Our Father’s Love: John calls us to marvel at (“see”) the stupendous love of God (3:1). Out of His infinite love, the holy God adopted us. We were like poor and sick orphans with no guardian or home, but He took pity on us and He welcomed and adopted us into His heavenly family. God did not merely call us His children, but He made His children indeed (“we are”). This is seen in the undeniable mark of our resemblance to Him: We who are born of God practice His righteousness (3:7; Rom. 6:17-18). Our identity as sons is also seen in how the world cannot make sense of us.[1] This is because we really are not of this world, even as God’s only begotten was not of this world (John 15:19; 17:16). Out of His great love, the Father truly made into His spiritual children.
Our Future: Our future shapes our present. As an engaged woman saves herself for her groom and denies all other men, so we who are assured of our future with Christ save ourselves for Him and rid ourselves of the defilements of this corrupt world (2:15-17; 2 Cor. 7:1). We live the present with our eyes squarely fixed on the coming of Christ (1 Pet. 1:13). Instead of facing that day dazed, ill-prepared, and full of shame, we ready ourselves for our union with our Lord. Now we see Him as in a mirror, but then we will see Him face to face (2 Cor. 3:18; 1 Cor. 13:12). May He find us ready with fine linen, bright and clean (Rev. 19:7-8), dressed in readiness with our lamps lit (Luke 12:35).
[1] “[The world] does not understand our principles; the reasons of our conduct; the sources of our comforts and joys. The people of the world regard us as fanatics or enthusiasts; as foolish in abandoning the pleasures and pursuits which they engage in; as renouncing certain happiness for that which is uncertain; as cherishing false and delusive hopes in regard to the future, and as practicing needless austerities, with nothing to compensate for the pleasures which are abandoned. There is nothing which the frivolous, the ambitious, and the selfish less understand than they do the elements which go into the Christian‘s character, and the nature and source of the Christian‘s joys” (Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, of the NT [1852], 402).