A Christian daycare provider (let’s call her Anne) tells the story of how one day a beautiful, but very troubled little girl came through the door of her center. From the very beginning Anne became captivated by this child who had so little but needed so much. She was heartbroken that a four-year-old could suffer such heartache and pain. She was born in prison after her mom had used marijuana, and crack cocaine her entire pregnancy.
The little girl was nonverbal and had very little control. Anne knew her progress would be a mighty battle. Whenever somebody approached her, she became violent for long periods and ended up in a fetal position on the floor crying out and Anne found herself praying for this little girl day in and day out.
As months rolled on, Anne began to bond with this child that no one wanted. They worked very hard but only took one step forward and four steps back. Daily, they sat in the big rocking chair in Anne’s office, swaying back and forth and back and forth. During their rocking time she sang "Jesus Loves Me" to the little girl. She always settled down and became very still at the melody. Though she never spoke, peace seemed to fill her face as she listened to the song.
One day after a very long battle Anne held the little girl to calm her fears and pain. In silence they rocked back and forth and back and forth. Anne says, “Then she looked at me with tear-filled eyes and spoke for the first time, ‘Sing to me about that Man who loves me.’” Blinking back tears of joy, Anne says, “I knew the battle had been won.”
Today we are going to learn a little about this love…the love of God.
(1 John 3:1 NKJV) Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. and such we are! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Behold - Not translated in the NIV. It is the Greek word (idete, eido, i'-do), which means, "look at."
This word means, “behold you.” The writer wants everyone to take notice. Another way to put it is “Behold, all of you.” The young people used to say, “Yo!”
What is it that John wants us to see? What is it that John wants us to behold? He wants us to behold or to see “what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us…”
The kind of love that John is talking about is a strange kind of love, an unusual kind of love, a kind of love to which we are not accustomed.
* Many of us are accustomed to a “fair-weather love” – As long as there are no challenges, this person is around but when a storm comes the “love” goes.
* There is “selfish love” – As long as they are getting what they want everything is ok but when their needs are no longer met they’re gone.
* Then there is a “romantic love” – Which for many men ends when he “scores” and is off to find another trophy.
An online match-making website shares with its audience, Ten Gut-level Characteristics of True Love with the first one being, “Self-ishness.” The author says, “What I mean by Self-ishness is both people in a relationship putting themselves first in a healthy way. Why? So they have the inner resources and energy to extend themselves lovingly to their beloved.” In other words, they are saying, “Look out for #1 and then whatever resources and energy you have left you devote to your partner.”
But this is not the kind of “love” that John is referring to. He writes, “Behold what manner of love.” The word “manner” speaks of something foreign. The first part of verse one could also be translated, “Behold, what foreign kind of love…”
* It is an out of this world kind of love. (i.e., other worldly)
* It is not of this life or from this place. (i.e., unearthly)
John is writing about the love of God.
Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us…
A minister one day sat in the vestry of his church to meet anyone who needed help with some difficult passages of Scripture. Only one came so the minister asked, "What are you having trouble with?" The man answered, "My problem is with the ninth chapter of Romans, where it says, 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,'"
"Yes," said the minister, "that is a hard verse to understand; but which part of the verse is difficult for you?" “The latter part, of course," said the man. "I cannot understand why God should hate Esau."
The minister replied, "That verse has given people trouble, but my difficulty has always been with the first part of the verse. I never could understand how God could love that wily, deceitful, trickster and scoundrel, Jacob."
If we stopped to think about it, every one of us could say the same thing about ourselves. “How could God love a sinner like me?”
* The suffering Job says, "What is man, that You should exalt him, That You should set Your heart on him” (Job 7:17 NKJV)
* In amazement, the Psalmist writes in Psalm 8:4, “What is man that You are mindful of him?”
In our text John writes that God bestowed His love upon us. It was an “out of this world” kind of love. The Bible tells us in other places that it was “a great love, a sacrificial love, a forgiving love, a pursuing love, an on time love, a demonstrated love and an enduring love!”
Bestowed – To give something to someone—He gave us His love! This word is in the perfect tense – indicating the gift becomes a permanent possession of the recipient.
Jeremiah 31:3b - "…I have loved you with an everlasting love…”
Romans 5:5 - “… the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Romans 8:39 – “Nothing… shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In other words, when God saves you, you will always be saved. He doesn’t commit to love you and then drops out of the relationship when you displease Him. If that was the case, He would have never saved you in the first place. Romans 5:8 says, “but God demonstrated His love to us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
How do we know that God has bestowed this great, “out of this world” kind of love?
We know because He proved His love by some of the things He did for us. John tells us one of those things: He has called us His children!
…that we should be called children of God.
In the 1950’s the world was shocked by the murders of five missionaries killed by the Auca Indians of Ecuador in South America. One of the wives of the murdered missionaries, Elizabeth Elliott, wrote the history of that event in a book called Through Gates of Splendor. But she did more than write a book, she went to live among those murderers and win them to a new way of life in Christ.
Elizabeth Elliott displayed an act of unselfish love when she decided to move in with the tribal people but it was nothing compared to what God did for us. He not only “moved in” with humanity but He adopted some into His family and made them His own children.
In 1 Timothy chapter one, Paul describes himself as the type of person you would not want to have as your child: “…I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent aggressor…I’d done cruel acts, caused great trouble…I was the chief of sinners.” (1 Tim 1:13-15)
But in spite of who we are and what we’ve done, when we repent of our sins and follow Jesus Christ as Savior and King, God calls us His children.
A tender word is used for "children." It is the Greek word teknia, meaning "born ones." This word is used in the Scripture by both the apostles Paul and John.
* When Paul uses it he is concerned with our public and legal position as sons:
Romans 8:16-17a - “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…” Because we are “children of God” we are legal heirs to the promises of God our Father.
* But John is not concerned here with our legal position as children of God, he is concerned with our nearness as the little born-ones of the Father: “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called little born-ones of God!
As King, God could have referred to us as merely His subjects.
As Master, He could have confined us to the realm of servitude as His slaves.
As Lord of heaven, God could have related to us as only His tenants
As Creator, He could have associated with us as simply His creation.
As our Savior, God could have referred to us primarily as His debtors.
BUT! Because He is Father, He chooses to call us His little “born ones”—His children!
Just think of the intimacy expressed by a loving parent to his or her little born one. How a mother uses loving words, warm embraces, nurturing and caring for her little born one.
In Isaiah 66:13 God says, “As one whom his mother comforts, So I will comfort you…”
Jesus had this kind of love for the inhabitants of Jerusalem—even those who didn’t want to follow Him: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37)
Psalm 103:13-14 says, “As a father pities his children, So the LORD pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.”
John writes, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. And then he pens the words, “And such we are!”
…and such we are!
If you are using a KJV or NKJV you will not find the last part of verse one. But better translations have the expression, “and such we are!” John is saying, we are not only called children of God---we are children of God.
Because of this truth, the child of God can say emphatically, “I am a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” We don’t hope to be…we don’t expect to be…but every believer can rejoice and constantly thank and praise God that he or she is God’s child.
An old hymn expresses this joy and gratitude perfectly with these words:
I'm so glad I'm a part of the Family of God,
I've been washed in the fountain, cleansed by His blood!
Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod,
For I'm part of the family, The Family of God.
From the door of an orphanage to the house of the King,
No longer an outcast, a new song I sing;
From rags unto riches, from the weak to the strong,
I'm not worthy to be here, but praise God I belong!
I'm so glad I'm a part of the Family of God,
I've been washed in the fountain, cleansed by His blood!
Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod,
For I'm part of the family, The Family of God.
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. And such we are!
“Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”
This part of the verse should be a review for those of us who heard the last two weeks of messages.
* “World” – kosmos – people of this world system of evil headed by Satan
* “Know” - ginosko, - to "know" experientially
Putting these two words together John is saying that the people of this world system of evil headed by Satan cannot come to an understanding and appreciation of the nature of the Christian. Why? Because unsaved people do not have a saving relationship with God and hence an understanding of Him.
Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 2:14: “The natural man or the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Back in 2002 I preached through the text we are looking at today and at that time I applauded the attempts of Christians across the nation for trying to impact the legislative process and adopting a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution. Even 13 years ago many believers saw the threat of homosexual marriage and wanted to ensure that the biblical definition of marriage would remain intact.
But at that time I also told our church family what the Bible teaches about the difficulty of convincing unbelievers in their understanding and acceptance of the spiritual foundation of marriage and the family.
I said at that time that I believe that if Christians took the money they are spending to lobby Congress to change laws…and used it to the unsaved of our nation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then the laws that are already on the books to uphold morality and righteousness have a better opportunity of not being overwritten by new laws that nullify them.
You change laws by changing people. We live in a nation with a representative form of government or democracy—meaning the people vote into office those who will represent their views. The state governors and our presidents appoint jurists to sit on the bench of the highest courts of our land.
Both Houses of Congress make law and the checks and balances of power between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches—as laid out in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution—safeguard our freedoms by preventing any single branch from becoming too powerful.
This is how the laws concerning marriage were changed for the worse…because our culture has changed to be more acceptable of the perversion that is called “gay marriage” and vote people into office that represent, for the most part, their views.
This world system of evil headed by Satan cannot come to an understanding and appreciation of the nature and the character of the Christian. Why? Because unsaved people do not have a saving relationship with God and as a result, they do not have an understanding of Him and His ways.
* They do not understand true love because they do not know and understand Him.
* They do not understand marriage because they do not know and understand the One who created marriage.
* They do not understand the preciousness of the life that is growing in the womb because they do not know and understand Him who is life eternal.
If our culture is going to be changed back to one that has reverence for God and His Word, we do not start with a transformation of the government, we begin with a transformation of people—preach the Gospel—get people saved—preach the Gospel!
John writes, “Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” And then he offers some assurance to his readers:
“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be…” (verse 2a)
I once worked for over two decades for one of the largest companies in the world. While working there we would have regularly scheduled “All Hands” meetings where executive leadership would compare our current situation with their future projections.
Sometimes they would show the technology of the present alongside the technology that was on the drawing board and would be ready for production in about 15 or 20 years. Our company was so certain of their future they invested millions of dollars into research and development that would bring these concepts and models to reality.
Before I left the company I was able to see some of the products that were only “ideas” on an engineer’s computer screen 20 years earlier.
This is what John is doing in verse two. He is taking the present condition of God’s children and putting it side-by-side with our future hope. But unlike Northrop Grumman, John is saying that both our present and future positions are certain and for sure, being rooted in the truth of God which says that we are His children!
John writes, “…it has not yet appeared” – This means it has not yet been made manifest. It is in the aorist passive – The aorist tense in the Greek refers to a snapshot of something in time. John is saying that our future condition is a sure thing but it hasn’t happened yet.
Then he writes, “…what we shall be” – Here he is referring to “something that one is unable to speak about.”
Even though we are seeing an increase in the publishing of books like Heaven is for Real, My Time in Heaven, and 90 Minutes in Heaven, the Bible is telling us that no one has ever died, been changed, went to heaven and then returned to tell about it. John is writing that it has not yet appeared—it has not yet been made manifest.
There is no revelation on “what we shall be” and in the absence of such revelation, he continues at the end of verse two, “we know.” In other words, because of the inner witness of being God’s child…if the “what we shall be” were to happen, we would be just like the Lord…whatever that is…because we are going to see Him just as He is.
The Apostle Paul says it like this in 1 Corinthians 15: “…we will all be changed. It will happen in an instant, in a split second at the sound of the last trumpet…This body that decays must be changed into a body that cannot decay. This mortal body must be changed into a body that will live forever.”
Back in 1 John, when he says, “when He is revealed” he is referring to what Paul was referring to…the Rapture.
The word “rapture” means “caught up”. The Rapture is that event in Bible prophecy (described in 1 Thessalonians 4) when Jesus returns from heaven and appears in the clouds to grab His church and take them home to heaven. By the way, it could happen at any time.
Back in our text, John says:
…we shall be like Him…
This statement has to do with physical likeness, not spiritual likeness. The Christian’s blessed hope is to be physically like the Lord when He returns. We are going to look at this more next time.
Let’s conclude this message talking about this “out of this world” kind of love, this great love, this sacrificial love, this forgiving love, this pursuing love, this long suffering love…
This love should mark us, define us, impact us and motivate us. Let me share with you a couple of ways this love should touch our lives.
This love should motivate us.
2 Corinthians 5:14 says, “Clearly, Christ's love constrains or moves us…” Paul is saying here, “If Jesus died for me; who am I to say “no” to my obligation as a servant to Him?” The Bible says in 1 John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.”
A missionary in Africa was once asked if he really liked what he was doing. His response was shocking:
“Do I like this work?" he said. "No. My wife and I do not like dirt. We have reasonably refined sensibilities. We do not like crawling into vile huts through goat dung...
…But is a man to do nothing for Christ he does not like? God pity him, if not. Liking or disliking has nothing to do with it. We have orders to ’Go," and we go. Love constrains us.”
The love of Christ motivates us to get out of our comfort zones and do the work of the ministry.
This love captivates our heart.
In Korea right after the Korean War took place, a woman got pregnant by an American soldier. The soldier went back to the United States and she never saw him again. She gave birth to a little girl. But this little girl was very different from the other little girls. Her hair was light colored and curly so she stood out. In that particular culture this meant that the child and the mother would be severely rejected by society.
In fact some mothers in Korea who gave birth to children from American fathers actually killed their babies because they couldn’t stand the humiliation, the rejection, the heartache because of the way they were treated. But this woman kept her baby and she tried her best to raise this child for several years. But the rejection and the humiliation and the taunting and the harassment that she experienced was too much for her. So she did something nobody here could imagine anybody doing. She abandoned her seven-year-old daughter to the streets.
That little girl wasn’t alone though, because there were packs of little children living on the streets. They would live under bridges and in abandoned buildings and they would go outside of town and live in caves. And they would just eat whatever they could find. They would find stuff on the street – bugs and locusts and roots and things like that.
This little girl was ruthlessly taunted by everybody she would encounter. They would call her the ugliest word in the Korean language…the word that means “Alien devil”.
After a while this little girl began to draw conclusions about herself. This is what she would say years later, “When you hear what you are as a little child day after day, you begin to believe it. I believed that anyone could do whatever they wanted to me physically because I wasn’t a person. I was inhuman. I was dirty. I was unclean. I had no name. I had no identity. I had no family. I had no future. And I hated myself.”
For two years she lived on the streets. Finally there was a new orphanage that opened up. It had very little money. It was a very primitive kind of place but at least it was safe and it was a place she could go and not be assaulted and attacked and harassed. So they took her into the orphanage.
Pretty soon word came that a couple from America was coming to that orphanage and they were going to adopt a little baby boy. The word went out among all the orphans in the orphanage. This was the best news of all. Some little boy among them was going to have a fresh start, a new chance, a future. So this little girl, who was now nine years old and the oldest child in the orphanage, began to bathe the little boys and clean them up and get them all ready wondering who it was that this American couple was going to choose and adopt and take back to America.
When American man and his wife arrived, this is what the girl recalled: “It was like Goliath had come back to life. I saw that man with his huge hands lift up each baby and I knew he loved every one of them as if they were his own. I saw tears running down his face and I knew if they could, they would have taken the entire group. Then he saw me out of the corner of his eye. I was nine years old but I didn’t even weigh thirty pounds. I was a scrawny thing. I had worms in my body, lice in my hair, boils all over me and I was full of scars. I wasn’t a pretty sight. But the man came over to me and he rattled off something in English and I looked up at him. And then he took this huge hand of his and he laid it on my face. What was he saying? He was saying, ‘I want this child. This is the child I want’.”
Then an incredible thing happened with that little nine-year-old Korean girl at that moment. As that man reached out to her she recalls, “The hand on my face felt so good and inside I said, ‘Keep that up, don’t let your hand go.’ Nobody had ever shown that kind of affection to me before and I didn’t know how to respond.” She said, “I yanked his hand off my face and I looked up at him and I spit at him and then I ran away.”
Can you imagine that? Here’s her window of opportunity. Here’s her future. Here’s hope and what does she do? How does she respond? She spits at him and runs away.
This is how many today respond to the love of God. Many have been beaten, abused and betrayed by the people and circumstances of life. Some are physically spent and emotionally wounded that when True Love (God’s Love) comes to call and reaches out to touch them, they don’t know how to respond other than giving in return what they themselves have experienced.
“I don’t trust you with my life, Lord.”
“I don’t have the confidence that you won’t ever leave me nor forsake me.”
“I’m not willing to take a chance on you God.”
“I’m not willing to risk getting hurt, betrayed and abandoned all over again.”
The next day the couple came back to the orphanage. And because they understood what was behind that little girl’s hurt and because they understood the trauma she had gone through and all these things she had suffered…they understood all that and in spite of her initial rejection of them, they looked at all the children in the orphanage and they went back to that little girl, the one who spit in their eye, and they said, “We still want this child.”
God knows! Hebrews 4:15-16 says, “Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. Let us have confidence, then, and approach God's throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it.”
Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and put it on you, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest. For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light.” (Mat 11:28-30)
They adopted that scrawny little nine-year-old girl…with lice, boils and worms, who weighed less than 30 pounds…the little girl who pulled her hand away; who spit at them and ran away. They cleaned her up and they got her the medical attention that she needed. They raised her as their own. She’s married today and she’s a follower of Jesus Christ.
This is what God does with anyone who comes to Him by faith.
This is what God does for anyone who trusts Him to do what He’s promised to do in their life.
Paul captures this ministry of divine love in Ephesians 2:1-10. (From The Message)
1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next…to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
