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1 John 3:3
“And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
One day, at Christ’s appearing, we will see Him and be made like Him (1 John 3:2). This is the great hope to which all of God’s children look forward. In today’s verse, John draws an immediate practical implication from that hope. Those who genuinely look forward to that transformation will pursue purity now, conforming themselves in advance to what they will finally become.
“And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (v. 3). The connection between hope and present purification is essential to John’s argument. The Christian hope is not merely a comforting expectation about the future. It is a transforming vision that reaches back into the present and reshapes how we live. Those who truly hope to see Christ and be like Him will not be content to remain in any pattern of life that contradicts the holiness toward which they look forward.
In saying that the Christian “purifies himself,” John is not teaching that believers achieve their own sanctification by the strength of their unaided will. The whole tenor of the New Testament rules out such a notion. Sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s work of applying Christ’s redeeming work to believers, but it is also a work in which believers are genuinely active. Believers both are worked upon by God and are working out, with reverence, the salvation that God has wrought (Phil. 2:12–13). To deny either side of this mystery is to depart from the New Testament’s careful balance.
To purify oneself is to engage actively in the process of sanctification. It involves the deliberate refusal of sin, the cultivation of holy habits, the practice of the means of grace, and the constant turning of the heart toward Christ. The Christian fights indwelling sin not to secure his standing but because he genuinely longs for the purity of Christ.
The Christian purifies himself “as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). The pattern of purity is the perfect purity of Christ Himself. Of course, no believer attains that standard in this life; the very next paragraph in 1 John will remind us that we still sin (vv. 4–5; see 1:8). Yet the Christian aims at the purity of Christ, knowing that anything less is not the goal but a station along the way. To aim lower is to misunderstand both the holiness of God and the goal of sanctification, which is to make us pure as He is pure.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The Christian’s hope of seeing Christ does not breed passivity but presses us toward purity. May we examine our hearts today and ask the Lord to expose any compromise that we have allowed, that we might be increasingly conformed to the One in whose presence we expect to stand.
For further study
- Psalm 24:3–6
- 2 Corinthians 7:1
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 62–64
- 2 Thessalonians 2
- Isaiah 65–Jer. 3
- 2 Thess. 3–1 Tim. 1