The Hope that Transforms: A Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent
1 John 3:1-3
It’s Advent time again. The American celebration of Thanksgiving is past. Now all eyes turn upon celebrating Christmas. In fact, this is what many Christians make of Advent, if they have even heard of it. The reality is that Advent is only distantly related to Christmas. It was celebrated long before Christmas in the church. Instead of centering on the birth of Christ and making sure the church is decorated properly and the proper dishes prepared, Advent centers upon the second coming of Christ. Advent has been called a “mini-lent” by some as it centers of making sure we are ready for the day of His appearing.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent which serves as New Year’s Day in the Church calendar. The last week of the Christian year is now celebrated as the Feast of Christ the King who is the final word. We celebrate that the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords shall reign for ever and ever. Amen. Advent is the first word, a season in which we prepare ourselves for the day of His coming.
Advent is centered around four Christian themes in many of the Christian Churches around the world. These themes are “hope”, “peace”, “joy”, and “love.” In these churches these themes are symbolized by four candles in a wreath, three purple, and one pink. The large white candle in the middle is the Christ candle which is lit on Christmas Eve. Readings are made, called “litanies” in which Scripture is read which illustrates the theme of the week. On the first Sunday, others have a hanging of the green ceremony in which serves as a sort of pictorial and symbolic sermon.
Today’s theme is that of Christian hope. Hope has its birth in two realities. the first is that what one is going through in the present is less than optimal. the second is that even though the times are tough, things will improve in the future. We hope for better times. We are not sure that they will be better. They could be worse. Yet we must keep some sort of hope in the future to be psychologically healthy. so we hope or even hope that we can hope.
We as Christians share in the desire to be hopeful. What is different is what our hope is grounded in. It is not based on the next election or some government intervention. These may or may not improve things. We might hope for a better job, or at least the prices go down at the store. We are bound to be ultimately disappointed if we place our hope in anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ and His promises to us.
What we learn from the Apostle John this morning is that hope is transformational. We know all too well that we are not yet what we should be. We also despair that we are in ourselves powerless to change the situation. We seem to cry out with the Apostle Paul “O Wretched man that I am. Who shall save me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24) But as soon as we say this, we realize their is an answer. “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 7:25) There is hope.
But hope is not passive. We don’t just continue to look at our wretchedness and wallow in it. Hope is active. We are aware that we shall be changed at some point into a new and glorious body. But this isn’t just something for the sweet by and by. We don’t know exactly how we shall appear in that day, but we trust that by the Lord’s grace we will get there. We are promised that we will be like Him and that we shall see Him as He is. Have we not wondered what it would have been like to have walked in Galilee with Jesus. What an awesome privilege the Apostles had. they beheld him. They saw His works. They heard His teachings. They handled the Word of Life as John mentions at the beginning of the epistle. We cannot but read the testimony of the Apostles who knew Him from the beginning of His earthly ministry. Even though we have not seen, we are beckoned to believe on Him. But we also have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which confirms the message of the prophets and apostles of old.
John then tells us: “He that has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure. Hope motivates us to grasp the future reality now. This process is called “sanctification.” We have been transformed already in part when we receive Jesus as our Savior. Now we are called to be more of what we already are until we come to perfection. This is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. We are beckoned to be more like Jesus, even in the here and now. Paul in the 3rd Chapter of Colossians has a similar teaching. We died when we put on Christ. That life is hidden and remains hidden in Christ. We are beckoned to look upward to where christ is seated at the right hand of God as well as to yearn for His return. This is hope in action.
I am not saying that perfection will happen in this life. John Wesley was most disappointed in this. of all the thousands he led to the Lord and talked about being made perfect in love in this life, he only found a tiny handful of believers whom he felt had attained it. And he never included himself. For all this talk of perfection, Wesley kept returning to despair. He had a heart-warming experience at Aldarsgate, but a quarter-century later despaired that he had never been a Christian at all. This is the double-edged sword which comes from pursuing personal holiness. How do we deal with this. The Scripture calls us to believe and to hope, yet it seems that we fail to live up to standard. It seems that the harder we try the farther we fall. We follow Paul in Romans 7. but we must get to Chapter 8. There is, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) The answer is to take our eyes off ourselves and back unto Christ. It is His work. He that has begun this work in us shall bring it to fruition. (see Philippians 1:6-7) This hope puts our Christian life back on track.
I can remember in my seminary days hearing the arguments about sanctification. Some held that it was instantaneous and happened at the same time as justification. Others held that sanctification was progressive and a separate work of grace. both views seemed to make strong points as well as leaving me unsatisfied. If I was sanctified when I believed, then why was I not living the Christian life as I ought. And if it was progressive, then why did I feel sanctified on Sunday when my faith was lifted and felt lost on Tuesday and needed to get saved again and start the process of sanctification from the beginning. The Scripture is clear. Hope transforms, and we need to remind ourselves of this hope. What I came to realize is that God sees us for what we shall fully be on the day the Lord returns. His promises cannot fail. He will complete the good work. In this way, sanctification is instantaneous. It is progressive in the sense that God guides us on our journey of faith. He is not responsible for our failures, or course, but He is committed to our success. If it were up to us, we will fail every time. But we must remind ourselves that when we do fail that He is faithful and just to forgive our sin upon our confession of it.
1 John was often used by John Wesley to promote perfection among the Methodists. Yet it would be good to review how it appears that the Apostle John meant perfection to be taken. The church to whom John writes to appears to have recently suffered a split. A group had left the body who felt that they had risen above everyone else. Some think that these were Gnostics in the making. They felt they had a special knowledge that the common Christians did not have. They felt that Jesus was a teacher of the secrets, but once they had attained this knowledge, they had no further need of either Christ or His Church. So they left. they felt they had achieved perfection, and that the common lot of Christians were incapable of this knowledge and had become a burden, John clearly tells them that they had it all wrong. They were not Christians at all. This was proven by the fact they felt no need for fellowship. Their pursuit of perfection was an individual effort. Anything that hindered their conception of perfection needed to be discarded.
All too often, we in America today feel that our relationship with the Lord is a one on one relationship. there is a tendency to see our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ as a hindrance to their own blessing. There is a tendency for such to leave the Church as being unnecessary. They are individually priests and go to God directly. if others can help them progress, all is well. But once they have gotten all the help they feel they need, they move on. Some say that they can worship God in the woods better than in Church. or, if they feel the need for a mutual admiration society, they will gather around others whom they feel worthy of special revelation. This is a tragic mistake. Once one feels that they can come before God directly, they are no longer in the Son. They have to stand on their own works. Who can stand before an infinitely holy God in their own person. John clearly teaches that if anyone says they have not sin, they are liars, and the truth is not in them. He also reminds us that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. We would all burn to cinders before this Holy God. Only Jesus Christ is holy enough to come into the presence of the Father. So, unless we are in Christ, there is no hope.
So John in this epistle is giving hope to the wounded believers in the church. Their “teachers” had abandoned them as being hopeless. Yet it these very hopeless believers that John says are in true fellowship with the Father because they are in the Son. They had despair in themselves, and this despair was amplified by those who had left. But they were all right because they were in the body of Christ. The transformation which is promised when we received Christ will happen. As we noticed, hope is active and not passive. But this is the activity of the Holy Spirit who works in us and not ourselves. So let us rest in hope and faith. All will be well.
Not only do we feel our own imperfections, we also realize that the Church is imperfect. There is a saying if one should actually find the perfect church that they should not join it or it would no longer be perfect. Churches have accomplished great works for the Lord at times, yet seem so carnal at others. It is easy to feel the disappointment. But the promise is that in the end she will be presented as the perfect bride of Christ. The church needs constantly to be reformed, and she needs teachers who will care for and guide the flock, patiently dealing with the sheep.
So let us at this Advent time renew the true hope and act upon it. Let us encourage ourselves and each other with the truth of the Gospel. Let us be patient with each other. and let us march forward in hope and the day of His appearing.
