NOTES for 1 Ин 3:2

The Apostle John draws a very clear analogy with our human infancy. When we are born, we are already “human young,” although we can do almost none of the things a human being can do. Nothing about us is clear yet: who shall we be, what shall we be like? All of this develops and is revealed gradually. Yet it is very important that, as we grow and mature, we meet and communicate with other people, for this is how we learn what it means to be human. If this does not happen, then our “human likeness” is not realized either, as all real rather than fictional stories of “Mowgli children” attest.

It is exactly the same in our Christian life. In Baptism we died and were born anew as children of God, and we are already alive, although we are still infants. We do not yet understand very well what we shall be like when we grow up, but trusting in God’s goodness we want to become like Him. To do so, we meet Him and communicate with Him, for now “through a glass, darkly,” yet we know that a moment will come when we shall meet “face to face.” If we continue steadily toward this meeting, we shall enter “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”