MONDAY March 6th
1 John 3:3
‘And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.’
Continuing in his letter, John refers to the future that is being prepared for us which we considered in our last devotion as being our present hope. ‘Everyone who thus hopes in him’ (that is in God) (v2) and this hope that is in our hearts, the hope that is in him, is not a fingers crossed wishy washy might be or might happen hope, it is a definite hope, it is a fixed, unmovable hope that is guaranteed by the shed blood of our Lord and Saviour. ‘Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.’ (I Peter 1:3-5)
But John tells us that having this hope in us should cause us to a) know that we have been made pure (sanctified) through the washing and cleansing of the blood of Jesus and b) we should ensure that we strive to do all that we can to make sure we remain pure.
In 2 Corinthians 7:1 Paul puts it this way ‘Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God’, what we learn from this is that although we have become what we are in Christ through what he has done for us, we have our part to play once we have been made anew in making sure that we put off anything of the old nature that would defile us and put on those things which enable us to be more Christlike. In Colossians 3:9 we are instructed to ‘put to death therefore what is earthly in you’, there follows a list of things we need to put to death and then in verse 12 we are told what we need to put on, things which replace the earthly with those things or virtues which will enable us to purify ourselves.
I heard this little ditty once, which I wrote down in my diary at the time,
Two natures live within you,
The one is foul, the one is blest.
The one you love, the one you hate,
But the one you feed will dominate.
Because of this hope that we have, can I ask, which of the two natures are we more actively feeding? The old nature which we are supposed to be putting to death, or the new nature that causes us to become more like what we should be as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Are we doing all we can to make sure that which has been made pure by the blood of Jesus remains pure, or are we tainting it by feeding the old nature that needs to be starved.
The same chapter I have just quoted from Colossians starts with these words, ‘If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Colossians 3:1-4. Have you seen the link here to what John has said here in his epistle, the words we considered just a couple of devotions ago ‘we know that when he appears we shall be like him’. Let us make sure that we starve the old nature and feed the new, for we really are new creations, the old must be gone and the new must come (2 Corinthians 5:17), we should long to start to be like him NOW in readiness for the future.