1 John 2:29–3:6 — Saturday, January 3, Christmas Week
In the First Letter of John, three luminous phrases describe who God is: God is light (1 John 1:5), God is righteous (1 John 2:29), God is love (1 John 4:8).
And from each description, John draws a simple, practical conclusion. If God is light, we are to walk as children of light. If God is righteous, our lives must lean toward righteousness. If God is love, then love must become the shape and tone of our Christian existence.
To belong to God, John insists, is to let our lives be gradually freed from the grip and shadow of sin (1 John 3:3–6). This is not about perfectionism, but about direction — a heart steadily turning toward the One who first turned toward us.
Anything in life has its beginning and its end. Every journey has a point of departure and a destination. The Bible says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 1:7), yet its end is love — for “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).
Today, John announces the astonishing beginning of our Christian journey: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God — and that is what we are.” (1 John 3:1)
Paul explains that this change of identity took place in baptism. There, we ceased to be slaves; we became beloved sons and daughters. And as a seal of this adoption, God sent into our hearts the Spirit who teaches us to cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6).
That is the beginning. But what is the end?
John answers with a sentence that feels almost too daring to read aloud: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. But when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)
Like Him. What does this mean?
Peter gives the key when he describes the aim of Christian faith as becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Two of the Church’s greatest theologians dared to comment on this line with breathtaking simplicity: St. Athanasius wrote, “The Son of God became man that we might become God.” St. Thomas Aquinas echoes him: Christ became human that He “might make men gods.”
Neither saint meant that we become God by nature, as though we replace Him. They meant something far more beautiful: we are invited into God’s own life, drawn by grace into communion so deep that the boundaries of fear, sin, and death are burned away by love.
The Orthodox tradition has a luminous story that makes this mystery almost visible. It is found in The Conversation of St. Seraphim of Sarov with Nicholas Motovilov. Motovilov, a simple layman longing to know the “aim of the Christian life,” asks the great elder for an answer. St. Seraphim tells him plainly: the aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.
But then something happens — something Nicholas will never forget.
He looks at Seraphim’s face, and suddenly the winter forest is filled with light. Not the light of snow, nor the pale glow of the sun, but a radiance so intense that Nicholas cannot see his own hands — only a blazing, joyful brilliance surrounding the elder who speaks to him with tenderness.
Nicholas writes:
“Imagine, in the centre of the sun at midday, the face of a man speaking to you. You see his lips, you hear his voice, yet you see no hands, no cloak — only light, spreading in every direction.”
It is perhaps the closest earthly image of what John and Peter mean: that in the end, we shall share in God’s own life, shine with His own light, and become — by grace — what He is by nature.
This is our beginning: children of God. This is our journey: growing in light, righteousness, and love. And this is our destiny: to behold Him as He is, and in that seeing, to be made like Him.
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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