“Future prospects”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, November 1, 2023
1 John 3:1-3 (Forward, p. 3) CEV p. 1287
It can easily be said that farmers and gardeners are the epitome of optimism, for year after year they plant crops and gardens, never knowing for sure what the outcome will be and never knowing just what growing conditions might arise before harvest. There’s a kind of hope for the future and what it might bring. The same might be said of people who fish for a living, those who start up new businesses or organizations, those who work for or lobby for particular causes, or, in a lesser degree, even those who vote in democratic elections near or far. There is always the hope that future prospects will be better than what we ‘enjoy’ just now.
In a sense, the Christian life is like that, except better, better because they are founded on the promises of God and on the very character and nature of God, rather than on the fickleness or the unknown quantity and variability of us humans. In today’s letter from John, we are told outright one very amazing thing, namely, that we, right now, are already God’s children. And, he asserts that this is not ‘in name only’, meaning that’s what we are called, but in actuality. We are actually His children, right now.
Even so, what this means hasn’t been fully unveiled as yet. (There are still, you might say, ‘some future prospects’. It is sort of like the signing on of a draft pick in hockey or football. You have the player, he or she is part of the team, but you have only the faintest idea of what the future holds, how that player will perform when he or she gets to ‘the big league.)
John suggests a couple of these future projects:
a) “What we will be hasn’t been seen yet’, we are still let somewhat in suspense.
b) However, “when Christ returns, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he really is”. What a glorious and unimaginable ‘future
prospect’ this will be!
In fact, this unimaginable—and, in my case, almost unbelievable—a prospect and scenario, is why I often remark that I’m going to live
forever--simply because ‘I have so far to go’ in terms of becoming like Christ!
However, John doesn’t leave it just like that, with us buoyed up and excited by these ‘future prospects.’ He suggests that there is a proper and desired response on our parts, an appropriate response. He says that ‘this hope makes us keep ourselves holy’—in other words, like Christ Himself. We want to live up to His calling of us as God’s children, to live up to our ‘future prospects.’ And, isn’t this exactly what we sometimes see in the sporting world: a draft choice, when exposed to a higher level of play, superior coaching, a great and encouraging group of fellow players, and a greater sense of expectancy, can really ‘step up to the plate’ and outperform anything that was hitherto expected of him or her. That, indeed, is exactly what John, and our Lord, is calling us to—to starting to live out, right now, in our present situation, those ‘future prospects.’ Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “When he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (verse 2b).
“When we see the great multitude ‘from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb’ and when all the angels fall on their faces before the throne, we shall be among brothers and sisters: the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted and reviled. And we shall all rejoice.
“And when we see the risen Christ, we will not notice differences among nations, tribes, people, or languages. It was necessary that the historical Jesus be limited in these ways, or he could not have lived a human life and died a human death—for we human beings are likewise limited.
“We will see the risen Christ as he is—and as we become more purely ourselves, we shall know that we are like him because he is like us. And we shall, as Psalm 34 says, ‘look upon him and be radiant, and let not (our) faces be ashamed.’”
Moving Forward: “How do you envision the risen Christ?”
[An explanatory note to the references in this latter meditation, that is, to the other readings selected for today. These were Revelation 7:9-17, Psalm 34:1-10, 22 and Matthew 5:1-12.
[And a concluding note: Jesus, by the very fact of the Incarnation, became ‘like us’, but with a rather significant difference. Though tempted in every way that we are, He was still without sin. And so, there is a sizeable and significant difference between what He is like and what we are like at present. The call to holiness, to repentance, faith and reliance upon Him, and to purity of life and faithfulness to Him and the Gospel, is therefore very real and necessary, and constitutes one of our very real challenges to how we live our lives.