1 John 3:2

2. Beloved] This form of address only occurs once in the first part of the Epistle (1Jn_2:7), just where the subject of love appears for a few verses: it becomes the more common form of address (1Jn_3:2; 1Jn_3:21, 1Jn_4:1; 1Jn_4:7; 1Jn_4:11) now that the main subject is love. Similarly, in 1Jn_3:13, where brotherly love is the special subject, ‘brethren’ is the form of address.

now are we the sons of God] Rather, as before, now are we children of God. ‘Now’ is placed first in emphatic contrast to ‘not yet,’ which has a similar position. Our privileges in this world are certain; our glories in the world to come still continue veiled. The term ‘children’ is in harmony with this: ‘child’ necessarily implies future development; ‘son’ does not.

it doth not yet appear] Better, as R. V., it is not yet made manifest; it is the same verb as we have already had 1Jn_1:2, 1Jn_2:19; 1Jn_2:28. As it is one of S. John’s favourite expressions it is all the more important that it should be rendered in the same way throughout his writings. See on 1Jn_2:28.

but we know that, when he shall appear] The ‘but’ must be omitted on overwhelming evidence (אABC, Vulgate): We know that if it shall be manifested. Here there is no difference of reading (as there is in 1Jn_2:28) between ‘when’ and ‘if’; but earlier English Versions, under the influence of the Vulgate (cum apparuerit), have ‘when’ in both cases. ‘If’ in both cases is right; but it has been either changed in the Greek, or shirked in translation, as appearing to imply a doubt respecting the manifestation. It implies no doubt as to the fact, but shews that the results of the fact are more important than the time: comp. ‘if I be lifted up from the earth’, and ‘If I go and prepare a place for you’ (Joh_12:32; Joh_14:3).

It is less easy to determine between ‘if it shall be manifested’ and ‘if He shall be manifested; ‘it’ meaning what we shall be hereafter, and ‘He’ meaning Christ. No nominative is expressed in the Greek, and it is rather violent to supply a new nominative, differing from that of the very same verb in the previous sentence: therefore ‘it’ seems preferable. ‘We know that if our future state is made manifest we, who are children of God, shall be found like our Father’. On the other hand, 1Jn_2:28 favours ‘if He shall be manifested.’ The word for know (οἴδαμεν) is that used in 1Jn_2:20-21, not that used in 1Jn_2:3; 1Jn_2:13-14; 1Jn_2:18, 1Jn_3:1. No progress in knowledge is implied, no additional experience: our future resemblance to our Father is a fact of which as Christians we are aware: comp. 1Jn_5:18-20.

we shall be like him] If we render ‘if He (i.e. Christ) shall be manifested’, this naturally means ‘we shall be like Christ;’ which, however true in itself, is not the point. The point is that children are found to be like their Father. This is an additional reason for preferring ‘if it shall be manifested’. Tyndale and Cranmer have ‘it’, Wiclif, Genevan, and Rhemish have ‘he’.

for we shall see him as he is] Better, because we shall see Him even as He is; ‘because’ as in 1Jn_3:9; 1Jn_3:20; 1Jn_3:22, 1Jn_2:13-14, &c., and ‘even as’ as in 1Jn_3:3; 1Jn_3:7; 1Jn_3:23, 1Jn_2:6; 1Jn_2:27, &c. ‘Because’ or ‘for’ may give the cause either (1) of our knowing that we shall be like Him, or (2) of our being like Him. Both make good sense; but, in spite of ‘we know’ being the principal sentence grammatically, the statement which most needs explanation is the subordinate one, that we shall be like God. ‘We shall be like Him’, says the Apostle, ‘because, as you know, we shall see Him’. Comp. ‘But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory’ (2Co_3:18); the sight of God will glorify us. This also is in harmony with the prayer of the great High Priest; ‘And the glory which Thou hast given Me, I have given unto them’ (Joh_17:22). Comp. ‘And they shall see His face’ (Rev_22:4). The ‘even as’ emphasizes the reality of the sight: no longer ‘in a mirror, darkly’, but ‘face to face’.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn_3:2

Beloved, now are we the sons of God

A present religion

The word now is to me the most prominent word in the text, Beloved, now are we the sons of God.

They who love religion love a present thing. The Christian who really seeks salvation will never be happy unless he can say, Now am I a child of God. That word now which is the sinners warning is to the Christian his greatest delight.

I. I shall commence by endeavouring to show that religion must be a thing of the present, because the present has such intimate connections with the future. We are told in Scripture that this life is a seed time, and the future is the harvest, He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. But again, this life is always said in Scripture to be a preparation for the life to come. Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. This life is as the vestibule of the kings court, we must put our shoes from off our feet; we must wash our garments and make ourselves ready to enter into the marriage supper of the Lamb. How are we saved? All through Scripture we are told we are saved by faith, except in one passage, wherein it is said, we are saved by hope. Now note how certain it is that religion must be a present thing if we are saved by faith, because faith anal hope cannot live in another world. What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?

II. In the second place, as I have shown the connection between the present and the future, let me use another illustration to show the importance of a present salvation. Salvation is a thing which brings present blessings. Unto them which are saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. He does not say to them who shall be saved, but to them which are saved. We know too that justification is a present blessing--there is therefore now no condemnation. Adoption is a present blessing, for it says, Now are we the sons of God, we know also that sanctification is a present blessing, for the apostle addresses himself to the saints who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called. All the blessings of the new covenant are spoken of in the present tense, because with the exception of eternal glory in heaven, they are all to be enjoyed here. A man may know in this life, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he is accepted in Christ Jesus. Yet I am inclined to think that the worldly man most of all objects to present religion because he does not like its duties. Men will not direct a single eye to religion, because it curtails license and entails duties. And this, I think, proves that religion is a present thing, because the duties of religion cannot be practised in another world, they must be practised here. Now, what are the duties of religion? hi the first place, here are its active duties, which a man should do between man and man, to walk soberly and righteously and uprightly in the midst of an evil generation. Lightly as some people speak about morality, there is no true religion where there is no morality. You have hard struggles to pass through life. Sometimes you have been driven to a great extremity, and whether you would succeed or not seemed to hang upon a thread. Has not your religion been a joy to you in your difficulties? Has it not calmed your minds? When you have been fretted and troubled about worldly things, have you not found in a pleasant thing to enter your closet, and shut to the door, and tell your Father in secret all your cares? And oh, ye that are rich, cannot you bear the same testimony, if you have loved the blaster? What had all your riches been to you without a Saviour? I fear that there are a great many of you who will say, Well, I care nothing at all about religion; it is for no avail to me! No, and it is very probable that you will not care about it until it shall be too late to care. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Sonship the foreshadowing of heaven

In every true economy of life there is a concealed side. This fact grows partly out of the nature of the case, and is partly a dictate of wisdom. This fact of concealment, and these two reasons for it, are both apparent in Gods dealing with men. Divine revelation is the exposed side of a Divine economy which reaches back into darkness. Some things God could not tell us, because we could not understand them. Other things are equally hidden, because He does not see fit to reveal them. God does not ignore nor for bid mens natural curiosity to know what is hidden. In many cases, indeed, He uses it in the interest of wider knowledge. The advancement of knowledge would come to a stop if all men were simply content to accept the unknown as unknowable. At the same time He does set a limit to human knowledge in certain directions: but in all such cases God puts His revelation in such a relation to what is unknown, as to quiet the restlessness of the curious and searching spirit when it reaches the limit of knowledge. He assures us concerning what He does not reveal by what He does reveal. He gives us certain foreshadowings of our future in our present. First, the concealment. What we are to be hereafter is not yet manifested. Christ reveals the fact of immortality but tells us little or nothing about the outward conditions of immortality. A Christian must frankly accept this ignorance. By the terms of his Christian covenant he engages to walk by faith and not by sight. Still, there is revelation as well as concealment. It doth not yet appear, but we know something. And as we study what is revealed to us, we begin to see that the concealment and ignorance which wait on this subject are not arbitrary, but are in the interest of our knowledge on another side, and are intended to direct our researches into another and more profitable channel. It doth not yet appear--not where we shall be, or in what circumstances we shall be--but it doth not appear what we shall be: only we know that we shall be like God. That is the great, the only point which concerns us as respects the future life. To be like God will be heaven. To be unlike God will be perdition. Character creates its own environment. On this side we know something of the heavenly world. We know the moral laws which govern it, for they are essentially the same laws which the gospel applies here. We know the moral sentiments which pervade heaven. They are the very sentiments which the gospel is seeking to foster in us here. We know that holiness which is urged upon us here is the character of God; and that where a holy God reigns the atmosphere must be one of holiness: that if God is love, love must pervade heavens that if God is truth, truth must pervade heaven. Now, all this, you see, must exert a tremendous power upon the present life, viewed as a prelude and preparation for the life to come. If that future life is to have its essence in character and not in circumstance, it follows that character and not circumstance is the great thing here. The apostle strikes directly into this track of thought. In the first place he states the fact of concealment. Down between our speculations and dreams and the eternal reality falls an impenetrable veil. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. But he goes on to say, You are on the right road to knowing. You are on the right road to becoming. Now are you children of God: that fact enfolds all that is to come. It is a matter of character here as in heaven. The true goal of your striving is likeness to God. Essentially we shall not be other there than here. The difference will be in degree, in maturity of development. We are children of God here, we shall be children of God there. Why, then, with all this promise, does it not appear what we shall be? Look at the promise itself and you will see the answer. The essence of the promise is, we shall be like God. Understand, not equal to God, but like God, as the finite, under the highest possible conditions, can be like the infinite. The reason for this likeness to God is given. We shall see Him as He is. This gives us the reason why it doth not yet appear what we shall be. We do not see Him as He is. We cannot so see Him here, any more than a child, in the weakness of infancy and the ignorance and perverseness of childhood can understand and appreciate the mind and character of a noble father. We cannot know what it is to be like God, because we cannot see Him as He is, and never shall, until He shall be manifested as pure spirit to purified spirits freed from the trammels of the flesh. And you will further notice the truth which the text assumes, that likeness to God comes through vision of God. We assimilate to that which we habitually contemplate, and especially so when we contemplate lovingly and enthusiastically. Thus we come to the last point of our text--the practical duty growing out of this mixed condition of ignorance and promise. For if the promise is to be fulfilled in likeness to God, if that, in short, is to constitute our heaven, and if that promise is enfolded in our present relation as children of God, then we have in that fact both a consolation and an exhortation to duty. You shall win the best of heaven by getting the best there is out of your position and relation as a child of God here. This is the logic of the gospel. Only God can purify the heart, but He enlists our service in purifying the life. In the same breath Paul tells us that God worketh in us to will and to work for His own pleasure, and bids us carry out our own salvation. Everyone that hath this hope in God is purified by the Holy Spirit, yet our text says purifieth himself. Personal devotion calls out personal effort. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)

The glory of Divine sonship

I. The present glory of this sonship is great. The life of God in the soul is intrinsically great. Holiness and love are the principal elements of character embodied in the life of a believer; these constitute his dignity--his present glorious inheritance.

II. The future glory of this sonship is the greatest. The model is Christ in His enthroned majesty and splendour. Behold the omnipotence of this love. For whom was it displayed? Angels? No, but for rebellious, ruined man--man scathed by sin, and an enemy to his Maker. (J. H. Hill.)

The possessions and prospects of believers

I. Here is true unity. Now are we the sons of God. This makes a true Catholic Church. There may be diversity in the family features--nay, if there be intellectual life there must be; but withal there will be likeness in the Kings sons, in all the wide extent of the Great Fathers household.

II. Here is true fellowship. This, at all events, is the ideal. Till the world lasts there will be men of the logical temperament of St. Paul, the mystical temperament of St. John, the practical, sagacious temperament of St. James; but there should be true fellowship for all that: Sons of God swallows up all minor difficulties, all theoretical diversities.

III. Here is true resemblance. It is not a mere question of condition, but of character. All the lines of the Gospel are laid along the lines of life.

IV. Here is future prospect. It doth not yet appear. No, the time has not yet come. The cradle is not the place for judging of countenance or character in the perfect sense. The condition of the development is time. Like a tree made strong by storms, so life means contradiction, hindrance, temptation. We are waiting, as our text says, to appear. Like an unblossomed flower, the glory is hidden yet. (W. M. Statham, M. A.)

The present condition and future prospects of believers

I. What we now are--sons of God.

1. We were restored to the forfeited honour of the sons of God by being begotten again by the Father; and born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. We became the sons of God, not by natural generation, nor in virtue of any inherent power or tendency, nor in consequence of any endeavour on the part of others, but by the agency of His Spirit.

2. We may know it by the faith we exercise, if it leads us to entire dependence on Christ, and to the utmost diligence in duty. We may know it by the repentance we have experienced, if it has been heartfelt, arising from a true sense of sin, and resulting in its entire renunciations. We may know it by the feelings we cherish toward our brethren in Christ, if we love them sincerely. We may know it by the state of our affections toward God, if they are set on those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

3. We, indeed, may be of no account among men.

II. What we expect to become.

1. The confidence with which we may expect future happiness: We know we shall be like Him. Though we are not favoured with such evidence as John enjoyed, we have all that is necessary to sustain our hope in the reality of that blessedness which God has in reserve for His children. The number and minuteness of these predictions, which have received accomplishment in the history of Jesus and the Church; the sublime nature of the doctrines of the gospel; the holy tendency of its principles; the pure morality of its precepts; the circumstances in which it was first promulgated, and the success which has attended its ministrations, convince us of the truth of that record, which reveals to us life and immortality.

2. The peculiar nature of the happiness of heaven, We shall be like Him. It must satisfy the most enlarged desires of the immortal soul to be assimilated to Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Our minds, like His, shall be gloriously constituted, for, vigorous and pure, they shall be fitted for the noble pursuits and sublime contemplations of the heavens. Our character, like His, shall be glorious, for, freed from all taint of impurity, we shall be arrayed in the robe of His righteousness. Our stations, like His, shall be glorious, for we shall be near to that throne on which He sits at the right hand of His Father. Our happiness, like His, shall be glorious, for we shall possess all we can desire or be able to enjoy.

3. The means by which this assimilation to Christ shall be produced, We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. As the earth owes all that diversity of light and shade with which it is adorned, and all that variety of flower and luxuriance of fruit with which it is beautified and enriched to the agency of the sun; so shall the redeemed in heaven derive all their beauty, and all their blessedness, from the presence of Him who sits upon the throne.

4. The time when the felicity of the sons of God shall be consummated, When He shall appear.

5. The inconceivable greatness of this future happiness, It doth not yet appear what we shall be. (W. Welsh.)

The present and the future of Christian life

I. That which is positively known: Beloved, now are we the sons of God.

1. A man may know himself a Christian, as he knows himself a living soul--by personal consciousness. The fact of his conversion is the starting point in his religious history; and the incidents of Christian experience are the indications of his progress in the Divine life.

2. And, beyond the personal evidence arising from the exercise of faith in the soul, there is the witness of the Spirit in our hearts.

II. That which is imperfectly understood. It doth not yet appear what we shall be.

1. One thing, however, is quite sure. We shall not remain as we are. The very process of animal life is fraught with decay.

2. Another thing is equally certain; and that is, that we shall still exist.

3. But amidst all the information which God has given us on that subject, we know not the mode of our future existence, nor even its locality. How we shall see without these eyes, hear without these ears, and converse without these organs of speech, we cannot tell. Probably we shall be all intelligence, and find, to our surprise, that the senses on which we laid so great a stress, and considered so essential to our intellectual being, were but so many loopholes in our prison house of clay, through which we could sometimes catch a glimpse of surrounding objects, but by means of which we could distinguish nothing perfectly.

III. That which is confidently anticipated. (D. E. Ford.)

Now sons, though sufferers

I. The sons of God are specially loved of God.

II. The sons of God are born again of God. Of His own will begat He us by the word of His truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. So that the character of the disciples of Christ is a special Divine workmanship. It matters little what civilisation may be in a country, or what it may do. Every man needs regeneration.

III. The sons of God, as such, are brethren of Jesus Christ.

IV. The sons of God are related to all the unfallen and redeemed of the offspring of God. Paul makes very much of this, and I suppose that if our hearts were right we should make very much of this.

V. The sons of God are heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, heirs to the noblest rank and title, and heirs to boundless wealth. The reason that God does not give us more of every kind of good now, is that we need the discipline of want. And until the discipline of suffering and of want has accomplished its end we have not the capacity to use the treasures and the riches which God waits to put at our disposal, and which He will put at our disposal so soon as we are educated and ready.

VI. The sons of God are being educated by God. Suitable habits are being formed, so that when they become lords of the inheritance which is in reserve for them, they shall appear to have been so educated as to be thoroughly fit for all the duties, and responsibilities, and honours, and joys of that position.

VII. The sons of God have access to God. (S. Martin.)

It doth not yet appear what we shall be--

Of the happiness of good men in the future state

I. The present obscurity of our future state, as to the particular circumstances of that happiness which good men shall enjoy in another world. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. If one should come from a strange country, never known before, and should only tell us, in general, that it was a most delightful place, and the inhabitants a brave, and generous, and wealthy people, under the government of a wise and great king, ruling by excellent laws; and that the particular delights and advantages of it were not to be imagined by anything he knew in our own country. If we gave credit to the person that brought this relation, it would create in us a great admiration of the country described to us, and a mighty concern to see it, and live in it. But it would be a vain curiosity to reason and conjecture about the particular conveniences of it; because it would be impossible, by any discourse, to arrive at the certain knowledge of any more, than he who knew it, was pleased to tell us. This is the case as to our heavenly country.

II. Thus much we know of it in general, that it shall consist in the blessed vision of God. It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but when He shall appear, we shall see Him as He is.

1. What is meant by seeing God. As to see the king includes the court, and all the glorious circumstances of his attendance: so to see God, does take in all that glory, and joy, and happiness, which flows from His presence.

2. What is here meant by seeing God as He is: we shall see Him as He is.

(1) Our perfect knowledge of Him. Not that we are to imagine that when we come to heaven, our understanding can or shall be raised to such a pitch as to be able perfectly to comprehend the infinite nature and perfections of God. But our knowledge shall be advanced to such degrees of perfection as a finite and created understanding is capable of.

(a) We shall then have an immediate knowledge of God, that which the Scripture calls seeing Him face to face; not at a distance, as we do now by faith: not by reflection, as we do now see Him in the creatures.

(b) We shall have a far clearer knowledge of God than we have now in this life (1Co_13:12). We see Him now many times as He is not; that is, we are liable to false and mistaken conceptions of Him.

(c) We shall then, likewise, have a certain knowledge of God, free from all doubts concerning Him (1Co_13:12). As God now knows us, so shall we then know Him, as to the truth and certainty of our knowledge.

(2) To see God as He is, does imply our perfect enjoyment of Him. It can be no mean thing, which the infinite wisdom, and goodness, and power of God hath designed for the final reward of those who love Him, and of those whom He loves.

3. The fitness of this metaphor, to express to us the happiness of our future state.

(1) Sight is the noblest and most excellent of all our senses; and therefore the flame of the eye is the most curious of all other parts of the body, and the dearest to us, and that which we preserve with the greatest tenderness. It is the most comprehensive sense, hath the largest sphere, takes in the most objects, and discerns them at the greatest distance. It can in a moment pass from earth to heaven, and survey innumerable objects. It is the most pure, and spiritual, and quickest in its operations, and approacheth nearest to the nature of a spiritual faculty.

(2) The primary and proper object of this sense is the most delightful trod of the most spiritual nature of any corporeal thing, and that is light (Pro_15:30; Ecc_11:7). It is the purest and most spiritual of all corporeal things, and therefore God chooseth to represent Himself by it: God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

III. Wherein our likeness and conformity to God shall consist.

1. In the immortality of our nature. In this mortal state we are not capable of that happiness which consists in the vision of God; that is, in the perfect knowledge and perpetual enjoyment of Him. The imperfection of our state, and the weakness of our faculties, cannot bear the sight of so glorious and resplendent an object, as the Divine nature and perfections are; we cannot see God and live.

2. In the purity of our souls. In this world every good man does mortify his earthly Dud corrupt affections, and in some measure bring them into obedience and subjection to the law of God. But still there are some relics of sin, some spots and imperfections in the holiness of the best men. 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.

IV. The necessary connexion between our likeness and conformity to God, and our sight and enjoyment of Him. We know that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

1. Likeness to God in the immortality of our nature is necessary to make us capable of the happiness of the next life; which consists in the blessed and perpetual vision and enjoyment of God.

2. Our likeness to God in the purity of our souls is necessary to make us capable of the blessed sight and enjoyment of Him in the next life.

(1) It is necessary, as a condition of the thing to be performed on our part, before we can expect that God should make good the promise of eternal life and happiness to us.

(2) We cannot possibly love God, nor take delight in Him, unless we be like Him in the temper and disposition of our minds. (Abp. Tillotson.)

Future state of Christians

I. The character of the children of God. It is this filial spirit which forms all the beautiful and amiable traits in the Christian character.

1. It disposes the children of God to love Him with an ardent and supreme affection.

2. It disposes them to love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and to believe in Him alone for salvation.

3. It unites all the children of God to one another.

4. It is a spirit of grace and of supplication.

5. It disposes His children to obey all His commands.

II. What they do not know concerning themselves in a future state.

1. They are wholly unacquainted with the means by which they shall perceive either material or spiritual objects, after they have lost their bodily senses.

2. It is no less dark and mysterious how they will converse with one another, and with the heavenly hosts, after they leave these mortal bodies.

3. They must remain totally ignorant in this life, how they shall arrive in heaven, and how they shall move from place to place after they arrive there.

III. What the children of God do know concerning themselves in a future state.

1. They do now know where they shall be hereafter.

2. They know in this world what manner of persons they shall be in the next.

3. They know that when they shall leave this present evil world, they shall be completely blessed.

Lessons:

1. It appears from what has been said, that all the knowledge which Christians have of themselves in a future state, they wholly derive from Divine revelation.

2. We may learn from what has been said, why some Christians die in so much light and joy, and some in so much darkness and distress.

3. Christians may and ought to infer, from what has been said, the great importance of making their calling and election sure.

4. The preceding observations leave us no room be doubt, that death is always a happy event to the children of God.

5. This subject affords a source of great consolation to those who have been bereaved of near and dear Christian friends. (N. Emmons, D. D.)

Our ignorance and our knowledge of the future state

I. Our ignorance. We do not suppose that God has designedly kept back from mankind clear and full intimations of the characteristics of future happiness; on the contrary, revelation is abundant in its discoveries. Parable and image are exhausted with the effort to make that portrait worthy the original; and, probably we do not, for the most part allow our knowledge to keep pace with Gods revelation of the future. But when you come to the point of what we ourselves shall be, we frankly admit that we have but scanty information. It is just that mystery, for coping with which we possess no faculties. Yea, and from this our ignorance of what a spiritual body shall be, arises an ignorance just as total of a vast portion of the occupations of believers.

II. Our knowledge. We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. There would be no difficulty in bringing forward other portions of Scripture to corroborate this statement. It is, for example, expressly declared by St. Paul, that Christ shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto His glorious body. But St. John, you observe, subjoins a reason for the resemblance, We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. We can hardly venture to suppose that the excitement of desire, and the consequent offering up of prayer will constitute the connection, as they do a present connection, between seeing Christ and resembling Christ. We must rather own, that whatever the future connection, it will altogether differ from the present. It is to a suffering and humiliated Christ that we become like now; it shall be to an exalted and glorified Christ that we are made like hereafter. The work wrought in us whilst on earth is conformity to Christ in His humiliation--the work wrought in us when we start up at the resurrection shall be conformity to Christ in His exaltation. The apostle declares that we shall see Christ as He is. We ask you whether, with the most vigorous actings of faith, it can be ever said of us that we see Christ as He is? No, the gaze that we cast on Christ here must be a gaze upon Christ as Christ was, more truly than a gaze upon Christ as Christ is. We look upon Jesus as delivered for our sins, and raised again for our justification. We look towards Christ as lifted up like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, as presenting in His office of Intercessor the merits of His atonement in our behalf. Even those who obtain a night of Christ as Intercessor, do not strictly see Christ as Christ is. They see Him as perpetuating His crucifixion. So that, sift the matter as closely as you will, whilst on earth we see Christ as He was rather than Christ as He is--and in exact agreement with this sight of Christ is the likeness we acquire. But when in place of travelling back I would spring forward, when I would contemplate the majesty of a Being administering the business of the universe, and drawing in from every spot an infinite source of revenue, teeming with honour, and flashing with glory--oh! shall I not be forced to confess myself amazed at the very outset of the daring endeavour? Shall I not be compelled to fall back from the scrutiny of what Christ is, to repose more and more on a survey of what Christ was, thankful for present knowledge, hopeful of future? (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The unrevealed future of the sons of God

The present is the prophet of the future, says my text: Now are we the sons of God, and (not but) it doth not yet appear what we shall be. A man may say: Ah! now are we, we shall be--we shall be--nothing! John does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a son of God he will always be So.

I. The fact, of sonship makes us quite sure of the future. It seems to me that the strongest reasons for believing in another world are these two--first, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and has gone up there; and, second, that a man here can pray and trust and love God, and feel that he is His child. We are the children of God now--and if we are children now, we shall be grown up some time. Childhood leads to maturity. And not only the fact of our sonship avails to assure us of immortal life, but also the very form which our religious experience takes points in the same direction. The child is father of the man; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way the very imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the existence of another state where all that is here in the germ shall be fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us. There is a great deal in every nature, and most of all in a Christian nature, which is like the packages that emigrants take with them, marked Not wanted on the voyage. These go down into the hold, and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son of God I have got much in me that is not wanted on the voyage, and the more I grow into His likeness the more I am thrown out of harmony with the things round about me in proportion as I am brought into harmony with the things beyond.

II. Sonship leaves us ignorant of much in the future. We are the sons of God, and, just because we are, it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. John would simply say to us, There has never been set forth before mens 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. In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus Christ. But the risen Christ is not the glorified Christ. The chrysaliss dreams about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be as reliable as a mans imagination of what a future life will be. So let us feel two things--let us be thankful that we do not know, for the ignorance is a sign of the greatness; and then, let us be sure that just the very mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have about another world is precisely the food which is most fitted to nourish imagination and hope.

III. Our sonship flings an 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. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Future life

There is nothing in the actual condition of mankind, or in the method of Gods dispensations towards them, more surprising than the fact that, while the very constitution of the mind impels it to survey the future with intense solicitude, futurity itself is hidden by a veil which can neither be penetrated nor withdrawn. We have only to look back upon our progress hitherto, to see experimental evidence, which we at least must own to be conclusive, that, in hiding from us that which was before us, God has dealt with us, not as an austere master, but a tender parent, knowing well how His children can endure, and, in the exercise of that omniscience, determining not only how much they shall actually suffer, but how much of what they are to suffer shall be known to them before their day of visitation comes. But this part of Gods providential government, though eminently merciful, is not designed exclusively to spare men a part of the suffering which sin has caused. It has a higher end. By the partial disclosure and concealment of futurity, continually acting on the native disposition to pry into it, the soul is still led onward, kept in an attitude of expectation, and in spite of its native disposition to look downward, to go backward, or to lie stagnant, is perpetually stimulated to look up, to exert itself, and make advances in the right direction. In making us rational, in giving us the power of comparison and judgment, and in teaching us by the constitution of our nature to infer effect from cause and cause from effect, God has rendered us incapable of looking at the present or remembering the past, without at the same time or as a necessary consequence anticipating that which is to come, and to a great extent with perfect accuracy, so that all the knowledge of the future which is needed for the ordinary purposes of human life is amply provided and infallibly secured; while, far beyond the limits of this ordinary foresight, He has granted to some gifted minds a keener vision. Nor is this all, for even with respect to things which neither ordinary reasoning from analogy, nor extraordinary powers of forecast can avail to bring within the reach of human prescience, God has Himself been pleased to make them known by special revelation. If anything is certain it is this, that they who do escape perdition, and by faith in the omnipotence of graze pursue this upward course, shall still continue to ascend without cessation, rising higher, growing better, and becoming more and more like God throughout eternity. This vagueness and uncertainty, although at first sight it may seem to be a serious disadvantage, is nevertheless not without important and beneficent effects upon the subjects of salvation. It may seem, indeed, that as a means of arousing the attention, an indefinite assurance of transcendent blessedness hereafter is less likely to be efficacious than a distinct and vivid exhibition of the elements which are to constitute that blessedness; but let it be remembered that no possible amount, and no conceivable array of such particulars, would have the least effect in originating serious reflection or desire in the unconverted heart. This can be wrought by nothing short of a Divine power, and when it is thus wrought, when the thoughts and the affections are once turned in the right direction, the less detailed and more indefinite description of the glory which is yet to be experienced seems often best adapted to excite and stimulate the soul, and lead it onwards, by still presenting something that is yet to be discovered or attained, and thus experimentally accustoming the soul to act upon the vital principle of its newborn nature, forgetting that which is behind, and reaching forth to that which is before. The same thing may be said of the indefinite manner in which the doom of the impenitent and unbelieving is set forth in Scripture. In this, as in the corresponding case before described, if the mind is awakened, such details are needless, and if not awakened, they are unavailing. But is it, can it be, a fact, that rational, spiritual beings, Godlike in their origin, and made for immortality, with faculties susceptible of endless elevation and enlargement, and activity, can hesitate to choose life rather than death, and good in preference to evil? Because you now wish to repent, and to believe, and to be saved hereafter, you imagine yourselves safe in your impenitence, and unbelief, and condemnation. Why, the very disposition which is now made the pretext for procrastination may forsake you. The respect you now feel for the truth, for Gods law, for the gospel, may be changed into a cold indifference, contemptuous incredulity, or malignant hatred. The faint gleams of conviction which occasionally light up the habitual darkness of the mind may be extinguished. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)

Heaven

It is often asked, if the great object of the gospel be to fit us for heaven, why is not a fuller revelation of its joys made to us? In the first place, were the future life fully laid open to us, its brightness would throw the present state into utter eclipse, and make our earthly pilgrimage irksome and grievous. The natural shrinking from an unknown condition of being sustains an interest in the present life in the hearts of those best fitted to die, while, when that unknown state is at hand, their confidence in the Divine mercy enables them to enter upon it without doubt or fear. Again, the representations of heaven in the Bible are such as to adapt the inspired record to the needs of all classes of minds. We doubt not that the life of heaven is spiritual. We expect there pleasures, not of sense, but of soul. But the gospel was first preached, and is still preached every year, to multitudes who occupy the lowest plane of intelligence and culture. It goes to them in their coarseness and degradation; and in that state how could they take in a picture of spiritual joy? Their conceptions of heaven grow with their characters. As they increase in spirituality it becomes less a place and more a state. It represents to them at every stage the highest point that they have reached, the utmost of blessedness that they can apprehend. To pass to another topic, I would ask, Would not any detailed description of the life to come raise more questions than it answered--excite more curiosity than it gratified? I love to think of it as infinitely diversified, as, though the same, yet different to every soul. I believe that every direction which the mind can take, every bent which the character can assume under the guidance of religion, reaches out into eternity. If this be the case, how could the whole be written out in a volume? Or, had some portions of this blessed life been revealed, and some threads of our earthly existence shown us as they are woven into the web of eternity, it could only have awakened doubt and despondency in those minds on whose favourite departments of thought and duty no light from heaven was shed. But while for these reasons a specific revelation with regard to the heavenly life was not to be expected, does not the very idea of immortality include the answers to many of the questions which we might ask the most anxiously? If we are the same beings there as here, we must carry with us the tastes, affections, and habits of thinking and feeling, with which we depart this life, and those of them which can find scope for exercise and space for growth in heaven must unfold and ripen there. In addition to what has been said, I would suggest that much may have been left unrevealed with regard to heaven in order to furnish room for the highest exercise of the imagination. It seems to me that the Scriptural representations of the life to come are precisely adapted to make fancy the handmaid of devotion. There may be yet another reason why we have so little detailed information with regard to heaven. There is no doubt much which we could not know--for which human speech furnishes no words. Language is the daughter of experience. It can give the blind no idea of colours, or the deaf of sounds. Now there can be no doubt that in the future life our mode of being, of perception, of recognition, of communication, will be essentially different from what it is here, and perhaps so different that nothing within our earthly experience could furnish terms for its description. But, with all our ignorance, we have full assurance on one point, and that the most essential to our present improvement and happiness. When God shall appear, shall draw near the soul in death and judgment, we shall be like Him. And if like Him, like Jesus, His express image, whose heart is all laid open to us, whose traits of spiritual beauty and excellence are within our clear view. To be like Christ--need we know, could we ask more? (A. P. Peabody.)

Progress of manhood

There is enough of progress and development in our present existence to justify the belief that man, living in God and loving Him, shall pass on to capacities, services, and enjoyments of which he can have now only the most imperfect conception. Look at the little child in his mothers arms: its eyes beautiful but vacant, or just sharpening into attention and wonder; its head at all points of the compass in five minutes. Now look at that man who, with eye of fire and voice of thunder, binds an army together, and rules the will of a hundred thousand men with a word: the little, comely, helpless infant has grown into that mighty soldier, whose look is equal to a hundred swords, whose voice is equal to a cannonade. Who could have predicted such a man from such a child? Say, then, to every child, It doth not yet appear what we shall be; we must wait; we must live and work in the spirit of hope; this child, or that, may move the world to God and heaven! Look at the child beginning his letters and forming words of one syllable. See him hesitating between C and G, not exactly knowing which is which, and being utterly confounded because he is not sure whether the word to should have two os or one! Now look at the student shut up in the museum deciphering and arranging the most learned and difficult writings in all literature, vindicating his criticism in the face of an enlightened continent. The two are one. The little puzzled learner has grown into the accomplished and authoritative scholar. It doth not yet appear what we shall be! If we follow on to know the Lord and do His will, our strength shall be equal to our day, and we shall be to ourselves a continual surprise, and to the dignity of life a constant witness, and a memorial not to be gainsaid. Fancy a child born under the most corrupting and discouraging circumstances: parents immoral; poverty, desolation, discomfort of every kind, the characteristics of the house. No reverence, no chivalry, no pretence even of religious form; to be born under such circumstances is surely to be doomed to a continual depravity, wickedness, and despair. Yet even there the Spirit of the Lord may mightily operate, and out of that pestilent chaos may order come, and music, and beautiful utilities. This has been done; it is being done now; it is the daily Christian miracle; it constrains us by glad compulsion to exclaim, It doth not yet appear what we shall be. It is the joy of the Christian missionary to be able to point to villages once the scene of cannibalism, and of wickedness of every name, where there was no conscience, no law, no mercy, no honour, and to show you houses of Christian prayer, and to point out men who were cannibals singing Christian psalms and crying like children under the pathos of Christian appeals. What wonder, then, if within view of transformations so vital and astounding, we exclaim with thankful and hopeful surprise, It doth not yet appear what we shall be! (J. Parker, D. D.)

Our imperfect knowledge of the future

If a child had been born, and spent all his life in the Mammoth Cave, how impossible would it be for him to comprehend the upper world! Parents might tell him of its life, its light, its beauty, and its sounds of joy; they might heap up the sands into mounds, and try to show him by stalactites how grass, flowers, and trees grow out of the ground; till at length, with laborious thinking, the child would fancy he had gained a true idea of the unknown land: and yet, though he longed to behold it, when it came that he was to go forth, it would be with regret for the familiar crystals and rock-hewn rooms, and the quiet that reigned therein. But when he came up some May morning, with ten thousand birds singing in the trees, and the heavens bright and blue, and full of sunlight, and the wind blowing softly through the young leaves, all aglitter with dew, and the landscape stretching away green and beautiful to the horizon, with what rapture would he gaze about him, and see how poor were all the fancyings and interpretations which were made within the cave of the things which grew and lived without! and how he would wonder that he could ever have regretted to leave the silence and dreary darkness of his old abode! So, when we emerge from this cave of earth into that land where spring growths are, and where is eternal summer, how shall we wonder that we could have clung so fondly to this dark and barren life! (H. W. Beecher.)

Loves ultimate intentions

It is not merely for what we are today that our Father loves us so. It is for what He means to make us when we have done with mortality and sin. See that tiny boy in his cradle, over whom his parents watch with such doting fondness. Say, over and above the instinctive fondness of parents for their children, are there not big hopes that gather round that little ones head? It is not merely because of what he is today that his parents love him so, but because of what he is to be when he becomes a man, filling some place of honour in this busy world. Ah! and so it is with the love of God. It is not merely because of what we are now, in our frailty and weakness, that our Father loves us thus, but because of what He means to make us when He has received us home and has divested us of this dull mortality, and has crowned us with His own ineffable glory! (C. Clemance, D. D.)

Our knowledge of heaven small

Oh! when we meet in heaven, we shall see now little we knew about it on earth. (G. Payson.)

But we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is--

The eternal future clear only in Christ

The apostle admits that there is obscurity hanging over much of our eternal future.

1. The first step of the soul into another state of being is a mystery. The existence of the soul separate from the body, and from all material organs, is incomprehensible.

2. The place of our future life is obscure. How there can be relation to place without a body we do not know, and even when the body is restored, we cannot tell the locality of the resurrection world.

3. The outward manner of our final existence is also uncertain. Whether we may possess merely our present faculties, enlarged and strengthened, as a childs mind expands into a mans, or whether new faculties of perception may not be made to spring forth, as if sight were given a blind man, we find it impossible to affirm.

4. Many of the modes of thought and feeling, in that life to come, perplex us. Truth must forever continue truth, and goodness eternally commend itself to the soul, else our training for the future life would be valueless, and our confidence in the reality of things shaken. But there may be large modifications, through the extension and elevation of our thoughts. We shall see the same spiritual objects, but from other positions, and with higher powers of judging. How far this may affect our views we cannot say.

5. 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. It matters little, the apostle says, what may be our ignorance about other things, what doubts may agitate us, what darkness lie on the edge of our horizon, if we can abide in the centre with this great Enlightener. He casts His illumination upon our future destiny as well as upon our present duty.

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.

1. The first thought of the apostle was no doubt the human nature of Christ as appearing again to the eyes of His friends. He left with that nature, and promised so to return--I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice. His first disciples are not to be the only favoured men who ever saw Christ after the flesh. They will regain the view they lost, and we, if we are of them who love His appearing, shall share it with them. The likeness of sinful flesh will be removed--the marred visage and form of suffering,--but the look that turned on Peter--the face that rejoiced in that hour when He said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth--the hands that blessed the children--these shall remain, with all the soul of pity that was in them, and the beating heart which went forth through them. The only difference will be that they shall appear. In this world they were hidden, seen only by the few, seen obscurely, realised feebly; but when He is made manifest they shall be the centre and the sunlight of a ransomed world, the heritage of an innumerable company, and yet each one, as if by himself, shall have His view of, and portion in, the true human fellowship of the Son of God.

2. In the manifestation of Christ the apostle must have thought also of His Divine nature. His first appearance in this nature was dim and over cast, both for the sake of the weak vision of fallen humanity, and because suffering and sacrifice were necessary for the work He had to perform. Before He could raise, He needed to redeem. When He became man He emptied Himself of His Divinity, as far as this was possible--gathered the attributes of the Infinite within the limits of the finite, and shut up the rays of His uncreated glory in the likeness of sinful flesh. When He shall appear there may be expected a clear manifestation of the Divine nature through the human. 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. The majesty, the power and wisdom which belong to Him as the Son of God shall go forth unrestrained, in union with the tenderness and sympathy which fill His heart as the Son of Man.

II. The second thing promised at the appearance of Christ is a full vision on our part--we shall see Him as He is.

1. There must certainly be a change in our material frame before we can sustain the view of Christs exalted humanity. When men are brought to see Him as He is, the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory would crush them to the dust, without that change which will make their bodies incorruptible and glorious as His own.

2. With this change on the body, there must be a corresponding one upon the soul, before there can be the full vision of Christ. If we were allowed to conjecture, we might suppose that this education is part of the history of souls in the separate state. The body can rise at once to its highest perfection, but the law of spirit is that of advance by slow degrees. It is consolatory, also, to think that the great day shall not startle the blessed dead, if we may so speak of them, with affright. It shall dawn to them as the summer sun dawns. But however the preparation takes place, we may be confident that the souls vision will be at last perfectly fitted to its object--Christ as He is. It will be a vision free from all sin in the soul. This will make it free from error, and from the doubt which has pain with it. It will be free from partiality--from that fruitful source of misconception and division, taking a portion of Christ and His truth for the whole. It will be a vision intense and vivid, not coldly outlined by the understanding, but veined and coloured by the heart--a sight in which the soul goes out to rejoice with a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. And it will be a vision close and intimate. They shall gain their knowledge of God and Christ by quicker processes and shorter paths than here we do.

III. The third thing promised is complete assimilation to Christ--we shall be like Him. It is the perfect view of Christ which gives perfect likeness to Him. To look on one we love brings a measure of similitude, and looking on Christ, even here, however dimly we may see Him, produces a degree of likeness. But it is when Christ appears that the last great step is taken. However pure and happy may be the state of separate spirits, the Scripture teaches us that it is incomplete, and that they, as well as the whole creation, wait for the manifestation of the sons of God.

1. Taking the order hitherto observed, we may think first of our material frame. It will be made like to Christs glorious body. This assures us that we shall have eternal relations to Gods material universe. It fixes a central home for our nature--we shall be where Christ is. It makes us feel that there will be a fitness in our frame for our future dwelling place. All that world forms itself into a harmony with Christ, and when we are like Him we shall be in harmony with it. When the material frame is made like Christs, it indicates to us something not only of the forms of the future life, but of its active employments. The body in this present world serves two great purposes. It lets in Gods external creation, with all its lessons of knowledge, upon the soul; and it gives the soul power to go forth and imprint upon Gods creation its own thoughts and volitions. When the Bible assures us that a body shall still be associated with mans soul, it leads us to infer that Gods material universe will be open to him in all its teachings; and that he will be able to impress it in some way with the marks of his own mind and will. Only it will be after a higher manner. The lordship of man over creation, which was granted him at first, will be heightened when it is restored through Christ (Heb_2:7).

2. Besides the assimilation of the material frame, we cannot forget that there will be a likeness of the spiritual nature. The source of heavens blessedness and power is the likeness of the soul to Christ. When He shall appear we shall see His face, and His name shall be on our foreheads. It shall be deeper--in our souls; and all of Gods truth and grace that can be communicated to a creature shall enter into the depth of the spiritual nature through Christ. If the active soul finds scope for work in Gods material universe, the Mary-like spirit which delights to sit at the feet of Christ and hear His word, shall have unrebuked leisure in the heavenly home. We may trust that in some way the sisters, Service and Meditation, will interchange gifts, and be perfectly at one when they reach His higher presence.

3. We have pursued the order of presenting first the human side of Christ, and then the Divine; but we trust it has been made clear that the knowledge of Christ comes to us through the soul side in ourselves. 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. (John Ker, D. D.)

Future blessedness

I. The nature of this blessed and glorious estate--we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. A transforming vision, or such a vision as changeth us into the likeness of God, is the true blessedness of the saints. There are three things considerable in our happiness

(1) The vision of God;

(2) A participation of His likeness;

(3) The satisfaction or delectation thence resulting.

Two of them are in the text: we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. The third is fetched from a parallel place (Psa_17:15). First, for vision that beginneth the happiness, and maketh way for all the rest--we shall see Him as He is. This sight is either ocular or mental.

1. Ocular; for our senses have their happiness as well as our souls, and there is a glorified eye as well as a glorified mind (Job_19:26-27). But you will say, How is this so great a privilege to the godly, since the wicked shall see Him? (Mat_26:64).

(1) That sight they have of Christ shall be but a short glimpse of His glory; for after their doom and sentence is passed, they shall be immediately banished out of His presence (Mat_25:41).

(2) They shall see Him with shame and terror, looking upon Him as to receive their just punishment (1Jn_2:28).

(3) The consideration of the object is different; the one look upon Him as their inexorable judge, the other as their merciful saviour; their interest in Him maketh Him dear to their souls.

2. Mental vision or contemplation. The angels, which have not bodies, are said to behold the face of our heavenly Father (Mat_18:10); and when we are said to see God, it is not meant of the bodily eye, for a spirit cannot be seen with bodily eyes; so He is still the invisible God (Col_1:15). And seeing face to face is opposed to knowing in part. And therefore it implieth a more complete knowledge than now we have. The mind is the noblest faculty, and must have its satisfaction. Now three things are necessary--

(1) A prepared faculty;

(2) A suitable object; and

(3) The conjunction of both these.

Now in the state of glory all these concur. 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. Secondly, assimilation or transformation into the image of God and Christ.

1. What this likeness is. This was mans first ruin, this aspiring to be like God (Gen_3:5); not in a blessed conformity, but in a cursed self-sufficiency. This was the design of the first transgression (Isa_14:14). The men of the world aspire to be like God in greatness and power, but not in goodness and holiness. We affect or usurp Divine honour, and to sit upon even ground with God. Christ came not to gratify our sin, but to make us like unto God, not equal with God.

(1) In holiness and purity; for that is the chief thing wherein God will be resembled by His creatures. We are made holy as He is holy.

(2) We are like Him in happiness and glory, that is, in a glorious condition (1Co_15:49).

(1) A relative and adherent glory, as the saints are admitted into a participation of His judicial power (1Co_6:2).

(2) Internal and inherent, viz., the glory revealed in us, put into us, Now it is revealed to us, then in us. Our ear hath received a little hereof, but then it shall be fully accomplished in our persons, in our bodies and souls.

2. How it is the fruit of vision? for so it is given as a reason, We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. I answer--there is between light and likeness a circular generation, as there is in most moral things; and on the one side it may be said we shall be like Him, therefore we shall see Him as He is, and also on the other side, as in the text, We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Thirdly, the third thing is satisfaction, not mentioned in the text, but implied from a parallel place; for we having the sight and presence of God, must needs be ravished with it (Psa_16:11). Our great business will be to love what we see, and our great happiness to have what we love. This will be a full, perpetual, and never failing delight to us.

II. The season when we shall enjoy this--when He shall appear.

1. I take it for granted that the soul before is not only in the hand of God, which all assert, but admitted into the sight and presence of the Lord, and to see His blessed face.

2. Then we have our solemn absolution from all sins (Act_3:19). And our pardon is pronounced by the judge sitting upon the throne.

3. Then shall we have glorified bodies restored unto us, wherein Christ shall be admired (2Th_1:10).

4. Then Christ will present us to God by head and poll, and give an account of all that God hath given him, that they may be introduced into their everlasting estate, not one wanting (Joh_6:40).

III. The apprehension that we should have of it for the present--we know.

1. It is not a bare conjecture, but a certain knowledge; it is not only we think, we hope well, but we know.

2. It is not a probable opinion, but an evident and infallible truth, as sure as if we saw it with our eyes. An unseen world is an unknown world; how can we be so sure of it? It is set before us by His precious promises who cannot lie.

3. It is not a general belief, but a particular confidence. He speaketh upon the supposition that we are Gods children. (T. Manton, D. D.)

Mans capability of future glory and blessedness

I. That strong, unappeasable desire, that longing after a higher good than this world affords, which seems inherent in the nature of man, points to something great and glorious in his future destiny. This was wont to be appealed to by the ancient heathen philosophers as among the strongest proofs of the souls immortality. And plainly there is much force in the argument. For, assuming the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, it may be asked, why should He implant in the nature of man a desire after immortality, if He did not mean to gratify that desire; or why awaken in Him longings after unearthly, eternal happiness, if He has made no provisions to appease those longings? Place man in any earthly situation; give him wealth, give him power, give him honour, pleasure, all that the world can afford; still there will be a void within, still he will travail in pain, and look and sigh after enjoyments which the fleeting objects of time and sense can never afford him. His thoughts and his hopes stretch beyond the shadows of earth and time and fasten on the skies. These facts clearly show that this world was never designed to be the final abode of man.

II. If we consider the capacities of man, we shall perceive still stronger evidence that he is destined to something inconceivably grand and glorious in the progress of his future being. Though fallen from his original dignity and degraded by sin, man is still noble in ruins. He is now, most plainly, but in the infancy of his being. Still we perceive in him capacities for high and noble attainments; capacities which stamp on his existence the seal of eternity.

1. Man possesses an immortal nature; is made for an endless existence. The body soon decays. But this affects not the existence of the living, thinking spirit.

2. Man has a capacity for endless progress in knowledge. The great law of mind is expansion, and we know of no assignable limits to this law.

3. Man has a capacity for endless improvement in moral excellence or holiness. He is qualified to be perfectly conformed to the will of God, to be holy even as He is holy.

4. Man has a capacity for great and noble actions, and for constant and evergrowing usefulness in the kingdom of God.

5. Man has a capacity for endless advancement in happiness. Happiness in a rational being is the necessary result of the right and useful exercise of all His powers.

III. What provisions God has made to satisfy the wants of man, and fill the large capacities of the soul with good. Ever since the morning of creation, when God made man in His image, and gave him dominion over His works, He has been continually operating for his good. Behold this world in all its magnificence and beauty, appointed to be his habitation, and to minister to his improvement and happiness. Turn next to the wonders of redeeming love, and see how, from age to age, God has been operating for the salvation of our race.

IV. Let us turn to the oracles of God, and learn what they reveal on this subject.

1. Conclusion: How truly wise is it to be religious! What is religion? It is to act up to the dignity of our nature as made in the image of God, rational and immortal beings; is to look beyond the scenes of earth and time to those invisible realities which the Word of God presents for our consideration, and prepare to meet them; it is to love, reverence and serve the great Being who holds our destiny in His hand.

2. How degrading is a life of irreligion, a life spent in neglect of God and the soul; devoted to the cares and pursuits of the world! Of what value, in a little time, will all those things be which now most interest and absorb men of the world? (J. Hawes, D. D.)

The manifestations of Christ

Both St. Paul and St. John dwell largely upon the sonship of believers, but they approach the subject from different points of view. To the mind of the former of these two apostles, this sonship assumes the appearance of a position of privilege. A boy running wild in the streets--untaught and uncared for, and in danger of utter destruction--is adopted into a benevolent and wealthy family. He has had no reason to expect such an advancement. The other apostle pushes the matter a step further, and opens up what perhaps we may venture to call a profounder view of the subject. Looking beyond the question of privilege, He speaks of the disciple as deriving his spiritual existence from the Great Being into whose family he has been introduced. The man, according to the apostle, is born of God. You will see at once what a lofty idea of Christian discipleship the apostle St. John presents to us. Beloved! now are we the sons of God. This is the starting point; and when we have reached it there emerge to the view three thoughts. First, that there is something difficult to comprehend about the present spiritual position of the believer. It is seen, as it were, through a mist. In the next place, that this difficulty will be removed. The mist will melt away, and all be made plain when Christ appears. And lastly, that if we are really looking forward to the clearing up or manifestation, which is coming, the effect of the expectation will be seen in the conduct of our daily lives. We shall purify ourselves even as He is pure.

1. As to the first of the three thoughts, it is plain enough that the true disciple of Christ is misunderstood, and must be misunderstood by the world at large, and just because the world cannot possibly put itself at his point of view. St. Paul tells us that the spiritual man judgeth all things, whilst the natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God. The Christian disciple is more or less of a puzzle to those who, not being born again of the Spirit, do not really belong to the family of God. Sometimes they will question his motives, and set him down as hypocritical, or fanatical, or as seeking his own advantage under pretence of regard for the glory of God. But the more kindly and generous portion of them--and these will probably constitute the majority--will content themselves with expressing surprise, or, it may be amusement, at his devotion to Christ. And the reason of this is plain enough. You must sympathise with a man in order to be able to understand him. But there is more than this to be said. The disciple himself--to put the opinion of the world aside--the disciple himself can only very dimly and imperfectly apprehend the future which lies before him. Partly because he is engaged in the tug and strain of a spiritual conflict. You may have your misgivings sometimes as to how the battle is going on with you. When men express a doubt about the reality of your faith and the sincerity of your religion, you may at times be inclined to suspect that their judgment is correct, and that your estimate of yourself has all along been in error. But though the confusion may arise--in part--from the fact of your being placed in the thick of a spiritual struggle, it may be attributed still more to the difficulty of realising the things of the eternal world: a difficulty for experiencing which we are surely not altogether to blame.

2. There will be a time when all difficulties and confusions shall be removed, and that time is the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 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. At present we are muffled up in various disguises. More or less, we are hidden from each other, and perhaps from ourselves. The mean spirit is sometimes clothed in dignity, whilst solid worth, not unfrequently, is clothed in rags. Sometimes, too, the true Christian is misunderstood. But we must go a little further with Him. When Christ, he says, is manifested, i.e., in His resurrection glory, we shall see Him as He is. It is possible to see Christ and yet not to see Him as He is. There are few, I suppose, in Christendom, who do not form any idea of Christ; but in some cases it is unhappily a mistaken one. To some persons He is a mere man. To others a great teacher and nothing more. To others, again, a hard and exacting taskmaster. But to see Christ as He is, is to contemplate Him with sympathy and love. We have been taught by the Spirit to understand Him. This I suppose to be seeing Christ as He is, so far as this present world is concerned. And they who are thus accustomed to see Christ are ready to gaze upon Him with unspeakable joy when He shall come again to earth.

III. Our last point remains yet untouched. An illustration somewhat resembling that with which I started, must serve me to place this part of our subject before you. A young prince, stolen away in childhood from his fathers palace, and brought up amidst unworthy surroundings, has been recovered and brought back again. By degrees he comes to understand his position--he did not quite understand it at first--and he is full of gratitude when he contrasts what he is now with what he was some months or years ago. Yet he has difficulties. The habits of years of depraved life are not easily shaken off. But he contends manfully against the difficulties, and is climbing up slowly, but surely, to a fitness for the position in which he has been so happily reinstated. Now, two distinct considerations will influence the young man. First, he will desire to act worthily of his present princely state; and then, because he knows he is to inherit, at some time or other, his fathers sceptre, and because wide dominions and large populations will then be placed under his sway, he will wish to qualify himself for the task and responsibility of ruling, whenever he shall be called upon to ascend the throne. You see the application. We who are Christians have a present position to maintain. Christ says to each of us, Be what I have made you! I have placed you where you are. I have made you children of God. Be children of God! And then there is the future to look forward to--the future kingdom--the future glory, upon which we shall have one day to enter with Christ. And what is the result of our expectation of these things if we really entertain the expectation? Let St. John tell us: Every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself, even as He is pure. (G. Calthrop, M. A.)

By and by

I. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. At present we are veiled, and travel through the world incognito.

1. Our Master was not made manifest here below.

(1) His glory was veiled in flesh.

(2) His Deity was concealed in infirmity.

(3) His power was hidden under sorrow and weakness.

(4) His riches were buried under poverty and shame.

2. We are not fit to appear in full figure as yet.

(1) The son is treated as a servant while under age.

(2) The heir is kept a pensioner till his majority.

(3) The prince serves as a soldier before he reaches the throne.

3. This is not the world to appear in.

(1) There are more to appreciate us, and it would be as though kings showed their royalty at a wake, or wise men discoursed philosophy before fools.

(2) A warring and waiting condition like the present would not be a fit opportunity for unveiling.

(a) The winter prepares flowers, but does not call them forth.

(b) The ebb tide reveals the secrets of the sea, but many of our rivers no gallant ship can then sail.

(c) To everything there is a season, and this not the time of glory.

II. But we know that when he shall appear.

1. We shall speak of our Lords manifestation without doubt. We know.

2. Our faith is so assured that it becomes knowledge.

(1) He will be manifest upon this earth in person.

(2) He will be manifest in perfect happiness.

(3) He will be manifest in highest glory.

(4) He will appear surely, and so we speak of it as a date for our own manifesting--when He shall appear.

III. We shall be like him. We shall then be as manifested and as clearly seen as He will be. The time of our open presentation at court will have come.

1. Having a body like His body: sinless, incorruptible, painless, spiritual, clothed with beauty and power, and yet most real and true.

2. Having a soul like His soul: perfect, holy, instructed, developed, strengthened, active, delivered from temptation, conflict, and suffering.

3. Having such dignities and glories as He wears: kings, priests, conquerors, judges, sons of God.

IV. We shall see him as he is.

1. This glorious sight will perfect our likeness.

2. This will be the result of our being like Him.

3. This will be evidence of our being like Him, since none but the pure in heart can see God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

What we shall be

Surely a wholly new interest creeps over this poor human world of ours if we once see in it the germ of possibility, the suggestion of all we shall be hereafter. So seen, it is no aged and weary traveller tottering slowly down to his end; but it is a child still, with the fascination of a child all about it, the fascination of a life which is feeling its way forward by start, by gleam, by sudden intuition, by experiment, by tentative trial, by flashes of insight, by glances, by glimpses--yes, and by stumbles and falls and shocks and jolts, from out of which it still pulls itself together and runs on yet ahead. That is human life in the believers eye, in its best and wisest form--still the child life, wistful, prophetic, marvellous, suggestive; a child life so full of strange dreams, but with all its achievements yet to come, to come in that great after world for which the whole round of this age long story of man is but a nursery, but a preparation, but a rehearsal, but an education. Let us recount our gains from such a belief in respect of the world at our feet, before our eyes.

1. Cheerfulness in the face of change. Change is so wearisome when it insists on going beyond what we want. 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. In politics, especially, we note how we are suffering from this cheerless disappointment. Good things, from which men thirty years ago hoped so much, have been done only to show how much more remains to be done. We thought ourselves in the van--lo! we are already lagging in the rear, we are passe, we have lost the cue. That is what damps the spirit. But what if this life is all of it not an end, but only a beginning; all of it a suggestion of more beyond, none of it a goal attained? Our political fabric is to us precious and sacred. It suggests something which we shall find hereafter. It gives a hint, a shadow, of that heavenly citizenship which shall complete all that is well begun here: we shall find it all there. Here no suggestion of that vast society in heaven exhausts its meaning. As soon as we have understood one, and seen our way to its realisation, we see our way to another; each is but a fragment of the great kingdom to be. Now let it go. God sweeps it out of sight; not in contempt, but because He prepares for us another and yet another picture of that immeasurable glory of the kingdom of heaven.

2. We gain cheerfulness in the face of change, and we gain hope just where we most need it. For if the ideal, if completion, is to be sought here on earth, then we know how despairing is our view of those who are born in thousands in dark and low dens, born out of the seed of sin, out of the fires of lust and of drink, born into a life that must be stricken and stunted, blind with ignorance and cursed with a loveless doom. 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. If this earth of ours be all, how can we close our eyes to that nightmare? 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. 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. Kindness, purity, may have been touched at least. And if this is so there is hope. God may yet do great things with them, so long as He can secure in them some seed of future life.

3. We gain cheerfulness in the face of change and hope in face of base and bad tuition, and then we gain what is near akin to the last joy in the face of failure. The fruit is not here, but fruit may come hereafter in abundance out of those very failures which prune and curtail and sharply discipline us here. Hereafter it may be our failures that we shall most bless, as we see all they taught us. Who knows what is going on in secret behind those very failures in others which most provoke us? It will not be the failure which distresses, but only the failure to use the failure for good purposes. Our failures (above all, of course, our noble failures) are part and parcel of our spiritual history and growth. 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. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, but it doth not appear what we shall be. Not yet, but the root of what we shall be hereafter is here embodied in the soul. Now are we the sons of God, now are we the germ of what we shall find ourselves in that fair land. 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. 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. How, then, shall we not turn to this poor life of ours with hope, with zeal, with tenderness, with love; how shall we not clasp it tight and fast, and cling about it, and busy ourselves with its services? (Canon Scott Holland.)

The spirituality of the beatific vision

As vain and troublesome a world as this is, and as short and uncertain as our abode is in it, yet are we so strangely charmed with the glittering appearances in our way as to forget the crown of glory at our journeys end. To wean us, therefore, from the place of our pilgrimage, and to set our affections on a better country, we must send out our minds, as Moses did his spies, to search the promised Canaan, and to bring of the fruit of that good land we are travelling to. Such Divine contemplations will give a new turn of thought and quite another taste and relish of things; they will be of great use to cure a downward disposition of soul, and to raise us above the world.

I. The meaning and extent of this phrase, of seeing God as He is. The vision here intended must be intellectual--a vision of the mind and not of the eye, a clear perception or sight of God in the souls of just men made perfect. In this life we feel after God, as it were, in the dark, we trace Him out by the foot steps of infinite power and wisdom, we see Him in His works but not in Himself; but when we commence angel life this veil shall be taken away, then we shall be no longer under the pedagogy of types and shadows but admitted into the immediate possession of original truth.

II. The mode or manner of this beatific vision. The manner of our seeing God in this life is either by a long train of consequences, by climbing up gradually from the effects to the cause, from the things that are made to the invisible things of the Maker, even His eternal power and Godhead; or by way of eminence, by inferring that the perfections we see in the creatures must of necessity centre all more eminently in the Creator; or negatively, by denying everything of God we conceive unbecoming the Divine nature, for at present we rather know what God is not than what He is; or else we see Him by faith, by believing upon the testimony He has given us of Himself by Moses and the prophets, Christ and His apostles. In the vision reserved for the heavenly Jerusalem there will be nothing dark or enigmatical, nothing of cloud, or representation, of faith or reasoning, or intermediate ideas to inform the understanding, nothing between God and the glorified soul, the knowledge intuitive, the vision naked, full, and perfect according to the quality of the recipient, and the mind directly irradiated from the fountain of light, from the Divine essence itself.

III. Wherein the happiness of this beatific vision does principally consist. Now by seeing God we are not to conceive a bare intuitive knowledge only of the Divine essence, but a vision most lively and operative, warmed with all the affections of the heart, and an entire conformity of our wills to the will of God. For then, then alone, are just men completely blessed, when their spirits are made so perfect that they clearly contemplate all truth and fully enjoy all good; that is, when the whole orb of the soul is filled with perfect light and perfect love. To see God, therefore, is to enjoy Him. First, the Holy Spirit is now given but in part, in proportion to the exigencies of a state of trial, and consequently our communion must be in part also; but in heaven, the place of reward, we shall all, to the utmost extent of our capacity, so be filled with all the fulness of God, and most perfectly joined to the ever-blessed Trinity in a most intimate, immediate, and ineffable union. 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. But in the other world all we can want or wish for shall be supplied directly from the Fountain of Happiness, and God Himself shall be to us all in all without any second causes. 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. From the nature of our communion with God in heaven thus explained, I proceed more particularly to the blessed effects of it. I begin with the perfection of our knowledge. Then shall we know, not in part, not by wearisome steps and deductions, but clearly and all at once; we shall know in the same manner as God knows, that is, by His immediate self, for in Himself only can we see Him as He is, and in His infinite mind we shall see the hidden forms of His creatures and the ideas of all perfection. But there is a fond inquiry whether we shall know our relations and acquaintances in the other world. To which I answer, that if such knowledge will add to our happiness we shall surely enjoy it. 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. Lastly, from this perfection of knowledge will arise a perfect conformity of our wills and affections. (W. Reeves, M. A.)

The beatific vision

It is one of the most natural desires in all the world, that when we hear of a great and a good man we should wish to see his person. I am sure you will all confess that this strong desire has arisen in your minds concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. We owe to none so much; we talk of none so much, we hope, and we think of none so much: at any rate, no one so constantly thinks of us. We have a strong desire to see Him. Nor do I think that that desire is wrong. Moses himself asked that he might see God. Had it been a wrong wish arising out of vain curiosity it would not have been granted, but God granted Moses his desire. Yea, more; the earnest desire of the very best of men has been in the same direction. 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. The holy Psalmist said, I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness; I shall behold Thy face in righteousness. We are rejoiced to find such a verse as this, for it tells us that our curiosity shall be satisfied, our desire consummated, our bliss perfected. We shall see Him as He is.

I. The glorious position. Our minds often revert to Christ as He was, and as such we have desired to see Him. We shall never see Him thus; Bethlehems glories are gone forever; Calvarys glooms are swept away; Gethsemanes scene is dissolved; and even Tabors splendours are quenched in the past. We cannot, must not, see Him as He was; nor do we wish, for we have a larger promise, We shall see Him as He is.

1. Consider, first of all, that we shall not see Him abased in His incarnation but exalted in His glory. We shall see the hand, and the nail-prints too, but not the nail; it has been once drawn out, and forever. We shall see Him, not with a reed in His hand, but grasping a golden sceptre.

2. Remember, again: we are not to see Christ as He was, the despised, the tempted one. We shall see Him beloved, not abhorred, not despised and rejected, but worshipped, honoured, crowned, exalted, served by flaming spirits and worshipped by cherubim and seraphim. We shall see Him as He is.

3. We shall not see the Christ wrestling with pain, but Christ as a conqueror. We shall not see Him fight; but we shall see Him return from the fight victorious, and shall cry, Crown Him! Crown Him! We shall never see our Saviour under His Fathers displeasure; but we shall see Him honoured by His Fathers smile. Perhaps I have not shown clearly enough the difference between the two visions--the sight of what He was and what He is. The believer will be as much astonished when he sees Jesus glories as He sits on His throne as He would have been to have seen Him in His earthly sufferings. The one would have been astonishment, and horror would have succeeded it; but when we see Jesus as He is it will be astonishment without horror. If we could see Jesus as He was, we should see Him with great awe. If we had seen Him raising the dead we should have thought Him a most majestic Being. So we shall feel awe when we see Christ on His throne; but it will be awe without fear. We shall not bow before Him with trembling, but it will be with joy; we shall not shake at His presence, but rejoice with joy unspeakable. 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. We shall love Him quite as much when we see Him in heaven, and more too, but it will be love without pity; we shall not say Alas! but we shall shout--All hail the power of Jesus name, etc. If we had seen Jesus Christ as He was here below, there would have been joy to think that He came to save us; but we should have had sorrow mingled with it to think that we needed saving. But when we see Him, there it will be joy without sorrow; sin and sorrow itself will have gone; ours will be a pure, unmingled, unadulterated joy. Yet more. If we had seen our Saviour as He was, it would have been a triumph to see how He conquered, but still there would have been suspense about it. We should have feared lest He might not overcome. But when we see Him up there it will be triumph without suspense. Sheathe the sword; the battles won.

II. Personal identity. Perhaps while I have been speaking some have said, Ah! but I want to see the Saviour, the Saviour of Calvary, the Saviour of Judea, the very one that died for me. 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. You shall see Him. It is the same one. There is personal identity. We shall see Him. We shall be sure it is He; for when we enter heaven we shall know Him by His manhood and Godhead. We shall find Him a man, even as much as He was on earth. Have you never heard of mothers having recognised their children years after they were lost by the marks and wounds upon their bodies? Ah! if we ever see our Saviour, we shall know Him by His wounds. But then, Christ and we are not strangers; for we have often seen Him in this glass of the Word. We shall know Him, because He will be so much like the Bible Jesus, that we shall recognise Him at once. Yet more, we have known Him better than by Scripture sometimes--by close and intimate fellowship with Him. Why, we meet Jesus in the dark sometimes; but we have sweet conversation with Him. Oh! we shall know Him well enough when we see Him. You may trust the believer for knowing his Master when he finds Him.

III. The positive nature of vision. We shall see Him as He is. This is not the land of sight; it is too dark a country to see Him, and our eyes are not good enough. We walk here by faith. It is pleasant to believe His grace, but we had rather see it. Well, we shall see Him. How different that sight of Him will be from that which we have here!

1. For here we see Him by reflection. Just as sometimes, when you are looking in your looking glass, you see somebody going along in the street. You do not see the person, you only see him reflected. Now we see Christ reflected; but then we shall not see Him in the looking glass; we shall positively see His person. Not the reflected Christ, not Christ in the sanctuary, not the mere Christ shining out of the Bible, not Christ reflected from the sacred pulpit; but we shall see Him as He is.

2. Again: how partially we see Christ here! The best believer only gets half a glimpse of Christ. There we shall see Christ entirely, when we shall see Him as He is.

3. Here, too, how dimly we see Christ! Have you never stood upon the hilltops when the mist has played on the valley? You have looked down to see the city and the streamlet below; you could just ken yonder steeple and mark that pinnacle; but they were all so swathed in the mist that you could scarcely discern them. Suddenly the wind has blown away the mist from under you, and you have seen the fair, fair valley. Ah! it is so when the believer enters heaven. Here he stands and looks upon Christ veiled in a mist--upon a Jesus who is shrouded; but when he gets up there, on Pisgahs brow, higher still, with his Jesus, then he shall not see Him dimly, but he shall see Him brightly.

4. Here, too, how distantly we see Christ! Almost as far off as the farthest star! 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. And oh! how transitory is our view of Jesus! It is only a little while we get a glimpse of Christ, and then He seems to depart from us. But, Christians, there will be no hidings of faces in heaven! Then, do you know, there will be another difference--when we shall see Him as He is. How much better that sight will be than what we have here! When we see Christ here, we see Him to our profit; when we see Him there, we shall see Him to our perfection. I bear my Master witness, I never saw Him yet without being profited by Him. But then it will not be to improve us, it will be to perfect us, when we see Him there. We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.

IV. The actual persons--we shall see Him as He is. Come, let us divide that we into Is. How many Is are there here that will see Him as He is? Brother, with snow upon thy head, wilt thou see Him as He is? Thou hast had many years of fighting, and trying, and trouble: if thou ever dost see Him as He is, that will pay for all. But are thy grey hairs full of sin? and doth lust tarry in thy old cold blood? Ah! thou shalt see Him, but not nigh; thou shalt be driven from His presence. God save thee! And thou, who hast come to middle age, struggling with the toils of life, mixed up with all its battles, enduring its ills, thou art asking, it may be, shalt thou see Him? The text says, We shall; and can you and I put our hands on our hearts and know our union with Jesus? If so, we shall see Him as He is. Young man, the text says, We shall see Him as He is. Young man, you have got a mother and her soul doats upon you. 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. Oh! bitter, bitter thought that just now crossed my soul! O heavens! if we ever should be sundered from those we love so dearly when the last day of account shall come! That were sad indeed. But we leave the thought with you, and lest you should think that if you are not worthy you will not see Him--if you are not good you will not see Him--if you do not do such-and-such good things you will not see Him--let me just tell you, whosoever, though he be the greatest sinner under heaven--whosoever, though his life be the most filthy and the most corrupt--whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall have everlasting life; for God will blot out his sins, will give him righteousness through Jesus, accept him in the beloved, save him by His mercy, keep him by His grace, and at last present Him spotless and faultless before His presence with exceeding great joy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The two transfigurations

(with 2Co_3:18):--The transfigurations of Moses and Christ were events that did more than accredit their Divine missions. 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. Paul and John take hold of these inscrutable and stupendous transfiguration forces, and trace the effect of their working upon a mans moral life and character here, and upon his person and destiny hereafter. 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. It may help the weak faith of some who stumble at the supernatural, if we recognise that assimilation forces are already at work which change into finer quality, nobler form, more subtle function that which is gross, inert, unshaped. The earth, in its noiseless flight, gathers to itself cosmic dust, just as a miller in going to and fro amidst the revolving wheels of his mill draws to himself fine grains of flour; and the earth then conforms that dust to its own likeness. It pulls the pliant stuff into its own range, and then refines and exalts it into those living organisms that are the glory of the earth.

2. It is by the law of assimilation that men are bound together into homogeneous communities and nations.

3. Transfigurations go on in the social realm that are more or less consciously mimetic in their character. It is because of this fact that the different parts of our common life at least match themselves into a congruous and harmonious whole. The moulding forces of society tend to bring men into conformity with ruling types rather than to make them separatists. And there is an assimilation to Christs pattern that is more or less conscious, corresponding to these processes in the social realm around us. The transcendent beauty of Jesus Christ casts a spell over us, and we long to copy Him. And within certain limits we do find ourselves possessed of power through which we approximate, in external conduct at least, to His standard of truth and righteousness and compassion.

4. In ways unknown to us these assimilative forces work deep down amidst the elemental mysteries of life. The nervous system seems curiously responsive to the environment, and accommodates itself to the forms and hues that predominate in it, In a stream near Ivybridge, into which white clay was poured, the fish soon became perceptibly lighter in colour. A Syrian shepherd, by putting peeled rods of hazel before his flocks and herds in the breeding season, found that he could almost mark at will the skins and fleeces of the unborn young. And the law holds in human life. 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. The deep mental impressions of the mother often infix themselves legibly upon the young life she brings into the world. 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. And if there be a law of this sort, it must surely run out into higher and more momentous forms. 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? Shall this mysterious law work through our fears and terrors, and conform us to the disease of which we may think and work towards death, and shall it not also operate through hope and admiration and worship, and assimilate us to the ideal of health, and be fruitful for glory and honour and immortality? We are even now in conditions in which we are being attracted more or less swiftly into the image of Christs 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. Both the earthly and the heavenly transfigurations rest upon a common act of contemplation. The monks of Mount Athos hypnotise themselves into trance conditions by gazing at their own bodies. 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. We find, as a matter of experience, that we can absorb and assimilate that on which we succeed in detaining the attention of our concentrated powers. Now, if men by projecting themselves into moods of abstraction discover new powers of mind, find unknown fires begin to burn within them, and rise into worlds of spiritual ecstasy, what change, think you, ought to effect itself within us if with the same steadfastness we contemplate the personality of Him who is the Leader and Consummator of our faith? We cannot look with sympathy upon His moral loveliness here, or with worship upon His glorious majesty hereafter, without realising some amazing approximation to His likeness.

6. Another analogy worthy of our notice is that these transfiguration processes effect themselves upon a new and impressionable life. It is the unborn babe which is responsive to the image presented to the brain of the mother, rather than the mother herself. The chrysalis is no longer affected by the colour of its surroundings when it reaches the last stages of its development. And in the spiritual realm this fact has its counterpart. The transcendent beauty of Christ imparts itself only in natures made tender by the Spirit. Till the Holy Ghost comes to brood within us, the material of which we consist does not lead itself to these high spiritual transformations. A man may try and look at Christ for a lifetime. He may have an adequate intellectual conception of this ideal character. Every grace may be discriminated and may command its due need of homage, but all in vain unless there be a new and tender life to receive the imprint of the perfect personality thus presented to the thought and emotion. This process is not human and ethical only. The life dawning in that birth mediated through the Spirit is alone susceptible of these sublime modifications and perfectings; and in the heavenly transfiguration there is the same parallel or analogy. If mans nature is to be photographically sensitive to the celestial splendour of the Son of Man in His last glorious manifestation, the quickening from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, must be followed by a new birth of mans sentient life from the dust of death.

7. But in these transfigurations there are contrasts as well as analogies. These arise, not from the fact that different forces are brought into use to effect these changes, but from the different degrees of aptitude which appear in the early and late stages of the religious history of the soul.

(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. If the broken gleams of Christs 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?

(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 righteous burst forth at once into the zenith of their destinies like stars into the swift kindling splendour of the firmament. 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.

(3) The present transfiguration is gradual, whilst the future is instantaneous. We shall see Him as He is, and pass at once into the distinctions of His sovereignty. Quick as the kindling of light His exalted humanity will implant itself in us. In that life of unknown blessedness there will be scope for ever-enlarging knowledge, strength, dignity of nature; but men will rise at once into participation with the privileges of Christs enthronement and conformity to His Divine kingliness.

8. These two blessed changes are so vitally related to each other that one is a pledge and forecast of the other. Princely beauty hides itself away in the sons of God everywhere, and if we only suffer the Spirit of God to come to us and assimilate our characters to the Christlike ideal, that beauty will adorn even the bodies of our humiliation, and will at last clothe our quickened and recreated flesh forever. Guard unhurt the germ. See that the law of approximation to Christ is at work in all the occasions of common life. That will guarantee the rest. If we are absorbed into Christ, and Christ into us, when He is manifested we also shall be manifested with Him in glory. He is in us the hope of glory, and such a hope maketh not ashamed. (T. G. Selby.)

The final transguration

There is a very lofty sentiment in these words. They labour with meaning and soar with aspiration. We notice--

I. A change of the most marked character is already superinduced. Something is already accomplished; an effect is secured. Things are placed in a course of progression even now.

II. This change is preparatory to another in a future state of existence. Life is the school, the arena, the watch tower. Here holy principle is imbibed and holy habit formed; but the scope and aim are always prospective. The premonitions of our future are afforded by the nature of--

(1) Our present states. There is rapture in devotion. Holiness now is clothed with beauty. Love, obedience, fellowship, are sweetest flowers of earth, but they all look heavenward.

(2) Our characteristic principles.

III. Of that sublimer change the present one is a very imperfect specimen and presage. It doth not yet appear, etc. (R. W. Hamilton, LL. D.)

The transforming power of the revelation of God

John, looking back, sees what great spaces have been covered in his spiritual history; he also looks forward, and sees greater changes in store for him. He has, in truth, become a son of God, but it is not manifest what he will become; he is only sure that as all the transformations in his character have been in the direction of likeness to God, they will go on in the same direction. To believe in future change is very different from believing in past change. 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. Our future self is commonly the simple projection of our present self. The wondrous changes since infancy, with the development of hidden powers, do not effectually teach us that changes as great await us, or may be achieved. And yet these natural changes in the past ought to teach us that as great changes may await us in the future, and also that there may be spiritual changes and developments corresponding to the physical changes. 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. 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. This natural history should open our minds to the possibility of a like spiritual history. We may be sure that God has not put all the wonders of His creation into our early physical life, and left the moral life bare and fixed. The natural comes first, then the spiritual, but it is no less full of germinant seeds and possibilities than the natural. This is high probability; the Christian faith makes it a certainty. It enters into its nature and purpose to open before us great changes and developments. And it also seeks to produce them. It sets before us the duty of ourselves striving to make these changes. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour. Let us give ourselves to this thought for awhile. Under natural conditions character does not show a tendency to change its type or direction; it simply grows after its type, and sets steadily in its native direction and toward some permanent form. Hereditary qualities take the lead, and the character moves on in their direction. The main quality asserts itself more and more strongly, shapes the features, gives tone to the voice, and gesture to the body, directs the conduct and becomes the spirit of the life. If selfish or lustful or proud, these qualities tend simply to go on and harden into fixed form. We call the result habit; it is rather the natural tendency of character, aided by habit, to consolidate; it is the loss of native freedom, for habit is the absence of freedom. But there is even a better prospect than this. It is, indeed, a pleasant thought that if I cultivate a spirit of patience, or sympathy, or self-control, it will become a fixed habit in me. It points to an end of strife, to rest and peace; but there is something better than that. 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. Therefore we hope to come upon other duties, and so to enter into other feelings than any we now know. Just as a little child knows nothing of the passions that sweep through the heart of the youth, so there may be lofty spiritual passions and experiences, and even qualities of character, of which we now know nothing. 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. And therefore it begins with a call to regeneration. Its first work is to lift us out of the order of nature where character tends simply to solidify and habits become fixed, and to carry us into another sort of world. Regeneration means, not that we are to be developed, but that we are to be changed, to live in other ways, with other motives and for other ends. Now see how Christian requirement works in with regeneration and helps it on. 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. When I begin the day, I have not only to keep on in the good habits of yesterday, but I have fresh choices to make. New questions come up; life varies its phases; I am myself not quite the same being as yesterday; I see more, feel more; duty is a little broader; time presses upon me a little more heavily; eternity becomes more real. Thus I am summoned to new exercises of my nature. We are not to think that this transforming process belongs only to the life beyond. God is appearing all the while to those who have eyes to see Him. We touch here a most vital fact--the revelations of God and their effect upon us. I do not refer to the everyday manifestations of God--the sunlight, the blessed order of nature, the daily food and daily joy of home, but to those occasions when life becomes momentous, when it gathers itself up in a crisis and all is changed for us. It may be good or evil fortune, the birth or death of love, a loss or a gain; all such things are revelations of God, for God is in our lives and not outside of them; but when He thus appears it is for purposes of transformation. That is the use to be made of such events as they touch us. St. John doubtless had in mind the effect of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. That was almost the only revelation to which he gave much heed; the effect of it was the only spiritual effect of which he was conscious. Christ had come into his life; and from a mere child of this world, a simple fisherman, he had been made a veritable son of God. Christ had drawn him out of his old, worldly, natural self up into this high sense and relation, so that he could say, Now, I am a son of God--a tremendous change, the greatest a human being can undergo. St. John had experienced this change under the influence of Christ--a change so great that he can scarcely realise what he was at the beginning. A new creation; born again; a son of God; transformed--these phrases are too weak to express it. But it will go on, he says. We shall see Christ again, and see Him as He is; see Him with clearer eyes than we now have; and so mightier transformations will take place within us; we cannot tell nor even imagine what we shall be. I see no reason to doubt this--that great changes are still to go on in us under the transforming power of Christ. Let us not think meagrely on such a subject, but under high analogies. See how Christ has transformed the world; how His spirit has stolen into the hearts of nations; how civilisation has taken on His name and is doing His work. See how the tide of progress sets steadily Christward--more peace and less war, more justice, more equality, more mercy and kindness and goodwill. No matter how they come; they are coming by the Spirit of Gods and they are coming in ways not to be turned aside. What the end of this social change will be we do not know, but there is no reason to doubt that society will make as great gains as it has made in the past. But if society is capable of such transformations, much more must the individual be capable of them. All men are as one man; one is the whole and the whole are but one. And the final condition! who can imagine it? It doth not yet appear what this human world will become. All we can say is that the holy city of the saved world, the new Jerusalem of the perfected humanity, is slowly but steadily coming down from God out of heaven, and will in time appear four-square upon the earth. Thus these great hopes that enfold the world are yours and mine; we can take them into the secrecy of our sorrowing hearts, into our disappointed lives, into the vanishing away of our strength and years, and through them claim and find a place in the world of joy and peace. (T. T. Munger.)

Life and character in God

His children: Loved ones, now are we the children (τέκνα) of God. We are His children even now. 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. The soil may dwarf the Divine life and prevent its perfect development; nevertheless, we have that life in germ. But the infinite future lies before us: It doth not yet appear. The lily life is subject to hostile climate, and hence is imperfect. The life in us is an exotic from a celestial clime, and hence it doth not yet appear what we shall be. There will be no difficulty in recognising our unfolding of His life in the future. When He shall appear all will be well; the life will unfold itself in divinest forms under the immediate sunlight of His countenance. We shall be like Him. The life will have reached its type. For the present our life is hid with Christ in God, but when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory; yes, with Him in glory, because like Him. What is the explanation of that perfect likeness? For we shall see Him as He is. The sight of Him makes us like Him. Our life begins with a look Behold the Lamb of God. In the same way that life develops: We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory. 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. What heaven in such a look! (A. R. Cocke, D. D.)

The blessed vision of Christ

Oh, blessed vision! was the apostrophe of an ancient confessor. Oh, blessed vision! to which all others are penal and despicable! 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! I cannot see Thee and not be blessed. I can see Thee here through symbols; if the eye of my faith be dim, yet it is sure. Oh, let me be unquiet till I shall see Thee as I am seen! (Quoted by Dr. Hanford.)

Transformations

Mr. Ruskin, in his Modern Painters, tells that the black mud or slime from a footpath in the outskirts of a manufacturing town--the absolute type of impurity--is composed of four elements--clay, mixed with soot, a little sand, and water. These four may be separated each from the other. The clay particles, left to follow their own instinct of unity, become a clear, hard substance so set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. The sand arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which reflect the blue, green, purple, and red rays in the greatest beauty. We call it then an opal. 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. We call it then a diamond. Last of all, the water becomes a dewdrop, and a crystalline star of snow. Thus God can and does transform the vilest sinners into pure and shining jewels fit for His home in heaven.

Transfiguration by sight of Christ

Among some reminiscences of the sweet singer, Jenny Lind, communicated by Canon Scott Holland to Murrays Magazine, occurs the following:--She had gone to look on the face of her friend, Mrs. Nassau Senior, after death. 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. She pushed open the door and entered alone, and there, before her, lay the face, fine and clear cut, encompassed about with a mass of white flowers. On it was peace, and a smile, with her lips parted; but that was not all. I must tell the rest in her own words. It was not her own look that was in her face. It was the look of another, the face of another, that had passed into hers. It was the shadow of Christ that had come upon her. She had seen Christ. And I put down my candle, and I said, Let me see this thing. Let me stop here always. Let me sit and look. Where are my children? Let them come and see. Here is a woman who has seen Christ. I can never forget the dramatic intensity of her manner as she told me all this, and how she at last had to drag herself away, as from a vision, and to stumble down the stairs again.

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn 3:2. Beloved — It is a most certain and joyful truth, that now are we, who believe on God’s Son with our heart unto righteousness; the children of God — And, persevering in that faith, we shall be acknowledged as such before men and angels in the day of final accounts; a truth which draws after it a long train of glorious consequences. For the happy condition we shall be in hereafter exceeds all that we can now conceive; and it doth not yet appear — Even to ourselves, though supernaturally enlightened by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation; what we shall be — How pure and holy, intelligent and wise in our souls, how spiritual and glorious in our bodies, how exalted in dignity, how great in power, how rich in inheritance, how happy in enjoyments! But we know — In the general, on the testimony of him who cannot lie; that when he — The Son of God; shall appear, we shall be like him — In all these respects; our souls perfectly conformed to his wise and holy soul, our bodies to his immortal and glorious body, and that we shall share with him in his felicity, honour, and riches, world without end. For we shall see him as he is — Which it would be impossible we should do if we were not like him. Or rather, as perhaps the apostle chiefly means, the great privilege being granted us, of seeing him as he is, the sight of him will transform us into his likeness. “The sight of God,” [in Christ,] as Archbishop Tillotson proves at large, (see his works, vol. 3. p. 194,) “is put to express the knowledge and enjoyment of him, because of its excellence and dignity, its largeness and comprehension, its spirituality and quickness, its evidence and certainty.” The apostle alludes to Christ’s words, which he has recorded in his gospel, (Joh 17:24,) Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me: and therefore is speaking, not of a transient, but of an abiding sight of Christ, as is plain, because only such a view of him could be a reason for our being like him. And since we are to live with him for ever, our bodies must be fashioned like to his body, corruptible bodies not being capable, in the nature of things, of inheriting the kingdom of God. And with respect to our minds, the seeing of Christ as he is cannot be supposed effectual to make us like him, unless it be an abiding sight; which, by exciting in us an admiration of his glories, esteem for his excellences, gratitude for his goodness, love to his person, delight in his will, with all wise, holy, and happy affections, will assuredly produce that happy effect. At the day of judgment, it is probable that the wicked will have a transient sight of Christ as he is, but will not thereby be made like him, in body or mind.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest (or, it never yet was manifested) what we shall be. The emphatic nun is in opposition to ou]pw: our present state is known; our future remains still unrevealed. Again, (1Jn_2:27, 1Jn_2:29) we are in doubt about the construction. What is the nominative to "shall be manifested" fanerwqh, "he" or "it"? The context is strongly in favour of "it," i.e., " if it shall be manifested what we shall be; 1Jn_2:28 seems to favour "he," i.e., " if Christ shall be manifested." The context must prevail. "Our future state is not yet made manifest. We know that on its manifestation we shall find ourselves like God." The two things will be contemporaneous. The "Speaker"s Commentary" quotes the following anecdote: "When some heathen converts to Christianity were translating a Catechism into their own language, they came uponmeqa 1Jn_3:2. They stopped. "No; it is too much," they said; "let us write that we shall be permitted to kiss his feet. Beware of inverting the meaning of the last clause, oti ojyo k.t.l.. It does not mean that the seeing God is a proof or sign of our being like, (Mat_5:8) but the cause of our being like him: "We shall be like him, because we shall see him." God is light, (1Jn_1:5) and light is seen. In this life nun we cannot see the light of the Divine nature "as it is," but only as it is reflected; and the reflected light cannot transmit to us the nature of the Divine original, though it prepares us to receive it. Hereafter the sight, "face to face", (1Co_13:12) of the Light itself will illuminate us through end through, and we shall become like it. Rothe takes "like him" to mean like Christ (Rom_8:16, Rom_8:17, Rom_8:29; 2Co_3:18; comp. Joh_17:24; Col_3:18) comp. Rev_22:4 Rev_1:7.

Vers. 2, 3.

The present and the future of the good.

"Beloved, now are we children of God," etc. Here is

I A GLORIOUS FACT OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE. "Beloved, now are we children of God.

1. As sharing in his life.

2. As morally resembling him

3. As possessing the filial spirit.

II A GRACIOUS MYSTERY AS TO OUR FUTURE CONDITION. "And it is not yet made manifest what we shall be." Ebrard: "While we are already God"s children, we are nevertheless yet in the dark as to the nature of our future condition.

1. The mode of our being in the future is at present a mystery to us. We know that the soul exists consciously and at once after passing from our present mode of life. We infer this from such Scriptures as these: "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise"; (Luk_23:43) "We are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord"; (2Co_5:8) "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better". (Php_1:21, 23) But how the soul exists when it has departed from the "natural body," or what is its mode of existence, we know not. At present the body is the organ and instrument of the soul. Does the soul after death require some vehicle of expression, some instrument of action? If so, of what kind will these be? Or will the soul be independent of such things? What is the clothing (2Co_5:2-4) which awaits the soul when it passes from the earthly house of this tabernacle? Of these things we know nothing. "It is not yet made manifest what we shall be.

2. The exaltation of our being in the future is at present a mystery to us. The glory of our future being and condition is hidden from us as yet. What developments of being await us, to what services God will appoint us, with what honours he will crown us in the hereafter, of these things we are altogether ignorant. Presumptuous are they who speak of the details of the condition and circumstances and occupations of the children of God after death. They who knew something of these things and were recalled to this life maintained unbroken silence concerning them (Luk_7:11-16; Joh_11:38-44) Paul was caught up into Paradise, but he said that it was not lawful to utter what he heard there. (2Co_12:1-4) Wisely and graciously God has left a veil over our future condition and circumstances. Mystery in these things is perhaps inevitable. Probably in our present condition we have no symbols by which the future glories could be revealed unto us. Our languages could not describe them. Music, as we have it, could not express them. Painting could not set them forth. Moreover, mystery in these things is merciful. We could not bear the revelation of the bright future, and continue in the faithful and patient performance of our duties in the present. There is one sense in which the children of God will ever say, "It is not yet made manifest what we shall be." Their progress will be interminable. The development of their being and blessedness will never come to an end.

III A GRAND ASSURANCE AS TO OUR FUTURE CONDITION. "We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is." (It seems to us that the rendering should be, "if it shall be manifested." But the chief points of the apostle"s teaching are the same whether, we translate, "if it" or "if he shall be manifested.") Here is an assurance:

1. Of moral assimilation to God in Christ. "We shall be like him." Like him in character and sympathies and aims. Like him too, in some respects, corporeally; for he "shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory". (Php_3:21)

2. Of the vision of God in Christ. "For we shall see him even as he is." Some measure of likeness to him is indispensable to our seeing him. Spiritual resemblance to him qualifies the soul to see him even as he is. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." But the truth here is that the vision of God in Christ will perfect the likeness of his children unto him. Ebrard: "The being like unto God will be effected by the beholding of God." The vision of God is transforming in its effect. After Moses had been with the Lord forty days and forty nights upon Mount Sinai, when he came down from the mount the skin of his face shone, and the people were afraid to come nigh him. (Exo_34:29-35) "We all, with unveiled face reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit". (2Co_3:18) By the operation of the same principle, when the children of God see him as he is they will become like unto him. How blessed and inspiring is this assurance! To see him and to be like him has been the dearest hope of the noblest souls. Thus David, "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness," etc.; (Psa_18:15) and St. Paul, "Having the desire to depart and be with Christ;" and St. John, "The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein; and his servants shall do him service; and they shall see his face." "We shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.

IV A SALUTARY INFLUENCE OF OUR HOPE FOR THE FUTURE ON OUR CONDITION IN THE PRESENT. "And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself," etc.

1. The character of this hope. It is the assured expectation and the sincere desire of the vision of God in Christ, and of complete moral assimilation to him.

2. The ground of this hope. "This hope set on him." On what he has promised, and on what he is, his children base their great hope. "God is not a man, that he should lie," etc.; (Num_23:19) "In hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before times eternal". (Tit_1:2)

3. The influence of this hope. "Purifieth himself, even as he is pure." It is clearly implied that, while in this world, the children of God need moral purification. They are not yet entirely freed from sin, and sin pollutes the soul. Their sanctification is not yet perfected. But the precious and assured hope which they cherish stimulates them to seek for perfect moral purity. To indulge in sin, or to cease to strive after holiness, would be virtually to renounce their hope. They endeavour to attain to a holiness like unto that of Christ to be pure as he is pure. His purity is the pattern of theirs. So that we have here a test of Christian character. Does our religion exert a sanctifying power in our hearts and lives?

O Living Will, that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow through our deeds and make them pure?" (Tennyson.) W.J.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1 John

THE UNREVEALED FUTURE OF THE SONS OF GOD

1Jn 3:2.

I have hesitated, as you may well believe, whether I should take these words for a text. They seem so far to surpass anything that can be said concerning them, and they cover such immense fields of dim thought, that one may well be afraid lest one should spoil them by even attempting to dilate on them. And yet they are so closely connected with the words of the previous verse, which formed the subject of my last sermon, that I felt as if my work were only half done unless I followed that sermon with this.

The present is the prophet of the future, says my text: ‘Now we are the sons of God, and’ {not ‘but’} ‘it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ Some men say, ‘Ah! now are we, but we shall be--nothing!’ John does not think so. John thinks that if a man is a son of God he will always be so. There are three things in this verse, how, if we are God’s children, our sonship makes us quite sure of the future; how our sonship leaves us largely in ignorance of the future, but how our sonship flings one bright, all-penetrating beam of light on the only important thing about the future, the clear vision of and the perfect likeness to Him who is our life. ‘Now are we the sons of God,’ therefore we shall be. We are the sons; we do not know what we shall be. We are the sons, and therefore, though there be a great circumference of blank ignorance as to our future, yet, blessed be His name, there is a great light burning in the middle of it! ‘We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’

I. The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future.

I am not concerned to appraise the relative value of the various arguments and proofs, or, it may be, presumptions, which may recommend the doctrine of a future life to men, but it seems to me that the strongest reasons for believing in another world are these two:--first, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and has gone up there; and, second, that a man here can pray, and trust, and love God, and feel that he is His child. As was noticed in the preceding sermon, the word rendered ‘sons’ might more accurately be translated ‘children.’ If so, we may fairly say, ‘We are the children of God now--and if we are children now, we shall be grown up some time.’ Childhood leads to maturity. The infant becomes a man.

That is to say, he that here, in an infantile way, is stammering with his poor, unskilled lips the name ‘Abba! Father!’ will one day come to speak it fully. He that dimly trusts, he that partially loves, he that can lift up his heart in some more or less unworthy prayer and aspiration after God, in all these emotions and exercises, has the great proof in himself that such emotions, such relationship, can never be put an end to. The roots have gone down through the temporal, and have laid hold of the Eternal. Anything seems to me to be more credible than that a man who can look up and say, ‘My Father,’ shall be crushed by what befalls the mere outside of him; anything seems to me to be more believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these elevating emotions and aspirations of confidence and hope, which can know God and yearn after Him, and can love Him, is to be wiped out like a gnat by the finger of Death. The material has nothing to do with these feelings, and if I know myself, in however feeble and imperfect a degree, to be the son of God, I carry in the conviction the very pledge and seal of eternal life. That is a thought ‘whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that it was born for immortality.’ ‘We are the sons of God,’ therefore we shall always be so, in all worlds, and whatsoever may become of this poor wrappage in which the soul is shrouded.

We may notice, also, that not only the fact of our sonship avails to assure us of immortal life, but that also the very form which our religious experience takes points in the same direction.

As I said, infancy is the prophecy of maturity. ‘The child is father of the man’; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, the very imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the existence of another state, where all that is here in the germ shall be fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us. Think of the ordinary Christian character. The beginning is there, and evidently no more than the beginning. As one looks at the crudity, the inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness of the Christian life of others, or of oneself, and then thinks that such a poor, imperfect exhibition is all that so divine a principle has been able to achieve in this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time where we shall be all which the transforming power of God’s spirit can make us. The very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong reasons for believing in the perfect life of Heaven as their purities and virtues are. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work upon Christian souls--the power of the Cross, the power of love issuing in obedience, the power of an indwelling Spirit; and is this all that these great forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so precious and divine is somewhere, and at some time, to bring forth something better than these few poor, half-developed flowers, something with more lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an exotic; does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer suns and richer soil, where it will be at home?

There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in Christian men and women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond in their capacities to the place where they are set down; and the world in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings, stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man. ‘Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests.’ They fit exactly, and correspond to their ‘environment.’ But a man!--there is an enormous amount of waste faculty about him if he is only to live in this world. There are large capacities in every nature, and most of all in a Christian nature, which are like the packages that emigrants take with them, marked ‘Not wanted on the voyage.’ These go down into the hold, and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son of God I have much in me that is ‘not wanted on the voyage,’ and the more I grow into His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with the things round about me, in proportion as I am brought into harmony with the things beyond.

That consciousness of belonging to another order of things, because I am God’s child, will make me sure that when I have 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. ‘Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature’ shall be able to break that tie, and banish the child from the conscious grasp of a Father’s hand. Dear brother and sister, can you say, ‘Now am I a child of God!’ Then you may patiently and peacefully front that dim future.

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 forth before men’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.

In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus Christ. Christ has died; Christ is risen again. Christ has gone about amongst men upon earth after Resurrection. Christ has been raised to the right hand of God, and sits there in the glory of the Father. So far it has been manifested what we shall be. But the risen Christ is not the glorified Christ, and although He has set forth before man’s senses irrefragably the fact of another life, and to some extent given glimpses and gleams of knowledge with regard to certain portions of it, I suppose that the ‘glorious body’ of Jesus Christ was not assumed by Him till the cloud ‘received Him out of their sight,’ nor, indeed, could it be assumed while He moved among the material realities of this world, and did eat and drink before them. So that, while we thankfully recognise that Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension have ‘brought life and immortality to light,’ we must remember that it is the fact, and not the manner of the fact, which they make plain; and that, even after His example, it has not been manifested what is the body of glory which He now wears, and therefore it has not yet been manifested what we shall be when we are fashioned after its likeness.

There has been no manifestation, then, to sense, or to human experience, of that future, and, therefore, there is next to no knowledge about it. You can only know facts when the facts are communicated. You may speculate and argue and guess as much as you like, but that does not thin the darkness one bit. The unborn child has no more faculty or opportunity for knowing what the life upon earth is like than man here, in the world, has for knowing that life beyond. The chrysalis’ dreams about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be as reliable as a man’s imagination of what a future life will be.

So let us feel two things:--Let us be thankful that we do not know, for the ignorance is the sign of the greatness; and then, let us be sure that just the very mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have about another world is precisely the food which is most fitted to nourish imagination and hope. If we had more knowledge, supposing it could be given, of the conditions of that future life, it would lose some of its power to attract. Ignorance does not always prevent the occupation of the mind with a subject. Blank ignorance does; but ignorance, shot with knowledge like a tissue which, when you hold it one way seems all black, and when you tilt it another, seems golden, stimulates desire, hope, and imagination. So let us thankfully acquiesce in the limited knowledge.

Fools can ask questions which wise men cannot answer, and will not ask. There are questions which, sometimes, when we are thinking about our own future, and sometimes when we see dear ones go away into the mist, become to us almost torture. It is easy to put them; it is not so easy to say: ‘Thank God, we cannot answer them yet!’ If we could it would only be because the experience of earth was adequate to measure the experience of Heaven; and that would be to bring the future down to the low levels of this present. Let us be thankful then that so long as we can only speak in language derived from the experiences of earth, we have yet to learn the vocabulary of Heaven. Let us be thankful that our best help to know what we shall be is to reverse much of what we are, and that the loftiest and most positive declarations concerning the future lie in negatives like these:--’I saw no temple therein.’ ‘There shall be no night there.’ ‘There shall be no curse there.’ ‘There shall be no more sighing nor weeping, for the former things are passed away.’

The white mountains keep their secret well; not until we have passed through the black rocks that make the throat of the pass on the summit, shall we see the broad and shining plains beyond the hills. Let us be thankful for, and own the attractions of, the knowledge that is wrapt in ignorance, and thankfully say, ‘Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not appear what we shall be!’

III. Now I must be very brief with the last thought that is here, and I am the less unwilling to be so because we cannot travel one inch beyond the revelations of the Book in reference to the matter. The 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.’

‘When He shall be manifested’--to what period does that refer? It seems most natural to take the manifestation here as being the same as that spoken of only a verse or two before. ‘And now, little children, abide in Him, and when He shall be manifested, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming’ {2. 28}. That ‘coming’ then, is the ‘manifestation’ of Christ; and it is at the period of His coming in His glory that His servants ‘shall be like Him, and see Him as He is.’ Clearly then it is Christ whom we shall see and become like, and not the Father invisible.

To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing like Him. That way of transformation by beholding, or of assimilation by the power of loving contemplation, is the blessed way of ennobling character, which even here, and in human relationships, has often made it easy to put off old vices and to clothe the soul with unwonted grace. Men have learned to love and gaze upon some fair character, till some image of its beauty has passed into their ruder natures. To love such and to look on them has been an education. The same process is exemplified in more sacred regions, when men here learn to love and look upon Christ by faith, and so become like Him, as the sun stamps a tiny copy of its blazing sphere on the eye that looks at it. But all these are but poor, far-off hints and low preludes of the energy with which that blessed vision of the glorified Christ shall work on the happy hearts that behold Him, and of the completeness of the likeness to Him which will be printed in light upon their faces.

It matters not, though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, if to all the questionings of our own hearts we have this for our all-sufficient answer, ‘We shall be like Him.’ As good old Richard Baxter has it:--

‘My knowledge of that life is small,

The eye of faith is dim;

But, ‘tis enough that Christ knows all,

And I shall be like Him!’

‘It is enough for the servant that he be as his Lord.’

There is no need to go into the dark and difficult questions about the manner of that vision. He Himself prayed, in that great intercessory prayer, ‘Father, I will that these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.’ That vision of the glorified manhood of Jesus Christ--certain, direct, clear, and worthy, whether it comes through sense or through thought--to behold that vision is all the sight of God that men in Heaven ever will have. And through the millenniums of a growing glory, Christ as He is will be the manifested Deity. Likeness will clear sight, and clearer sight will increase likeness. So in blessed interchange these two will be cause and effect, and secure the endless progress of the redeemed spirit towards the vision of Christ which never can behold all His Infinite Fulness, and the likeness to Christ which can never reproduce all his Infinite Beauty.

As a bit of glass when the light strikes it flashes into sunny glory, or as every poor little muddy pool on the pavement, when the sunbeams fall upon it, has the sun mirrored even in its shallow mud, so into your poor heart and mine the vision of Christ’s glory will come, moulding and transforming us to its own beauty. With unveiled face reflecting as a mirror does, the glory of the Lord, we ‘shall be changed into the same image.’ ‘We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’

Dear brethren, all begins with this, love Christ and trust Him and you are a child of God! ‘And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn 3:2. Ἀγαπητοὶ) beloved by me, because the Father loves us.—νῦν) now, at present. The antithesis is, not yet. In this verse it must be especially seen, what words are to be pronounced with a fuller sound: now, not yet, what, like Him.—τέκνα, sons) This is repeated from 1Jn 3:1.—τί ἐσόμεθα) what we are about to be further, by the power of this sonship. This what, by Epitasis [see Append.], suggests something unspeakable, contained in the likeness of God, which so exalts the sons of God, that they become as it were gods.—οἴδαμεν) we know, in general.—φανερωθῇ, shall be manifested) The same word occurs, ch. 1Jn 2:28.—ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ, like Him) God, whose sons we are.—ὅτι, since) From beholding comes resemblance, 2Co 3:18; as the whole body, the countenance, and especially the eyes of those who behold the sun, are sunned.—ὀψόμεθα, we shall see) Sight includes in its notion all the other kinds of senses.—αὐτὸν, Him) God.—καθώς ἐστι, as He is) that is, manifestly.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn_3:2. After emphatic resumption of ἐσμέν, the apostle indicates the yet concealed glory of the τέκνα Θεοῦ. He begins with the address ἀγαπητοί, which occurs to him here the more readily as he feels himself most closely connected with his readers in the common fellowship with God (so also Düsterdieck).

νῦν τέκνα Θεοῦ ἐσμέν] νῦν is used in reference to the future (οὔπω); it is here a particle of time, not = now, in consequence of that decree (de Wette); a contrast with what immediately precedes (Lücke: amidst all mistake on the part of the world, we are nevertheless really now the children of God; so also Düsterdieck and Braune) is not suggested by it. Hereby the present glory of the believing Christian is described;[192] before the apostle mentions the future glory, he observes that this is yet concealed: καὶ οὔπω ἐφανερώθη τί ἐσόμεθα] φανεροῦσθαι may, as Ebrard remarks, mean both: to be actually revealed, or: for the knowledge to be revealed; most commentators rightly take the word here in the first meaning; it is true, Ebrard maintains that this explanation is grammatically impossible, because φανερόω, as governing a question, can only have the meaning of theoretical revelation; but this assertion is unfounded, for in the N. T. usus loquendi (nay, even in the classics) the interrogative τίς, sometimes τί, confessedly appears where, according to the rule, the relative should properly be used; comp. Winer, p. 152; VII. p. 158 f.; Al. Buttmann, p. 216; and especially if the thought involves an assumed question, as is the case here.[193] That φανεροῦσθαι cannot here be understood of the theoretical revelation is clear(1) from the fact that no ἡμῖν is put with it, which Ebrard arbitrarily inserts when he interprets: it has not yet been revealed to us, no information about it has yet been communicated to us; (2) from the fact that the apostle himself immediately afterwards says what Christians will be in the future; (3) from the fact that a confession of present ignorance is at variance with the natural connection; from the fact that with this view a very artificial thought results for the following words: οἴδαμεν κ.τ.λ.; see below.

By οὔπω ἐφανερώθη κ.τ.λ. the apostle accordingly states that the future condition of those who at present are τέκνα Θεοῦ is still concealed, has not yet come to light (comp. Col_3:3; Rom_8:18).[194] This future state is, it is true, something different from the present, yet it is not absolutely new, but is that which is latent and established in the present (Düsterdieck, Braune).

οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἐὰν φανερωθῇ κ.τ.λ.] By ΟἼΔΑΜΕΝ the apostle expresses his own and his readers consciousness of that which, as ΤΈΚΝΑ ΘΕΟῦ, they will be in the future.

With ΦΑΝΕΡΩΘῇ we must supply ΤΊ ἘΣΌΜΕΘΑ, the meaning is the same as it previously has; so it is correctly explained by Didymus, Augustin, Socinus, Grotius, Paulus, Baumgarten-Crusius, de Wette, Semler, Lücke, Düsterdieck, Erdmann, Braune, etc. As Ebrard similarly supplies ΤΊ ἘΣΌΜΕΘΑ, but understands ΦΑΝΕΡΩΘῇ here also of the knowledge, there results for him this thought: we know rather that when it shall be made known to us, we shall even already be like Him, in which the emphasis is made to rest on the contemporaneousness of the theoretical φανεροῦσθαι with the actual ὍΜΟΙΟΙ ἜΣΕΣΘΑΙ; but in this interpretation, which suffers from unjustifiable supplements, a reference is brought out as the chief element of the thought which is in no way indicated, and is foreign to the context.

Some critics supply with ΦΑΝΕΡΩΘῇ as subject ΧΡΙΣΤΌς, as in chap. 1Jn_2:28, so Syrus, Calvin, Beza, Hornejus, Calov, Semler, etc. (Myrberg at least thinks that this is not omnino improbabile); this is, however, erroneous, as in this ΦΑΝΕΡΩΘῇ what immediately precedes is clearly resumed. It is self-evident that this revelation will take place ἘΝ Τῇ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΊᾼ ΧΡΙΣΤΟῦ; comp. 1Jn_2:28.

ὍΜΟΙΟΙ ΑὐΤῷ ἘΣΌΜΕΘΑ] ΑὐΤῷ, i.e. Deo, cujus sumus filii (Bengel); the idea remains, indeed, essentially the same if αὐτῷ is taken = ΧΡΙΣΤῷ (Storr), but the context decides in favour of the first explanation. The apostle says: we shall be to God ὍΜΟΙΟΙ, not ἼΣΟΙ, because likeness to God will not be unconditioned, but conditioned by the nature of the creature, as a creature; in so far ὍΜΟΙΟς may be translated by like, only this idea has something indefinite in it, and therefore Sander not unjustly says that thereby the point of the thought is lost. As John himself does not more particularly define this future ὉΜΟΙΌΤΗς of man with God, the commentator must not arbitrarily restrict the general idea on the one side or the other, as, for instance, by the reference to the light-nature of God (Ebrard), or the ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΎΝΗ ΘΕΟῦ (Düsterdieck), or the ΔΌΞΑ ΘΕΟῦ (de Wette[195]).

ὍΤΙ ὈΨΌΜΕΘΑ ΑὐΤΌΝ, ΚΑΘΏς ἘΣΤΙ] This sentence states the logical ground of the foregoing; Calvin correctly: ratio haec ab effectu sumta est, non a causa; so that the sense is: because we shall see Him as He is, we therefore know that we shall be like Him (Rickli; so also Socinus, S. Schmidt, Erdmann, Myrberg, etc.). It is a different thought in 2Co_3:18, according to which Bengel explains: ex aspectu, similitudo (similarly Irenaeus, adv. haer. iv. 38, says: ὅρασις Θεοῦ περιποιητικὴ ἀφθαρσίας), according to which the sense is: the beholding is the cause of the likeness (Spener; similarly Baumgarten-Crusius, de Wette, Neander, Köstlin, Düsterdieck, Ebrard, Braune, Weiss, etc.). But John does not here want to explain whence the ὍΜΟΙΟΝ ΕἾΝΑΙ Τῷ ΘΕῷ comes to the believer, but on what the ΟἼΔΑΜΕΝ is based. The certain hope of the Christian is that he shall see God. In that hope there lies for him the certainty that he will one day be like God; for God can only be seen by him who is like Him.[196] When Rickli remarks on ὈΨΌΜΕΘΑ: not a bodily vision of Him who is Spirit; it is the spiritual beholding, the knowledge of God in His infinite divine nature (similarly Frommann, p. 217), or when others interpret this ὉΡᾷΝ simply by to know aright, and similarly, this is contrary to the sense of the apostle; for as the word itself indeed shows, an actual seeing is meant. For man in his earthly body, God is certainly invisible; but it is different with the glorified man in his σῶμα πνευματικόν (1Co_15:44); he will not merely know (the believer has knowledge already here), but see God; and, moreover, no longer διʼ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, but ΠΡΌΣΩΠΟΝ ΠΡῸς ΠΡΌΣΩΠΟΝ, 1Co_13:12. Compare on the seeing of God, Mat_5:8; 2Co_5:7; Rev_22:4.

By ΚΑΘΏς ἘΣΤΙ the entire reality of the nature of God: as He is, not merely in a copy, etc., but in Himself and in His nature, His perfect majesty and glory (Spener), is described.[197] The relation of the single parts of this verse is usually regarded by the commentators as adversative; certainly ΝῦΝ and ΟὔΠΩ form an antithesis, but the connecting ΚΑΊ shows that the apostle considered the first two thoughts less in their antithesis to one another than in their co-ordination, inasmuch as it occurred to him to emphasize them both equally: both that believers are now really ΤΈΚΝΑ ΘΕΟῦ, and also that a glory as yet concealednamely, likeness to Godawaits them. Between the third and fourth parts also a sort of antithesis occurs (hence the Recepta δέ), but here also the apostle is not anxious to bring out this contrast, but rather to add to the negatively-expressed thought, for its confirmation, the positive substance of Christian consciousness; comp. de Wette-Brückner, Braune.

[192] De Wette incorrectly remarks on ἐσμέν: by destiny, by faith and aspiration or idea; John rather signifies by ἐσμέν the actual reality.

[193] Act_13:25 is especially to be compared. According to Buttmann, the interrogative is used for the relative only after predicates which have a certain similarity with the verba sentiendi, etc., thus especially after ἔχειν (Mar_8:1-2); yet this similarity is sometimes at the least very remote, thus with δοθήσεται, Mat_10:19, and with ἑτοίμασον, Luk_17:8, where Buttmann finds himself compelled to supply a connecting verb. Besides, a similarity with the verba sentiendi is not to be denied to the verb φανεροῦσθαι, even if it does not describe the theoretical revelation, for the coming out of concealment includes the becoming visible.

[194] Ebrard groundlessly asserts that this view amounts to a tautology: our future state is still future, for according to it the apostle rather expresses the thought that the future condition of the τέκνα Θεοῦ will be distinguished from the present; in which, plainly, there is not the slightest tautology contained.

[195] Baumgarten-Crusius and others quote on this passage 2Pe_1:4 : κοινωνοὶ τῆς θείας φύσεως; this is (as Brückner also remarks) unsuitable, for in this expression the author of that Epistle does not say what the Christian will be one day, but what he already is; it therefore corresponds rather to the τέκνα Θεοῦ.

[196] To Düsterdiecks question, Why then did not the apostle write: ὀψόμεθα αὐτόν, ὅτι ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ ἐσόμεθα? it is a valid reply: because he did not want to represent the beholding of God, but likeness to God, as the purpose of the divine love. The justification of the rejected explanation by 2Co_3:18 is inappropriate, because John describes the future condition of the children of God, not as a becoming like, but as a being like (ἐσόμεθα).

[197] Calvin: Deus nune se nobis conspiciendum offert, non qualis est, sed qualem modulus noster cum capit. Weiss rightly observes that the emphasis is laid on καθώς ἐστιν; but it is incorrect for him to place this in contrast with His manifestation in the Son; for God has not revealed Himself in Christ otherwise than καθώς ἐστι.As a curiosity the explanation of Oertel may be given here: One day after several centuries, mankind, which now belongs too much to the spirit of barbarism, will become more glorified, more ennobled, and more happy, and thus attain to the perfect knowledge of the plan of God and the purpose of Jesus.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn 3:2 . Having spoken of our present dignity, the Apostle goes on to speak of our future destiny. The Incarnation manifested our standing as children of God, but “it was not yet manifested what we shall be”. The aorist ἐφανερώθη ( cf. ἔγνω in previous verse) refers to the historic manifestation in Jesus Christ. The N.T. says nothing definite about the nature of our future glory. With our present faculties we cannot conceive it. It must be experienced to be understood. Jesus simply assures us of the felicity of the Father’s House, and bids us take His word for it ( cf. Joh 14:2 ). ἐὰν φανερωθῇ , “if ( cf. note on 1Jn 2:28 ) it may be manifested,” taking up οὔπω ἐφανερώθη . This obvious connection is decisive against the rendering “if He shall be manifested” ( cf. 1Jn 2:28 ; Col 3:4 ). ὅτι , κ . τ . λ .: What we shall be was not manifested, but this we know that we shall be like Him. And how do we know it? From His promise that “we shall see Him even as He is” ( cf. Joh 17:24 ). The argument is two-fold: (1) Vision of God implies likeness to Him in character and affection ( cf. Mat 5:8 ); (2) the vision of God transfigures ( cf. 2Co 3:18 ), even in this life.

“Ah! the Master is so fair,

His smile so sweet to banished men,

That they who meet it unaware

Can never rest on earth again.”

And how will it be when we “see Him face to face” (1Co 13:12 )? St. Augustine expresses much of the Apostle’s thought in a beautiful sentence: “Tota vita Christiani boni sanctum desiderium est”.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2. After οἴδαμεν omit δέ with [592][593][594][595] against [596][597].

[592] 4th century. Discovered by Tischendorf in 1859 at the monastery of S. Catherine on Mount Sinai, and now at Petersburg. All three Epistles.

[593] 5th century. Brought by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, from Alexandria, and afterwards presented by him to Charles I. in 1628. In the British Museum. All three Epistles.

[594] 4th century. Brought to Rome about 1460. It is entered in the earliest catalogue of the Vatican Library, 1475. All three Epistles.

[595] 5th century. A palimpsest: the original writing has been partially rubbed out and the works of Ephraem the Syrian have been written over it. In the National Library at Paris. Part of the First and Third Epistles; 1Jn 1:1 to 1Jn 4:2; 3Jn 1:3-14. Of the whole N.T. the only Books entirely missing are 2 John and 2 Thessalonians.

[596] 9th century. All three Epistles.

[597] 9th century. All three Epistles.

2. ἀγαπητοί. Vulgate, as usual: Jerome (Con. Pelag. 13) dilectissimi. In the first part of the Epistle this form of address occurs only once (1Jn 2:7), just where the subject of love appears for a few verses. In this second part it becomes the more common form of address (1Jn 3:2; 1Jn 3:21; 1Jn 4:1; 1Jn 4:7; 1Jn 4:11), for here the main subject is love. Similarly, in 1Jn 3:13, where brotherly love is the special subject, ἀδελφοί is the form of address. Νῦν and οὕπω each stand first in their respective clauses in emphatic contrast, and καί, as so often in S. John, introduces an antithesis. Our privileges in this world are certain; and yet our glories in the world to come are still veiled. But they will be connected with our blessings here (καί), not something quite different (ἀλλά). With this τέκνα Θεοῦ agrees: ‘child’ implies a future development; ‘son’ does not. Φανεροῦσθαι in both places should be rendered, as in R.V., be made manifest or be manifested, in order to preserve the passive voice and uniformity of rendering with 1Jn 1:2; 1Jn 2:19; 1Jn 2:28. It is one of S. John’s characteristic expressions. ‘Appear’ comes from the Vulgate: Augustine uses both apparere and manifestari, Tertullian revelari.

ἐὰν φανερωθῇ. If it shall be manifested, or if He shall be manifested. Here there is no difference of reading, as there is in 1Jn 2:28, between ὅταν and ἐάν; but earlier English Versions, under the influence of the Vulgate (cum apparuerit) have ‘when’ in both passages. Ambrose and Augustine have cum also; Tertullian has si. In both cases ‘if’ is right; but it has been either changed in the Greek, or shirked in translation, as appearing to imply a doubt respecting the manifestation. It implies no doubt as to the fact, but shews that the results of the fact are more important than the time: comp. ‘If I be lifted up from the earth,’ and ‘If I go and prepare a place for you’ (Joh 12:32; Joh 14:3).

It is less easy to determine between ‘if it shall be manifested’ and ‘if He shall be manifested;’ ‘it’ meaning what we shall be hereafter, and ‘He’ meaning Christ. No nominative is expressed in the Greek, and it is rather violent to supply a new nominative, differing from that of the very same verb in the previous sentence: therefore ‘it’ seems preferable. ‘We know that if our future state is made manifest we, who are children of God, shall be found like our Father.’ On the other hand, 1Jn 2:28 favours ‘if He shall be manifested.’ Note the οἴδαμεν and comp. 1Jn 2:20-21. No progress in knowledge is implied; no additional experience. Our future resemblance to our Father is a fact of which as Christians we are aware. Contrast γινώσκομεν (1Jn 2:3; 1Jn 2:18; 1Jn 3:24; 1Jn 4:6; 1Jn 4:13; 1Jn 5:2). The ‘but’ of A.V. from δέ of T. R. introduces a false antithesis. But yet another way is possible. We may read here, as R.V. in 1Jn 3:20, ὅ τι ἐάν, and translate, We know—whatever may be manifested—that we shall be like Him. But this does not seem probable: it is unlike S. John, and (perhaps we may say) unlike Scripture generally.

ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ. We are once more in doubt as to the meaning of αὐτῷ. If ἐὰν φαν. be rendered ‘if He shall be manifested,’ this will naturally mean that we shall be like Christ; which, however true in itself, is not the point. The point is that children are found to be like their Father. This is an additional reason for preferring ‘it’ with Tyndale and Cranmer to ‘He’ with Wiclif, Purvey, Genevan, and Rhemish. The precise nature of the ὁμοιότης (not ἰσότης) is left undetermined. Similes, quia beati, says Bede. Man was created κατʼ εἰκονα καὶ καθʼ ὁμοίωσιν τοῦ θεοῦ (Gen 1:26-27), and this likeness, marred at the Fall, is renewed here by Christ’s Blood and perfected hereafter. ὅτι ὀψόμεθα αὐτὸν καθώς ἐστιν. Because we shall see Him even as He is: ‘because’ as in 1Jn 3:9; 1Jn 3:20; 1Jn 3:22; 1Jn 2:13-14, &c., and ‘even as’ as in 1Jn 3:3; 1Jn 3:7; 1Jn 3:23; 1Jn 2:6; 1Jn 2:27, &c. ‘Because’ or ‘for’ may give the cause either (1) of our knowing that we shall be like Him, or (2) of our being like Him. Both make good sense; but, in spite of ‘we know’ being the principal sentence grammatically, the statement which most needs explanation is the subordinate one, that we shall be like God. ‘We shall be like Him,’ says the Apostle, ‘because, as you know, we shall see Him.’ Comp. ‘But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory’ (2Co 3:18); the sight of God will glorify us. This also is in harmony with the prayer of the great High Priest; ‘And the glory which Thou hast given Me, I have given unto them’ (Joh 17:22). Comp. ‘And they shall see His face’ (Rev 22:4). The ‘even as’ emphasizes the reality of the sight: no longer ‘in a mirror, darkly,’ but ‘face to face.’

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For now we see as in a glass, 1 Cor. 13:12.

Like, but not equal.

The other: This dignity is not fully made manifest to ourselves, much less to strangers, but we are sure of the accomplishment of it, insomuch that we shall be like to the Son of God himself, and shall enjoy his sight indeed, such as he is now: but yet notwithstanding this is deferred until his next coming.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Beloved--by the Father, and therefore by me.

now--in contrast to "not yet." We now already are really sons, though not recognized as such by the world, and (as the consequence) we look for the visible manifestation of our sonship, which not yet has taken place.

doth not yet appear--Greek, "it hath not yet ('at any time,' Greek aorist) been visibly manifested what we shall be"--what further glory we shall attain by virtue of this our sonship. The "what" suggests a something inconceivably glorious.

but--omitted in the oldest manuscripts. Its insertion in English Version gives a wrong antithesis. It is not, "We do not yet know manifestly what . . . but we know," &c. Believers have some degree of the manifestation already, though the world has not. The connection is, The manifestation to the world of what we shall be, has not yet taken place; we know (in general; as a matter of well-assured knowledge; so the Greek) that when (literally, "if"; expressing no doubt as to the fact, but only as to the time; also implying the coming preliminary fact, on which the consequence follows, Mal 1:6; Joh 14:3) He (not "it," namely, that which is not yet manifested [ALFORD]) shall be manifested (Jo1 3:5; Jo1 2:28), we shall be like Him (Christ; all sons have a substantial resemblance to their father, and Christ, whom we shall be like, is "the express image of the Father's person," so that in resembling Christ, we shall resemble the Father). We wait for the manifestation (literally, the "apocalypse"; the same term as is applied to Christ's own manifestation) of the sons of God. After our natural birth, the new birth into the life of grace is needed, which is to be followed by the new birth into the life of glory; the two latter alike are termed "the regeneration" (Mat 19:28). The resurrection of our bodies is a kind of coming out of the womb of the earth, and being born into another life. Our first temptation was that we should be like God in knowledge, and by that we fell; but being raised by Christ, we become truly like Him, by knowing Him as we are known, and by seeing Him as He is [PEARSON, Exposition of the Creed]. As the first immortality which Adam lost was to be able not to die, so the last shall be not to be able to die. As man's first free choice or will was to be able not to sin, so our last shall be not to be able to sin [AUGUSTINE, The City of God, 22.30]. The devil fell by aspiring to God's power; man, by aspiring to his knowledge; but aspiring after God's goodness, we shall ever grow in His likeness. The transition from God the Father to "He," "Him," referring to Christ (who alone is ever said in Scripture to be manifested; not the Father, Joh 1:18), implies the entire unity of the Father and the Son.

for, &c.--Continual beholding generates likeness (Co2 3:18); as the face of the moon being always turned towards the sun, reflects its light and glory.

see him--not in His innermost Godhead, but as manifested in Christ. None but the pure can see the infinitely Pure One. In all these passages the Greek is the same verb opsomai; not denoting the action of seeing, but the state of him to whose eye or mind the object is presented; hence the Greek verb is always in the middle or reflexive voice, to perceive and inwardly appreciate [TITTMANN]. Our spiritual bodies will appreciate and recognize spiritual beings hereafter, as our natural bodies now do natural objects.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 2. Now are we the sons of God] He speaks of those who are begotten of God, and who work righteousness. See the preceding chapter.

And it doth not yet appear what we shall be] ουπω εφανερωθη. It is not yet manifest; though we know that we are the children of God, we do not know that state of glorious excellence to which, as such, we shall be raised.

When he shall appear] εαν φανερωθη. When he shall be manifested; i.e., when he comes the second time, and shall be manifested in his glorified human nature to judge the world.

We shall be like him] For our vile bodies shall be made like unto his glorious body; we shall see him as he is, in all the glory and majesty both of the Divine and human nature. See Php 3:21; and Joh 17:24: Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. John had seen his glory on the mount when he was transfigured; and this we find was ineffably grand; but even this must have been partially obscured, in order to enable the disciples to bear the sight, for they were not then like him. But when they shall be like him, they shall see him as he is-in all the splendour of his infinite majesty.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

2 Now are we the sons of God He comes now to what every one knows and feels himself; for though the ungodly may not entice us to give up our hope, yet our present condition is very short of the glow of God’s children; for as to our body we are dust and a shadow, and death is always before our eyes; we are also subject to thousand miseries, and the soul is exposed to innumerable evils; so that we find always a hell within us. The more necessary it is that all our thoughts should be withdrawn from the present view of things, lest the miseries by which we are on every side surrounded and almost overwhelmed, should shake our faith in that felicity which as yet lies hid. For the Apostle’s meaning is this, that we act very foolishly when we estimate what God has bestowed on us according to the present state of things, but that we ought with undoubting faith to hold to that which does not yet appear.

But we know that when he shall appear The conditional particle ought to be rendered as an adverb of time, when But the verb appear means not the same thing as when he used it before. The Apostle has just said, it does not yet appear what we shall be, because the fruit of our adoption is as yet hid, for in heaven is our felicity, and we are now far away traveling on the earth; for this fading life, constantly exposed to hundred deaths, is far different from that eternal life which belongs to the children of God; for being enclosed as slaves in the prison of our flesh, we are far distant from the full sovereignty of heaven and earth. But the verb now refers to Christ, when, he shall appear; for he teaches the same thing with Paul, in Colossians, where he says,

“Your life is hid with Christ in God: when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:3,4)

For our faith cannot stand otherwise than by looking to the coming of Christ. The reason why God defers the manifestation of our glory is this, because Christ is not manifested in the power of his kingdom. This, then, is the only way of sustaining our faith, so that we may wait patiently for the life promised to us. As soon as any one turns away the least from Christ, he must necessarily fail.

The word to know, shews the certainty of faith, in order to distinguish it from opinion. Neither simple nor universal knowledge is here intended, but that which every one ought to have for himself, so that he may feel assured that he will be sometime like Christ. Though, then, the manifestation of our glory is connected with the coming of Christ, yet our knowledge of this is well founded.

We shall be like him He does not understand that we shall be equal to him; for there must be some difference between the head and the members; but we shall be like him, because he will make our vile body conformable to his glorious body, as Paul also teaches us in Philippians 3:21. For the Apostle intended shortly to shew that the final end of our adoption is, that what has in order preceded in Christ, shall at length be completed in us.

The reason that is added may, however, seem inappropriate. For if to see Christ makes us like him, we shall have this in common with the wicked, for they shall also see his glory. To this I reply, that this is to see him as a friend, which will not be the case with the wicked, for they will dread his presence; nay, they will shun God’s presence, and be filled with terror; his glow will so dazzle their eyes, that they will be stupefied and confounded. For we see that Adam, conscious of having done wrong, dreaded the presence of God. And God declared this by Moses, as a general truth as to men,

“No man shall see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20.)

For how can it be otherwise but that God’s majesty, as a consuming fire, will consume us as though we were stubble, so great is the weakness of our flesh. But as far as the image of God is renewed in us, we have eyes prepared to see God. And now, indeed, God begins to renew in us his own image, but in what a small measure! Except then we be stripped of all the corruption of the flesh, we shall not be able to behold God face to face.

And this is also expressed here, as he is He does not, indeed, say, that there is no seeing of God now; but as Paul says,

“We see now through a glass, darkly.” (1 Corinthians 13:12.)

But he elsewhere makes a difference between this way of living, and the seeing of the eye. In short, God now presents himself to be seen by us, not such as he is, but such as we can comprehend. Thus is fulfilled what is said by Moses, that we see only as it were his back, (Exodus 33:23;) for there is too much brightness in his face.

We must further observe, that the manner which the Apostle mentions is taken from the effect, not from the cause; for he does not teach us, that we shall be like him, because we shall see him; but he hence proves that we shall be partakers of the divine glory, for except our nature were spiritual, and endued with a heavenly and blessed immortality, it could never come so nigh to God yet the perfection of glory will not be so great in us, that our seeing will enable us to comprehend all that God is; for the distance between us and him will be even then very great.

But when the Apostle says, that we shall see him as he is, he intimates a new and an ineffable manner of seeing him, which we enjoy not now; for as long as we walk by faith, as Paul teaches us, we are absent from him. And when he appeared to the fathers, it was not in his own essence, but was ever seen under symbols. Hence the majesty of God, now hid, will then only be in itself seen, when the veil of this mortal and corruptible nature shall be removed.

Refined questions I pass by: for we see how Augustine tormented himself with these, and yet never succeeded, both in his Epistles to Paulus and Fortunatus, and in the City of God, (2:2,) and in other places. What he says, however, is worthy of being observed, that the way in which we live avails more in this inquiry than the way in which we speak, and that we must beware, lest by wrangling as to the manner in which God can be seen, we lose that peace and holiness without which no one shall see him.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God,.... By adoption, secretly in God's predestination, and in the covenant of grace; and openly in regeneration, through faith in Christ, and by the testimony of the Spirit:

and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; though they are sons, they do not appear now as such, as they will do, when they shall be introduced into their Father's house, and into the many mansions there prepared for them; when Christ shall publicly own them as the children given unto him, and when they shall be put into the possession of the inheritance they are heirs of; besides, they will appear then not only to be kings' sons, but kings themselves, as they now are; they will then inherit the kingdom prepared for them, and will sit down on a throne of glory, and have a crown of righteousness, life, and glory, put upon them; and will appear not only perfectly justified, their sins being not to be found; and the sentence of justification afresh pronounced, and they placed out of the reach of all condemnation; but they will be perfectly holy and free from all sin, and perfectly knowing and glorious; they have a right to glory now, and glory is preparing for them, and they for that: and they are now representatively glorified in Christ, but then they will be personally glorified: now, though all this shall certainly be, yet it does not now manifestly appear; it appears to God, who calls things that are not as though they were and to Christ, whose delights were with the sons men, these children of God, before the world was, and saw them in all the glory they were to be brought to; but not even to angels, until they are owned and confessed before them; much less to the world, who do not know what they are now, and still less what they will be, seeing them now in poverty, meanness, under many reproaches, afflictions, and persecutions; and even this does not appear to the saints themselves, whose life is a hidden life; and that by reason of darkness, desertion, and diffidence, for want of more knowledge, and from the nature of the happiness itself, which is at present unseen:

but we know that when he shall appear; that is, Jesus Christ, who is now in heaven, and out of sight, but will appear a second time: the time when is not known, but the thing itself is certain:

we shall be like him; in body, fashioned like to his glorious body, in immortality and incorruption, in power, in glory, and spirituality, in a freedom from all imperfections, sorrows, afflictions, and death; and in soul, which likeness will lie in perfect knowledge of divine things, and in complete holiness;

for we shall see him as he is; in his human nature, with the eyes of the body, and in his glorious person, with the eyes of the understanding; not by faith, as now, but by sight; not through ordinances, as in the present state, but through those beams of light and glory darting from him, with which the saints will be irradiated; and this sight, as it is now exceeding desirable, will be unspeakably glorious, delightful, and ravishing, soul satisfying, free from all darkness and error, and interruption; will assimilate and transform into his image and likeness, and be for ever. Philo the Jew observes (k), that Israel may be interpreted one that sees God; but adds, , "not what God is", for this is impossible: it is indeed impossible to see him essentially as he is, or so as to comprehend his nature, being, and perfections; but then the saints in heaven will see God and Christ as they are, and as much as they are to be seen by creatures; God will be seen as he is in Christ; and Christ will be seen as he is in himself, both in his divine and human natures, as much as can be, or can be desired to be seen and known of him.

(k) De Praemiis. & Paenis, p. 917.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

Ver. 2. What we shall be] Great things we have in hand, but greater in hope; much in possession, but more in reversion. Let this comfort us against the contempts cast upon us by the world, blind and besides itself in point of salvation.

For we shall see him as he is] Now we see as in a glass obscurely, 1Co 13:12, as an old man through spectacles, as a weak eye looks upon the sun; but in heaven we shall see him as he is, so far as a creature is capable of that blissful vision.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God - We now in fact sustain this rank and dignity, and on that we may reflect with pleasure and gratitude. It is in itself an exalted honor, and may be contemplated as such, whatever may be true in regard to what is to come. In the dignity and the privileges which we now enjoy, we may find a grateful subject of reflection, and a cause of thankfulness, even if we should look to nothing beyond, or when we contemplate the fact by itself.

And it doth not yet appear what we shall be - It is not fully revealed what we shall be hereafter; what will be the full result of being regarded as the children of God. There are, indeed, certain things which may be inferred as following from this. There is enough to animate us with hope, and to sustain us in the trials of life. There is one thing which is clear, that we shall be like the Son of God; but what is fully involved in this is not made known. Perhaps,

(1)It could not be so revealed that we could understand it, for that state may be so unlike the present that no words would fully convey the conception to our minds. Perhaps,

(2)It may be necessary to our condition here, as on probation, that no more light should be furnished in regard to the future than to stimulate us to make efforts to reach a world where all is light. For an illustration of the sentiment expressed here by the apostle, compare the notes at 2Pe 1:4.

But we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him - It is revealed to us that we shall be made like Christ; that is, in the bodies with which we shall be raised up, in character, in happiness, in glory. Compare the Phi 3:21 note; 2Co 3:18 note. This is enough to satisfy the Christian in his prospects for the future world. To be like Christ is the object of his supreme aim. For that he lives, and all his aspirations in regard to the coming world may be summed up in this - that he wishes to be like the glorified Son of God, and to share his honors and his joys. See the notes at Phi 3:10.

For we shall see him as he is - It is clearly implied here that there will be an influence in beholding the Saviour as he is, which will tend to make us like him, or to transform us into his likeness. See the nature of this influence explained in the notes at 2Co 3:18.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Our present state he affirms to be unquestionably that of

sons, whatsoever hardships from the world, or severer discipline from our Father, we must for a while undergo; but for our future state, it is much above us to comprehend distinctly the glory of it;

it doth not yet appear, it is yet an unrevealed thing, Rom 8:18; a veil is drawn before it, which is to be drawn aside at the appointed season of the manifestation of the sons of God, 1Jo 3:19. But so much we in the general know of it, (so certain are the apprehensions of faith), that

when he shall appear, or display his own glory in the appearance of his Son, who is then to come in the glory of his Father, Mat 16:27; 1Ti 6:14-16,

we shall be like him, as it befits children to be unto their Father; i.e. his image shall then be perfected in us, which was defaced so greatly in the apostacy, is restored imperfectly in regeneration, Eph 4:24; Col 3:10, must be daily improved in progressive sanctification: so that as God was above said to be light, Christians are to shine as lights, as the sons of God, without rebuke, representing and glorifying their Father, Mat 5:16; Phi 2:15; 1Pe 2:9; but is then to be advanced in us to a far higher pitch than ever, in respect both of holiness and blessedness.

For we shall see him as he is; i.e. so far as the limited capacity of our natures can admit; and are therefore by that likeness to be qualified for such vision: which eternal, efficacious vision doth also coutinue that likeness, the causal particle,

for, admitting both those references: see Psa 17:15.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

2. Now… yet—Contrast of the humble present with the transcendent future.

Are—Emphatic; true, in spite of the occultness of our sonship and non-recognition by the world. Even what we shall be, does but very dimly appear. But at the resurrection, as Paul says, a “glory shall be revealed in us.” And then will be “the manifestation of the sons of God.” Rom_8:18-19.

Like him… see him as he is—From the certainty that we shall see him as he is, we know that… we shall be like him; for it is only like natures that truly realize each other. The brute can realize man only just so far as he resembles man; and man can realize spirit only just so far as he is like spirit; and the human can see God only so far as it is like him. if, therefore, when the limitations of flesh are flung off, and our “spiritual body” of the resurrection shall be such as to be no limitation at all, we see him as he is, then it is certain that we shall be most perfectly like him.

Or, conversely, our seeing him as he is may cause us to become more and more like him. Gazing upon beautiful models the soul becomes beautified: our characters are formed by imitating improving examples. By realizing the divine beauty we become divinely perfected. If we see him as he is, we know that we shall be constantly made to become like him. See note on 2Co_3:18.

Regeneration, as a term, does not appear in Scripture, but it is expressed in all such phrases as born or begotten of God. It is that work of the Holy Spirit by which, immediately upon our repentance and faith, (which are preceded by the convicting and enabling influences of the Spirit,) the love of God and the Christian graces spring up in the soul. The first spark of divine love is the spark of spiritual life—the spark of an everlasting life; which, if preserved within the soul, will advance until it works out the resurrection glory.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

It doth not yet appear - Even to ourselves. What we shall be - It is something ineffable, which will raise the children of God to be, in a manner, as God himself. But we know, in general, that when he, the Son of God, shall appear, we shall be like him - The glory of God penetrating our inmost substance. For we shall see him as he is - Manifestly, without a veil. And that sight will transform us into the same likeness.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

As if the apostle had said, "Although the world knows us not, affects us not, esteems us not, because of the weakness of our grace and the strength of our corruptions, yet notwithstanding both these, we are now the sons of God; this is the happiness of our present condition, we are as children in their minority; we are not grown up for the inheritance, but we are growing; we are not what we would be, we are not what we should be; we are not what we shall be; but blessed be God we are what we are; now are we the sons of God."

Observe, 2. As the honour and dignity of the Christian’s privilege in this life asserted, we are now the sons of God, so their happiness and glory in the next life described,

1. By way of negation. It doth not yet appear what they shall be; the glory which God has prepared for all his adopted children and people, is an hidden glory, a glory that doth not yet appear; what the saints shall be in their perfect state of glory doth not yet appear to them in this their imperfect state of grace.

2. By way of positive asseveration, But we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Here note, 1. The certainty of Christ’s appearance declared, He shall appear.

2. A double benefit which believers may expect at his appearing.

1. They shall be like him, as well in holiness as in happiness, as well in purity as in immortality; like him in a perfect freedom from sin, like him in the ardour and intense fervency of their love; like him in the perfection of grace, and the unspotted purity of his holy nature.

2. They shall see him: That is, his glory, with a clear and immediate sight, with a full and comprehensive sight, with an assimilating and transforming sight, with an appropriating and possessive sight, with a satisfying and everlasting sight.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2. Now are we, etc. Already we have the great privilege of being sons, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Our future glory is not yet manifest. Even we ourselves cannot understand it. But we know. One glorious revelation has been made. At the coming of Christ we shall be like him. Then we shall be like him in body. See Phil. 3:21. We shall also be found morally in his image. For we shall see him as he is. To look upon him has power to change us into his glory. See 2 Cor. 3:18.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

2.] Beloved, now are we children of God (the world recognizes us not: but our sonship is real: none the less real, that we ourselves know not our future condition in all its manifestation. So that the next member of the sentence is introduced not with an ἀλλά, but with a καί: the two are not contrasted, but simply put in juxtaposition as components of our present state. We are really sons of God, even now: and we look (this very word νῦν suggesting a future) for an inheritance in virtue of that sonship: it has not been yet manifested of what sort that inheritance shall be: thus much we know &c. Such seems to be the simple connexion, without any adversative particles expressed or understood), and it was never yet manifested (on any occasion: such is the force of the aor. And ἐφανερώθη, as so often in St. John, and as in the next sentence, does not mean, made manifest to knowledge or anticipation,—for that it is, as asserted below: but, shewn forth in actuality, come to its manifestation) what we shall be (understand, in virtue of this our state of sons of God: to what new development or condition this already existing fact will lead. But we must take care not to fall into Grot.’s error, “quo modo futuri simus filii Dei:” for as Calov. rightly remarks, “non dantur gradus υἱότητος:” we are as truly, and in the same sense, children of God now, as we shall be then: but now (cf. Gal 4:1) we are children waiting for an unknown inheritance—then we shall be children in full possession of that inheritance. And hence, from the reality and identity of that sonship, comes what follows,—our certain knowledge, even in this absence of manifestation in detail, that our future condition will consist in likeness to Him. As Œc., τὸ γὰρ νῦν ἄδηλον φανερὸν γενήσεται, ἐκείνου ἀποκαλυπτομένου. ὅμοιοι γὰρ αὐτῷ ἀναφανέντες τὸ τῆς υἱοθεσίας λαμπρὸν παραστήσομεν. οἱ γὰρ υἱοὶ πάντες ὅμοιοι τῷ πατρί). We know (no contrast—see above: what we know of this τί ἐσόμεθα is this. There is not even a correction of the preceding as Düsterd.: the connexion is simply, “This future condition of ours hath never yet appeared: thus much we know of it.” οἴδαμεν, as always, of certain, well assured cognition) that if it were manifested (viz. the τἱ ἐσόμεθα; this φανερωθῇ takes up again the former one. So Didymus (Aug. is quoted on both sides by the Commentators, but he does not really commit himself on the point), Œc. (τὸ γὰρ νῦν ἄδηλον φανερὸν γενήσεται), Luther, Seb.-Schmidt, Socinus, Episcopius, Schlichting, Grotius, Spener, Bengel, Benson, Rosenm., Lücke, Sander, De Wette, Baumg.-Crus., Neander, Düsterd., Huther, and others: on the other hand, , Calvin, Beza (and the E. V.: Tyndale and Cranmer had “it”), Aretius, Whitby, Calov., Estius, al., supply “He,” understanding Christ: appealing to St. John’s well-known usage which we have in ch. 2:28, and below in our ver. 5. But it may be replied, that in the former case the subject was plainly suggested by ἐν αὐτῷ in the latter actually expressed in ἐκεῖνος: whereas here the reference of the verb is no less plainly given by the preceding ἐφανερώθη. Besides which, ἐκεῖνος in verse 5 clearly shews that the divine subject of these verses is not Christ but the Father. Estius and Lyra indeed seem to hold it possible to supply ὁ θεός as a subject to φανερωθῇ here, but not even themselves have propounded this for their own interpretation: indeed the former sets it aside, and the latter seems to be only paraphrasing when he says, “cum nobis se patrem ostenderit in possessione cœlestis hæreditatis.” On the ἐάν, hypothetical, see above, ch. 2:28. As there, the φανερωθῇ is the futurus exactus: “on its manifestation:” and here the hypothesis, from the repetition of the verb, necessarily gains, emphasis, almost = that, even if it were manifested, … This consideration has an important bearing on what follows), we stall be (ἐσόμεθα taken up again from above, and the emphatic ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ corresponding exactly to τί above) like Him (God; as Œc. above, and most Commentators. See below), because (ὅτι must be kept firm to its causal meaning, and all the difficulties of the sentence met thus, not by explaining it away, as even Œc. (ἀλλὰ καί), Schol. ii. (ὅτε καί), Luther (et). Nor does it express merely the mode of the transformation, as Lyra. Still less must we, with Calvin (“neque enim docet similes ideo nos fore, quia fruemur adspectu, sed inde probat nos divinæ gloriæ fore participes, quia nisi spiritualis et cœlesti beataque immortalitate prædita esset natura, ad Deum nunquam tum prope accederet”), Seb.-Schmidt (“Qui visurus est Deum sicuti est, eum oportet esse perfecte similem Deo”), and Socinus (“neque enim fieri potest ut quia ipsum Deum videat, … nisi ei similis aliquo modo.… fuerit”),—and so even Huther, endorsing Calvin’s statement, “ratio hæc ab eftectu sumta est non a causa,”—reverse the causal connexion, and make the seeing Him as He is merely a proof that we shall be like Him (ὅτι = γάρ). Whatever consequences it may entail, it is philologically certain that the proposition introduced by ὅτι contains the real essential cause and ground of that which it follows) we shall see Him (God: see below) as He is (with St. John, the recognition and knowledge of God is ever no mere cognition, but the measure of the spiritual life: he who has it, possesses God, has the Father and the Son: becomes more and more like God, having His seed in him. So that the full and perfect accomplishment of this knowledge in the actual fruition of God Himself must of necessity bring with it entire likeness to God. And this is the part of the future lot of the sons of God which is certain. Because we shall see Him as He is,—which is taken for granted as a Christian axiom,—it of necessity follows that we shall be entirely like Him: ethically like Him: we shall behold, as Œc., δίκαιον δίκαιοι, ἀγνὸν ἁγνοί. The difficulty that no man can see God, is not in reality contained here, any more than it is in our Lord’s “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The word, however understood, has for its limit, that no created eye even in the glorified body can behold the Creator: that beyond its keenest search there will be glory and perfection baffling and dazzling it: but this incapacity does not prevent the vision, as far as it can reach, being clear and unclouded: being, to the utmost extent of which our glorified nature is capable, ὡς ἔστιν—a true and not a false vision of God. And if it be again objected that we seem to be thus confounding the ethical sight of God which is the measure of our likeness to God, with corporeal sight of Him in the resurrection body, I answer that in the realm where our thoughts are now employed, I cannot appreciate that distinction between ethical and corporeal. We are speaking of things which eye hath not seen, nor mind conceived: what a σῶμα πνευματικόν may imply, our ideas now do not enable us to conceive: but I suppose it must at all events be a body, all of whose senses are spiritually conditioned and attuned: that what τὰ φυσικά are to our bodies here, τὰ πνευματικά will be there: and feeling this, however little I may know of the details of the great fact, it removes from me all insuperable difficulty as to the ὀψόμεθα αὐτὸν καθὼς ἐστίν. “I know that in my flesh I shall see God,” may not be the right expression in Job, but it is the expression of my hopes as a son of God: it is the one expression of a hope in which all other hopes culminate and centre. And every son of God knows, that for it ever to be fulfilled, he must be growing onward in likeness to Him, pure, even up into His purity: for in His light only shall we see light.

The literature of this verse would far surpass our limits, even in an abridged summary. It will be found in Düsterdieck’s Commentary, vol. ii. pp. 56-82.

One point only must be noticed before passing onward; the fact that several of the great interpreters understand αὐτῷ and αὐτόν of Christ. This has partly of course been occasioned by their supplying Christ as a subject to the verb φανερωθῇ above. Augustine has one of his most beautiful passages, explaining how at Christ’s appearing, the impious shall see only formam servi, but we formam Dei. The whole view, however, does not satisfy the requirements of the passage. It is the τέκνα θεοῦ who are addressed: and the topic of exhortation is that they be righteous as God their Father is righteous. Christ is expressly introduced below in ver. 5 (see on ver. 3) by ἐκεῖνος. Augustine concludes with a burst of eloquence which describes just as well the true view of the vision: “Ergo visuri sumus quandam visionem, fratres, quam nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit: visionem quandam, visionem præcellentem omnes pulchritudines terrenas, auri, argenti, nemorum atque camporum, pulchritudinem maris et aëris, pulchritudinem solis et lunæ, pulchritudinem angelorum, omnia superantem, quia ex ipsa pulchra sunt omnia.” Tract. in Ep. Joh. iv. 5, vol. iii. p. 2008).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2. The thought of τέκνα θεοῦ is expanded in connection with the thought of the Parousia. Here and now they have attained to the position of “children of God.” Their present dignity is as nothing compared with the glory which shall be revealed. The exact conditions of their future state have not yet been made clear. What has already become matter of common knowledge is that, the more fully Christ is revealed, the closer will be their likeness to Him. What they have seen of Christ incarnate has raised them to the position of God’s children. If He is fully made manifest, those who see Him as He is “will be consummated in the divine likeness to which it was the divine purpose that they should attain” (Westcott). Cf. Gen 1:26. All is not yet made manifest, but they have so learned the Christ that they know that it is “God’s task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen.”

ἀγαπητοί] Cf. 3:21, 4:11, and contrast 2:7, 4:1, 7. The word is used here, not to introduce a new section, but to call attention to a further meditation on what has preceded. The writer uses the term which reminds his readers of their and his common share in the gift which God has given.

νῦν τέκνα θεοῦ ἐσμέν] Cf. καὶ ἐσμέν of the preceding verse. What they have at present justifies their full confidence for the future, which will bring the complete unfolding of that which is even now present, though its manifestation is hindered by the circumstances in which they are placed.οὔπω ἐφανερώθη] For οὔπω with the aorist, where the writer is not looking back on a time separated by an interval from that of writing or speaking, cf. Mar 11:2 (οὐδεὶς οὔπω ἐκάθισεν); 1Co 8:2 (εἴ τις δοκεῖ… οὔπω ἔγνω); Heb 12:4 (οὔπω μέχρις αἵματος ἀντικατέστητε); Rev 17:10 (ὁ ἄλλος οὔπω ἦλθεν), 12 (βασίλειαν οὔπω ἔλαβον). The statement denies that there has ever yet been a moment at which it could be said ἐφανερώθη, where the aorist would be either timeless, or expressive of what has just happened. There is no necessary reference to any occasion “on which the revelation might have been expected,” such as the manifestation of the Risen Lord (Westcott).

οἴδαμεν] We know enough to justify confidence even if no complete revelation has as yet been made. Great as are our privileges now, how far greater then! Nothing short of being like God in Christ. Contrast γινώσκομεν (2:3, 18, 3:24, etc.): here no progress in knowledge is suggested: we are aware of the future likeness.ἐὰν φανερωθῇ] May mean either (1) if it shall be revealed, i.e. our future condition (τί ἐσόμεθα), or (2) “if He shall be revealed,” i.e. Christ. The first is the more natural interpretation so far as grammar is concerned. It connects the words naturally with the preceding οὔπω ἐφανερώθη. And it gives an adequate meaning to the words. “If our future glory is revealed, it will be found to be not less than likeness to God, the open vision of whose glory shall transform us.” In favour of (2) is the use of φανερωθῇ of Christ in ver. 28 of the preceding chapter, and the general sense of the passage. Throughout the passage the writer’s thoughts are turned to the revelation of Christ in His glory at His Parousia. If He be manifested in His true glory, the vision will change us to His likeness. Cf. 2Co 3:18, τὴν δόξαν Κυρίου κατοπτριζόμενοι τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν: Col 3:4, ὁτὰν ὁ Χριστὸς φανερωθῇ… τότε καὶ ὑμεῖς σὺν αὐτῷ φανερωθήσεσθε ἐν δόξῃ. And if the use of φανεροῦσθαι in 2:28 partly suggests this interpretation, in spite of the intervening οὔπω ἐφανερώθη, where the τί ἐσόμεθα determines the meaning of the verb, it must also be remembered that the language of soliloquy and meditation has to some extent its own rules. To one pondering over the future glory of the Son of God, in the light of the present revelation of the Risen Lord, which suggests so much more than it actually reveals, the words ἐὰν φανερωθῇ could probably have but one meaning. To us it would have been clearer if the subject had been definitely expressed. It does not follow that the same is true of the writer, or of those for whose sakes he is giving written form to his meditations. Very possibly they had often heard him meditate on the theme ἐὰν φανερωθῇ. He uses the word φανεροῦσθαι eighteen times, and in twelve Christ is the subject, though most of them refer to His manifestation in the flesh.

ὅμοιοι] Contrast Php 2:6, τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ. And for the thought, cf. Plato, Theaetetus, 176 B, φυγὴ δὲ ὁμοίωσις τῷ θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν: Greg. Thaum. Paneg. in Origenem, c. 12, τό γε πάντων τέλος οὐχ ἕτερόν τι οἶμαι ἢ καθαρῷ τῷ νῷ ἐξομοιωθέντα προσελθεῖν τῷ θεῷ καὶ μένειν ἐν αὐτῷ. Rev 22:4, καὶ ὄψονται τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ. Similes, quia beati, says Bede.

ὅτι] “Because we shall see Him as He is.” What men saw of Jesus of Nazareth, when He manifested His glory under the limitations of human life, raised them to the position of τέκνα θεοῦ, in the case of all who received Him (Joh 1:13). How much greater transforming power shall there be in the vision of Him as He is, no longer veiled by the conditions of earthly life!

It is possible to take ὅτι κ.τ.λ. as giving the proof of the knowledge (οἴδαμεν). We know that we shall be like Him, for we know that we shall see Him; and only the pure in heart shall see God. He is visible only to those who share His nature. Like is perceived by like alone. But if the writer had meant this he surely would have expressed himself differently. He often leaves not a little for his readers to supply. But he demands from them the use of spiritual insight rather than of mental acuteness. Weiss’ explanation is too ingenious for its context.

τεκνα] post θεουP 31.

τι] οτι Ia 270 (54) K 559 (415).

οιδαμεν] + δεK L al. pler. cat. syrsch cap. sahd aeth. Or. Dam. Thphyl.

οτι (? 2:0)] pr. και Ia 397f, 205, 106, 201 (96): και Ia 158 (395).

οψομεθα] οψωμεθα 31 Rev_2 scr: uidemus, boh-ed.

2. 3:7-18. Elucidation of the thesis (ethical), and earnest warning against those who would lead them astray

(a) 7-10. Further meditation on the Divine Birth. The opposite statement. He that sinneth is of the Devil.

(b) 10-17. Clearer definition of sin as failure to love the brethren, and of its opposite, love.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Beloved. See 1Jo 2:7.

Now are we and, etc. The two thoughts of the present and the future condition of God 's children are placed side by side with the simple copula, and, as parts of one thought. Christian condition, now and eternally, centers in the fact of being children of God. In that fact lies the germ of all the possibilities of eternal life.

It doth not yet appear [ουπω εφανερωθη] . Rev., more correctly, it is not yet made manifest. See on Joh 21:1. The force of the aorist tense is, was never manifested on any occasion.

What we shall be [τι εσομεθα] . "This what suggests something unspeakable, contained in the likeness of God" (Bengel).

But we know. Omit but.

When He shall appear [εαν φανερωθη] . Rev., correctly, if He (or it) shall be manifested. We may render either "if it shall be manifested," that is what we shall be; or, "if He," etc. The preceding ejfanerwqh it is (not yet) made manifest, must, I think, decide us in favor of the rendering it. We are now children of God. It has not been revealed what we shall be, and therefore we do not know. In the absence of such revelation, we know (through our consciousness of childship, through His promise that we shall behold His glory), that if what we shall be were manifested, the essential fact of the glorified condition thus revealed will be likeness to the Lord. This fact we know now as a promise, as a general truth of our future state. The condition of realizing the fact is the manifestation of that glorified state, the revealing of the ti ejsomeqa what we shall be; for that manifestation will bring with it the open vision of the Lord. When the what we shall be shall be manifest, it will bring us face to face with Him, and we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.

As He is [καθως εστιν] . Strictly, just as. Rev., even as.

" As long as the festivity Of Paradise shall be, so long our love Shall radiate round about us such a vesture. Its brightness is proportioned to the ardor, The ardor to the vision; and the vision Equals what grace it has above its worth.

Dante, "Paradiso," 4, 37 - 42.

1Jo 3:8Every man that hath [πας ο εχων] . A characteristic form of expression with John, containing "a reference to some who had questioned the application of a general principle in particular cases." Here to some persons who had denied the practical obligation to moral purity involved in their hope. See vv. 4, 6, 9, 10, 15, 23, 29; 1Jo 4:7; 1Jo 5:1, 4, 18; 2 John 9. Hope. John's only reference to Christian hope. The phrase used here, to have the hope upon one, is unique in the New Testament. Compare ejp' aujtw eqnh ejlpiousin "on Him shall the Gentiles hope" (Rom 14:12) : hjlpikamen ejpi Qew zwnti "we have hoped on the living God" (1Ti 4:10). On the force of ecwn, see on Joh 26:22.

In Him [επ αυτω] . Ambiguous. Better, as Rev., set on Him.

Purifieth himself [αγνιζει εαυτον] . On the verb, see on 1Pe 1:22; Jas 4:8. In the Septuagint used only of ceremonial purification, and so four out of the seven instances in which it occurs in the New Testament (Joh 11:55; Act 21:24, 26; Act 24:18). In the remaining cases, of purifying the heart and the soul (Jas 4:8; 1Pe 1:22). The kindred adjective aJgnov pure, has a moral signification in every case, as has the noun aJgothv pureness (only 2Co 6:6). Agnismov purification (only Act 21:26), ceremonial.

He [εκεινος] . Christ, as always in the Epistle.

Pure [αγνος] . See above. Though marking moral and spiritual purity, and that of a very high grade, since it is applied to Christ here, yet it admits the thought of possible temptation or pollution, thus differing from agiov, which means absolutely holy. Hence aJgnov cannot properly be applied to God, who is agiov; but both may be used of Christ, the latter in virtue of His human perfection.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

2. -’Ayannroi] Carissimt V., Dilectissimi Aug., Beloved. The title (ii. 7 note) embodies the thought

which has been just expressed. St John in the spirit of love addresses those who with him look forward to the issue of love. In doing this he takes up the words which he has just used, half in personal reflection (καὶ children with the promise of mature development.’ The change to which he thus looks forward will not be in the position of children, but in the conditions under which the relation will be shown. The Christian has now, even in the present life, that which carries with it potentially infinite blessings, but the manifestation of his sonship is hindered by the circumstances in which he is placed. He will not be anything essentially different hereafter, but he will be what he is now essentially more completely, though in ways wholly beyond our powers of imagination.

νῦν.. ἐσμέν, Kal...] 20w are 106... and... The thought of what Christians are and the thought of what they will be are treated as parts of the same thought and not placed in contrast. The fact and the hope are both powerful for life.

οὔπω ἐφανερώθη...ἐὰν φανερωθῇ... nondum apparuit...cum apparuerit...V.. nondum manifestatum est . (and apparuit)...cum apparuerit (and manifestatum fuerit) Aug. manifestatum est...s1 manifestaverit (one Ms. manifestatus fuerit) Tert., nondum revelatum est...cum revelatum fuertt Ambr.

The main difficulty in this passage lies in the interpretation of the clause ἐὰν φανερωθῇ. The subject is not expressed; and the clause can be rendered either (1) if ἐξ shall be manifested i.e. what we shall be; or (2) if Ae shall be manifested. In

favour of the first interpretation it is urged that the clause must refer back to the corresponding words (οὔπω ἐφανερώθη) which have immediately gone before : it 18 not yet manifested... Uf it shall be manifested...; unless such an explanation be obviously excluded by other considerations ; and on the other hand it is answered rightly, I think, that this is in fact the case; that the words 7/f it shall be manifested are altogether without force; or rather that they obscure the meaning. The knowledge which is affirmed is not dependent on any manifestation, but absolute. Christians already possess it; and their certainty so far is not conditioned ‘by anything future. Or to put the thought somewhat differently: it cannot be said that the knowledge that we shall be like Christ (which is assumed) depends upon the manifestation of what we shall be. On the other hand there is an inspiring power in the assurance that our likeness to the Lord will be a likeness to His glorified Being, which will hereafter be shewn, though as yet we cannot understand what it ig,

And further in support of the rendering ¢/ he shall be manifested it is to be noticed that the same phrase has been used in ii. 28 where the meaning is beyond all doubt. It may be added that this use of φανεροῦσθαι appears to rule the whole line of the Apostle’s thought (ii. 28, iii. 8). Christ has been (was) manifested and He will be manifested. The past manifestations made some things clear and left some things dark (iii. 5, 8). The future manifestation will remove this darkness (comp. Col. iii. 4).

Even in the foregoing clause there is, a8 will be seen, something of this

same thought. The manifestations of the Risen Christ have not completely illuminated our future.

οὔπω ἐφανερώθη] it ts not yet made manifest. The aorist (ἐφανερώθη) appears to point back to some definite occasion on which the revelation might have been expected (compare ἔγνω Ὁ. 1). Perhaps it is best to refer the word to the manifestations (comp. ii. 28 note) of the Risen Lord. These revelations of a changed and glorified humanity do not make known to us what we shall be. They only serve to shew that the limitations of the present mode of existence will be removed.

ri ἐσόμεθα] For the use of the direct interrogation, see Moulton’s Winer, pp. 210 f.

οἴδαμεν] We know. Comp.c. Υ. 2, 18 notes. There is no opposition between this clause and that which immediately precedes such as is suggested by the δέ of the common text. The knowledge corresponds with the whole consciousness of the position of children.

ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ] similes et V., like him, like God in Christ. The image in which we were made will then be consummated in the likeness to which it was the divine purpose that we should attain. Compare the Essay on Zhe Gospel of Creation, ττι. I (a).

This likeness of man redeemed and perfected to God is the likeness of the creature reflecting the glory of the Creator. Contrast Phil. ii. 6 ro εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ, said of the Son. Dispar est res, sed sicut ad similitudinem dicitur. Habemus ergo et nos imaginem Dei, sed non illam quam habet Filius sequalis Patri (Aug.).

ὅτι ὀψόμεθα... quoniam videbimus...V., because we shall sce.... The

x. 16), appears to mark a state which co-exists with the divine manifestation at the first, and does not follow from it. On the other hand the thought of the transfiguring virtue of the divine vision is familiar. Comp. 2 Cor. iii. 18; v. 4; Iren. Iv. 38. 3 (a very fine passage).

In either case the central truth is the same, The great confidence of the believer is that he will see the full revelation of the glory of God in Christ, and therefore that when that is made he will be like Him. Time, indeed, before and after, has no place in the eternal.

The main elements in the idea οὗ the ‘vision’ of God seem to be a real knowledge, a direct knowledge, a continuous knowledge, a knowledge which is the foundation of service. The seat of the organ of spiritual sight is the ‘heart,’ the part of man which is representative of personal character (Eph, i. 18; Matt. v. 8). The ‘vision’ of God’s face appears in the hope of the righteous in the Psalms (Ps. xvii. 15; xi. 7 Hupfeld), while it is recognised as unattainable and unbearable by man in the present earthly life (Ex. xxxiii. 18 ff.). In the new Jerusalem it finds accomplishment, Apoc. xxii. 4, His servants (δοῦλοι) shall do Him service (Aarpevoovow) and they shall see His face and His name shall be on their foreheads. As He is light, they shall be made light (comp. Eph. v. 13), and when the sons of God are thus revealed the end of creation will be reached (Rom. viii. 18 ff.).

In treating of this final transfigu-

Thomas Aquinas discusses at length (Sum. Theol. Suppl. Qu. xcii, art. 1) the question wliether the human intellect can attain to seeing God in essence (ad videndum Deum per essentiam), and concludes in the affirmative.

‘The last words with which [Dr Arnold] closed his last lecture on the New Testament were in commenting on [this verse], “So too,” he said, “in the Corinthians, For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Yes,” he added, with marked fervency, “the mere contemplation of Christ shall transform us into His likeness”’ (Life ii. 329 f.).

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901), The Epistle to the Hebrews (1889) and The Epistles of St John (1883) — public domain (pre-1929). Text recovered from Internet Archive / Google Books OCR scans. Westcott’s Gospel of John commentary is not included (its OCR lost the chapter running-heads required for reliable verse-keying). Some Greek quoted in the Hebrews volume is imperfectly rendered by the OCR.