The author of the First Letter of John wrote, “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.” (1 John 3:2 NRSV) What does it mean to be children of God?
The author of the Gospel of John, who is believed to be the same person that wrote the First Letter of John, argues that people who believe in Jesus are children of God. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1:12 NRSV) So, it seems that the author of the Gospel of John and the First Letter of John would suggest that Christians are, at the present time, children of God, but that what they will be has not yet been revealed. They do, however, go on to say that when he (God) is revealed, then Christians will be like God, for they will see God as he is.
I like to think of God as the essence of all being; that God is the source of all life and is present in all life. God is present in all life, but is not necessarily knowable by us or accessible to us. However, something of God has been revealed to us, and it was revealed to us in and through the person of Jesus. The life of Jesus has given us some insight into what God is like.
The Gospel of John, in particular, focuses on how God is revealed in Jesus. The description of Jesus in this gospel demonstrates that he possesses a deeper and freer self-consciousness that is so acute that the usual human barriers which are present in life disappear: he is portrayed as having a relationship with God that is of indistinguishable identity. But Jesus is not absorbed into God. Rather, he is alive with God.
For John, Jesus is the life through which the voice of God is heard speaking, the being through which God, as the essence of all being, is experienced as present. There is a kind of inherent, inseparable unity between Jesus and God, the result of which does not make Jesus more than human, but it does make him fully human and therefore fully one with all that God is. That is why John’s Jesus can identify himself with God.
When Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples, asks Jesus in John’s Gospel to “show us the Father,” Jesus responds that if Philip has seen Jesus, he has seen God, for “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:8–10). Jesus is interpreted by John to be inviting the disciples to enter him as he has entered God. When they do so, they will know the oneness that is present in the whole universe (14:20).
That is perhaps true for us as well. Perhaps as we follow Jesus and try to emulate him, we might achieve the same state of self awareness or self consciousness that Jesus experienced, and in that moment, God might be fully revealed to us. Then in that moment, we will see God as God is, because in that moment, we ourselves will be like God.
If we think of God as the very essence of being, then God is part of us, and we are part of God. Achieving the same state of self awareness or self consciousness that Jesus experienced, means we have a heightened sense of the interconnectedness between ourselves and God. God will be revealed in us just as God was revealed in Jesus.
