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Hope in Eternal Purity, Aim at Daily Purity

John says: If you have experienced the new birth and, thus, your heart has been awakened to hope in Jesus Christ and you cannot wait until he appears, because all your sin will be done away with and you won’t be battling on the Internet anymore and you won’t be battling with pride anymore and you won’t be battling with selfishness anymore and you won’t be battling with all the bitterness and anger in your life, then you will be free and like him—if that is the passion of your life. 1 John 3.2–5″>1 John 3:2–5 says it plainly: If the passion of your life is to be purified from all sin in the presence of Christ in the future, you are only kidding yourself—if you don’t want purity to happen in your life right now. “He is going to show up some day, and then I will really want to be pure.”

I used to play those games when I was a kid. “I’ll get saved when I am old, because it is boring to be saved. So get saved when you are old.” No. It won’t happen. The hardness will creep over you and you will lose all your capacity to know him, see him, love him—and God will withdraw from you and you will perish, thinking that on your death bed you could repent. And you will be an Esau pleading for repentance and it will not be given. Don’t play that game. If you are 30 years old, don’t play it. If you are 40, don’t play it. 50, don’t play it. And sure don’t play it if you are 60. Don’t play that game.

We will purify ourselves, meaning, we are going to fight. Nobody in this room is perfect. Nobody will be perfectly pure before you die. The question is: Who is fighting? Who is fighting? Who says, “Yes, I want Jesus to come back”? “I want to be like him perfectly. It grieves me not to be more like him than I am. I am going to fight sin now.” Who says that? That’s the children of God talking. I don’t care how many times you fall down, if you get up talking like that, you are a child of God.