Imago Dei, Part 1

And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

1 John 2:28-3:3

This passage deals with the divine paternity test. Have you ever heard someone say, “That boy looks just like his father! He walks like him, smiles like him, talks like him and even coughs like him.” In nature children bear their parents’ image, and this is equally true in spiritual life. The Bible speaks of two families-the family of God and the family of the devil. Those who are born of God bear the likeness of God, and those who are of the devil bear the likeness of the devil. Christians are people who have been re-created in the image of God. If you are a child of God, you will bear God’s image.

We must realize that God is not the heavenly Father of all the people of the world. He is the Creator of all, but he is the Father only of those who are born of the Holy Spirit and do what is righteous. This point is clearly seen in Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees in John 8:38-44:

[Jesus said,] “I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.”

“Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did. As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the things your own father does.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

In 1 John 3:10 we read, “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are.” Thus, there are two families with two different types of children who have two different types of behavior. In this passage, 1 John 2:28-3:3, the apostle John tells us who Christians are and what their characteristics are.

Beloved of God

As children of God, we are beloved by God the Father. This is the chief reason for all that has happened to us. When we grasp this truth, we will not be confused or miserable or fearful any more. We are beloved by the Father!

In 1 John 3:1 we read, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” The first word in chapter 3, verse 1, is an imperative-Idete. Something wonderful has happened, and so John commands us, “Behold! Pay attention! Something great has happened; fix your mind on it!” What are we to give such close attention to? This fact that we are beloved of the Father.

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us,” John writes. In the Greek it is potapên agapên, “what great love.” Now, that word potapên actually means “of what country.” It introduces the idea of something that is foreign tous. In other words, the love of God is not of this world but from heaven. The source of it is the heart of God.

The use of potapên also implies that this love is of a certain quality. It was used to describe Jesus Christ when he brought calm to the Sea of Galilee in Matthew 8:27. There his disciples exclaimed, “What sort of a man is this!” In other words, Jesus was equal to them and yet so different.

Potapên also points to the idea of quantity. In Mark 13:1 the disciples said to Jesus, “Look, Teacher, what massive stones!” as they looked at the stones of Herod’s great temple. In the same way, John uses potapên to make the point that this love from heaven is of a quality and quantity far different from what we are used to.

Finally, John is saying that God’s love is so massive that it is incomprehensible. No matter how hard we try, it is always beyond our understanding, yet God commands us to understand it. In Ephesians 3:18 Paul prays that we “may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” We are supposed to understand it, but then Paul says it is beyond our understanding. We can never figure it all out. It is so out of this world. It is of divine origin, of a different quality, and massive.

That is why John gives his command: Idete! Behold! In other words, he is commanding us to make a conclusion based on the great love of God for us.

The Love of God

We must understand that God’s love is not like our love. Rather than being dominated by emotion, God’s love is dominated by intellect and will. That is why in Ephesians 1:5 God speaks about loving us and choosing us “in accordance with the good pleasure of his will,” meaning that God’s determined to save us sinners based on his understanding and will, not on his emotions.

We must understand this truth. Romans 5 says that God loved us, not when we were righteous, but when we were powerless, ungodly sinners-enemies of God, in other words. That is why intellect and will dominate the Christian concept of love and results in saving actions in behalf of miserable sinners. There was nothing in us that deserved the outpouring of heavenly love that we read about in Romans 5:5. There was nothing in us that deserved the great love demonstrated by Jesus Christ, as John writes in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

The cross is not an emotional thing; rather, it is a clear demonstration of the mind and purpose of God. God sent his Son into a state of humiliation that he may die as a criminal on the cross in behalf of us. That is why we read in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” and in Romans 8:32 we read, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

Notice, 1 John 3:1 does not say that God loves us, but that God lavished his love upon us. In other words, God has given his love to us as a gift. In the Greek the word is dedôken in the perfect tense. He has invested his massive, heavenly, other-worldly love in us, and he will never take it back. It is ours permanently. That is why we must not wonder whether God loves us or not. If you are a child of God, then God is with you and he has given you his love And if you read Ephesians 1, you will discover that he gave us this love from eternity and it will be with us through eternity. I hope we will be ashamed of our defeatism and worry when we recognize this great divine investment, the incomprehensibly great love of God. PGM That is what John is declaring: We are beloved-beloved in eternity past, present, and in future eternity. There is no time we shall not be loved by God.

This is the great love that Jeremiah speaks of in Jeremiah 31:3: “The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt. . . .'”

I pray that we can grasp the truth of God’s everlasting love for us! When we do so, all our confusion, misery, and questioning will be cured. We are beloved of the Father!

Born of God

The second point we want to consider is that we have been born of God. In 1 John 2:29 John gives a true paternity test: “If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.” In the Greek it is ex autou gegennêtai, “born of him.”

“Of him” points to the source. Who is the source? God. If we are born of God, we will behave in a certain way because we have his characteristics and nature imprinted in our soul and spirit.

If we are Christians, we are not only God’s creatures but we are also his tekna, his children. What does it mean to be a child of God? The Bible tells us that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. It means we share the nature and characteristics of our Father in heaven.

Notice the perfect tense of the verb gegennêtai. That means we can never be unborn. We are always beloved children of God and we will always remain so. It is the permanent condition of God’s people. Some people may not like such security. They prefer to be nervous and questioning all the time. But I like not having to worry about my relationship with God. When I am secure in the knowledge that I am born of God and that this relationship is permanent, then I can spend my time worshiping God and doing his will.

John writes, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” Who called us? God, and his call is effectual. This idea of calling means that he owns us and names us as his own. I don’t care what anyone else calls me. What I care about is that a Father in heaven is calling me and saying that I am his child. That is all that matters.

This is not mere calling; it is effectual calling. We are told that God says we are children of God, and so we are! When is this new relationship effective? It is effective now, while we are still in this world. John is not saying that some day we are going to be children of God, but that we are children of God here and now. Paul refers to this also in Romans 8:17 when he says that if we are children, we are also heirs of God and heirs of glory.

How to Know If You Are Born of God

How do we know that we are children of God? There are various ways to know, including the following:

1. We will live as children of God. In Galatians 2:20 Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ, and no longer I live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Apparently Paul knew that he was a child of God by experience. He says, “I live,” meaning “I live this heavenly life, the life of a child of God, not in the future in heaven, but here and now in this world.” This experience of Paul was written down for our understanding so that we can also find out whether we are born of God. Are we living in this world by faith in the Son of God?
2. The testimony of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 8:16 Paul writes, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” If we are born of God, there will be an internal witness of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will testify to our spirit that we are children of God. Oh, what a great source of comfort that is!
3. The Spirit of adoption. In Romans 8:15 Paul writes, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.'” Do you see the relationship? Because of this new life, we recognize God right away as our heavenly Father. The Spirit of adoption gives us understanding of this relationship by witnessing to our spirits and causing us to cry, “Abba, Father,” to God.
4. Consciousness of sin. Those who are not born of God are not worried about sin. They have no consciousness of it. But the people of God are conscious of their sin, as we read in Romans 7 and other places. This consciousness will increase throughout their lifetimes, so that they will say with Paul, as he did near the end of his life, “I am chief of sinners.” Being conscious of our failures and sins against God Almighty, then, is another sign that we are God’s children.
5. Rejection by the world. In 1 John 3:1 we read, “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” If the world does not like you as a Christian, it is a sure indication that you no longer belong to this world but to the family of God. Always fear the approval of the world! If you have the approval of the world, there may be something wrong with you. But if the world hates you for Christ’s sake, then you may draw the conclusion that you are a child of God.
6. A desire for God. If you are a child of God, you will desire God and spiritual things. In Psalm 42 we read, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.” What are you panting after? What are you desiring? Is it the smell of the leather in a new Lexus 430, or some other worldly possession or experience, or is it God? If your greatest desire is God, you may deduce that you are born of him.
7. Love for God and others. The final reason is that as God’s children, we love one another. Someone told me that he recently went to help his mother move. This woman goes to a good church with right doctrine, but when she was moving, no one from the church came to help her. Her son had to fly from here to another state to do the job.

If we claim to be Christians but don’t love God and his people, our claim may be false. If we love God, we will necessarily also love those who are born of him.

What About You?

What about you? Do you say you are a Christian, but you are confused and miserable? If so, God is calling you to the greatest intellectual pursuit you can find: the task of apprehending to the degree you can the massiveness and the otherworldliness of the love of God demonstrated on the cross. Know that God has invested his love in you and he will never take it back. Know that he caused you to be born again so that you are his child now and forever, and he is not going to undo that relationship. Even if you sin, he will chasten and discipline you, but he will never undo what he did in making us children of God.

I pray that God would help us to appreciate his truth so that we may be strong, steady, bold, and confident, as we live our lives in this world. And if you have not trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I pray that you will do so today, that you may be eternally saved. Amen.