Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3235
“And every man that has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure.” 1 John 3:3.
THE Christian is a man of much present enjoyment. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God and, being God’s sons, we cannot be altogether unhappy.” Relationship to the ever-blessed God must bring with it a measure ofjoy. “Happy are you, O Israel,” sang Moses, “who is like unto you, O people saved by the Lord?” The men who can be truly called the sons of God are a blessed people! Still, the main portion of the Believer’s inheritance lies in the future. It is not so much what I have as what I shall have that makes me joyful. “It does not yet appear what we shall be.” To the unbeliever, all that is to come is in darkness. He may expect to go from the shades of evening to the blackness of a midnight that shall never end. But for the Christian, “light is sown.” He is now in darkness—the only darkness he shall ever know—and from the twilight of the morning he shall go on unto the perfect day, a day whose sun shall never set! We have the eyes of hope given to us and, looking across the narrow stream of death and beyond—that place where to carnal eyes hangs the curtain that shuts out the unseen—we, with these far-seeing eyes, behold the Glory which is yet to be revealed and we are blessed with the joys of hope! Let every Christian, therefore, when at any time he is downcast about the things of the present, refresh his soul with the thoughts of the future!
We have often discoursed concerning the past and I know that some of us have frequently been cheered and comforted by seeing how kindly God has dealt with us in bringing us up out of the hole of the pit from which we have been dug. Now we shall get further consolation by seeing what is to become of us in the future yet to be revealed. But still, my objective at this time will not be to impart consolation so much as to excite to holiness! Our text is a very practical one— while it deals with hope—it has more to do with the resultof that hope in the purity of the Believer’s life.
Let us go at once to our work. We shall note, first, the Believer’s hope. Secondly, the operation of that hope and, thirdly, the use of the operation as a test of the hope.
I. To begin, then, let us look at THE BELIEVER’S HOPE. The text speaks of men that have hope—“hope in Him”—which I understand to mean hope in Jesus Christ.
The Christian has a hope peculiar to himself As for its objective, it is the hope of being like Jesus Christ. “We shall be like He, for we shall see Him as He is.” Now, some would not put it in that shape—they would say that their hope, as Christians, is to pass within the pearly gates, to tread the golden streets, to listen to the harpers harping with their harps and, standing upon the sea of glass, to be forever free from sorrow, toil and pain. But those are only the lower joys of Heaven, except so far as they indicate spiritual bliss. I believe that there are some professing Christians who would like Mohammed’ s heaven—and be perfectly satisfied if they could sit forever on a green and flowery mountain and could drink from rivers of milk and eat from hives of honey—and so on, and so on!
But, after all, the real Truth of God, the Truth that is contained in these metaphors and figures and underlies them all—the Truth is that the Heaven a true Christian seeks after is a spiritual one—it is the Heaven of being like his Lord! I take it that while it will consist in our sharing in the Redeemer’s power, the Redeemer’s joy and the Redeemer’s honor, yet from the connection of the text, it lies mainly in our being spiritually and morally like He—being purified, even as He is pure. I must frankly confess that of all my expectations of Heaven, I will cheerfully renounce ten thousand things if I can but know that I shall have perfect holiness, for if I may become like Jesus Christ as to His Character—pure and perfect—I cannot understand how any other joy can be denied me! If we shall have that, surely we shall have everything! This, then, is our hope—that “we shall be like He, for we shall see Him as He is.”
Every man sees morally what he himself is. A man who is bad sees evil—he is blind to good. The man who is partially like Christ has only a partial view of Christ. You might almost know your own character by your view of Jesus. If your eye sees not inexpressible beauty in Him, it is your eyes that are to blame, for He is altogether lovely. And when the eyes of our inward nature shall come to see Jesus as He is, then we may depend upon it that we are like He is! It is the pure in heart that see God, because God, the inexpressibly Pure One, can only be seen by those who are, themselves, pure. When we shall be perfectly pure we shall be able to understand Christ—and when we understand Christ, or see Him as He is, as we shall do at His appearing, then we shall be like He—like He, free from sin! Like He, full of consecration to God! Like He, pure and perfect! Today He is Conqueror over sin, death and Hell. He is superlative in His virtue and His holiness, He has conquered all the powers of evil and one day we, too, shall put our foot on the old dragon’s head! We, too, shall see sin bruised beneath us and shall come off “more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” This, then, is our hope—that we shall be like our Head when we shall see Him as He is!