Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
What Manner of Love
1 John 3:1-3
1 See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him. · WEB
The status is present and settled, the future is deliberately left blank, and the one thing said about it is a resemblance.
The exclamation in verse 1 uses a word that asks what kind of thing something is, as though the love had to be classified before it could be described. What follows is the classification: that we should be called children of God.
The letter then adds a clause that is easy to read past — and we are. The naming is not honorary. And the consequence drawn is not comfort but explanation: the world does not know us because it did not know him. A congregation feeling its strangeness is told the strangeness is inherited.
Verse 2 balances certainty against ignorance in one sentence, and both halves are firm. Now we are children of God — present, settled. It has not yet been revealed what we will be — and the letter simply leaves that blank rather than filling it.
What it does say about the future is a single thing: when he is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him as he is. The seeing is given as the cause of the likeness, not merely its reward. What the resemblance consists of is not described, which is consistent with the sentence before it.
Verse 3 draws the practical line, and the direction is worth noting. Hope purifies. Not fear of the meeting, and not effort to qualify for it — the expectation itself does the work, and the standard given is again a person: as he is pure.
settled What this mark means