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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
2:28-3:3 Christians as Children of God. Having reaffirmed his readers' commitment to the true Son of God, not the Antichrist (vv. 18-27), John urges them to strive for the ethical integrity and sense of urgency appropriate to their spiritual identity.
2:28 abide in him. See notes on John 8:31; 15:4. so that. Maintaining one's personal relationship with Christ will prevent straying into doctrine or conduct of which one will be ashamed at his coming. When he appears, many will lack confidence and will shrink from him, because he will come in judgment.
2:29 To know that he is righteous is to have placed one's faith in Christ, not in one's own moral uprightness.
3:1 the world does not know us. There is built-in friction between those who know and serve Christ and those who do not.
3:2 What we will be means having glorified bodies that will never be sick or grow old or die, and being completely without sin. No one like that has yet appeared on earth (except Christ himself after his resurrection). we shall be like him. In eternity, Christians will be morally without sin, intellectually without falsehood or error, physically without weakness or imperfections, and filled continually with the Holy Spirit. But "like" does not mean "identical to," and believers will never be (e.g.) omniscient or omnipotent as Christ is, since he is both man and God.
