1Jn 3:1-5

1) vv1-2: What are we asked to contemplate in the opening verses of this chapter?

• What did John find surprising about the manner of God’s love? And what is there to behold?
• John did not live in a a more humane world than we do. How did he expect that his readers will be able to nonetheless ‘see’ God’s love for them?
  • How can being “called a child of God” convince anyone of God’s love, v1? Hint: Called so by whom?
  • If you asked someone how she knows that she is a child of God and she would say: “Because he tells me so”, would you agree that this is how believers find out? Why or why not? cf Heb 2:11-12; Jn 15:15; 1Jn 2:27; Ro 8:16; Eph 1:13-14

2) vv2-3: What image do the words ‘children of God’ evoke in your brain?

• If you had lived 2000 years ago, do you think you would have made the same association?
  • In other words, do you think it corresponds to what John and other NT writers had in mind first and foremost?
  • We have been conditioned to associate the biblical concept of adoption by God as being about our identity and self worth. For those who wrote the Bible, adoption served first and foremost to settle the question of who is entitled to be rightful heirs, and invariably so both in the OT (e.g. Gen 15:4 and 21:10; Ps 2:7-8; Jer 3:19 and 49:1) as well as in John (Jn 1:12) and elsewhere throughout the NT (Mt 21:38; Col 1:12; Ro 8:16-17; Gal 3:29 and 4:6-7; Eph 1:11-18; 1Pet 1:3-4): To be made heirs, despite being unworthy, and how this changes what we do:
• Read 1Pet 1:14. Of us who believe that we are ‘children of God’, how many would nowadays still equate this filial relationship primarily with a solemn duty of devoted obedience, as Peter did here?
• How do you explain the interest of contemporary evangelical literature in concepts about our ‘identity’ (a word that does not even exist in the Bible)?
  • Of many saints in the Bible, we read that because of their faith in God they received a different name (to the Hebrews, names said something about the person). E.g., Paul’s name means small. His former name was Saul, which means “asked/prayed for”. Was the change meant to boost his self-esteem, or rather to humble him? cf 2Cor 12:11
  • Peter’s name was Simon until Jesus renamed him Peter (Mt 16:17-18). What do you make of that?
  • Can you picture Peter meditating on a new ‘identity’ in a counseling session with Jesus to help him overcome any besetting sins or bondage by his ‘past identity’ as Simon? Why (not)?
• Do you find in John (vv1-2) any encouragement to learn to ‘love yourself’ (Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst, 1900-1980)? Why or why not?
  • v3: What did John want his readers to see by thinking about being called ‘children of God’: More of their own self-worth? Or that Christians should not put any hope in their self-esteem?
  • Read Jn 8:44-45 => Here, Jesus reproved the Pharisees for their unbelief. Why did he call them sons of the devil? Why was Jesus not afraid that this would hurt their self-esteem?*
• If John’s counsel was not about identity and self-worth, what else is there to contemplate about God’s love to call us children? =>
• What is the inheritance that awaits believers in the future resurrection: The realization of a ‘hidden identity’, or rather a new body?**

3) vv2-3: How did John distinguish genuine Christian hope from counterfeit hope (as preached e.g. by the Gnostic movement)?

• What does it mean to ‘purify yourself’, v3? cf Mt 15:18-20
• What does v3 identify as the ‘secret’ why professing Christians may or may not remain busy with such cleaning?

4) vv4-5: How will they go about purifying ‘themselves’? 

• Does v4 suggest we should try harder to keep God’s laws? Why not? cf Ja 2:10
• Instead, how/where did John counsel his readers to find a pure heart, v5? cf 1Jn 1:9

5) Personal & application

• How would you describe your own self-esteem or sense of self worth?
• Do you think a low self-esteem is holding you in bondage, or have you ever been told by books, teachers or preachers that it does? How?
• If traumatic past experiences shatter someone’s sense of self worth: ‘Inner healing’ of such ‘wounds’, they say, requires to re-live the past in counseling sessions that ‘visualize’ the healing presence of Jesus. Did John imagine that an appearance of Jesus by any such practices can ‘destroy sin’? Why not?
• Why are such practices from evangelical pop-psychology dangerous?

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* Their problem was not a lack of self-esteem, but that they had too much of it, as shown by their spiritual pride and self-delusions about what they were.
** cf e.g. Calvin’s commentary: “…we shall be like him, because he will make our vile body conformable to his glorious body, as Paul also teaches us in Phil 3:21. For the Apostle intended shortly to show that the final end of our adoption is, that what has in order preceded in Christ, shall at length be completed in us.“