Grow up, he says in the kindest way possible - 1 John 3:1-7
Like any children, adopted or not, we are still learning what it means to be a part of this big, loud, crazy family. And just like any children, we are changed by what we learn.
Today, I want to tell you a story. It goes like this: once we were no people, but now we are God's people. Once we were no one's children, but now we are God's children.
Now, because we are children of God, some people think that we have to be separated from the world. Some people even think we have to be against the world. "The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know [Jesus]," as John says.
The world might not understand Christians because it doesn't understand Christ. That could be true. But I don't think we have to be separate from the world. We certainly don't have to hate the world.
What we do have to do is learn what it means to have been adopted by God. We don't know now: "what we will be has not yet been revealed." But God will show it to us sooner or later.
Adoption
We were adopted for a very simple reason. God loved us so much that he chose us to be his children.
Like many parents, God was terribly lonely. God missed us, even before we existed!
And like many parents, God loved us, even before we came into the world.
These are the people I need to be my people, God said. These are my children.
"No," she said. "You need to read that paper. Those are our children!" And they were.
As it happens, my children are adopted. My wife and I would read papers about children who needed families. One night, my wife said, "You need to read this paper about the brother and sister."
"Uh-huh," I said.
"No," she said. "You need to read that paper. Those are our children!" And they were. We chose them, and we adopted them. We gave them our name and they became ours.
In the same way, God chose to make us his children, and that is who we are. We have God's name: "Christians."
It is sometimes asked why God would choose to do such a thing. After all, one would expect God not to need or even to notice little people like us.
The reason God chose us to be his children is also very simple. That is the kind of god God is. The God who would choose us as his children welcomes all people into his family.
He also cares for all people. No matter who they are, no matter how repulsive or nasty we think they are, he loves them just the same. He loves them so much, in fact, that he is willing to be vulnerable to them. Imagine a God who would allow himself to be hurt by the people he created! Imagine a God who would be hurt by his people and then come back to tell them he loved them!
But that is our God. He loves us, and his love story for us has made us the people we are. It has made us the children we are. And as I say, what we are meant to be about is learning exactly what that means.
Growing up
For when we are small, it is often difficult to tell what we will become when we are grown. A very thin child (such as I was) may turn out to be a very fat adult (such as I am). And a child with heavy, apple-red cheeks may grow up to be thin and pale.
A grumpy, ill-tempered child may remain perfectly wretched well into adulthood. Or she may metamorphose into a decent, loving mother in her own right. Strange things happen all the time.
My son used to have fits all the time. He would cry and hit and kick and tell us he hated us. But eventually those went away. Now he has grown up to be a very loyal, very loving young man that we can't get to move out of the basement. So it goes.
As we mature as God's children, we don't know what we will be when we are big. After all, there's only ever been one Son of God, and him a very special one at that.
But we know that when we grow up, we will become like God. "We will be like him, for we will see him as he is." Or we hope that we will. We trust and we expect that we will. Nothing is certain because people can always change.
So if we want to be just like God when we grow up, we ought to imitate what God does. We ought to be changed for the better by being in his presence. We ought to purify ourselves.
That does not mean that we ought to become better or purer than other people, much less think we are better or purer than they are. After all, we want to love the world and to be part of it.
Pure and spotless
It means that we have to clean ourselves little by little. We work first on the big spots of dirt, and then the smaller ones, and the smaller ones, and so on. Like Charles Wesley says, we ask God to
Finish then, Thy new creation [that's us];
pure and spotless let us be
That means we have to change our ways.
We cannot be mean.
We cannot be hateful.
We cannot be hostile.
We cannot stop caring about people.
We cannot stop loving people.
None of those things is like God. The God who chooses us to be his children welcomes all people into his family. The God who chooses us to be his children loves all people, serves all people. We cannot be God's children if we do not love our brothers and sisters.
To love as God loves means that we must choose to love one another in everything that we do and say. It is a practice, a habit, a way of being. It is above all else a choice.
It is a choice to care for one another.
It is a choice to stick with one another.
It is a choice to share with one another.
It is a choice to seek what is best for one another.
It is a choice to put what is best for one another before what we want.
It is a choice to be responsible for, and to, one another.
It is a choice to do the right thing, whether we like to do it or not.
It is in short a great deal like being a child growing up and learning to do the right thing.
Children are capable of many things, some of them not at all loving. They can be mean. They can be hateful, hostile, and indifferent to the misfortune of others. But they can also be generous, kind, pleasant, caring, and loyal to a fault.
In other words, children very often have not learned the habits of the heart that prevent adults from loving.
"Once we had not received mercy, but now we have received mercy."
Do the right thing
It is for this reason that they are some of God's favorite people. They know the truth of the statement, "Everyone who does what is right is righteous."
They also know what it means to say that "Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness." They (mostly) love to follow the rules, because the rules help them to understand the world.
But rules or not, we have to make choices. Either we choose to do the right thing or we choose not to do the right thing. Every day we make that choice, again and again. Because we make that choice, God sees us and sees that we need him to help us make the right choice. "Once we had not received mercy, but now we have received mercy."
Since Jesus always did the right thing, if we choose to do the right thing, we come to know Jesus better and better. But if we make the choice to do the wrong thing, we don't learn about who he is. "No one who sins has either seen him or known him," John tells us.
Don't let that frighten you. We all make mistakes. We all make sins. Like any children, we are still learning right from wrong. Like any children, adopted or not, we are still learning what it means to be a part of this big, loud, crazy family. And just like any children, we are changed by what we learn. What we learn makes us different people. If we have a strong and healthy family, we become better people, closer to God and one another.
The trick is to be changed and to stay changed.
The trick is to be changed by one another.
The trick is to keep working on ourselves, bit by bit. Even when we think we are all grown up and have no changing left to do.
When we can do that, we become people of God. We become beloved children of God. Because once we were no people, but now we are God's people. And once we were no one's children, but now we are God's children.
That is a very simple story, and it has a very simple moral. We are called "children of God," and that is what we are. Let us go out this morning and grow up to be exactly that. The End. Amen.