A Hope Like That

09.19.12

1 John 3.3 3 Everyone who has at heart a hope like that keeps himself pure, for he knows how pure Christ is. JBP

The key to purity: a hope like that. The key to a godly and fulfilling life: a hope like that. The key to surviving the impact of what is coming upon our world: a hope like that. Well how is that? John said: “Oh, dear children of mine (forgive the affection of an old man!), have you realised it? Here and now we are God’s children. We don’t know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect his likeness, for we should see him as he really is!”  That’s the hope: that’s a hope like that.

A hope less than that, is an insufficient hope. Hope is reality, not wishful thinking. Hope is fixed on what is really going to happen in reality (pardon the redundance). That kind of hope is sufficient to carry us through whatever comes our way due to the scheming of evil men and their jockeying for position. That kind of hope motivates us and guides us to live differently: it centers our life on a godly and Christ-like purity.

Purity is something this world doesn’t understand. We want pure food, pure drugs, pure water, and yet we settle for impurity through immorality (of all kinds), infidelity; the rejection of goodness, the ridicule of virginity, and the list goes on and on. Wash your hands after you use the restroom. Wash your hands if you have a cold – or better yet, stay home until you’re no longer contagious. But who cares if you sully your soul with the immoral acceptabilities of modern society: abortion, adultery, apathy?

It is easy to become impure in many ways in our day because there are few boundaries that mean anything anymore. Impure thoughts. Impure words. Impure motives. The information age: so much info; so little truth. Hopelessness. (Not the hopelessness of despair, just the hopelessness of a care-free life: I don’t give a crap!) A lack of compassion and common decency. The valuelessness of life. And all of this because we are (generally) clueless as to the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus. Without a hope like that, impurity floods in like a pandemic.

Look at the utter mess our world is in and it’s getting worse every day – and not just because the media outlets tell us so. It is! How are we going to survive and what are we going to survive into if it isn’t for a hope like that? (See above).

So John tells us (and JB Phillips translates) Everyone who has at heart a hope like that keeps himself pure, for he knows how pure Christ is. Do I believe that? Do You? Do I know how pure Christ is and how important that is to my soul and my future? Do You? John says the key to purity is to know, and keep at heart, a hope like that.

I got hung up on the phrase: a hope like that. I got hung up on it because it jarred me into thinking: Do I really know? And if I do, what is that doing to my belief, my character, and my conduct? I think it worth thinking about. I think remembering what my hope is ought to unlock some of the things that hold me back and cause me to be such a retard at times; such a relational leper at times; such a weak and pathetic whiner at times. You and I were called to live on a much higher plane than that – His hope – a hope like that – ought to lead me there…