Morning Moments

1 John 3:3 And everyone who has this hope continually set on Him is constantly purifying himself, just as that One is pure.

What is the "hope" of this text?  It is that we shall be "like Him"!  He previously wrote, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. 2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

The pronoun "Him" refers to the Lord Jesus, not to God the Father, as Smith so clearly brings out when he says: "hagnos (pure) also proves that the reference is to Christ. As distinguished from hagios (holy), which implies absolute and essential purity, it denotes purity maintained with effort and fearfulness amid defilements and allurements, especially carnal. . . . God is called hagios but never hagnos. Christ ishagnos because of His human experience. The duty of his appearing before God, his presentation to the King, is hagnizein heauton (to purify himself), like the worshippers before the Feast (John 11:55), like the people before the Lord's manifestation at Sinai (Ex. 19:10, 11, LXX). It is his own work, not God's, or rather it is his and God's."

As to the expression, "purifieth himself," Alford comments: "These words are not to be taken in any Pelagian sense, as if a man could of himself purify himself: 'apart from Me,' says our Lord, 'ye can do nothing' (John 15:5). The man who purifies himself has this hope resting upon God. This mere fact implies a will to purify himself, not out of, nor independent of, this hope, but ever stirred up by and accompanying it. So that the will is not his own, sprung out of his own nature, but the result of his Christian state, in which God also ministers to him the power to carry out that will in self-purification. . . . The idea of hagnizein (to purify) is much the same as that of katharizein (to cleanse) (1:9): it is entire purification, not merely from unchastity, but from all defilement of flesh and spirit." Thus, the hope of being like the Lord Jesus arouses the determination to be pure like Him, and this brings into play the will of the Christian to carry that resolve out into action. Thus, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, the saint puts sin out of his life and keeps it out.