Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, June 30, 2024
by Dr. Miles Hopgood, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Being a child of God means being a little Christ. Looking to God to see ourselves is not meant to be a judgment; rather, it helps us notice where God is at work in our lives to make us more like God in our love for one another.
Barely is a child born before everyone begins to play the game of claiming who they look like. While I am convinced that all babies really look the same, others seem confident that they can detect all the details of their parents in them. Each respective set of grandparents is sure they are the spitting image of the parent on their side of the family, while friends and relations are more measured in making sure they can find something of both mother and father in the face of the child. As personalities emerge, the game takes on a new form. Whose habits do they have? Is their laugh yours or mine? And so on. While at times it can be a frustrating game—every child will be their own person—there is a certain charm in seeing ourselves in someone we have raised and loved.
Being a child of God is no different, for God or for us. Here, we see that it means we are a chip off the divine block, waiting for the revelation of how much we are like the one who has claimed us. “Beloved, we are God’s children now;” the author writes, “what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him,” (3:2-3). God has called us children as an act of love, and this declaration is a source of hope, one which purifies us to make us more like God.
These words are essential to understanding what follows in this chapter. Absent this analogy, we would read verse 4 and following as a threat. The latter half of today’s reading seems to suggest that, if we sin (and we all do), we are not the children of God we thought we are. They seem to make our status as children conditional on living up to the standard set by God as our parent. But the analogy of being a child helps us to resist this reading. Like a young person, we are still growing and developing, learning how to walk this new life we have been born into. When we do what is right, we shine not with our own righteousness but with the righteousness of God (3:7). When we sin, we have in Jesus an advocate who will forgive us our sins and cleanse us of unrighteousness (1:9-2:1).
What the author is describing here is not a litmus test to judge us as a final product but a description of how God’s love works in us to grow and change us. We are given stark descriptions of what it does and does not mean to abide in God not so that we could strive to be like God through our own efforts but so that we could distinguish the work of God in us. These words serve as a mirror, helping us watch ourselves grow and see in our own lives the love of God which conforms us to God’s image. The righteousness of God in Christ has been imputed to us; sin is being taken away.
