We Shall Be Like Him
1 John
3:1-2[1]
I’ve mentioned before that one of the symptoms
of the changes that are reshaping our society is that it’s hard to know whom
you can trust. While I genuinely and wholeheartedly believe that there is
plenty of goodness and beauty in our world if we have the eyes to see it, I
also recognize that there is a lot of pain and fear as well. As much as it is
true that we all have so much to be grateful for in this life, we also all have
our share in the pain and brokenness of our world. Despite all appearances,
especially in the beautiful family pictures on social media that make us think
that everyone else has the perfect life, the reality is that life takes
unexpected and unwelcome turns for us all. And when that happens, most of us
find ourselves asking the question of God, “Why did this have to happen to me?”
Part of the problem is that we may look for
our sense of safety from people who aren’t really able to provide it. Some of
us may have felt betrayed by the person we love most in the world, whether a
parent or child, a spouse or a friend. That kind of betrayal can leave us
wondering if we can trust anyone or anything, even God! Some of us may have
committed our lives to a career, even given our best years to it, only to find
that the choices of others or circumstances beyond our control leave us
empty-handed. Some of us have had our health go from something we took for
granted to something that feels like it’s hanging by a thread. In these and
many other ways, our experiences in life can leave us wondering if we can trust
anyone or anything. Even God.
We come to faith drawn by the wonderful good
news that God loves us and that Jesus lived and died and rose again to show us
just how much that’s true. And in our best moments we know the peace and joy
that promise holds for us, and we’re deeply grateful. But the way our lives may
unfold has a way of taking a jolting turn at what can seem like the very worst
possible time. Sometimes our faith is strong enough to carry us through.
Sometimes, life’s sudden twists take all the supports out from under us. The
shock of that jolt can leave us wondering where God is, or whether God loves
us, or whether there even is a God at all. It shakes our faith to the core, and
we may wonder if we can ever believe again.
I think our lesson from 1 John for today addresses this
issue. The Elder John uses the resurrection of Jesus as a basis for reminding
us that, no matter what may happen to us, God is always faithful. In a very
real sense, that was also one of the main lessons of Jesus’ resurrection.
Despite all appearances that his death somehow invalidated all that he said and
did—as the crowds pointed out by shouting, “he saved others, let him save
himself!”—the cross was not the end of Jesus’ faith in God and his life of
faithful obedience to God. Death was not the final word for Jesus’ life and
ministry. The final word was and is resurrection to new life. Part of the
reason for that was to vindicate all that Jesus had said and done in his
ministry. But part of the reason for the resurrection was to demonstrate
definitively that God is always faithful. Always.
And so it is that our Scripture reading reminds us that our
lives are all grounded firmly in the love of God, which has made us “children
of God.” This is one of the themes of 1 John. God has not only demonstrated his
love for us by what Jesus did, he also assures us of his love for us by the
constant presence of his Spirit. In the face of any doubts we may harbor about
whether or not we are truly beloved children of God, the Scripture emphasizes
that we’re not just “called” God’s children, but that’s what we truly are. The
basis for this confidence is the story of God’s love for the people of Israel
in the Hebrew Bible. We may be used to thinking of it as a story of an angry
God punishing a wayward people. But I think we would do better to see it as the
story of a loving father who never gives up on his stubbornly defiant children.
Through it all, God is always faithful to them. Always!
Our scripture lesson takes it a step further, however. As
the author puts it, “we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us
what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like
him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT) While
there’s a lot going on in that statement, I would say that the point of it is
to assure us that just as God demonstrated his faithfulness to Jesus by raising
him from the dead, so the promise that we will share the resurrection life of
Jesus is the promise that God will be faithful to us as well. Just as death was
not God’s last word for Jesus, so it is for us as well. Neither will any of the
pain or fear or disappointment or despair or emptiness we may have to deal with
in our lives.
God’s last word for us is life. And God’s final act
of faithfulness will be to bring us face-to-face with Jesus so that we see him
“as he really is.” What’s more, the promise is that when we stand before the
risen Lord Jesus, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1
John 3:2, NLT)! I find it interesting that the Elder John says we don’t
know exactly what that will look like. But the idea is that Jesus’ resurrection
gives us at least a clue. In fact, another main theme of Easter is that very
real nature of Jesus’ resurrection gives us something of an indication about
what to expect about our future with God. As the Scripture says, we will be
like Jesus. The promise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that we too will
be resurrected to a new life, and when that happens, we will all be changed so
that we are “like him.” And the point of it all is that God is always faithful.
And he will continue to show us his faithfulness all the way to our eternal
life in his loving presence.
Sometimes the way our lives unfold can make us question
whether we can trust even God. The path gets dark and difficult, and we may wonder
whether it will always be that way. But the promise of the resurrection is that
God’s last word is never death, but life.[2] I like the way Henri Nouwen frames it: “Through the resurrection, God has said
to Jesus, ‘You are indeed my beloved Son, and my love is everlasting,’ and to
us God has said, ‘You are indeed my beloved children, and my love is everlasting.’”[3] That first
Easter is a promise that we can trust God to be faithful to love us all the way
through everything in this life until we are standing face-to-face with Jesus,
when we shall be like him.
[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/14/2024 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.
[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2:29:
“God Himself in His freedom has decided that [man] shall stand, that he shall
be saved and not lost, that he shall live and not die.”
[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, God’s Greatest Gift: A
Meditation on Dying and Caring, 100-101. He adds that “The resurrection is
God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God … will [ever] get
lost … . The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our curious questions about
life after death, … . But it does reveal to us that, indeed love is stronger
than death.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer is known for saying something similar: the
promise of final resurrection is the promise that “nothing is lost, that
everything is taken up in Christ” and restored “as God originally intended for
it to be.” Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison,
170
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