18 April 2021 | A Sermon on 1 John 3:1-7 | by Samuel D. Zumwalt, STS |
1 John 3:1-7 English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.
[Professor Bruce Schuchard’s Concordia Commentary: 1-3 John is a good resource to purchase.]
THE WORD OF GOD: OUR INNOCENCE
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
We Are God’s Children
It is sheer grace that in Holy Baptism God makes us His children. Washed in the Blood of Jesus, we get what we don’t deserve. Our Father in heaven does not wait until we are holy enough, godly enough, pure enough, righteous enough, or pious enough. As Paul wrote to the Romans, so here John the Beloved Disciple tells us: God’s beloved Son Jesus shed His Blood for us on the cross while we were yet sinners that we might become the children of God by grace alone.
At the outset of his first letter as we heard last Sunday, John the Beloved Disciple wrote to his churches in Asia Minor telling them not to sin, but, if they did sin, that they have an Advocate (parakletos) with the Father, Christ Jesus, God’s only Son. Lest the acknowledgement that we are all sinners become an occasion for cheap grace, John makes clear today that persisting in sin is not the mark of the children of God. Those who abide in God’s Son Jesus are not permitted to join with those who deceive themselves as if lawlessness is one of the marks of the Christian life.
The nature of biological existence is, yes, that we human creatures cannot not sin. Our hearts are, by nature as Martin Luther said, incurvatus in se (curved in on ourselves). This inbred narcissism unchecked by God’s Law as curb, mirror, and guide leads to the rapid dissolution of community on the microcosmic level of family and on the macrocosmic level of, first, nations and, then, of all humanity. In response to this dreadful human condition, Holy Baptism is an amazingly gracious work as God makes a new creation out of the chaos of His very good creation gone bad.
What almost forty years ago was called reimagining Christianity was nothing more than the resurgence of the old sinner climbing out of the baptismal font to push God from His rightful place at the center of all things. Such movements, regardless of the soaring God talk, are successors to the secessionist movement that was plaguing John’s churches in Asia Minor.
We Are Not the World’s Children
It is sheer mercy that for His Son Jesus’ sake God the Father does not give us what we do deserve, namely eternal death as the just punishment for our rebellion against His good and gracious will.
Were God as just as many of the confused blown-dry children constantly clamor for, He would long ago have scrapped the whole very-good-creation-gone-bad project entirely. In the words of the confession of sins from my childhood, we justly deserve our Father’s temporal and eternal punishment, that which retributively applies to the whole human race chasing after other gods.
Like a cherished grandfather in the faith, John reminds his hearers that we are not the world’s children, and so, accordingly, we cannot pretend that the unbaptized are God’s children by virtue of a common humanity apart from the only Son of God. But more importantly, and to the point, we the baptized cannot look like the world’s children (who sometimes look better than God’s children in name!) and remain unchanged by the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. His Word works!
An old friend of forty years used to say that Alcoholics Anonymous messes up a person’s drinking. A late friend from almost the same forty years used to say one cannot not know what one knows. Baptized into the Lord Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are not the world’s children. Only those more catechized by the world than by the Lord, and having absented themselves from the fellowship of Light, will try to gloss over what God has newly created in supposed solidarity with a world in hostile rebellion against its Creator, His Christ, and His “Holy-ing” Spirit.
John is not addressing those who have wandered away. He is speaking to those who have not done so and are intently assembling with the Lord weekly around the Word and His Sacraments. We are not the world’s children. We cannot pretend otherwise. God’s children look like His Son.
Be Like Jesus
The sheer wonder and miracle of God’s grace and mercy in Jesus Christ is that, in the washing of Holy Baptism, God the Father promises that we will be like His Only Son Jesus when He appears in glory to judge the living and the dead. We the guilty will be found innocent for His sake. We the impure will become pure. We the unrighteous will become righteous. We the unloving will become what Jesus is. In our best moments, we have glimpses of that, usually more in the unsung saints around us than in the one looking back at us from the aptly named vanity mirror.
The point, dear ones, is that practicing the Christian faith does something to us. Hear God’s Word and it disturbs before it delights. Routinely sign yourself with Christ’s cross in the memory of your Baptism into His death and resurrection, and it chides before it comforts. Take into your mouth the very Body and most precious Blood of Jesus given and shed for you, and He goes with you into the Sturm und Drang (storm and pressure) of daily life, work, and relationships without allowing you to pretend that biological life and a rebellious creation are not passing away. In short, our hope in Christ is not for this life only (1 Corinthians 15:19). Receiving Him in this most intimate way of all is not merely receiving gifts or benefits apart from the Giver Himself!
So, then, our elder Brother, Jesus, is not to be spoken of in the past tense as unbelievers routinely speak and write. Apparently, as we will learn in 1 John 4 on May 2, the problem caused by those who have seceded from the Gospel that John has proclaimed for decades is that they do not believe God’s Word became flesh, dwelt among them full of grace and truth, suffered, died, was buried, rose again, and ascended to the seat of power at His Father’s right hand. Rather than being filled and guided by the Holy Spirit, who keeps the Lord Jesus present in the midst of God’s assembled children, they have been filled by the unholy spirit who constantly manifests himself in the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the present rebellious age). The more things change….
Knowing we are God’s children and not the world’s children, we want to be like Jesus here and now, because that is what we will be completely someday when the old sinner in us has been turned to dust and ash. Then, the white pall will be placed over our caskets. Perhaps, that same box will be sprinkled with water as a sign of the completion of our baptismal journey and even censed with holy smoke as one more reminder that we are clothed in Christ’s righteousness and not our own.
So… the children of God will not deceive ourselves in any way that by our own reason or efforts we are making ourselves, more and more, the children of God. To pretend like that would nullify the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ and waste His death on the cross for us and for all. Remember what we heard from Blessed Martin Luther at the end of Lent: “Above all, [God] wants our hearts to be pure, even though as long as we live here we cannot reach that ideal. So, this [tenth] commandment remains, like all the rest, one that constantly accuses us and shows just how upright we really are in God’s sight” (Large Catechism, Tappert edition, 407:310).
As we strive with the help of God to be like Jesus here on the way to what we will be someday, we keep in mind His words to the first generation of disciples: “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:10).
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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©Samuel David Zumwalt, STS
St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
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