NOTES for Jo1 3:1

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¹Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

The words of the apostle John in today's passage from his First Catholic Epistle in many ways continue the way of thinking and speaking by which God spoke through the Old Testament prophets. Many of them said that the main reason for sin and lawlessness in people is ignorance of God. Not a lack of information about the norms of the law, but a lack of knowledge of God. And now, after all the events of Christ's earthly life, death, and resurrection, the apostle says that the truth about God has now been revealed to us. And this truth is such that it gives us the possibility of abiding in the Father and the Son. What does this mean, how should we understand these words about abiding in God?

The apostle himself explains this with the famous words: "Behold what love the Father has given us, that we should be called and be children of God." This, in fact, is the basic meaning of knowing God: to see, to know this love of God, to experience it not only as theoretical knowledge, but as our own experience. Only this experience of our adoption by God in Christ is able to give a person life. Only the vision of this love of God gives meaning to everything that happens to us in this world.

In our present times, frightening and cruel, this is very important. In the monstrous, senseless violence that overwhelms us, whose victims are random people, we cannot help asking ourselves and God questions about the causes of this horror, about the meaning of suffering. But the point is that death is always meaningless and out of place in the world created by God. The answer to our questions will not be some reasoning about the causes of one or another manifestation of evil. The answer is these words of John the evangelist: "Behold what love our heavenly Father has given us." This is not the answer we expect, but it is the only answer that opens for us the possibility of living.

And returning again to one of the main themes of the epistle, the apostle speaks about the distinguishing marks of God's children. They are doing righteousness and love for the brothers. This is the path for us, adopted by God, and on this path we trust that victory over evil and death will be given to us: the very victory that was accomplished on the Cross and in Christ's Resurrection.

Other notes

For Jo1 2:29-3:6

²⁹If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.

¹Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

²Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

³And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

⁴Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.

⁵And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.

⁶Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.

Speaking about the spiritual life of a Christian, John describes it as becoming in Christ and at the same time being established in the Torah (the Law). Jesus is the only one in whom there is no sin (1 John 3:5). In this way He showed the world the only example in history of what in those days was called the living Torah: to become the living Torah meant precisely to be the living embodiment of the ideal that the Torah requires. Accordingly, such a person had to be completely free from every sin, because sin and the Torah, sin and God's commandment, are incompatible things. That is why, before the coming of Christ, the ideal of the living Torah remained only an ideal, one toward which many strove but which no one managed to attain.

Following the Torah cleanses from sin. The inner Torah, as believing Jews of the Gospel era called it, was the spiritual imperative without which the way of righteousness was impossible. The inner Torah was the spiritual core on which the whole life of a person seeking righteousness and striving to become the living Torah was based. Any sin destroyed this core, and that is why the apostle speaks of sin as lawlessness, as a departure from the inner Torah (1 John 3:4).

But for fallen humanity, sin is a sad inevitability, and that is why the ideal of the living Torah remained unattainable. The only hope is in the Savior, who not only showed this ideal to the world but is also ready to help everyone seeking righteousness be freed from the captivity of sin (1 John 3:5). For this only one thing is needed: to give oneself and one's life into His hands, and then He will make it part of the life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world.

There is no place for sin in the Kingdom, and therefore the one who lives one life with Christ does not sin. Sin has a place only in human life separated from the life of Christ and the Kingdom (1 John 3:6). We live in the age of the Kingdom that is coming but has not yet been revealed in all its fullness, and until the end of this age, until the full transformation of humanity and all creation, our Christian life retains the duality of which the apostle speaks.

But at the end of time, after the Savior returns in glory and our human nature is fully transformed, this duality will disappear. Only then will we become what we are meant to be according to God's purpose for us (1 John 3:2). For now we are pure to the extent that we live one life with Jesus, the life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world (1 John 3:3). And not only we Christians: everyone who acts righteously has a relation to Him (1 John 2:29; in the Synodal translation, "does righteousness"). And that is not surprising, because He is the only righteous one in the world without any qualification. He is the only one who has shown the world the pattern of the living Torah.

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