September 12th, 2013
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Reflections of the Father

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Opening Prayer

Eternal Father, for Your perfect goodness and perfect wisdom, for Your love to me, I praise and worship You.

Read 1 John 2:28-3:10

[28] And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. [29] If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. [1] See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. [2] Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. [3] All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. [4] Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. [5] But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. [6] No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. [7] Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. [8] The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. [9] No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. [10] This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

Meditate

“The child is father of the man” (William Wordsworth 1770-1850). But John tells us that our divine parentage should determine who we are and become.

Think Further

I think John would have loved the image of DNA to help express what he writes here about our relationship with God. We have been “born of him” (2:29; 3:9), the objects of passionate parental love from God himself (3:1). His “seed” is in us (3:9). But our DNA doesn’t determine what we shall be; it merely sets the fences around the field, allowing us freedom to decide what we shall grow or build on it. We have the responsibility to decide to reproduce the family characteristics that will mark us as “children of God” (3:2).

John picks out four family traits we need to show: three positive, one negative. The negative is simply–no sin! “In him is no sin” (3:5), so it shouldn’t be in his children, either. The TNIV translation of 3:6 is probably right: “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (italics added). It’s not a matter of spotless perfection, but of walking in the light purified by the blood of Jesus (1 John 1:7). The three positive characteristics are: (1) righteousness (2:29; 3:7), which is not a stiff morality but the quality that Jesus shows when he forgives us (1 John 1:9; 2:1; “just” and “righteous” are the same Greek word); (2) purity (3:3), which means inner dedication of heart, matching God’s commitment to us; and, of course, (3) love (3:10). Without love, all claims to relationship with God are false.

John sets all this in the context of our expectation that we will see our heavenly Father one day soon (2:28; 3:2). To become like him now, expressing these family characteristics, is the best way to prepare for seeing him face to face because, then, he won’t be a stranger!

Apply

Pray through those four family characteristics, reviewing your life and noting specific ways to develop and show them more clearly each day.

Closing prayer

Gracious Lord, I thank You that I can stand before You perfect in Christ. Do Your sanctifying work in me to make me more like Jesus in daily life.

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