1 John 3:2 – Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
I was recently reading Jesus prayer in John 17 and was struck by the implications of what Jesus prayed. First, He was asking the Lord to restore Him to the glory He had enjoyed with His father from eternity. As the Lord continued to pray He asked something so shocking that the implications of that prayer are beyond our comprehension. He was actually asking the Father to bring us into the same relationship with the Father that Jesus enjoyed from eternity. How is that even possible? We are called to enjoy the blessing of the Father and His family. Here is how Matthew Henry describes this.
“The unity between the Father and the Son, which is mentioned again and again (vv. 21 – 23). Christ assumed that the Father and he were one, one in mutual affection. The Father loves the Son, and the Son always pleased the Father. They are one in purpose. The intimacy of this oneness is expressed in the words you in me, and I in you. This was insisted on in Christ’s prayer for his disciples’ unity… In some measure, believers are one as God and Christ are one; they are united by a divine nature, by the power of divine grace, according to the divine purposes. It is a holy union for holy purposes, not a body politic for any worldly purpose. It is a complete union.”
Have you ever considered the implications of what Jesus prayed that night? He was asking that we could be brought into the very intimacy of the trinity, that is the shocking purpose of redemption. The second person of the Blessed Trinity took on a human body for a particular purpose. He came to redeem fallen man from the miserable pit he had fallen in to. The worst characters on earths; scoundrels, murderers, thieves, sexual deviants are all called out of their miserable lives to be part of the Father’s family. We have been made sons and daughters of God; the Father is our Father, Jesus is our elder brother, and the Holy Spirit is our Nourisher. This is to good to be true but it is true. We are tasting the edge of it now but the fullness of our inheritance will soon be on full display.
And to think this unimaginable opportunity, realized by sons and daughters as ourselves, posess in our changed hearts the authority to extend this same invitation to all others. I indite myself, how can I callously refuse the appointments purposely set up for me to serve His agendas? That I’m afraid is even more unimaginable.