Reading : 1 John 2 v 28- 3 v 10

As a child, I was one of those kids whose brains were rather like sponges, just absorbing facts; sadly they were nearly always completely useless facts. I was never much good at history, but I always knew the dates. 1066 & all that was a favourite book. So, Friday was a rather exciting day for me, because of all the Trafalgar celebrations. “England expects . . “ and all that stuff. Other useless facts I absorbed were about inventors and inventions, Marconi, Edison, Bell and so on. But I always had trouble with the steam engine. Was it James Watt or George Stephenson? Eventually, I realised that the reason for my problem was the different way we use the word “engine” in this country. Sometimes we use it to refer to the thing that pulls a train - the locomotive if you like, but at other times it can mean any old engine. So James Watt invented the first ‘any old’ steam engine, but George Stephenson invented the steam locomotive. But, and I bet you didn’t know this, George Stephenson didn’t invent the steam locomotive on his own - his son Robert worked with him in building the Rocket, which won them a prize of £500 in 1829 for being the first locomotive to reach a speed of 30 mph. Robert later became famous in his own right as a bridge builder. ‘Like Father, like son’ is a saying that has been used of the two Stephensons. I wonder if you can guess what my father did for a living? No, he wasn’t a preacher, he was a maths teacher! And would you be surprised if I told you that he was a pessimist? But then I’m working on that one.

What’s all this got to do with 1 John? Well, I wonder if you noticed verse 2 in our passage? We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And then again in the last verse we had read to us, v 10, it says this: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother. The theme is that if we are truly children of God we will display the marks of our heavenly Father , and the main characteristic of God that John is pointing to is holiness. Everyone who does what is right is born of him is how he puts it at the beginning of our passage. Incidentally, I hope you aren’t too upset by the title of this sermon, “Like Father, like Son.” What about the ladies? I was at the Senior Citizens Harvest Lunch last week and Margaret Mylchreest rang me up beforehand to ask if I would look out for her mother and father who were coming. “You’ll know it’s them”, she told me, “because my mother looks exactly like me”. And she was right! So when John talks about brothers, fathers and sons, he is using inclusive language and we are perfectly entitled to add, under our breath if you like, sisters, mothers and daughters. And in this passage, he’s asking us this question: do you look like your heavenly Father, do you display the family likeness? And he goes on to give us three incentives, three reasons why we should work on making ourselves more and more like him.

The first of these is our present status. Look at verse 1 (a favourite verse of mine - I could preach the whole sermon on this verse alone I reckon, but I’d better not!). There’s a film isn’t there called Lost in Translation, well there’s a word here that’s been lost in translation. What it really says is this Behold, how great is the love that the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God. Some years ago I was visiting someone’s house when I saw a poster on the wall with this caption, “Behold the tortoise, who only makes progress by sticking his neck out”. When I said how much I liked it, he took it down, rolled it up, and to my embarrassment insisted that I keep it. I have it at home, still, to this day. “Behold” - look, consider, dwell on - that’s what it means. But it’s also a word that expresses wonder and amazement, and it goes with that other extravagant word` lavished. (Do we really believe God loves us that much?). It’s so easy for us to become immune to this talk of God’s love. “Isn’t that God’s job to love everybody?” we sometimes think. But John is staggered that you and I could be called children of God. In the culture of the time, to be someone’s child, automatically meant that you were the heir; you inherited the family estate, and that included adopted sons as well. Adopted children had just as many rights as natural born children, and if we acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives, the Bible says that we are adopted by God as part of his family, and become heirs of all the promises he has made to those who belong to his kingdom. I’m sorry - I’ve been using far too many religious words like kingdom, Lord, even heirs and adopted - and that may have obscured the point I am trying to get across. Have we ever taken the time to consider honestly the state of our hearts? I wonder what you’ve found - what I’ve found in my heart doesn’t bear repeating. The amazing thing is that God knows all that and more. And yet, he loves me and he loves you and he will never let go of us. We are his children.

But being children also brings with it an obligation. Look at verse 29. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does right has been born of him. What John is saying is that there is a kind of spiritual paternity test for determining who are the true children of God. We’re getting familiar these days with the situation when there’s an argument about who is the true father of a child - it’s even crept into the Archers. So what happens,? A DNA test of all the candidates is done, and one of them is declared the lucky father. John is saying that there is a kind of spiritual DNA test we undergo. But the test here is how we behave. If God is righteous, if he acts in a holy and godly way, then so will his children. Like Father, like son! So, if we claim to be a child of God then there must be some evidence of it in our lives. A growth in holiness over the years, we’re becoming less proud, more loving, more patient - our speech is building others up, not tearing them down. And if we’re not displaying the family likeness then we need to think hard and long about the state of our Christian lives. The first incentive to holy living is our present status as children of God.

John’s second incentive to holiness is our future hope. So what exactly is our future hope? John spells it out in v 2 (which we looked at a few moments ago) What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. This all sounds a little uncertain: What we will be has not yet been made known. The Bible gives us enough information to be sure that we are going to be with Christ one day, but it doesn’t tell us exactly what that experience will be like. It rather reminds me of something Donald Rumsfeld once said (US Secretary of Defense) - Listen v carefully! “As we know there are known knowns - these are the things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns - that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there also unknown unknowns - these are the ones we don’t know we don’t know”! Our future life with Christ is a known unknown in Rumsfeld speak. We know it’ll be wonderful, but we don’t know the details. Verse 2 points to a staggering future that lies ahead of us - we shall see him as he is and (even more amazing) we shall be like him, with bodies that are perfect like his. To be with Christ and to be like Christ! That’s what we have been rescued for. If we are trusting in God, then - John says - this future hope must have an impact on the way we live our lives in the present. You’ve heard the phrase, “Too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use”. Utter nonsense, John would say! The more heavenly minded the more earthly use - because knowing that we are going to be with the Lord, keeping that thought in our minds on a regular basis, will act as a spur to us for righteous living. You can see this back in v 28. And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him. We need to continue to follow him. How hard that can be. I’m sure many of us have friends who have drifted away from Christ. Will we go the same way? If that happens then we won’t be confident of our future in the world to come. Or, will we continue in him? If that’s to be our aim, then we need to strive for the same purity of life that Jesus showed. The second incentive to holiness is our future hope.

There is also a third incentive to help us live holy lives, and that is our past rescue. When Jesus died on the cross two things happened. First of all (and you can find this in verse 5) he appeared to take away our sins. And in him is no sin. The one who was sinless died in the place of those who are sinful – that’s us. The very reason he came into the world was to take away our sins by bearing the penalty for them himself. But look on a couple of verses and you’ll see the 2^nd thing that happened at the cross. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. Just as love, purity and righteousness describe what God is like, so his children will be recognised as those who carry the likeness of the Father, whereas sinful acts are typical of the devil, and those who persist in these things demonstrate by their lives who they are taking after. There is, of course, a difficulty with this idea, and verse 9 will show you what I mean. No one who is born of God will continue to sin. A very alarming verse for Christians who are sensitive to the fact that they are still far from perfect. Does it mean that if I sin (which I do) then I am a child of the devil and not a real Christian? But that can’t be right. John has already said in chapter 1 that if we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Perhaps what he’s referring to here in chapter 3 is habitual sin. We should gradually be able to see progress in our fight against the sin that is within us. Sometimes, it’s true, as we draw closer to God in our daily walk we become more aware of our sinful thoughts and actions, so it’s hard to tell whether our progress really is upward. It’s here that others can tell us what they’ve seen - Oh, you’re not the same selfish and untruthful person you once were (or whatever it may be). These are signs that we are not the ones John is describing. The point that John is making, though, is this. We have been rescued from sin when Christ died on the cross, so to continue deliberately and persistently to reject God’s ways is no longer acceptable.

When Nicky and I were engaged, my parents invited her parents over for lunch one day, and Nicky’s 8 year old brother came too. He began to get bored after a while with all the grown-up chat and put his elbows on the table. Suddenly my mother announced, “Somebody’s got their elbows on the table” and immediately he whipped them off looking very guilty. Many times when I was a child my mother had said, “It’s not done to put your elbows on the table”. I can just imagine one of us saying, “Oh yes it is, because I’ve just done it”, but we didn’t dare make Smart-Alec remarks like that. No, elbows on the table were not done, inexcusable almost. John is saying the same sort of thing about sin. If you’ve been born of God and you’re one of his children you don’t sin, simple as that, and if we pipe up and say, “But sinning is possible, I’ve just done it”, we miss the point. When Jesus died on our behalf we became children of God. We’ve done with sin. So don't let’s do it.

Three incentives for us to aim at living a holy life. Our present status, our future hope and our past rescue. In John’s gospel - the bit we had read to us in the first reading, he expresses the idea of holy living more in terms of obedience, If you obey my commands you will remain in my love, and obedience to God implies that we yield ourselves to him. The night before he died, in Gethsemane, Jesus showed us how we can yield our lives to God: Father, everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine.

I guess we need to pray for ourselves and for one another that God will help us to yield our lives more fully to him so that we can be living examples of Christ to the world.

James Cooke

www.wonershchurch.com