“To Know Fully, and To Be Fully Known”

Scripture: 1 John 3:1-10

How well do you know your friends? How about your family members? Do you know every single issue that has ever occurred in these lives? And regardless of what you know, or don’t know for that matter, do you still love them? I mean really love them – willing to give everything you have for them, care for every unmet need that they might ever have, sacrifice your own well-being on their behalf? Regardless of what they may have done to you, regardless of what they may have said about you?

God’s love for us, given through Christ Jesus, answers a resounding “YES!” to all of these questions. He loves us beyond all reason, beyond all expectation, beyond our greatest need, beyond all understanding! He loves us to the extreme, even though he knows our failures and imperfections intimately – even better than we know ourselves. And that is the love that he calls us to show to others (John 13:34-35).

Our text for today is about the depth of God’s knowledge of us, and the love that he has shown us, in spite of who and what we may be.

Read 1 John 3:1-3

These 3 verses are not just about the Lord’s understanding and love for us – they are about unity with the Lord. The author states that through faith in Jesus Christ, we have become children of God. Israel has always thought that they were the only ones who God had chosen, and for centuries, that may have been the case. But in the coming of Jesus Christ, the door has been opened to all who will accept him as their Lord and Savior.
And not only are believers saved in Jesus, but just as Jesus is the Son of God, we, too, have become the sons and daughters of God. Now note that the text doesn’t say that we have been adopted by God – it says that we are his children! That means that we are direct descendants of God! And not only that, we are also told that when we stand in his presence, it will become obvious that we are truly like him. Any doubt that we are a child of God will vanish, and we will know him, as well as our relationship with him, for certain. Born of him, like him, his offspring, of equal standing with Jesus. We will even be seated with the Lord at the right hand of God! (Ephesians 2:4-6)

Knowing yourself as well as you do, are you humbled and awed by this fact? Have you ever thought that you were deserving of this honor? Awed – absolutely! Deserving – NEVER. It is only by the grace of God and the love of Christ Jesus that we can receive this gift! And in that perfect relationship, we are made right with God through the purification of our lives and the forgiveness of our sins.

Think about this for a minute. It isn’t just by obligation that we gain these rights – it is by the undying love of the Father for each and every person on the face of the earth. And if his joy flourishes in the salvation that he can offer to those who believe, just think about the heartache that he has over those who will not believe? The pain must be just as deep and intense as the Godly love that has been denied.

The choice that humanity has is between the purification of Jesus Christ, or remaining lost and sinful and condemned without him.

Read 1 John 3:4-6

Jesus came to take our sin away, and if we continue to sin, we don’t yet know him. Pretty harsh words, don’t you think? But do we take this simply at face value, or is there an even deeper significance here?
Remember from last week that sinfulness, and the condemnation that comes from it, is in our opposition to Christ, and in that, we become “antichrists”. And from this week, we learn that we will “know” the Father and Son when the Lord returns to claim his kingdom on earth.

So what does this all mean? Verse 3 tells us that everyone who has hope in Jesus will begin to separate themselves from the lawlessness of sin. It doesn’t mean that it happens immediately, but that it must begin when we confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, and will only become complete when we see him face to face.
But even so, any sin that continues to live within us is a break from the will of God. When we surrender our lives to Christ, it is by his grace that sin’s hold on us is broken, but for some reason, it does not break the hold that we have on sin. It gives us an awareness of our sin, it gives us a desire to set our sin aside, and by the power of prayer through the Holy Spirit, we can actually begin letting our sinfulness fall away.
But it isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen all at once. It’s tough to let go of those things we have always done in this life, and by faith in God, it will begin and it will continue to strengthen us throughout the age. And the closer we get to letting all of our sin go, the closer we get to truly knowing him, to actually live in him, to be “like him”.

Read 1 John 3:7-10

The reason for this letter becomes evident once again – some people have been trying to lead the faithful away from the truth of God, very possibly by telling them that all you need to do is believe in Jesus, and then you can do whatever you want to do. And the writer bluntly proclaims that those who do God’s will are righteous, and those who will not are still under Satan’s authority.
The purpose of Jesus’ time on earth, we are told, was to destroy the work of Satan. Even though Jesus spent 33 years with us – not a small amount of time for us – he took 3½ years to teach and prepare and lay the ground work for our faith, and only 3 days to win our salvation from Satan's grasp.

Salvation comes only by the Blood of Jesus, and by personal faith in the redemptive love that took Jesus to Calvary. And when we come to the realization of Jesus’ gift of eternal life for us and what it required of him, we begin to live a life that brings honor to our Triune God. And it is by our response to Christ’s sacrifice that we begin to become more and more like him.

In the last verse of this passage, John refreshes our memory of Jesus’ words to the Pharisee when he was asked “What is the greatest commandment?” (Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-34) The correct response to God’s righteousness, Jesus tells us, is to show love and respect to both God and all of humanity. Living a righteous life includes more than simple belief – it requires worship and service and prayer and study and giving and witness to the world around us. Living a righteous life occurs when we serve within the church as well as outside the church. A righteous life loves the faithful and the sinner equally. And with every step we take in faith, we come to know the Lord just a little better.

A life in faith is a journey unlike any other that we will ever take. It begins with a confession that we aren’t who we should be, and that Jesus is the only way we can ever be right with God. But our journey will never be complete until we stand in the presence of God and can finally know him as fully as he has always known us.
And that will be an incredibly glorious day, to say the least!