28"Abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence." Verse 28 is the hinge between the two halves of the letter. It closes the long section on walking in the light with John's favorite word, abide, and it opens the next with a picture of a meeting. The Greek word for his coming, *parousia*, was used of a king's arrival in state. The word for confidence, *parresia*, means freedom of speech, the boldness of someone with nothing to hide. John uses it again for confidence in judgment and for confidence in prayer. The closeness that lets a person pray freely now is the closeness that lets them look at him freely then.
Then John points. 1"See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are." He says see because the thing is hard to take in. Adoption is the Father's act, and the love in it comes before any performance. John adds four words to make sure the gift is taken at full value, and the name describes what we are.
2"We are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared." Two times are held in one sentence. We are children now, fully, and there is something ahead that has not yet come into view. What John knows is the mechanism, that seeing him as he is makes us like him. The likeness arrives through sight, the way a child becomes like the parent by looking at that parent for a lifetime. 3"Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." Hope purifies, and a person who expects to meet Christ face to face begins preparing for the meeting.
Then the passage becomes serious. 4"Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness." Three times John uses a present-tense construction that means keep on doing. This has to be read alongside the letter's earlier honesty, where John said that anyone who claims to be without sin deceives themselves and gave us an advocate for the times we sin. So he is describing a settled direction. A person who belongs to Christ does not make sin a home.
He names why Christ came in two ways. 5"He appeared in order to take away sins." And 8"to destroy the works of the devil." The first says what the cross does about the record of sin, and the second says what it does about the power behind it. Nothing in either leaves room for a comfortable life alongside sin, since the one we follow came to dismantle it.
Then an image of seed. 9"God's seed abides in him." The seed is the life of God planted in a person, and a seed carries a family likeness. A child of God will begin to look like God. The identity comes first, and the behavior follows from it.
Ask where you are still living as though the title had to be earned, and where a settled habit has been allowed to stay.
Prayer
Father, see what kind of love you have given us, that we should be called your children, and so we are. Give us confidence to stand before your Son when he appears. Purify us as he is pure. Destroy the works of the devil in us, and plant your seed deeply, so that sin will not make its home in us. In Jesus' name, amen.