“BELOVED, WE ARE God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3). “And every one who thus hopes in him”—to what does “thus” refer? It refers to the hope of being like Him.
Because you hope to be like Him, you purify yourself as He is pure—according to His standard and type of purity. This completely answers the charge of some against Christianity that it is a reward morality. A South American skeptic said to me: “You Christians have to be bribed to be good. You have to have heaven dangled before your eyes before you will be moral and righteous.” This is true of some brands of Christianity, but it has nothing to do with New Testament morality. Here the supreme motive is to be like Him, and because we want to be like Him we purify ourselves according to His purity. The reward is a type of being—to be like Him. The payoff is in the person. If we are like Him it would be an insult to offer any outer reward, for if we are like Him we have everything, including heaven. Where He is, there is heaven, and anyone like Him would be in heaven even if he were in hell.
If to be like Him is the goal, then it determines the quality of the motive for morality. We will slough off anything that keeps us from being like Him. No higher motive for morality is possible. Search the motives for morality, and they all fade into insignificance before this one: “I want to be good because He is good and pure because He is pure. He is the center and the motive of my morality.” To be in Christ is to have a passionate desire to be like Christ in character and life and disposition.
O Lord Jesus, one look at Thee and I renounce everything that comes in the way of my being like Thee. Everything I want I see there. Outside Thee is hell. Inside Thee is the heaven of goodness. Strip me of all that makes me unlike Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My one and only motive for morality is to be like Him.
