We don’t often think about purity in our culture today. If we think about it at all, we think of a pure bread animal or pure ingredients for a recipe. We do not think about being pure ourselves. If we did, we would likely think of it in human terms, meaning racial or cultural. Unfortunately, that line of thinking is not the way God thinks.

            When John is writing about us being made pure, he is writing about spiritual cleansing, which includes both our spirit’s and conscience’s. Our physical bodies are not made pure. Our moral character becomes pure, not of our own doing but through the work of the Holy Spirit. So why does John say we purify ourselves? It is in our humbleness and willingness to allow the Holy Spirit to carry out his work.

            Our hope, which John says is the reason for our being purified, is in Jesus Christ. It is a hope that is confident in the outcome. We believe in God’s promises and trust that he will fulfill them. We believe Jesus when He says He prepares a place for us and He will return. We believe the promise that we will spend all eternity with God.

            At the same time, we do not allow ourselves to become prideful in attaining the glory Jesus promises us in heaven. Instead, we remain humble, attributing it all to the work Jesus has done on our behalf. We have done nothing and can do nothing to earn it. Jesus, through His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension has prepared the way for us. We share in the glory of Christ by God’s amazing grace.

            Though we have likely heard that we will be resurrected and have our current bodies in mind, that is not what John tells us. Instead, he says that we do not know what we will look like. We do know our form will be like that of Jesus in His resurrected state. Based on John’s statement, we must assume we will be changed, just as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 when he says we will all be changed, even those who are still alive when Jesus returns. Paul says we will become imperishable, meaning immortal.

            What we will be, we do not know. Yet, we know that in our hope we are spiritually pure, just as Jesus is pure. We have been cleansed, made as pure as new fallen snow. It is not we who make ourselves pure, but we are made pure by a continual cleansing of the Holy Spirit with the blood of Jesus because of our hope. May we all remain humble and hope in Jesus.

1 John 3:2-3: Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.