It’s not something that is off in the future, it’s a present reality.  We have all the benefits of being a child of God now.  We have the Spirit of God in us now. We receive His spiritual DNA now.  We have complete access to the throne of God now.  We have eternal life now.  We enjoy all the rights and privileges that our adoption entails, because we have come to know God as our Father.

Paul describes our spiritual status as a present reality, to the point of even now spiritually being seated in the heavenly places as recipients of all God’s blessings.  In Eph. 2:4-7  he says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,  even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),  and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly [places] in Christ Jesus,  so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

But John says, because we are born of God, we are known by our Father, we have the blessings of being  a child of God,  but the world does not know us.  At the end of vs 1 he says, “For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”  Even as the world did not recognize Jesus as the Son of God, neither do they recognize us as being children of God.  They may recognize us as being crazy right wing nuts who call themselves Christians. But they don’t recognize that we are born of God, for the same reasons that they didn’t recognize Christ.  People don’t recognize Jesus Christ for who He is, they don’t believe in what Jesus Christ has done, because they are too enamored with this world. If they believed in Christ that would mean they would have to give up their love for this world, their love for themselves, and so it’s easier to just not believe in Christ.  That way they think they can hold on to their autonomy, their independence, and their sin.  But they don’t realize that they are enslaved to sin, and that they have within themselves the condemnation of their sin which is the sentence of death.

But because we know God, because we are born of God, we will come to know Him more, and we will become more like Him.  John says in vs 2, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.”   For a second time John emphasizes that we are now children of God.  What he wants to stress is that there is already a resemblance to the Father that should be seen in the children.  Children should look like their father.  They should share some of the characteristics of their father.  And as they mature, they look and act more and more like their fathers.  That’s a fact in the earthly realm, and it should be a fact in the heavenly realm. If we are God’s children, then we should act like God more and more as we mature.

That process of maturing is what the Bible calls sanctification.  It’s the natural progression of maturity that believers should express in their lives and in their behavior.  The last stage of that progression of maturity will occur when we see the Lord.  It’s brought about by what John referred to in the last chapter as the coming of the Lord.  He said in the previous chapter, vs 28 “Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.”  The way to not be ashamed, John adds in the next verse, is to be righteous as He is righteous.

Now John says that  our maturity as children of God will be completed and  we will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.  He again is speaking of the coming of the Lord, and what is called our glorification.  There are in theological terms three stages of our salvation.  There is justification, when our sins are forgiven and HIs righteousness is applied, which is when we are born again; then there is sanctification, when we become conformed to His image, when we exhibit the characteristics of our Father, and then there is glorification, when Christ returns and we receive a new, glorified body.  That glorified body is like Christ’s glorified body. That’s about all I can tell you about it as far as how it looks.  But most importantly, this new body will not have the old sin nature anymore.  Sin will be done away with in all it’s forms, in all of creation, all things will be made new.  A new heaven and a new earth.  A new Jerusalem, John calls it in Revelation, meaning the city of God.  And there will be no night there, no sin there, no sickness there, no tears there.  The Lord will be the light, and we will be in His glorified presence.  We will be in what theologians call the beatific vision.  When we shall see the Lord in all His glory.  The same glory that Moses only saw the backside of, and yet his face glowed so brightly that he had to veil his face so that men could look upon him.  To be in the beatific vision is to be in the presence of pure light, pure truth, pure holiness, pure righteousness, and pure life.  All things have their being in Him.  Eternal life emanates from Him. And to be in His presence will transform us into His likeness. That is what John means when he says we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  

Paul said that is indescribable. As the apostle Paul put it, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.”  God told Moses that no man can see God and live. So God has to transform us into a creature that can see God. That can look upon Him as He is and live.  He has to make us holy, righteous.  That is the purpose of the process of sanctification that we are going through now. Through the word of God,  there is a constant sanctifying, cleansing influence going on in us. As we look intently at the word of God, we are constantly being changed and conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul states that in 2 Corinthians chapter 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” So the process of sanctification is going on in the life of every child of God now,  being conformed more and more to the Son of God until finally the conformation will be made complete, when we see him as He is at His coming.

So that being God’s purpose in our sanctification, John says if we have that hope, then we purify ourselves, just as He is pure.  Vs.3, “And everyone who has this hope [fixed] on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” The self validating test of being a Christian is that you become like Christ.  You are a work in progress.  You may not be perfect yet, but you are being perfected.  Paul said in Phil. 1:6 “[For I am] confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

The more we learn of the Lord, the more we become like Him.  The more we know Him, the more we love Him. The more we love Him, the more we obey Him. The more we read His word, the more we have the mind of Christ, the more we imitate the life of Christ.  

Purity simply means being free from moral stain.  As Peter said in  1Peter 1:16 “because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”  It’s restatement really of what John said in chapter 2:29, which is the verse we opened with, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”

And that returns us to our initial premise, the purpose of John’s writing.  That the way the church might know the true prophet of God from the false prophet of God is in whether or not they live like Jesus lived.  If they practice righteousness or practice sinfulness. That’s how John instructed the church to distinguish the spirits. 

But let’s make sure we are clear on this principle -that righteousness follows as a result of conversion.  Our righteousness is not the means of our being born again, but righteousness is the fruit of our salvation.  Our righteousness is not the cause of the new birth, but it is the consequence of it. But if we are children of God, then we will exhibit the behavior consistent with our Father.   You cannot claim to know God, to have fellowship with God, and walk in darkness.  But if you are a child of God, you purify yourself even as He is pure.

I trust today that you pass the test of the evidence of your salvation.  Some of you here today may be trying to obtain salvation through your good works.  You might be sincerely trying to be a better person.  You want to know God and to know that you know Him.  You want to know that you have eternal life.  But the scripture says that  by your own righteousness you cannot obtain salvation.  

Titus 3:5-7 says,  “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,  whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,  so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to [the] hope of eternal life.”

God saves us because of His great sacrificial love which He has for us.  He saved us on the basis of what Christ did for us on the cross.  Our sins are forgiven, and our righteousness is granted, by our faith in what Christ has done.  So that John may say, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, [even] to those who believe in His name,  who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Have you been born again?  Are you able to answer that question today?  Born again not by man, nor by the will of man, but born of God, that you might become the child of God.  God loves you so much that He has already done all that is required for you to be become His child.  The part that is your responsibility is to trust in Him, to receive Him as your Lord and Savior, confessing your need for Him.  And the promise of God is that if you will receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, God will give you the right to be a child of God.  Call upon Him today and be saved.