John writes these letters as an old man. He has outlived almost every other apostle. He has watched the Messianic Community grow, fracture, suffer, and grow again. He has seen false teachers come and go, splinter groups break off, and tender believers wonder which voice is the true one. The first letter does not begin with argument. It begins with memory. That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. The old man is telling them what he saw. The Word of life was right there in front of him. Forty-some years on, the memory still sits in his hands.
And from that memory he gives them the test he will repeat throughout the letter. The evidence that the life of Messiah is actually in someone is not theological precision. It is love for the brothers and sisters. This is how we know what love is: Yeshua laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. The received love is the given love. The love that has been poured in is the same love that gets poured out. John keeps pressing on this nerve because it is the one nerve that cannot lie.
“Leaven in the Loaf”
The major evidence of righteousness is love for the brethren (2:29–3:24). Already believers are the “children of God” (an alternate designation for the “people of God” used elsewhere in the promise-plan), but what they will become has not yet appeared (3:2). First John 3:2 is one of the best texts to show what is meant by “inaugurated eschatology”: “Now we are the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known” (emphasis mine). Even though part of the single prediction of the future already has an immediate fulfillment, often with a multiple number of fulfillments in the future, the “now” and the “not yet” are bonded together as one in the total work of God. I have repeatedly pointed to this same phenomenon earlier in the promise-plan, especially in the prophets’ concept of the “day of the Lord.”¹⁴⁶
Walter Kaiser Jr. is putting a name on the tension every believer lives inside. Now / not yet. The children of God designation is already true. The fullness of what we will be is not yet revealed. Both are equally real. The same phenomenon, Kaiser says, that the prophets spoke about in the day of the LORD is now visible in our own chests. Part of the future is here. Part is still to come. And the two are bonded together as one in the total work of God. We are not waiting for our identity to arrive. We are already children. We are simply waiting for the full revealing of what that childhood will look like when the One who is our life appears.¹⁴⁷
And here is what John says is happening in the meantime. Yeshua meets people where they are — there is nowhere else He could meet them. But the meeting, if it is real in the covenant sense, does not leave anyone where it found them. The light that came into the world keeps replacing the darkness, slowly, in every room of the house. It is not just our theology that gets changed. It is our emotional life. Our thought life. Our habits. Our desires. Our dreams. Our palate for what tastes good and our vision for what looks beautiful. Yeshua said the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened. That is what is happening to us right now. The leaven is working slowly, in every part of who we are, until what is in us is fully kneaded in. The not-yet is doing its real work inside the now.
You have parts of your life you have been treating as outside the reach of the leaven. Areas you have unconsciously decided are just the way you are. A temper that flares in traffic. A vanity you have learned to call self-care. A bitterness about something done to you years ago. A pattern of dishonesty so old it does not feel like dishonesty anymore. You have given the gospel your theology, maybe even your finances. But there are rooms in the house you have not yet let the light into. You have unconsciously decided the leaven does not reach those rooms.
It does. Now we are God’s children, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. The leaven is reaching every part of you, slowly, whether you have invited it into the room or not. The question is whether you will cooperate with the work or keep the door closed. Your emotional life is not outside its reach. Your habits are not. Your imagination is not. Your appetites are not. The same Spirit who made you a child is the same Spirit working leaven into every part of who that child is becoming. Open the rooms you have been keeping shut. The light is not interested in leaving them dark.
Which room in your life have you been treating as outside the reach of the leaven — and what would change if you opened the door to it this week?
Somebody close to you is in the middle of receiving love and has not yet figured out how to give it. They came to faith somewhere along the way. They know they are loved by the Lord in theory. But the love has not yet found its way back out of them toward the people in their reach. They are sincere. They are not phony. The leaven is in the loaf — but the kneading is still happening, and they have not yet noticed that what was poured in is supposed to come back out.
Be near them, and do not preach. John does not preach in his letters. He remembers out loud. He tells them what he saw with his own eyes and let them feel what he was feeling. Be that kind of friend. Tell them, in your own words, about a time the Lord’s love reached you and how you noticed it later coming out of you toward someone else. Do not weaponize the principle. Just give them the picture. The received love is the given love. The kneading is slow. They do not need to manufacture love any more than they manufactured the love they received. They only need to notice it, and let it pass through them, and trust that the leaven is doing its work.
Who in your reach has been receiving love without yet learning to give it — and what would it look like to walk alongside them while the kneading does its work?
A small child in your life has more than one part to who they are. They have a mind. They have feelings. They have a body. They have a way of being with other children. They have a spirit. They have a forming character. And the temptation in raising a child is to camp in the slice that is easiest to see — the report card, the athletic skill, the quiet manners — and to miss the slices the LORD also wants to bless. A child whose intellect is praised and whose tender heart is overlooked grows up brilliant and lonely. A child whose body is celebrated and whose mind is dismissed grows up performing and unsure. The leaven needs to reach every part of who they are.
So look at them whole. Bless what is true in their mind and what is tender in their heart and what is strong in their body and what is generous in their friendships and what is alive in their spirit and what is becoming firm in their character. Name what you see across all of who they are, not just the slice that catches your eye. The LORD looks at the whole person. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. Train your eyes on the slices the world will overlook. The leaven is working in every part of who that child is being made. Help them notice the work He is doing across the whole of them, not just the part that earns applause.
Which slice of the small person in your reach have you been overlooking — and what would it look like to bless what the LORD is doing in all of who they are?
Where has the love you have received not yet become the love you give?
Read 1 John 3:1–3 aloud, slowly, twice. Then write down three rooms in your life — emotional, mental, physical, relational, spiritual, or character — where the leaven has not yet been allowed to do its work. Beside each, name one person who has been receiving the consequences of that closed door. Then write the line Now we are God’s children, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. Pick one room to open this week. Let the love that has reached you begin to reach someone through you.
¹⁴⁶ Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Promise-Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 381.
¹⁴⁷ Koch, Five to Thrive, “Identity: Who Am I?”
¹⁴⁸ Koch, Five to Thrive, “Belonging: Who Wants Me?”