Smoodock's Blog

When I first read John’s first epistle, and after I came to the first few verses of chapter 3, I began to think about how we might appear in the resurrection in our spirit bodies. However, it came as a surprise to me that, once I began studying John’s epistle, he was actually speaking of our bearing the image of God before the world, today. Paul, also, spoke about this in the resurrection chapter, 1Corinthians 15, when he spoke of bearing the image of Adam verses bearing the image of Christ, who is the second or last Adam. In the first Adam all die, but in Christ all are made alive (1Corinthians 15:22). Paul goes on to say that the first Adam was made a living soul, while the second Adam was made a life-giving spirit (1Corinthians 15:45), but this is a matter of living out Christ’s life today, not looking toward heaven, as I had believed at first. Such an understanding isn’t possible, because Paul sums up the matter by saying, “…just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1Corinthians 15:49 – NET).[1]

The Greek word John uses for the “kind” of love is potapos (G4217), and it is always translated “what manner” in the New Covenant text. It is a word that expresses some amazement or at least something foreign or strange. Literally, according to Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, it means what country or what tribe or what nation etc. The Apostles used it of Jesus in Matthew 8:27 to say “what manner of man is this…” after Jesus had calmed the storm and the sea, when they thought their lives were threatened. It was also used by the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner (Luke7:39), when he expressed surprise that Jesus didn’t seem to know what manner of woman he permitted to touch him, thinking the woman was a sinner and in a state completely foreign to where he was and thought Jesus ought to be.

Therefore, John attempted to describe God’s love as something truly amazing and completely  foreign to what men had known up to the time of Christ. The witness of God was that Jesus was someone who was well pleasing to him (Matthew 3:17; 12:18; 17:5), yet the world didn’t know him at all (John 12:34). That is, they had believed a doctrine about him, but the doctrine was wrong, so they had no context, into which they could fit this foreign Christ. It is in this light that God expressed his amazing love for us. Because the world didn’t know Christ (i.e. they misunderstood him), neither would the world find the context in which to fit the children of God. We are that much like him, according to how God sees us.

We need to keep in mind that 1John 3:2 actually corresponds to the amazing or foreign character of verse-1. Remember the children of God are loved by God but unknown to (misunderstood by) the world. So, John tells his readers that they were at the time of his writing (not sometime in the future) the children of God, loved but unknown. Why would this be so? John tells them “it doth not yet appear, what we shall be…” Originally, when I first began reading the Bible, I thought this referred to our resurrection (spirit) bodies, but this isn’t so. It refers to how we appear to God, but not to the world. It should be translated as: it was never made manifest what it would be. That is, the spirit indwelt children of God had never appeared before to the world, so the world had no context into which to fit God’s children.

Next, John mentions that “we know when he (or it) shall appear…” However, this is in the subjunctive mood, not the future tense (similar to 1Corinthians 15:49, mentioned above). It should be translated we know if it were manifest, that is, if it were manifest (or clear) to the world what the children of God would look like… “We shall be like him” is in the future middle tense, which is difficult to put in the English, because we don’t have a middle tense. It should be translated we would be like him… Because (again future middle) we would allow (him) to appear as he is. Taken together, the verse translates into something similar to:

Beloved, now we are the children of God, but it was never made manifest what we should be, but we know, if it were manifest, we would be like him, because we would allow him to appear as he is. (1John 3:2)

John is telling his readers what it is like to be a spirit-filled child of God. He is not speaking of how we might appear in our spirit bodies in heaven. He is telling the believers who were reading his epistle that they are the beloved children of God, but unrecognized by the world, because we express something foreign to them. They have no context into which they could place us, but if there were a context, they would be able to see Christ in us, because we bear his image to them (but presently unknown to them).

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[1] While most commentaries admit that Paul uses the subjunctive mood in the Greek at 1Corinthians 15:49 “let us bear,” they also believe that would be wrong, so they translate it as the future tense “we shall bear.” What one believes according to one’s religion is not a good excuse to translate the Greek poorly. We need to consider the word of God more precious than that, and cause what we believe to reflect the text not vice versa.