Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B, Second Reading (1 John 3:1-2)

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 

This Sunday’s readings focus on Jesus as the way to salvation. In the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” We learn in the gospel that Jesus is the good shepherd who sacrifices everything to ensure the safety of his flock.

The gospel of John tells us that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to save it and, for this reason, we can become children of God. Paul argues that we become children of God by adoption. Although John does not use the word adoption, that is basically what he means, but note that under Roman law, adopted children were equal to physical children in all things. Furthermore, the terms used are gender neutral so the application to both men and women is clear. Of course, we do not become children of God through anything we do but because God gave us this gift.

The last part of verse one means that since the world rejected Jesus, it will also reject his followers. Indeed, all three readings focus on the scorn and rejection that Jesus experienced.

The subject seems to change in verse two with a reference to the Parousia, the Second Coming. Note that John sees two times co-existing. There is the end-time when Christ returns and all will be made perfect. But there is also what is called a “realized eschatology” which means that we are each a child of God now. As Francis Moloney puts it “The believer has the wonder of God’s loving gifts now, yet waits for the fulness of those gifts, the very sight of God, when he will be revealed”.

If we abide in God we are already his children but we do not know what we will be when we are, in effect, fully grown: “what we will be has not yet been made known”. This will be revealed to us as part of God’s larger design but we will be like Jesus. That is the great hope we are offered through Jesus.