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Who are you?

I John 3: 1 – 6

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 26 June 2005

SOMETIMES I joke that, if I am unsure whether I really exist, I check my drivers’ licence. But, with so much bureaucratic bungling these days, my licence was probably a mistake, anyway.

There is one truth they never put on your licence, yet it is the defining truth in your life — if you are a true Christian believer.

We should all have this truth burnt there permanently: “I am a child of God!”

Male, female; young, old; slave, free; Jew, Gentile: it makes no difference: in Christ, you are a son of God.

We all have ways of defining who we are. Some people do it through their work, others through their relationships, others through humour or sport or intellectual ability.

We need to know who we are. If you don’t know who you are, you won’t know what you should do in life. Identity creates activity.

Who are you?

You might define yourself by a role. You are a worker in the office or factory, a wife or a husband, a mother or a father. You are a specialist or a generalist. We all have roles,and look to our roles for a sense of who we are.

I told a neighbour last night that a girl in her late teens spoke to me recently about some of the pressures of being, in effect, a housewife, together with struggling to find out what her own life is about, and coping with all the other things you do in your late teens.

He said, “Was this one of your pastoral counselling sessions?”

I said, “Not really: she‘s someone I met on the train and was chatting to.”

I had to explain that this young woman was not exactly a stranger, either, as we had chatted on previous occasions as well.

But the point is that who I am and the role I have define how I interact with people. It might have been an informal setting on a train platform, but I was still doing what a pastor does.

In the same way, if any of you happens to find yourself in hospital, and I come to visit you, you can breathe easily, that I will not pull out my Swiss Army knife and try to perform surgery on you. I might be in a hospital with a sharp knife, but I know I am there as a pastor, not as a surgeon!

But let’s go beyond roles today, and focus on being: who are you in Christ?

I read an article once by a pastor who found it very hard to feel comfortable as a hospital chaplain, working in the emergency ward.

When they brought in someone with serious injuries, the entire medical team would swing into action. Doctors, nurses, social workers — everyone had a role and a function. There’d be a coordinating doctor, a surgeon, an anaesthetist, several nurses, and everyone knew exactly what he or she had to do. Their roles defined their functions.

But what is a chaplain’s role? He wasn’t sure. Was he there to preach the gospel, or was he there to hold a hand? Should he even be there, with no defined job to do?

Then, one day, it struck him. He wasn’t there to have a role or a task. He was just there to be. His job was to concentrate on the patient and be there for the patient.

He realised that all these other people were focused on their roles and their tasks. They were measuring and assessing, they were operating and medicating, and they had little time to think about whether the patient was afraid or angry, whether the patient had concerns for family members, whether the patient had a faith to nurture or needed to find faith in the hour of need.

You and I have our roles and our functions, but we need to discover the supreme fact in life: who we are.

And, as the Bible says,

I Jhn 3:2 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.

Sometimes it is a bad idea to focus too closely on details in the Bible. It’s a failing of nearly every cult on this earth. They take some detail and build a theology on it. And the more they feel the need to prop that theology up, the more they have to deny reality to do it.

But sometimes a word makes a vast difference to everything.

And, in that passage, the word, “are” is such a word.

Dear friends, now we are children of God...

There is no, “we were, but no longer are” in this. Nor is there any, “we shall be, but we aren‘t yet.” It is very plain and obvious: now we are children of God.

Whatever we were is over and done with, because Jesus says,

Behold, I am making everything new!

And whatever we will be

...has not yet been made known...

But, right here and now, we are children of God!

And, as John points out in his letter, this has consequences.

We can read on a little further than the passage we heard a few minutes ago.

3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

1JN 3:4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. ⁵ But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. ⁶ No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

^3:7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. ⁸ He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. ⁹ No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. ¹⁰ 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; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

^3:11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

You can see straight away that being children of God has ethical implications and it has spiritual implications and it has relational implications.

If you are a child of God who lives in hope of growing to an exact replica of Jesus, you will aim to live a pure life and not keep on sinning.

As a teenager, I felt rather defeated by this passage, because I was aware of my sin, and felt that I might not really be a child of God, because I did keep on sinning.

And I also read George Fox’s Journal, and Fox said that Christians could be sinlessly perfect. If you disagreed with him, he said that you were pleading a case for sin.

But I am sure that both I and George Fox had misread John.

John is a practical theologian. He knows what goes on in churches. He knew that people come into churches who are gross sinners, lacking any apparent will to change.

I knew a young fellow who claimed to be a Christian. He enjoyed going to Fellowship activities and sometimes told us all about something interesting the minister had said on Sunday night.

But mainly he told us about his reckless driving and about near–accidents he had caused and managed to get out of, and about his sexual adventures. He was into sex outside marriage, which the Bible condemns as fornication, and he was into sneaky sex behind his girlfriend’s back, which is getting into the area of adultery as well, if you think about it.

One of the non–Christians who knew him told him, “Stuart and Peter are Christians, but you aren’t.” Stuart was a very humble and sincere young man who worked with us.

That is the kind of thing John is talking about. And it’s not just reckless disregard of others or extramarital sex. It is love of self, love of money, boastfulness, an unforgiving spirit, abusiveness and all the rest.

It’s repetitive and unrepentant behaviour that John is talking about. We all fall, we all have weaknesses and failure–prone areas. But we seek change and we purify ourselves as Christ is pure. That’s the difference.

This also means that we are in a battle which has a spiritual dimension. John calls us, ”children of God,” and then tells us,

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

We are in the same battle as Jesus is in, because we are all children of the same Father, and our family resemblance is to the one and only Son, the only–begotten of the Father.

I have long believed that one of the failings of our church is that we have not taken this spiritual battle sufficiently seriously.

This church was built over 100 years ago on tobacco money. It was a hotbed of pride and had little room for the poor or for people who didn’t fit in.

Yes, it had its good times, too. God did great things through the pastor, Mr Wingfield, and several other leaders.

But there was also a paedophile loose among us at one time, before any of us came here; and many girls were abused and hurt, and I am not sure we ever really dealt with that. Certainly, the church didn’t deal with it at the time.

Satan gets a foothold when God’s people fail to tackle him head–on, or when they fail to deal with the garbage that he feeds on.

Now, none of the original players is still in the church, and maybe we can no longer uncover the facts, but when we fail to deal with Satan on one level, he uses that to gain ground on other levels.

We are in a battle, and we have to fight it as children of God!

And the third area is relational, because

^3:11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

Families are supposed to be built on love. While they are not all as love–filled as they should be, we all know that there is something seriously wrong with a family lacking love.

And what could be more wrong than a supposed family of God’s children who don‘t love one another?

Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

Juan Carlos Ortiz once preached a very short sermon. It was so short that he preached it twice.

He was pastor of the biggest Assemblies of God church in Argentina, and he realised that they didn’t love one another. So he preached a one–sentence sermon: “Little children, love one another.” And he sat down.

Everyone sat, wondering what he was going to do next, so he stood again, and repeated,

“Little children, love one another,” and sat down again.

Gradually, some of the people got the idea, and began talking to each other, and some began praying together, and great changes came from that simple message.

In the early 1700s, Graf Nicholaus von Zinzendorf welcomed Czech refugees onto his estates in East Germany.

These Moravians were divided and weak, and Zinzendorf told their pastors to preach the cross and emphasise love.

On 13 August, 1722, revival broke out among them and welded them into a unity based on love for God and Christ, and love for each other.

They discovered what it means to be children of God.

The Bible sometimes uses the term, “children of God,” and sometimes “sons of God.”

In Galatians we read,

GAL 3:26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, ²⁷ for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise

A child of God is God’s offspring by his or her nature. A son of God is God’s offspring by his or her status.

A child is male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free.

A son has a position under law.

In ancient times, sons inherited where a daughter didn’t always inherit, sons fought alongside their fathers, daughters and slaves didn’t, and so on. So Paul couldn’t say, “You are all children of God.” and then talk about the end of distinctions based on race, social standing, or gender, because the idea of a child doesn’t exclude distinctions, but the idea of a son does exclude distinctions. A prince was the son of a king; a princess was useful to marry off to an ally. To make a princess into a king‘s son made her an heir to the throne itself.

We are children of God; we are sons of God; let’s live as who we are! The Bible says,

8:19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

The entire universe is waiting to see us as we really are; because, when Jesus comes, we shall be like him. The battles will be over; all will be pure. Satan will finally be defeated; and we shall enter the realm of unending love.

Meanwhile, we become children of God so simply:

JHN1:12 [ ] to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

And we express that truth in our lives in so simple a fashion: by seeking purity and loving one another as we do battle with the enemy of souls.

Let’s be who we are — to the glory of God our Father, through Jesus our Lord, forever and ever,

AMEN!

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)