There is, inherently present in a life of following Jesus, the stark awareness that none of us quite measure up to the standard. When we think about that reality, we are prone to celebrate God’s grace and the free gift of life eternal. But we can ill afford for that celebration of God’s grace to convince us that God isn’t interested in seeing a difference in our lives because of our faith.
1 John 3:3 is one of the plainest statements of that reality to be found anywhere in Scripture. Here’s what John encourages late first century believers to do: “And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” Apparently God is most willing to welcome us “just as we are” when we come to the Kingdom, but expects us to never again be satisfied with “just as we are” again! There is a kind of holy dissatisfaction to the Christian life that isn’t psychologically disabling, but is an ever present reminder that the standard is the holiness of Christ.
If you read through this short epistle, you discover early on (in chapter 1:5-10) that we move from darkness to light by means of the cleansing of Christ’s blood. But apparently we have some responsibility in our lives to “purify ourselves, just as He (Christ) is pure.” Grace celebrates the gift of cleansing through the blood of Christ; holy dissatisfaction accepts the responsibility of showing God our gratitude through living pure lives.
The motivation for such an approach to life is hope. Hope is one of those difficult- to-describe New Testament words that deserves some attention on our part. We use that word in so many different ways that often its meaning is discounted to almost nothing. I might buy a lottery ticket and hear the cashier say “I hope you win!” But the truth is, my chances of winning are so slim that it is almost always the waste of a dollar to buy a ticket. I may not crack the books all semester, take the final exam, and say to the professor, “I hope I passed!” But chances of that happening are not unlike buying a lottery ticket.
So what is hope? At some level, at least in the context of this portion of 1 John, hope is confident assurance that one day we will see Christ face to face, and among the results of that is that we will have a body like His. While John seems unwilling to try and describe that body – even though an eyewitness – He is confidently assured that one day he will have the same kind of body.
It is that hope – that confident assurance – that makes the challenge of “purifying ourselves as He is pure” more than merely worth the effort. It isn’t that our efforts to purify ourselves somehow earn a status with God, but that our efforts to purify ourselves model our gratitude for the status we already have. “Now we are the children of God . . .” is how John introduces this idea!
The days of Lent are a great time to get back in the habit of purifying ourselves. I hear the critics of Lent remind us all the time that “repentance, prayer, and fasting” should be a part of our lives all the time, not just during Lent. I couldn’t agree more – but am not so sure of my own efforts to “purify myself as He is pure” that I don’t appreciate this forty day reminder every year leading up to Easter.
When all is said and done – whatever we can do that makes “something happen” after becoming a child of God is a good thing and I pray that each of us would let our confident assurance motivate us to model a kind of gratitude that expresses itself in pure lives.
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