Imago Dei, Part 2

1 John 2:28-3:3
P. G. Mathew | Sunday, May 13, 2001
Copyright © 2001, P. G. Mathew

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

The Bible tells us that Christians are adopted into the family of God. Just as a child reflects the likeness of his father, so Christians reflect the likeness of their heavenly Father. In this study we want to examine the question of how we know we are children of God; thus, I have titled it, “The Paternity Test,” or, if we want to use a Latin title, “Imago Dei,” which means “the image of God.”

The Bible says there is a difference between the creation of man and that of every other creature. Because God created man in his own image, man is superior to all creatures, though inferior to God. This means man shares some of the attributes of God. So we can say that man is personal, man is rational, man is creative, man is able to govern, man has the ability to communicate in language, man has the ability to enter into relationship, and man is able to love.

The first man, Adam, was created morally upright. He was created in this way so that he could reflect and represent God in all his ways and have fellowship with him. But when Adam fell, his moral uprightness was lost, not only for him, but for all his descendants. Since Adam all men by nature are born enemies of God, spiritually dead, and incapable of having fellowship with God. The image of God in man was not destroyed by the Fall-man is still man-but it was distorted. That is why we read in the Scriptures that unregenerate people have their understanding darkened, their emotions perverted, their wills enslaved, and their consciences distorted. Unregenerate natural men retain the image of God structurally, in the sense that they remain human beings, but functionally they are slaves to sin.

So God is the Creator of all, but he is the heavenly Father only of those who are born of God. Such people become children of God by adoption, and throughout their lives the image of God is progressively restored in them. Regeneration begins the process of restoring God’s moral image in them, but it will only be brought to completion when they are glorified at the second coming of Christ.

Since the Fall, there has been only one man who perfectly mirrored the image of God in his life. That man is the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. But there is a day coming when all who have been born again shall be made like him. That is what the apostle John is writing about in this passage.

Obeying Our Heavenly Father

In our last study we learned that as God’s elect, all of us are beloved of God. “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!” John exclaimed in 1 John 3:1. Additionally, we learned that because of this great love, God caused us to be born of him. As God’s children, we begin to reflect God’s character in our lives. Though once the devil was our father, now our Father is God. As children of God, we love our heavenly Father and walk in his ways.

This brings us to the third point in our study, which is behavior. Those who are beloved of God and born of God will behave like God. If we are true Christians, we will demonstrate that we have been born of God by our behavior, which will be different from that of the world. Because we have experienced God’s great love for us, we will obey him and walk in his ways.

John speaks several times about this obedience. In 1 John 4:19 we read, “We love because he first loved us.” In John 14:15 John quotes Jesus, who said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” Jesus repeats this idea several times, especially in John 14:21 and 23. Our response to our Father’s great love should be obedience from the heart.

In Romans 1:5 Paul says that he “received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.” So the important thing is not a profession of faith but the obedience of faith. In Romans 6:17 he writes to the Roman believers, “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” Paul is speaking about obedience performed out of love. It is not forced obedience; rather, it is obedience freely rendered to God in response to his great love that he has freely bestowed upon us.

The Test of Abiding in God’s Word

A righteous heavenly Father will produce righteous people. Thus, to determine if we are God’s children we must ask ourselves: Are we righteous in our behavior? John gives us some tests to help us determine if we are born of God.

The first test is found in 1 John 2:24. John writes, “See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.” If we are God’s children, we will abide in the gospel. What is the heart of the gospel? Thy God reigneth!

What does it mean to let God’s word remain in us? It means to believe it, love it, and do it. To have God’s word abide in us means to have God’s word regulate and control us. In Colossians 3:16 we read, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. . . .” The word of God-not the ideas of the world, not philosophy, not psychology, not paganism, not culture, not other pagan religions-must regulate our lives.

Having the word abide in us and having us abide in the word means the same thing. Let me ask you: Do you believe that the Scriptures are the very word of God-infallible and authoritative for faith and life? In them God rebukes us, instructs us, corrects us and trains us in righteousness.

When the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they heard the word of God but did not believe it, as we read in Psalm 95. Because they became stiff-necked and stubborn, they were destroyed, and we are warned not to let that happen to us. These people did not enter into rest, the salvation that God offered them, because they rejected the word of God. We can say that they treated God with contempt.

If I am a child of God, it will be my passion to know the word of God. We read of such passion in Psalm 19 and Psalm 119. Jesus Christ himself learned the word of God. The Bible tells us he grew in wisdom and loved the word of God.

Jesus and the Word of God

As we said before, Jesus Christ is the only man since the fall of Adam who reflected the image of God in all its purity. What was the attitude of Jesus toward the word of God? When he was tempted by the devil, he said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). Jesus Christ was regulated by the word of God. He not only memorized it but applied it to his own life. So he told the devil, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.'”

Man is not merely a physical being. Yes, we get concerned and worked up about our little problems. But when we analyze them, we understand that they are usually problems of physical existence, whether they concern food or clothing or sickness or whatever else. We can be consumed by these problems. But Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Like Jesus, we are to live by the word of God. We have the capacity to do it, for we are not just animals but made in God’s image.

In John 4:34 Jesus gives us the application of Deuteronomy 8:3. He told his disciples, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” Jesus was saying, “You see, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. I receive strength, just like I would from physical food, by knowing and doing the will of God from my heart. My food, my delight, my nourishment is in knowing, doing, and finishing the will of God for my life.”

We find similar statements of Jesus throughout the gospels. In John 5:30 Jesus, who fully reflected the image of God, said, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” In John 6:38 Jesus said, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me.” This is what John was referring to when he said, “See that what you heard from the beginning remains in you.” We must abide in the word, be governed by the word, move in the realm of the word, and never go outside of it. And in John 8:29 Jesus made this statement: “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” Here again we see Jesus Christ fully devoted to knowing and doing the will of God.

The prophet Isaiah spoke of the obedience of Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 50:4-5 we read, “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back.” There it is-the total dedication of the man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to know and do from the heart the will of God.

Vital Union with Christ Results in Fruit

In John 15:3 Jesus told his disciples, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” As the word of God remains in us, it cleanses us. We also find reference to this in John 17:17, where Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”

In John 15:4 Jesus said, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” Then in verse 5 we read, “I am the vine; you are the branches.” In that statement Jesus was speaking about the correspondence of nature: those who are righteous will produce righteous offspring. Thus, if we are God’s children, we are given the nature of God. What God loves, we will love; what God hates, we will hate. There is correspondence of nature because of new birth.

Jesus continues, “If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. . .” Jesus is speaking about the fruit of the Spirit. Elsewhere we read that the first commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourself. Love here is not defined as some funny feeling, but actions based on this great compelling motivation of the fruit of love.

Then Jesus tells his disciples, “Apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Jesus is speaking about false Christians who have no correspondence in nature with the heavenly Father. Such people will be in the church, but they are false and will not behave as God wants them to. There is no image of God being restored in the lives of such people.

But for those who are true Christians, Jesus continues, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, then you can ask anything you want and it will be given you.” In other words, even our prayer is governed by divine revelation, the word of God. Those who are governed by the word of God in their lives will pray according to his will and it will be done.

So Jesus is telling his disciples of their connection with him: “I am the vine; you are the branches.” Those with such a vital union with God and correspondence of nature with him will bear fruit, more fruit, and much fruit. They will delight in hearing the word of God. They will love the word of God and do it, no matter what the cost.

Known by Their Fruit

Our behavior reveals who our father is. In Matthew 7:16-17 Jesus said of those who claim to be Christians, “By their fruit you will recognize them.” This is the paternity test, or the test of imago Dei, of whether or not the image of God is reflected in us. Jesus continued, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” The answer is no, because they are different. “Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” In verse 20 he concludes, “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”

In the same chapter we are told that some people will come on the last day and say, “Lord, Lord. . . ,” intending to be granted entrance into heaven. What does Jesus say to them? “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” These people are false professors, who may confess Christ as Lord, but do not obey him. Jesus will tell them, “Your life demonstrates you belong to the devil, not to the heavenly Father. How can you say that you belong to me? Depart from me, you workers of iniquity!”

In 1 John 2:29 we read, “If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.” The phrase “what is right” means the will of God as revealed in God’s word. The text tells us that it is a continual action of doing what is right. So we could say, “Everyone who is continually doing the will of God has been born of him.” We are also told that this doing the will of God is not the condition for new birth, but the evidence of it. In other words, the text is not saying that we become children of God by obedience, but that we are now doing the will of God based on a past action. What is that action? In the Greek it is ex autou gegennêtai, which means, “of him you have been born and remain [children of God].” In other words, we who are children of God and have been given divine nature will, with that nature, love the word of God our Father and do what the word tells us to do regularly and continually.

In Ephesians 2 we read about this radical transformation of a sinner to a saint. In verse 1 we read,”As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” A sinner is immersed in sin and transgression, so much so that he is described by his transgression and called a son of disobedience. In other words, disobedience is the father of a sinner; thus, a sinner disobeys. So Paul writes, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world, and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” The distortion of the image of God, especially in the moral realm, is the result of the Fall. Unregenerate men, although they can be great scientists and politicians, are, nevertheless, under the rule of the evil one.

In verse 3 Paul goes on, saying, “All of us also lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” But then, Paul says, something happened: “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ. . . .” (verses 4-5). There was a radical transformation, and in verse 10 Paul writes, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has foreordained that we should walk in them.” Do you see the difference? People who were dead in trespasses and sins, objects of wrath by nature and governed by demons, are now new creations of God.

Thus, there is only one way to find out whether or not we pass the divine paternity test: There must be radical, fundamental change in our behavior.

In 1 John 3:3 we read, “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure.” In the Greek the verb is hagnizei eauton, which is a present active indicative, meaning, “he purifies himself daily, continually, moment by moment.” It is a present reality that a child born of God will live a holy life. It is a moral responsibility which requires effort. The child of God must strive to be holy in cooperation with the Holy Spirit because sanctification is not automatic.

I was talking with someone who went to the dentist and found out he had several cavities. What should this person do? He has to eat right, brush his teeth, and floss. Is this something God does for him? No. He must put forth the effort himself. No one else can do it for him.

In the same way, God is not going to pray through us or study the Bible for us or obey for us. If we have been born of God, we ourselves must put forth serious effort to live a Christian life. But it is through all that striving, that effort, that dedication, that commitment, that zeal that we will demonstrate we have been born of God.

The apostle Paul understood this clearly, as he writes in Philippians 2:12-15:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed-not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence-continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe. . . .

Paul says we must continue to work out our salvation. We know what it means to work out physically. I work out every morning. I get up and get onto the bicycle, put it up on a certain speed, and make myself exercise for a certain amount of time. Yes, it is a struggle, but after I pray and tell myself, “I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengtheneth me,” I keep on biking until my time is up.

Working out is hard work. People want to be in a fit condition, but they don’t want to do anything about it. They want an easy way to fitness and, therefore, they look for some medical means that automatically makes them fit.

No, Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” There must be cooperation with the Holy Spirit and continuous effort on our part. We must diligently study the word of God. We must believe the word of God. We must obey the word of God. We must pray seriously to God. We must render strict obedience to God.

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Paul says. But then he says something else, which gives us great encouragement. You see, I know that God wants me to work out physically, and because I know God is for me in this effort, I just get on the bike and do it. In the same way, we know God wants us to work out our salvation. So Paul writes, ” for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” God works in us and we work out. The motivation, the impelling power to help us work out our salvation is that is God in us and for us. We are his children! So we say, “We can do all things through Jesus Christ, who strengtheneth us.”

Brothers and sisters, holy living is hard work! It is a fight. It is effort. It is striving. It is agony. We find an example of someone who lived a holy life in the book of Colossians. In Colossians 4:12-13 Paul speaks about a fellow named Epaphras, saying, “Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus sends greetings.” Now, Paul had stayed with Epaphras, and during that time he was observing him. He saw him at night, he saw him in the daytime, he saw him in the morning and at noontime. And after all this close observation of Epaphras’ life, Paul writes about their brother Epaphras: “Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you.” The word in the Greek is agonizomai, from which we get the word “agonize.” The apostle Paul himself was impressed as he observed Epaphras agonizing, wrestling in prayer continually for the church at Colosse.

True Christianity means agony, fighting for something, putting forth great effort, working hard. So Epaphras was always “wrestling in prayer.”

What about you? Do you wrestle in prayer for anyone, or do you just fall asleep and say, “Oh, God knows and understands all things. It’s okay if I don’t pray much.” If so, I urge you to change. As God’s children, we are given the right to go to him and pray, but such earnest prayer will be hard work. PGM So Paul tells the Colossians that Epaphras was always “wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and for all those in Laodicea and Hierapolis.”

We must agonize, wrestle, work hard. God is not going to brush our teeth and floss them for us every morning, and he is not going to take care of our sanctification automatically either. Oh, no. Sanctification is hard work. We bring glory to God by behaving in accordance with our new nature as children of God.

In 2 Peter 1:3-4 we read, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” By nature we were objects of wrath, but now, through the gospel, we have become participants in the divine nature. As Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches,” and “If you abide in me and my word abides in you, you will bear fruit, more fruit, much fruit to the glory of God the Father.”

The Importance of Obedience

It matters how we behave. I hope we will examine ourselves and see if we are living in accordance with God’s word. The great Puritan, Dr. John Owen, wrote one book on temptation and one on mortification. These works have been put together in a digest called What Every Christian Needs to Know. If you are born of God, then you will delight in this book, not only intellectually, but spiritually. You will apply the truth that is found in the Scriptures and engage in the hard work of sanctification. You will learn how you should not nourish and nurse sin, but put it to death by the Spirit of the living God. And when you do that, you will be demonstrating to the whole world and to the church that you have been born of God, that God is restoring his image in your life, and that one day you will be like the Lord Jesus Christ. Our destiny is to be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

I pray that God will have mercy upon us and help us in our behavior. May we love God’s word and have it abide in us. May we be governed by it so that we will say with Jesus, “My food is to do the will of God and to finish it.” May God help us all in the days ahead to demonstrate that we are his children who bear his image through our obedience to his word. First John is written to help us to determine whether we are children of the heavenly Father. One test is whether we behave the way God wants us to behave-whether we obey God’s word.

We must realize that in modern times instant, total, full, heartfelt obedience is considered to be a shameful thing. For example, if you ask your son to do something and he runs to do it, such a response will be considered as shameful. Modern people are not supposed to obey so easily. “What type of a man or woman are you?” people will ask if you demonstrate such obedience. You are supposed to dodge and delay and negotiate to demonstrate you are somebody. Immediate, instant, and total obedience means you are a nobody, according to the world.

But Jesus Christ obeyed from the heart. He was not ashamed to humble himself and obey his heavenly Father. So if we obey God from the heart instantly, fully, the world will look upon us and treat us with contempt, but God will honor us. “Those who honor me, I will honor,” we read in 1 Samuel 2:30. The husband will say something, and all of a sudden the wife will run to do it. Can you imagine that happening today? Someone will say, “Hey, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any backbone? What type of woman are you? What type of a wife are you?” We must resist that type of cultural decay.

How important is obedience in a Christian’s life? In 1 John 2:29 we read, “If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.” The heavenly Father is righteous and those who are born of him will regularly and continually practice righteousness. This is a very sure test to establish paternity. If we are practicing righteousness, we may conclude that we are born of God, and we can have that assurance even at the hour of our death.

Our Blessed Hope

In 1 John 3:3 we read, “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure.” Everybody should have something to look forward to. Studies show that if we don’t have hope, our lives will be miserable.

What is your hope? We must examine this question very carefully. What is the blessed hope of all Christians? It is the appearing of our God and Savior Jesus Christ at his second coming.

Some people’s hope resides in their children or their spouses or their government or in their wealth. The Bible speaks about having hope, not in something of this world, but in God. If you are a child of God, your hope will be in nothing else but in the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who will rescue us from the coming wrath. He will come to save those who are waiting for him.

Purifying Ourselves

What are we as Christians hoping in? We must examine ourselves, digging deep into our consciousness. Is it the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body? If it is not, it should be.

So John writes “Everyone who has this hope in him,” meaning in Jesus Christ, purifies himself, even as he is pure.” In the Greek John uses the word hagnizei, which is from the same word we have “saints” or “holy ones.” This is what we are called. But we also must make ourselves holy. In other words, we are serious people whose passion it is to cleanse us from all filthiness of flesh and of the spirit.

Consecrating God’s People

We find this word used in Exodus 19 in reference to the coming of God on Mount Sinai. The Israelite people were preparing for the greatest reality in the whole universe: God was coming to his people. God instructed them to make proper preparation for him to come, and in Exodus 19:9 we read, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to come. . . .'” God is all transcendent and doesn’t have to come to us at all. In fact, he can wipe us out, which is what we deserve. But he has not done that. Instead he tells his people, “I am going to come.” Isn’t that wonderful? God comes into the midst of his people. “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them,” Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 18:20. God has come to us in Jesus Christ. Not only is God transcendent, but he is also immanent: that is the glory of incarnation. God became man in Jesus Christ to save us.

So we read in Exodus 19:9-11, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you.’ Then Moses told the Lord what the people had said. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow.'” The people were to be made holy, in other words.

“‘Have them wash their clothes,'” the Lord continued. Who should do the washing? The people! They themselves must put forth effort to cleanse themselves, in other words, just as we read in 1 John 3:3, “He who has this hope in him purifies himself.” Yes, when we are saved, God sanctifies us by his blood, but we must work hard to purify ourselves. If we are true people of God, we have a part to play in the process of our sanctification.

The Lord continued, “Consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day.” What was going to happen on the third day? God was going to come on Mount Sinai. “Be clean! Be consecrated!” God was saying, “because on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.” And in verse 14 we read: “After Moses had gone down the mountain to the people, he consecrated them, and they washed their clothes.”

This external, ceremonial activity pointed to something internal. It is similar to circumcision, which also is an external thing. Thousands and thousands of circumcisions done throughout the world, but when you study circumcision in the Bible, you find that this external activity symbolizes internal cleansing. In the same way, we must understand that the washing of clothes found in Exodus 19 is an external, ceremonial action by the people which points to internal, moral purity.

Moses “consecrated them, and they washed their clothes. Then he said to the people, ‘Prepare yourselves for the third day.'” Here again we find the idea that we must work hard to be sanctified. “Prepare yourselves, Moses was saying. Clean your home. Clean your clothes. Make everything clean for the third day.” There is going to be a “third day,” the day God comes, which, for us will be the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. On that day, the Bible tells us, Jesus will come a second time from heaven, not to bear sin, but to save those who are waiting for him. Every Christian must wait for the third day. We don’t know when that day is. In fact, Jesus tells us that not even the Son does. Only the Father knows. But he is coming.

What must we do to prepare for the coming of Christ? We must engage in serious washing of clothes, making preparations, cleaning up. A bride makes her wedding dress clean. That is what Christian life is all about.

Then God told the people, “Abstain from sexual relations.” Again, this is an external thing. Why did the people have to abstain? God was coming. It is serious business. There must not be anything unclean because something of great significance was going to happen on the third day.

The people did all these things in view of God’s coming. What if a person among the Israelites refused to comply? Suppose someone said, “I am not going to prepare myself.” What would happen to such a person who did not want to honor God? That person would be destroyed by the holiness of God.

We Must Purify Ourselves

Every child of God must exercise personal effort in the process of sanctification. We must do so daily, perpetually, according to the tense of the verb. In other words, holy living must be our lifestyle, Monday through Sunday because, as children of God, we are always looking forward to our blessed hope as Christians: the personal, physical, public, glorious, powerful second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Does this knowledge grip you and cause you to live a holy life? It should. Holy living is the lifestyle of the children of God. Notice, holiness is not a gift that we can receive and then say to others, “Oh, I am holy now.” We oppose this view of perfectionism. Yes, there are people who would say, “I am perfect,” but the text tells us a true Christian cannot say that. Sanctification will be an ongoing effort until the coming of God, at which time he will make us perfect. The Christian lifestyle is holy living, which requires perpetual personal effort.

This word hagnizei is also used in John 11:55, where we read, “When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover.” Here again we see a lot of effort being made.

Sanctification is hard work. In the story of the wedding in Cana, we read that there were a number of big water pots. Why were they there? When people came in from the marketplace or from a journey, they were considered unclean. Thus, when people came to this wedding, they had to wash themselves. We find the same idea in mosques today. When you go to a mosque, you will see there are fountains outside. People must take off their shoes and go wash their feet before going into the mosque to pray.

Holiness requires personal effort. Before the Passover, Jews would come from all over Israel to Jerusalem for ceremonial washings. That is what John means when he says, “Everyone who has this hope in Jesus Christ purifies himself.”

The Paternity Test

Our behavior indicates who our father is. We must not say God is our father if he is not. It is a high crime if it is not true. It is like someone coming to me and saying, “Hi, Dad.” I would say, “Who are you?” “Well, you are my father.” “What do you mean, ‘You are my father’? You committed a high crime. I am not your father.”

In 1 John 3:10 John uses this argument to distinguish between children of God and children of the devil: “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God.”

Anyone who is not doing what is righteous, who is not abiding in the word, who is not purifying himself even as he is pure, is not a child of the heavenly Father. Rather, that person is a child of the devil. That is why we must examine ourselves seriously and see if we are walking in obedience to Christ.

The Standard of Holiness

What is the standard of holiness unto which we must strive? In the book of Proverbs we read that “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25). We may say, “Well, I think I am doing all right. My father said I was. My uncle and my wife said I am doing much better than everybody else.” What is God’s standard of holiness? “even as he is pure.” The standard is Jesus Christ himself.

The doctrine of perfectionism can be easily destroyed by this one verse. Can anyone say, “I am pure as Jesus Christ was pure”? We can speak about our purity only when we reduce the standard. But the standard of holiness is “even as he [Jesus Christ] is pure,” because in him the image of God is perfectly manifested. Jesus lived a perfectly holy life. He said, “My food is to do the will of God and to finish it.” Elsewhere he said, “I do always that which pleases him,” meaning God the Father. He said, “Can anyone convict me of sin?”

In Ephesians 5:25 we read that husbands are to love their wives ” just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Again, Jesus is the standard. We should never try to reduce that standard to manageable proportions and pretend that we have obeyed God. That is why we cannot achieve perfection in this life. Sanctification is always an ongoing process because the standard is very, very high.

In 1 John 2:6 we find an example of the type of Christianity we should practice. John writes, “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” It is the same idea. It is a divine requirement that if we claim to live in God, we must walk as Jesus did. So the standard is not your mother or your uncle. It is not even your preacher. The standard certainly is not the world. The standard is Jesus Christ himself.

I hope this standard will be written in your mind. In 1 Peter 2:21 we read, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps.” When we keep the standard of God in mind, we will come to some humility. We will pray, “O God, the truth is, I did not do as you wanted me to do. Help me, O God, to purify myself, even as he is pure. Help me to love as Christ loved. Help me to submit as Christ submitted to the Father.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, let us examine ourselves and see whether or not our behavior is the behavior of a true child of God. If it is not, I hope we will draw some conclusions. Let us not wrongfully say God is our Father when he is not. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time did that. They said they were Abraham’s children and God was their father even while they crucified Jesus Christ, thinking they were performing a service to God. This shows how terribly wrong people can be.

May God help us to examine ourselves in the light of his word to know that our behavior is in accordance with the nature of God. Amen.