One thing I learned about Jan: She never felt the need to control others. I don’t mean by that that she had no boundaries or no expectations of us. She wanted us to be our best selves. But she didn’t see the need to coerce us. She didn’t need us to be a certain way for her to be happy.
For example, she did not anger easily. But she was comfortable with others being angry if they needed to be. It didn’t make her anxious. She could be with you no matter what your mood, and she could accept you just the way you were.
This is a helpful trait in someone who does psychotherapy, and that’s what Jan did. At least, that was one of her callings. She counseled others who were struggling with life’s burdens. And what a gift she was to so many. Jan knew how to listen – not just to what you were saying but also to what you were not saying, to what, perhaps, you couldn’t bring yourself to say. She could map the human heart with all its fears and desires, with all its hope and despair. And her presence gave others comfort.
She could also help you to sort through things in your mind, see connections, draw your own conclusions about what to do, and then motivate you with the resolve you would need to act on your intentions.
It is, as I say, a great gift. And who knows how many people Jan encouraged and strengthened through the exercise of this gift?
But, of course, that’s not all there was to Jan’s life. She served her country in the United States Air Force. She read incessantly. She maintained friendships with a lot of people. She had a wonderful family. She worked as a travel agent, a job that took her on many trips to faraway and exciting places, including Mexico, the Caribbean, and even Singapore.
She did all these things, but what identified her more than all the rest is that she was – I should say, is – a child of God. If you also are a child of God, you know that this is a thing of wonder. It takes your breath away. In his first of three letters, the Apostle John wrote about our identity as God’s children, and what he said was this:
See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
There are three things in John’s statement that give us comfort at a time like this – and, really, at any time.
The first and most important of the three is that our relationship to God begins with the Father’s heart. “See what love the Father has given us,” John says, “that we should be called the children of God.” The long and the short of it is that we are God’s children – not because of anything we have done – but because of what God has done for us.
And what has he done for us? He has set his love upon us. Before we could ever love him – or ever would love him – he loved us. Later in his letter, John says, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:9f.).
Now, that word propitiation may sound strange to your ears, but what it means is that Jesus, the very Son of God, went to the cross in your place and mine – and, of course, in Jan’s place – and settled accounts with the justice of God. God is righteous and holy, and he cannot simply let our sins go by with a wink of the eye. His holiness has been violated, and his justice must be satisfied. And Christ’s death did just that. It satisfied the righteous requirements of the law, so that, if you and I put our faith in Christ – as Jan did – we are accepted in the sight of God.
Now, the initiative for all of this was in the Father’s heart. All this was borne of love. That’s why John can say, “See what kind of love the Father has given us.” There is no other love like this. It is far beyond our capacity to comprehend. The hymnwriter once wrote:
Could we with ink the oceans fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
And every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.
While we cannot comprehend the Father’s love, we can know it. We can experience it. And Jan did. She knew the Father’s love, set upon to redeem her through the atoning sacrifice of her Savior’s death. And she put her trust in this loving Savior. In his Gospel, John says that many did not receive Jesus, “but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12).
“See what love the Father has given us that we should be called the children of God, and so we are.” I trust this gives you comfort.
But I trust that it also gives you hope. John goes on. “We are God’s children now,” he says, “and what we will be has not yet appeared.” What he means by that is that, as good as things are now, they’re going to get even better.
That’s hard for us to grasp in the wake of the death of someone we love. We often say to one another, “She’s in a better place,” but do we really believe it? We should because it’s true. This is the second thing I want you to see in this passage.
Jan is now in her triumph. She is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “more than a conqueror.” How can that be? How can you more than conquer whatever it is that is squared off to defeat you – in our case, sin and death? Jan a conqueror? Okay. But “more than a conqueror”? What’s this “more than”? It’s the difference that Christ makes through his resurrection. Christ died. He has gone before us into the regions of death, and death has extracted from him everything that it possibly can. His body was left still and breathless, completely lifeless. He didn’t just pass out or go into a coma. He died.
And then, by the power of God, he was raised from the dead. And on that first Easter morning, when he stepped out of the darkness of the tomb into the full sunlight of the new day, a new era was inaugurated. He was, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v. 20). In other words, this was just the beginning. Christ’s resurrection would have a ripple effect that would stretch across the ages to bear up ever soul that puts its trust in him.
This includes Jan. We say in the creed, “I believe…in the resurrection of the body,” and this is what we mean. We mean that we believe that Jan, and all God’s other children, will be resurrected, just as Christ was. It will truly be, in the words of the old spiritual, a “great gettin’-up morning!”
But that’s not all. That’s not even close to all. There’s a third thing. “When he appears,” John says, “we shall be like, for we shall see him as he is.” God’s love doesn’t impel him simply to give us life forever; it impels him to give us a certain kind of life forever.
When Jan was received into the arms of her Savior on the 29th of this past month, she was immediately changed into his likeness. I don’t mean on the outside. She will still be – and always will be – the Jan we know and recognize. But on the inside – where her desires are forged and her affections are nurtured, where her deepest self resides – she became like Jesus.
Isn’t that what John promises? He says, “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Paul says the same thing in Romans. He writes: “For those on whom he set his love” – there’s that love thing again; aren’t we grateful? – “those on whom he set his love, he destined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (8:29). There it is, you see! This is God’s grand purpose for us from before the foundation of the world: that we should be like Jesus – loving God and others from a pure heart. That’s how it is with Jan right now – and that’s how it will be for all eternity. She has reached complete maturity in Christ, a promise that awaits all who put their faith in him.
In the meantime, though, what do we do? John says that “everyone that thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” In other words, this wonderful thing that has happened for Jan is going to happen for all of God’s children. We are going to be made to be like Jesus. And so – and this is the fourth thing we see in this passage – we use our days and our hours here in this life – hours and days that pass all too quickly – but we use them, few though they may be, to get ready. We pray and strive to be like our Lord even now, relying on the Holy Spirit’s enabling power, and doing battle against everything that would impede us or distract us. And we know that one day we shall be more than conquerors through him who loved us. And Jan’s triumph will be our triumph. To God alone be the glory. Amen.
