1 john 3:2 sermon

That were sad indeed. To others, again, a hard and exacting taskmaster. "We know."2. Let me go into the mint house and see heaps of gold, and I am never the richer; let me go to the pictures and see goodly faces, I am never the fairer; let me go to the court, where I see state and magnificence, and I am never the greater; but oh, Saviour! )The beatific visionC. bitter, bitter thought that just now crossed my soul! "Oh, blessed vision! I bear my Master witness, I never saw Him yet without being profited by Him. "We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is."IV. Christ not only so acts upon us as to conform us to His holy and exalted pattern now; when He comes again it shall be to reflect His glory into the persons of His believing followers.1. "Oh, blessed vision!" In some of the Buddhist monasteries of Eastern Asia devotees are pointed out who have sat facing blank walls for years, and have gazed themselves into mysterious ecstasies. Nor do I think that that desire is wrong. When we go before our God the failures will go to the account, they will be elements in the judgment, they will be as instrumental and effective as any of our successes in determining our eternal lot. (3)The prince serves as a soldier before he reaches the throne.3. It is not easy to realise that we shall ever be much different from what we are at present — that we shall become wiser, that we shall feel older, that we shall hold other opinions, that we shall develop new powers. Here no suggestion of that vast society in heaven exhausts its meaning. And it also seeks to produce them. For, secondly, God communicates Himself in this world not immediately, but by inferior instruments and secondary causes: He feeds the soul with the graces of His Spirit, by the ministry of His Word and sacraments, and preserves the body by the help of His creatures. He is in us the hope of glory, and such a hope maketh not ashamed.(T. How different that sight of Him will be from that which we have here!1. Again: how partially we see Christ here! How many "I's" are there here that will "see Him as He is"? I am sure you will all confess that this strong desire has arisen in your minds concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. The chrysalis is no longer affected by the colour of its surroundings when it reaches the last stages of its development. OUR KNOWLEDGE. Kindness, purity, may have been touched at least. And I put down my candle, and I said, "Let me see this thing. THE POSITIVE NATURE OF VISION. But we who believe that this life is at its best but a germ, a start, a discipline, can afford to broaden our hope beyond all our seeing. Holiness now is clothed with beauty. Then, do you know, there will be another difference — when "we shall see Him as He is." You may have your misgivings sometimes as to how the battle is going on with you. Quick as the kindling of light His exalted humanity will implant itself in us. ", 2. "We shall see Him as He is," and pass at once into the distinctions of His sovereignty. I do not so much pant to see the glorious Saviour you have spoken of; I want to see that very Saviour who did the works of love, the suffering Saviour; for Him I love." The Day of Judgment is simply a day of manifestation, in which every one of us, every human being, is seen to be what he really is. Consider, first of all, that we shall not see Him abased in His incarnation but exalted in His glory. Moses himself asked that he might see God. Many of the modes of thought and feeling, in that life to come, perplex us. The gospel is constantly putting a man upon moral choices, and so it acts against the solidifying tendency of habit or native inclination; i.e., it keeps a man constantly in the world of freedom and out of the region of fixed habit. I see no reason to doubt this — that great changes are still to go on in us under the transforming power of Christ. It is the same one. See that the law of approximation to Christ is at work in all the occasions of common life. Furthermore, if we had seen Christ as He was, we should have had great love for Him; but that love would have been compounded with pity. For, secondly, God communicates Himself in this world not immediately, but by inferior instruments and secondary causes: He feeds the soul with the graces of His Spirit, by the ministry of His Word and sacraments, and preserves the body by the help of His creatures. Mark 1:8, John 1:26-27 When Jesus did show up, John made this stunning announcement in John 1:29 - …Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. It enters into its nature and purpose to open before us great changes and developments. We notice —I. The transcendent beauty of Christ imparts itself only in natures made tender by the Spirit. Perhaps while I have been speaking some have said, "Ah! And our pardon is pronounced by the judge sitting upon the throne.3. She had seen Christ. it is so when the believer enters heaven. The monks of Mount Athos hypnotise themselves into trance conditions by gazing at their own bodies. There is personal identity. We are even now in conditions in which we are being attracted more or less swiftly into the image of Christ's spiritual loveliness, but ere long we shall be attracted into conformity to the unknown splendour which invests the humanity enshrined and enthroned in the highest heaven.5. Therefore we hope to come upon other duties, and so to enter into other feelings than any we now know. But then, seeing everything in God, we shall be affected only as God is affected; we shall love one another for our relation and likeness to Him only, and as we are members of Christ united and informed by the same Spirit, which will be both the bond of our union and the cause of our love. Brother, with snow upon thy head, wilt thou "see Him as He is"? that I … it is so when the believer enters heaven. First John 2:28-29 encourages Christians to “abide,” or persist with endurance, in that domain defined once for all by Christ (2:6, 10, 14, 24) so that when he (alternatively, God) is revealed at his royal coming (parousia) the … Continue reading "Commentary on 1 John 3:1-3" You see the application. The limit of physical development may be reached, but the mental and moral development may go on long after, and, for aught we know, forever, and the fact that we draw our life from God makes it probable that it will be so. Our future self is commonly the simple projection of our present self. There we shall see Christ entirely, when "we shall see Him as He is.". "Amidst all the mistakes on the part of the world we are nevertheless really now the children of God," however unworthy we may appear and however little we may be appreciated. Our sin is the problem because darkness and light do not mix. We must begin by knowing Him spiritually as the source of pardon and purity — commencing a new life within, which goes forward, strengthening and rising — a life of which heaven is not the reward, but the natural and necessary continuation. That were sad indeed. We are His children even now. "We shall be like Him." D.)The transforming power of the revelation of GodT. We notice —I. These go down into the hold, and they are only of use after landing in the new world. Those so born can make but a pitiful fight of it here; at their very best they can attain very little, and they are swept so lightly down the dark waters of crime and sorrow. Christ not only so acts upon us as to conform us to His holy and exalted pattern now; when He comes again it shall be to reflect His glory into the persons of His believing followers.1. So at last in the heavenly city we are made perfectly like Him, and seas of bliss begin to roll through our souls, because "we see Him as He is." One thing is sure, the gospel of Jesus Christ does not leave us alone with a law of heredity, and the bare hope that we may become confirmed in goodness; it opens before us a vista of endless growth and change. The Son creates them at once to new majesty as He once created worlds, for His power is dealing with an entirely obedient material, a material ruled by regenerated wills promptly and absolutely responsive to His sovereignty. (2)He will be manifest in perfect happiness. But upon our entrance into the other world we shall quite "put off the old man with the affections and lusts thereof"; we shall be perfectly "delivered from this body of sin and death," and, together with this mortal nature, part with all the remainders of sin and corruption which cleave to this mortal state. "Links1 John 3:2 NIV1 John 3:2 NLT1 John 3:2 ESV1 John 3:2 NASB1 John 3:2 KJV1 John 3:2 Bible Apps1 John 3:2 Parallel1 John 3:2 Biblia Paralela1 John 3:2 Chinese Bible1 John 3:2 French Bible1 John 3:2 German Bible1 John 3:2 CommentariesBible Hub. Sep 14, 2003. Having a soul like His soul: perfect, holy, instructed, developed, strengthened, active, delivered from temptation, conflict, and suffering.3. We are His children even now. In politics, especially, we note how we are suffering from this cheerless disappointment. Where are my children? THE ACTUAL PERSONS — "we shall see Him as He is." (2) In the first transfiguration the Spirit is the agent of the change; in the second the ministry of the Spirit is superseded, or at least falls into the background. The facts were typical, and suggestive of principles that were operating beyond the range of these special instances, and as such helped to colour the thought and speech and hope of the founders of the coming Church. Now, two distinct considerations will influence the young man. You do not see the person, you only see him reflected. If the broken gleams of Christ's life, the fragments of His tradition, the piecemeal presentation of His character and personality to the world by His followers, can effect such sublime changes amongst men, how much richer will be the transfigurations effected by His direct personal manifestation at His second coming "without spot unto salvation"? That were sad indeed. We should have feared lest He might not overcome. Probably the traditions of saints who had set themselves to meditate on the agonies of the pierced hands and feet, and at last received nail marks in their own persons, are not simple myths, but have a basis of scientific fact. Yea, more; the earnest desire of the very best of men has been in the same direction. Man has a capacity for great and noble actions, and for constant and evergrowing usefulness in the kingdom of God.5. That were sad indeed. Origin in an infinite being is a pledge not only of an infinite life, but of endless development in the direction of the unattainable source. He may have an adequate intellectual conception of this ideal character. The son of her friend had shown her the stairs, and pointed out the door of the room where the body lay, and put a candle in her hands, and left her. The organisation passes through plastic stages of sensibility, in which it is peculiarly susceptible to the imprint of any new object that may be presented to it. (b)The ebb tide reveals the secrets of the sea, but many of our rivers no gallant ship can then sail. "Oh, blessed vision!" Ah! "BUT WE KNOW THAT WHEN HE SHALL APPEAR."1. THE MEANING AND EXTENT OF THIS PHRASE, OF SEEING GOD AS HE IS. This, at all events, is the ideal. "We shall see Him as He is," and pass at once into the distinctions of His sovereignty. "Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour." The deep mental impressions of the mother often infix themselves legibly upon the young life she brings into the world. It is seen, as it were, through a mist. I do not want merely to become fixed in these habits, but to grow in them; and I also want to be carried on and lifted up into higher ranges of character than I now know; I cannot be satisfied with any condition that is stationary. We shall then be as manifested and as clearly seen as He will be. Here, too, how distantly we see Christ! The hints, the glimpses of the glory which is to follow, the beginning, the omen, the voice — all are here close about us in human nature trod in flesh and blood. Could your mother come to you this morning, she might take hold of your arm, and say to you, "John, we shall 'see Him as He is'; it is not I, John, that shall see Him for myself alone, but you and I shall see Him together; 'we shall see Him as He is.'" We shall find Him a man, even as much as He was on earth. Yet more. The faculty is more capacious, the object is more fully represented, and the conjunction and fruition is more intimate and close than it can be elsewhere. There is such a sense of disappointment when we, perhaps, have succeeded in obtaining a goal, and then have to discover that the moment the end is touched it has already begun to change, to move, to go further. thou shalt "see Him," but not nigh; thou shalt be driven from His presence. Let us recount our gains from such a belief in respect of the world at our feet, before our eyes.1. (1) The first transformation is brought to pass by contemplating the reflected image of Christ; the second, by contemplating the direct glory of His essential nature. And if there be a law of this sort, it must surely run out into higher and more momentous forms. )By and byC. The man, according to the apostle, is born of God. But are thy grey hairs full of sin? Job said, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and though worms devour this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God": that was his desire. Here no suggestion of that vast society in heaven exhausts its meaning. It is because of this fact that the different parts of our common life at least match themselves into a congruous and harmonious whole. G. Just as sometimes, when you are looking in your looking glass, you see somebody going along in the street. Man has a capacity for endless improvement in moral excellence or holiness. To which I answer, that if such knowledge will add to our happiness we shall surely enjoy it. We shall speak of our Lord's manifestation without doubt. The soot becomes the hardest thing in the world, and for the blackness it had obtains the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. A man may try and look at Christ for a lifetime. The time of our open presentation at court will have come.1. I do not want merely to become fixed in these habits, but to grow in them; and I also want to be carried on and lifted up into higher ranges of character than I now know; I cannot be satisfied with any condition that is stationary. Having a soul like His soul: perfect, holy, instructed, developed, strengthened, active, delivered from temptation, conflict, and suffering.3. "We shall see Him as He is."I. 1 John 3:2, ESV: "Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he … We have a strong desire to see Him. This is not the land of sight; it is too dark a country to see Him, and our eyes are not good enough. "We shall see Him." The text says, "We shall"; and can you and I put our hands on our hearts and know our union with Jesus? Behind the fumes of drink, behind the cloud of crime, each may have made his start and fought his fight, and have proved the possibility, and have manifested some germ of possible growth. But then we shall see Him closely; we shall see Him face to face; as a man talketh with his friend, even so shall we then talk with Jesus.5. Now all that we can learn of what we shall be here after is to be sought here and now, in our human lot, amid our fellows, in our common brotherhood. Thirdly, the mean, or condition on our part, whereby we are incorporated into Christ at present, is our faith, but in the life to come faith shall be swallowed up in perfect vision, we shall see God as He is, and the sight of infinite perfection shall set us on fire and make our hearts burn with love as pure and bright as our knowledge; and it being the property of love to clasp the object beloved into the closest union, we shall enjoy all things possible in common with the ever-blessed Trinity. )By and byC. Shall God give to the frail, mute, unreasoning weaklings of the animal creation around us the power of assimilating themselves to the hues of their environments, so as the better to equip them for a life which is but a short spasm of sensations, and shall He deny the benefit of that catholic law to us who have come to the assembly and church of the firstborn, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, so that we may be transformed and fitted for the high distinction that is before us?