divine kinship - God’s love in making believers God’s children (cf. Jn. 1:12) progressively produces resemblance to the Parent-God; here and hereafter. [1]

finished product?- Hope of complete moral likeness to Christ will motivate Christians to purity of life [2]

NIB - If the church abides as God’s beloved children now . . . then that reality makes a difference in the ways, that the church conducts its meetings and spends its money. Regarded from the vista of God’s eternity, the church is a family with an open heart, not a business with a bottom line. If Christians know that they are growing into a future whose form resembles him in whom they dwell, then they can withstand uncertainty and loss-even death-with vigor and hope, continually replenished by God . . . When we center ourselves, not in secular society’s immediate interests or anxious fears, but in god’s claims and intentions for us, we remember the One to whom we are finally accountable and from whom we draw our strength." [3]

In place of the writer’s phrase, "Now are you children of God," put various other possible metaphors that could have been used! "Now are we __________" (employees, students, spouses, staff, soldiers, POWs) of God." How do the different metaphors change the personal sense of relationship that is contained in children of God?

What might the writer’s link be between "children of God" and "no one who abides in him sins" suggest of other teaching that had come into the Johannine faith communities?

Please see the homily for this week on DPS which is based on this passage.

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[1] Oxford Annotated Bible: RSV (NY: Oxford University Press, 1965), page 1484.
[2] ibid., page 1484.
[3] The New Interpreter’s Bible XII (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), pp. 410-411.