1 John 3: “That we should be called the sons of God”

Who wrote 1 John, and why

The letter names no author, but church tradition since the second century has linked it to the apostle John, and its vocabulary (light and darkness, truth, abiding, love) is very close to the Gospel of John. It was probably written late in the first century to congregations shaken by a split: a group had left, teaching that Jesus had not truly come in the flesh.

John writes like an old pastor to people he calls “little children”. He wants them to know they belong, and he gives them simple tests: whether they believe that Jesus is the Christ, whether they keep his commandments, and whether they love one another.

What does 1 John 3:1 mean?

The full verse begins with “Behold”, an invitation to stop and look, and then marvels at the kind of love the Father has given. The wording on our print is the heart of it: the result of that love is that we are named God's children. Modern translations often add “and so we are”, because the earliest Greek manuscripts include those words; the King James text, following later manuscripts, leaves them out, but the meaning is the same. The name is not a polite title, it describes something real.

“Sons of God” in the King James follows the older English habit of using sons for all children, and the Greek word here, tekna, simply means children, daughters as much as sons. The second half of the verse adds a sober note: the world does not recognize them, because it did not recognize him either.

Verse 2 then looks forward. What we will be has not yet appeared, John says, but when Christ appears we shall be like him. Being a child of God is both a present fact and a future still unfolding.

A verse for new beginnings

Because it speaks of being named and adopted into a family, the verse is a natural fit for baptisms, christenings and dedications, and many parents hang it in a nursery. Adoptive families in particular often hold it close, since the New Testament itself uses adoption to describe how people become God's children.

The same idea elsewhere

John 1:12 says that those who received Christ were given power to become the sons of God. Paul develops the thought in Romans 8 and Galatians 4, where the Spirit teaches believers to call God “Abba, Father”, an Aramaic word a child would use at home.