56 - Hope Motivates Virtue

Hope Motivates Virtue; 1 John 3:2, 3

1 John 3:2 ^NASB "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.

The key word for understanding what John is talking about in this verse is the word "hope." This word is the word that moves us from spiritual childhood to spiritual adulthood. Hope is a confident expectation, a confidence of where we are going, what our destiny is. We are confident at salvation that we are going to go to heaven, but when we get to spiritual adolescence and a personal sense of our eternal destiny we begin to move that confidence of our eternal destiny in heaven to a confidence at the judgment seat of Christ that we will not experience shame a His coming. So the focus here is on hope, and hope is the mental attitude related to coming to a personal sense of our eternal destiny. It is not hope in the sense that we normally use the word which is the sense of an optimistic wish. That is not a very confident hope, it is just an optimistic wish that is not what we see in the Scripture. When the Scripture uses the word hope it is a confident expectation, a certainty of knowledge that something is going to take place. So this is the key word here that the interpretation of this passage is going to revolve because it emphasises for us the advance through spiritual adolescence to spiritual adulthood. We are children of God in a training ground right now, being trained to handle the tests of life. That is what James wrote his epistle about and there are many similarities between James and 1 John. The problem we have is the sin nature.

The sin nature is the source of temptation. The source of temptation is not our external circumstances, it is what is going on inside our sin nature. The occasion for the temptation is the circumstance but the temptation has its source in the sin nature. But sin doesn't come from the sin nature, it comes from our volition.

In verse two John begins with the vocative of address from agapetos [a)gaphtoj], beloved, which is a term of endearment. Notice he doesn't use the word teknion [teknion] that he has been using in terms of young children. We are beloved because we are the objects of God's eternal love. He sent His Son to die on the cross for us and by putting our faith alone in Christ alone we become the special objects of God's love in the royal family. This whole phrase, "Beloved, now we are the children of God," emphasises for us God's provision of everything that we will need to live the Christian life. We are children; God is training us. He has given us everything we need to pass the test, to make it through the various stages of training that we go through. God has given us spiritual skills and when we put them together we have protection for the soul—the soul fortress.  

"and it has not appeared as yet what we will be." The verb here, appeared, is the aorist passive indicative of phaneroo [fanerow] which means to make visible, to appear or to reveal. It is the same word that we find back in 2:28: "when He appears." Then he says: "We know that when He appears." So he is drawing our attention to the use of this word, even though it has a slightly different emphasis in the first use in v.2, to draw our attention back to the Rapture. Why? Because at the Rapture we will be taken to be with the Lord and we will then be at the judgment seat of Christ which was the focus back at 2:28. So we don't know what it will be at the judgment seat of Christ. It hasn't appeared yet, it hasn't been revealed what we shall be; it won't be revealed until the judgment seat of Christ. At the judgment seat of Christ all of our works—gold, silver and precious stones, word hay and stubble—are going to be piled up and be put to the metaphorical torch and burned up. What remains is that for which we will be rewarded. What remains is what sticks with us into the Millennial kingdom and is ours for eternity. The decisions we make today are what is going to determine who and what we are in the Millennial kingdom and who and what we are in eternity. So John says: "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be." In other words, there is a potential here and that potential is dependent on our volition. We advance because of our volition and our decision to make doctrine the highest priority in our life, to walk by means of God the Holy Spirit, to apply doctrine to the faith-rest drill, to be humble and to operate on God's grace plan (grace orientation), and to orient our thinking to doctrine. That is how we advance, so the potential is emphasised here because it is still up in the air. The issue is how we are going to exercise our volition.

The dynamics at death. There are two groups of people: believers who died physically and those who are the raptured generation. At the instant of physical death we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord. At this point we have an interim body. We don't know what the nature of that body will be but the reality of it is clear from Luke 16 which is not a parable. Those who advance before the Rapture go to the third heaven, the throne room of God, and they return with the Lord Jesus Christ to the clouds, and will receive their resurrection body. That resurrection body, if the analogy from the Lord Jesus Christ's resurrection body holds true, is going to be made up from the molecules that made up the original mortal body, except that it is going to be transformed into an immortal body. In the case of members of the raptured generation, what happens is that the dead in Christ shall rise first then they who are alive and remain will be caught up together in the clouds.

Then in verse 2 we have a second sentence, something we know, the perfect active indicative of horao [o(raw]. This is a perfect tense used with a present tense meaning and emphasises a present reality, that right now we know something for sure: "that when [3^rd class condition because we don't know when it will be] He appears [Rapture]…" The subjunctive mood emphasises the uncertainty of when the Rapture will occur. "…we will be like Him [transformation of our mortal bodies], because we will see [perceive] Him just as He is." For the first time we will have direct empirical observation of Jesus Christ. So the focus of v. 2 is on the fact that we are going to be at the judgment seat of Christ with the Lord Jesus Himself and there will be an evaluation.

Colossians 3:4, 5 ^NASB "When Christ, who is our life, is revealed [fanerow], then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry." Paul is doing the same thing as John. He is using the judgment seat of Christ and our appearance with Jesus Christ as motivation for what we do here and now. Because of the judgment seat of Christ, an evaluation, it should impact the decisions we make today. Verse 5 here makes the application. He is using our personal sense of eternal destiny as a motivator for our present decisions. That is what hope does. Confidence at the judgment seat of Christ is a motivator for us today to make decisions consistent with the Word of God. 

1 John 3:3 ^NASB "and everyone who has this hope {fixed} on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure." This is the hope of our appearing at the judgment seat of Christ, the hope that is not related to shame. Because we are confident that we will appear without shame we purify ourselves. This is the same idea as Colossians 3:5. Paul uses the same type of argument in 2 Corinthians 3:18 ^NASB "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." There is an ongoing transformation taking place into the image of Jesus Christ. Part of that is based on purification in phase two, the spiritual life. 1 John 3:3 begins with the adjective pas [paj], i.e. every believer, and then it is qualified with a relative participle, the present active participle of echo [e)xw], which means everyone who has something, who has a certain possession, a certain mental attitude. That mental attitude is expressed in hope.

There is a question we need to ask here. "…everyone who has this hope {fixed} on Him purifies himself…" Is that phase one purification where we are all purified at the instant of salvation—positional purification? Or, is it ongoing purification that takes place in the spiritual life? We have already seen from Colossians 3:4, 5 that it would seem that this is phase two purification, and indeed it is. The word "hope" is from the Greek word elpis [e)lpij] which means confident expectation. This is a key concept. It is certainty, confidence, an absolute level of knowledge based on the promise of God.

The doctrine of hope (Confident expectation)

1.  This is an absolute confidence regarding something in the future. It is anticipatory, something that hasn't happened yet but is guaranteed to happen by the Word of God.

2.  It is linked to the assurance of our salvation—Hope¹. But this confidence goes to the next level: confidence at the judgment seat of Christ. It is a confidence that is more real than our circumstances or our emotions.

3.  It is arrived at only on the basis of advanced knowledge of the Scripture. It is not just confidence in a vacuum.

4.  This confidence is at the judgment seat of Christ which is converted to motivation for the judgment seat of Christ—motivation to be ready for the judgment seat of Christ.

5.  So this shows that this hope/confidence in v. 3 is related to phase two of the spiritual life, to our advance in the spiritual life; it is not related to phase one/justification.

6.  This hope anticipates divine blessing in eternity, and divine blessing in eternity is based on grace and the understanding of grace, and the imputation of God's perfect righteousness.

This hope is motivational, and that is the point of 1 John 3:3 ^NASB "and everyone who has this hope {fixed} on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure." We have to recognise that at the judgment seat of Christ there are going to be differences. Some are going to be failures; some are going to be successes. True freedom means that there are going to be differences. The difference is how they used whatever they were given. It is up to volition. In the spiritual life everyone is given the same thing. It is not like here on earth where some were born into families with more, some with less, and where circumstances differ. In God's plan in the spiritual life everybody is given the same privileges, the same assets, the same access to God, and the only thing that makes the difference between the loser believer and the believer who is a success is how they use their volition.

The word "purify" here is an interesting word. It is not the word katharizo [kaqarizw] that we find in 1 John 1:9, it is hagnizo [a(gnizw] and it means to purify. In the Old Testament and in John and Acts this is related to ritual purification. But that doesn't help us a whole lot in understanding its meaning here. There are three times, including this passage, where this word is used in the epistles, and how it is used in the epistles is informative. James 4:6 ^NASB "But He gives a greater grace. Therefore {it} says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE." Then verses 7-10 give a picture through ten mandates, imperatives, of what humility looks like, of what grace orientation is going to look like in a believer. The first is v.7, "Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." By submitting to God we resist the devil. In v. 8, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you…" How do we draw near to God? "…Cleanse [kaqarizw] your hands, you sinners; and purify [a(gnizw] your hearts, you double-minded." katharizo has to do with confession of sin; hagnizo relates to learning doctrine. So we are to purify, and we do that through confession of sin and then doctrinal orientation.

1 Peter 1:13 ^NASB "Therefore, prepare your minds for action [remove any distractions from your thinking], keep sober [mental objectivity]{in spirit,} fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." We are to focus our confidence on the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is category # 2 hope, the hope that relates to the judgment seat of Christ. [14] "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts {which were yours} in your ignorance, [15] but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all {your} behavior; … [21] who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith [at salvation] and hope [confident expectation] are in God. [22] Since [because] you have in [by means of] obedience to the truth [doctrinal orientation] purified [a(gnizw] your souls for a sincere [true] love of the brethren, fervently [diligently] love one another from the heart." We are to love one another from the thinking of the soul because that has been purified. So purification has to do with thought, it is not simply confession of sin but moving from being simply in fellowship, being filled by means of God the Holy Spirit, and having a heart that has been purified by taking in doctrine.