“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
This line is in the First Letter of John, in one of our readings today. It is quite a statement: “What we will be has not yet been revealed.”
What does John mean?
In part, his statement could apply to the afterlife — to what happens to us after we die. Years ago, I worked in a bookstore, where I was responsible for shelving the religion books. This was around the time that books on the afterlife were very popular — books written by people who had had near-death experiences. They would describe what they had seen and heard in an experience that may have been a little taste of the hereafter. These books flew off the shelves. I suppose we’re all curious or nervous about what will happen to us after we die. We say we believe that the faithful go to heaven to be with God, with Christ. But we cannot describe what this actually looks like, and what we will look like. Can we describe what our heavenly beings will look like and be like? No, this has not been revealed to us, no matter how many books we might read about it.
John is writing a different sort of book, this short little book we call his first letter. John is writing from the perspective of one who knew Christ and walked with him and saw events first-hand. He lived in the presence of Christ, both Jesus of Nazareth who walked the earth, and also the Risen Christ, Christ raised from the dead, who came and met with the disciples on Easter evening and opened their minds to understand the Scriptures about him.
And so John writes now, in this letter, to those who are living some decades later, to communicate to them — and to us now — the truth that he has seen and that he knows — the truth about who Christ is, as the Son of God and author of life, and the truth about how we are to live in the light of Christ. He is writing to deepen the spiritual life of his readers and to show them what a life in Christ looks like. “See what love the Father has given us,” he says, “that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
We are children of God. So John is writing not just to encourage his readers about the life in the hereafter, after death, but he is also encouraging his readers for this life that they, and we, are living now. And so he says, “What we will be has not yet been revealed.”
Well, that seems a little strange. Here we are. We see who we are. We know our personalities, and what our past experiences have been, and so on and so forth. Most of us have some sense, we think, of who we are.
But what we could be we cannot even imagine. John is saying that as we follow Christ and worship God, we change. We actually become who God made us to be, we become more fully ourselves, but as a child of God, as one who belongs to Christ. And until we get there, we cannot imagine just how good it will be. This is not revealed to us, for we could not imagine the joy, the peace, the sheer sense of knowing ourselves to be loved and watched over, and all this is ours when we come to the fullness of knowledge of who Christ is and who we are in him.
In this letter aimed at deepening our spiritual lives in Christ, John constantly weaves in instructions and warnings and advice, not as a nagging parent or teacher shaking a finger at us, but with the greatest concern that we find the amazing wonder and goodness that is possible. He tells us repeatedly to love one another and to walk in the light.
The way that John writes about all this, he is warning us to pay heed to the path that we are on — the trajectory of our life. Are we on a path towards Christ, walking in his light, or have we turned our backs on him and headed in another direction? For example, in the reading today, he says that Christ takes away sins, and that “no one who abides in him sins.”
We all make mistakes — that is what sin is — mistakes that pull us away from unity with God and with one another. What John means here is to “habitually and constantly” sin,[1] to be on a path that takes us away from what we could be. He is urging us to be on a path that leads us steadily and consistently toward the light of Christ, so that what we will be might be revealed, not just to we ourselves but even to those around us, encountering us. If the path we are on just takes us into darkness, leave it aside, step away, and turn instead to the light.
Our Gospel reading today tells of the disciples sitting around on Easter evening. They are lamenting that Jesus has been crucified, but also saying that several of them now have seen Jesus, risen from the dead. What to think? Is he dead? Is he alive? Which way should they go? What should they believe?
And then Jesus appears among them, there in the upper room where they have gathered. He eats in their presence, and then he tells them that what has happened is exactly what he had said would happen, and exactly what is foretold in the Scriptures. And then he “open[s] their minds to understand the scriptures” — meaning he opens their eyes to see events differently, and by so doing, he helps them to change the path they are on, from despair to hope, from fear to courage.
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
May we follow Christ so that who we are and could be might be made real, and that we might walk in Christ’s life and know the peace, the joy, the light, and the goodness that are possible in him. Amen.
[1] From footnote in the RSV Oxford Annotated Bible.