“A Father’s Love”

Introduction

Chapter 3, beginning in verse 1, it says, See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning.

No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Fathers are really special.

And I hope that all of my children have a sense of security with me, a sense of protection. Now, of course, as they get older, they begin to realize there are things out of your control. You can pick them up and you can hold them when they’re little and they feel like everything’s okay, even when things maybe aren’t okay, and they learn some things along the way, and they know dad can’t do everything, but even still, one of our jobs as a father, fathers, is to offer that sense of security, that sense of strength to our family. Unfortunately, some people in this life don’t have that kind of father, and that’s always a very sad thing. Maybe that you didn’t. in your home. Maybe you didn’t have a father that offered that kind of sense of protection and safety.

1. God Is the Father

But one of the marvelous things about scripture is the way it portrays God for us. One of the things that we see about him, if we pay close attention to the wording of a text like this, is the way he is described, for example, here as the Father, almost just in passing. See what kind of love or what manner, the type of love the Father has given to us. Just in that passing epitaph of who he is. God is the Father. There’s a statement being made about him. That he has this nurturing, this caring, this protective, this secure type of love that he wants to offer us. And then the statement that I think first caught my attention as I was thinking about this passage was the one that comes right after that we should be called children of God.

So we use this type of language a lot. We talk about brethren, right? Or brothers and sisters. We’ll talk about God being the father.

Sometimes we have people in our life who maybe they’re like a father to us, or like a mother to us, or like a brother, or like a sister. We understand these ideas. And that’s what’s being conveyed to us here in 1 John 3, that the type of love that God has for us, actually, he is the demonstration of this love itself, and we as fathers are trying to mimic that. That’s actually the reality. What I described to you was the other way around. But we learn as fathers the right way to love by looking to the Father. That’s the reality. That’s what it shows us in Hebrews chapter 12. That when we look to him as the Father, it shows us the way that we would love our children.

2. He Calls Us His Children

But backing up to the point here, we have a father who cares so much about us, he loves us that he calls us his children.

Now, if we think about this maybe from even a different perspective, just like in Ephesians chapter 2, in Ephesians chapter 1, that we are adopted as children. Especially in ancient times, that conveyed, in a sense, even a deeper kind of love. it’s the kind of love where he specifically chose a man would choose a child to adopt, to bring him into his home. This is very significant. I mean, we love our children, our biological children, but in the case of adoption, and we are we are taking, we’re choosing someone, and we are bringing that person into our home in a very special way. So God uses both images. He uses the image of adoption. Here he uses the phrase, just the idea of him being a father and us being children to express to us the way in which he loves us.

3. Children Want to Please Their Parents

And then there’s some things in here about the world not understanding and all of that, which is really important material. It’s not where I want to focus tonight. But the world doesn’t understand God. That’s the point there, and so they’re not going to understand us. But as he goes on, he makes this statement in verse 3. If we understand the type of love that God has for us, and even deeper than that, the relationship. This speaks to intimacy, the intimacy of this relationship. He is a father, and we are children. And what do children want to do for their parents? And they want to please their parents, don’t they? They don’t always know the right way to express it. I have four children, they’re all a little bit different, and they all express their desire to please Katie and I in different ways, sometimes even in ways that aren’t good, because they’re children and they don’t always know the best way to go about it.

Sometimes they’ll act out in a negative way to get attention because they want that relationship and they want to please us, but they don’t always know the best way. But that goal is still there as children. We want to please our parents. And I believe that’s the point he’s getting at here, and that the end part of that first section. Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. They want to be holy like he is holy. They’ll want to be like God, just like children want to be like their parents. They look at the things their parents do, and that’s what they want to do, which just shows you how important it is that we understand and know what we’re doing, because our children want to be like that.

4. We Trust Our Father

I mean, how many of us fathers have a child that said they want to grow up and do the same job we’re doing? They want to go to work with us because they want to be like us. They want to follow you around the house, mothers, and do the things that you’re doing around the house. They want to be like you. And so this works with mothers as well. But it’s the nature of that relationship, the deep intimacy that exists between parent and child, and specifically here, between father and child that’s being expressed in this passage. And there’s a level of trust here because we trust when we’re children, we trust our parents. We don’t know what it’s going to be like. He’s our father. We don’t know what we’re going to be like.

5. He Demonstrated His Love to Us

We don’t know how this is all going to work in the end. But we know that when he appears, we’ll be like him, because we’re going to see him as he is. We don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like. We don’t have to, because we trust our Father that it’s going to be good. That it’s going to be what we need. That it’s going to be better than what we can even imagine. And we know love not because we love the Father, John goes on to say, but because he loved us. He demonstrated that fatherly type of love and the fact that he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. God became flesh and dwelt among us. God died for us.

When we could not do anything for ourselves, he demonstrated his love to us.

Conclusion

John highlights this as the pinnacle of understanding what love is. Just like we would understand a father or a mother who would risk their own life to save their child. That’s what God did. He gave his life. He gave his life to save his children. To bring them back into harmony with him. To lift them up out of the mires of sin. And lowliness and sadness and guilt and slavery to Satan and to evil. And bring them back into a loving relationship with Him. Can we help you do that tonight? Why don’t you come as we stand and we sing?