{"id":15324,"date":"2026-05-28T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=15324"},"modified":"2026-05-30T07:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:18:07","slug":"purity-that-springs-from-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2026\/05\/28\/purity-that-springs-from-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Purity that Springs from Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\">1 John 3:3\u00a0<sup>3<\/sup><em>And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as that one is pure.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\">The pronouns and references in this verse are vague, and so we need to consider the context to determine the references. <em>Everyone<\/em> provides an open invitation to any person who seeks the eternal life John writes about. <em>In him<\/em> could refer to God, who is mentioned in verse 2, or to Jesus, who is the major topic and focus of this letter. Likely, John has Jesus in mind because it is faith in him that leads to eternal life, not a generic belief in God that has no clear basis in God\u2019s revelation. <em>Himself<\/em> refers back to <em>everyone<\/em> as part of the invitation to participate in <em>this hope<\/em>. <em>That one<\/em> connects to <em>in him<\/em> and likely refers to Jesus, who is pure and without sin.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\">People make choices based on motivation. Some are motivated by money and make their decisions based on what will bring the best reward or comfort. Others are motivated by love, especially in \u201cwinning\u201d the love of another. Others are motivated by a sense of duty. Most people have a mix of these and just try to get by in the vicious cycle of life. Hope lies behind all these motivations in some way or another. Hope always requires an object since it cannot exist by itself. We hope\u00a0<em>for<\/em>\u00a0something or hope\u00a0<em>in\u00a0<\/em>someone.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\">The way to be pure is to hope in Jesus. Hope in eternal life provides the motivation to live in holiness. John connects hope with purity because hope serves as our motivation for walking in holiness. Our hope is to be remade into the likeness of Christ (verse 2). This hope guides our motivation for the choices we make. If our goal is Christlikeness, it will determine much about how we live.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\">John also emphasizes how we become participants in the hope of Christlike holiness and love by purifying ourselves. Temptations constantly bombard us, especially in our media-saturated world. When temptation comes, we must choose to walk in the light as he is in the light. We increasingly learn to rely on the blood of Christ, which is the purifying agent by which we cleanse ourselves. This situation is not either\/or; it is not God\u2019s work or our work, but both. We rely on the provisions God has already offered, but we must choose to accept this cleansing agent and allow our hope in Christlikeness to bring us to our knees in confession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1 John 3:3\u00a03And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as that one is pure. The pronouns and references in this verse are vague, and so we need to consider the context to determine the references. Everyone provides an open invitation to any person who seeks the eternal life John writes about. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15324"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15327,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324\/revisions\/15327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}