1 John 3:2

1 John 3:2

I. What is this sight awaiting us which shall accomplish so much? Observe (1) It is the sight of a personal Saviour. "We shall see Him." It is only natural that we should desire to see the countenance of one whose works we have read, and whose friends we have often met, and who is often in our thoughts and affections. It is but natural that there should be a longing to see any one of whom we have read much, and of whom we have thought more. Is it, then, surprising that when the heaven of the saint is described it should be represented as the sight of a personal Christ? Yes, we shall see the Christ of the Scriptures, the Christ of whom Moses and the prophets spake. We shall see also the Christ of our own thoughts. There is not a believer but has his ideal Saviour. We shall see Him a living, personal Saviour, arrayed in human form. We shall not have to inquire who He is, or where He is. We shall see Him in the very identical body that once hung in shame on Golgotha. (2) It is the sight of a glorified Saviour: "We shall see Him as He is." Jesus has been beheld as we shall never behold Him. We shall never see Him as the Magi saw Him: the Infant; we shall never see Him as the disciples saw Him: so tired out that He was sound asleep on the open deck of a fisherman's boat; we shall never see Him, the cursed Substitute, groaning under the horrible load of His people's sins; but as He is now: highly exalted. Take the most blessed season earth has ever known, and it is only seeing Christ through the glass darkly. And these feebler manifestations are never as clear as they might be. I question whether there has ever been a saint but has had in some measure a veil over his soul. The veil may vary in thickness. Sometimes it is dense and dark as a London fog, and at other times it seems no more hindrance than the thinnest gauze. Then we see, as it were, the outlines of His beauty, but no more.

II. Notice the effect wrought by the sight: "We shall be like Him." In a minor degree, this is true on earth. Nobody can look on Jesus long without getting something of His image. Any man or woman who is in habitual communion with Jesus Christ will have something about them that betrays their intercourse. Now, if seeing Jesus through a glass darkly makes me something like Him, seeing Him in all His glory, without a veil, will make me altogether like Him. When this poor green bud is brought into the sunshine of His countenance in glory, how in a moment will all the green shields that hide its beauty fly apart, and all its leaves of loveliness expand in His own light, and I shall be like Him!

A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 848.

The Apostle admits that there is obscurity hanging over much of our eternal future. He glances at this part slightly; but it is the background of that one bright scene to which he afterwards points. (1) The place of our future life is obscure. (2) The outward manner of our final existence is also uncertain. (3) Many of the modes and feelings in the life to come perplex us. The atmosphere is too subtle, the azure is deep even to darkness, and from every endeavour we must come back to realise the lesson of our present state: that, while Christians are now the sons of God, the heir is but a child. It would be unsatisfactory enough if this were all that could be said and done. But the Apostle puts this dark background upon the canvas, that he may set in relief a central scene and figure: Christ and our relation to Him.

I. The first thing promised is the manifestation of Christ: "Christ shall appear." It is not merely that Christ shall be seen, but seen as never before. The first thought of the Apostle was no doubt the human nature of Christ as appearing again to the eyes of His friends, but he must also have thought of His Divine nature. The glory that He had with the Father before the world was shall be resumed, and if we may venture to say it, raised, for the glory of the Divine shall have added to it the grace of the human.

II. The second thing promised at the appearance of Christ is a full vision on our part; we shall see Him as He is. This implies a necessary and very great change on us before we can bear and embrace, even in the smallest measure, the perfect manifestation of Christ. We shall be changed (1) in our material frame; (2) in our soul. It will be a vision free from sin in the soul, free from partiality, intense and vivid, close and intimate.

III. The third thing promised is complete assimilation to Christ. We shall be like Him. (1) Our material frame will be made like unto Christ's glorious body. (2) Our spiritual nature will be like His. God has used this way of revealing the future ( a ) as a method of spiritual test and training; ( b ) as a means of quieting our thoughts; ( c ) as a means of making Christ the centre of the soul's affections and aims.

J. Ker, Sermons, p. 365.

The Unrevealed Future of the Sons of God.

I. The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future. That consciousness of belonging to another order of things because I am God's child will make me sure that when I am done with earth the tie that binds me to my Father will not be broken, but that I shall go home, where I shall be fully and for ever all that I so imperfectly began to be here, where all gaps in my character shall be filled up, and the half-completed circle of my heavenly perfectness shall grow like the crescent moon into full-orbed beauty.

II. Now I come to the second point, namely, that we remain ignorant of much in that future. That happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate all the darkness which lies on that beyond. "We are the sons of God, and," just because we are, "it does not yet appear what we shall be," or, as the, words are rendered in the Revised Version, "it is not yet made manifest what we shall be." The meaning of that expression "It doth not yet appear," or "It is not made manifest," may be put into very plain words. John would simply say to us, "There has never been set before man's eyes in this earthly life of ours an example or an instance of what the sons of God are to be in another state of being." And so because men have never had the instance before them they do not know much about that state.

III. The last thought is this: that our sonship flings one all-penetrating beam of light on that future in the knowledge of our perfect vision and perfect likeness: "We know that when He shall be manifested we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like Him.

A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry, 2nd series, p. 255.

References: 1 John 3:2 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 196; vol. ii., Nos. 61, 62; J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. i., p. 18; R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 6; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. x., p. 228; Ibid., vol. xxvi., p. 259; E. D. Solomon, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 353; P. W. Darton, Ibid., vol. xxxiv., p. 101; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 353; vol. ix., p. 337; Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 265; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. v., p. 31.