I Can Be Confident and Unashamed

Note: This transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for the accurate information and meaning.

This sermon, based on the end of 1 John chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3, explores how believers can stand confident and unashamed at the return of Jesus. The speaker emphasizes that this confidence comes from maintaining a vital connection to Christ, receiving God’s lavish love, and embracing the ongoing process of being transformed into His righteous image.

Key Points

• Confident and Unashamed: By continuing in Jesus, believers can face His return with boldness and joy rather than shrinking back in fear or shame.

• Vital Connection: Staying connected to Jesus through the word, sacraments, prayer, and fellowship is essential for spiritual growth and combating feelings of spiritual depression or disconnection.

• God’s Lavish Love: God does not sparingly dole out His love; He heaps it generously upon believers, adopting former enemies as His beloved sons and daughters.

• Transforming Identity: As children of God, believers progressively grow into the likeness of Christ, producing a life that delights in God’s law and is characterized by righteousness.

• Divine Sanctification: The power to change and live righteously comes not from personal strength, but from God, who faithfully sanctifies believers through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Confident and Unashamed

Well, thank you, Jesse. As we continue in worship, let’s turn our attention to the word of God. We’re continuing our series through the Epistle of First John this morning, taking a look at the end of chapter two and bridging over into the beginning of chapter three there.

First John is just a wonderful, practical, and encouraging book, reminding us of the forgiveness we have in Christ, reminding us of the love of God, the character of God—that He is light, and there is no darkness within Him at all. And then as he continues on, he focuses on these realities of remaining in Christ, remaining within the church, not denying Jesus but instead continuing in Him and remaining in Him. And now he has a special focus on our adoption as sons and daughters through the work of Jesus.

And so, as he begins that discussion there in chapter two, verse 28, he starts with these words. Let’s give ourselves to the reading of God’s word together.

“And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”

This is the word of God. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your grace to us, that in Jesus we have all that we need. May we fix our eyes on Him, the author and perfecter of our faith this morning, and may you encourage us by these truths that we can be confident and unashamed by our continuing in Him, by our reception of your love, and by living as your children in this world. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Struggle with Confidence and Shame

You’ll notice there that the title for the sermon is “Confident and Unashamed.” And that’s coming obviously there from verse 28. As John begins this passage, he says, “And now, dear children, continue in him.” Continue in him so that when he appears, we may be confident and unashamed before him.

Perhaps it’s true for many of you—it’s been true in my life—where I’ve struggled tremendously with confidence and shame. I think for many of us, we wrestle with those realities as children, as adolescents, as college-age adults, as young adults, as more mature adults. In some ways, we wrestle with these two concepts of confidence and shame all throughout our lives.

I remember the earliest moments in my life, being on a soccer field, not being the most athletic person—I know that’s hard for many of you to believe. But growing up and being on the soccer field, not really confident of my ability, of my speed, of my technique, and the ball would come near me and I would freeze. Because I had such little confidence that rather than just going for it, and missing the ball or not doing it quite right, I just chose to do nothing instead. Maybe some of you can sympathize with that sort of reality in your life. Maybe it’s not sports, maybe it’s something else.

Another time in my life, on a Good Friday service here, Drew was fencing the table right before we took the supper. He was encouraging believers to come forward and warning unbelievers to let it pass by as they continued their exploration of Jesus. And I was probably nine or ten, sitting just right over here, right about where Eleanor and Donna are sitting right now. I was sitting next to my mom and I just had an overwhelming sense and weightiness, a sense of shame over the reality of my sin, that I didn’t come forward. I didn’t take my shame to Jesus, but instead, I sat there and I didn’t do anything.

And for many of us in our lives, we have varying moments where we wrestle with confidence, we wrestle with the reality of shame in our lives. I’d say maybe when you hear those words, “you can be confident and unashamed,” you might be like, “I don’t know about that.” Or maybe you have the opposite problem, and confidence and a lack of shame is all too easy for you. But as we look at this passage, I think the reality is for believers living in a sin-cursed world, for unbelievers living in a sin-cursed world, lack of confidence and shame is the water we swim in.

And so what is the solution to that reality? How is it that this can be true of us, that we can be confident and unashamed before Jesus at His appearing? When Jesus returns, when the creator of all things, the judge of all things, the one who gave Himself up for our sake—how can we stand before Him and accurately be confident and unashamed? To be confident in this section is not just to stand with a stiff, straight posture and to be bold, but it’s to speak boldly. It’s to have an outward expression of boldness, of confidence at His coming. It’s to not shrink back from Him, but instead to walk into His presence with the knowledge that Jesus has saved us.

Continuing in Jesus

How is it that we can have that response at His coming? As you look at the various moments throughout redemptive history, as God interacts with believers, as angels come before believers, what happens? They fall on their face. As you see the various moments through redemptive history, they respond in fear. The presence of God’s glory is too much for them. The reality is that when Jesus returns, our great judge, our great redeemer, our great savior, our great king—our response won’t be to hide. Our response will be, “You’re here. Praise God.” We’ll have joy, confidence, a lack of shame.

And how is that a reality in our lives? Well, there in verse 28, it says this: “And now, dear children, continue in him.” Continuing from what we talked about last week, echoes of John 15. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. Our ability to stand before Christ when He returns, confident and unashamed, is through our connection with Him. That we’re still connected like a baby in a mother’s womb is connected by the umbilical cord. We’re being nurtured, we’re receiving everything we need to grow, everything we need to be connected to Jesus through that vital connection. And so as we continue in Him, as we stay connected to Jesus, when He appears, there will be a sense perhaps where we’ll be like, “Man, I thought you kind of already were here, but now you really are, in front of me.” Faith has become sight. And so we continue in Jesus first and foremost, as we think about our confidence and our lack of shame as we stand before Him on that last day.

And practical realities—we continue in Jesus through continuing to fellowship with the other branches that are attached to that vine. As we continue to fellowship and to live life with other believers, and be encouraged and challenged by believers, to be encouraged and challenged by the words of scripture as we continue to look to Him, we’ll find our faith growing and our awareness of His presence more clear. It strikes me that in our lives we often lose sight of our connection with Jesus because He’s really the one grabbing onto us, right? He’s the one that comes after the lost sheep. He’s the one who delights in the one who was lost but has been found. But often we have varying levels of awareness of that reality in our lives.

And when our awareness of God is low, when our awareness of our connection to Jesus is low, our minds wander, our lives wander. The temptations that we have, the persisting sins, the sins that we still wrestle with each day—those voices grow louder, and at times they overpower the reality of our connection with Jesus. And what the scriptures encourage us time and time again is to keep the words of this book ever on your lips. Meditate on it day and night. Keeping the word of God ever on our lips, reminding ourselves of the reality of the gospel and who Jesus is and what He has done for us. Filling our minds with that as the other things fill our minds outside.

It’s through prayer, it’s through the intake of scripture that we hear the voice of God grow louder in our lives and the other voices grow quieter. I’ve experienced that in my own life as I went to Bible college, went to seminary, and have been involved in church work my entire adult life. There are these moments where you start to get into routines, and you’re just doing the next thing, doing the next thing, doing the next thing. And you feel connected and close to Jesus, and then you start to feel a bit of that slide happening. As the slide begins to happen, you start to feel, “Man, I’m feeling off. I’m feeling more disconnected. I’m feeling more depressed. I feel less satisfied in the work of Jesus for me.”

And as you go on through that, maybe there’s a moment where you suddenly go to church and you read a passage of scripture that’s encouraging, you read Romans 8, you read Jeremiah 31, and you feel your tank fill back up. Oftentimes when we are feeling the most disconnected from Jesus, it’s because our tank of awareness, so to speak, has dropped really low, and we haven’t been reminded about who Jesus is and what He’s done for us. And so if we’re going to be confident and unashamed at His coming, it’s being connected to Jesus. As we’re connected to Him, He’s going to help us grow, He’s going to give us all the nutrients and the support we need. And He gives us that in the means of grace: in the word, in the sacraments, in prayer. So use those things, go to those things. Those are good.

Receiving God’s Lavish Love

And then next, as we continue in Jesus, we recognize that as we’re connected to Him, as we’re being nurtured and perfected by His work in our lives through the application of it by the Spirit in chapter 3, verse 1: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

Because as we’re connected to Jesus, as we’re finding our way back to Him and emphasizing His presence in our lives over these other realities, our connection to Jesus leads us to the reception of God’s love that He lavishes upon us. And I think sometimes when we think about God’s love for us, we think not of it being lavish, but instead, we think of it as being minuscule and miserly. That God is just doling out little bits of His love. He’s hesitantly, begrudgingly giving us His love. He’s not giving it to us in heaps.

As I’ve been trying to make sure that there’s less of me going into 2027—when I have breakfast meetings, I’ll use one little packet of jam on my toast, one of those two pieces, and I’ll spread it nice and thin just so I have a taste of that sweetness, right? It’s barely any jam on there. And I think that’s often how we think about God’s love for us. It’s just barely there, spread on super thin. God really doesn’t want to give us His love. But what this verse shows us instead is that God lavishes His grace. He takes a whole big spoonful of jam and He dumps it on that toast and spreads it on thick. God is not in a place where He is holding back His love from us as His believers, as we’re connected to Jesus, but instead, He’s heaping it on top of us.

And we see that in its fullness there in this verse: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” God’s lavish love is most accurately and most powerfully seen in the reality that we were enemies, we were enemies of God, and He made us sons and daughters. We weren’t just strangers, we weren’t just orphans, but we were enemies. We hated Him, we did what was evil in His sight. We rejected who He was, we rejected His Son. And yet, through His love, through the call of His Spirit, He draws us to Himself, and He makes us sons and daughters.

Growing into the Likeness of Christ

And so this morning, friends, you can be a son or a daughter. You can receive the love of God that finds its pinnacle in that adoption of enemies, that adoption of sinners into sonship. Because that is what we are. “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him.” And it’s not just that we’re children, but it’s that we’re going to become more and more like Jesus.

Just as a natural child—as my children grow up, as your children grew up, as you grew up—you’ve got the DNA mix of your parents. And so the more you grow, and often you see it a little bit as people are babies, you see it a little bit when they’re toddlers, but you really start to see it as they’re adults. There’s a couple of times in different churches I’ve been in where there have been multi-generations of families, where you’ve got a patriarch of the family who’s in his 80s or 90s, and then his son is in his 70s, and they’re like the exact same looking person. And you get them confused, because if they’re sitting next to each other, especially from behind, it’s like they dress the same, they have the same mannerisms, their voices are super similar—they’re different people, but there’s such a resemblance that exists there, right?

And the same is true for us as spiritual children of God. Is that we are going to grow up more and more and more into the likeness of our Lord Jesus, into the likeness of God. He doesn’t just leave us to be as we are, He doesn’t just leave us to exist in our sin and in our grossness and our weakness, but instead, He grows and develops us. And so this is true: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

And that’s a beautiful thought, isn’t it? That whatever sin you wrestle with now, whatever shame you feel right now, whatever lack of confidence you are experiencing in this moment, when Jesus appears, you will become like Him. You’ll see Him as He is. You will not be in fear, you will not be in shame, you will not be in a lack of confidence because of the work that He is doing even now in you through the love of God. And so friends this morning, you can receive the love of God. Rather than running from it in your lack of confidence, rather than hiding from it in your reality of shame, receive it. It’s for you. He desires for you to come and be a son and a daughter, He desires for you to be more like Jesus this morning.

And then as we receive the love of God and become sons and daughters, the reality of that has implications for our life, doesn’t it? Because who we are is the foundation for everything that we do. Right? And so you might have gotten hung up there in the latter part of verse 29: “If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.” You know that He is righteous. Therefore you know that everyone who does what is right is born of Him. The reality of being born of God, being a son or a daughter of God, being born again, if we think of John 3, is that we are no longer living according to the world, we’re no longer living according to our sin, but instead we’re living according to righteousness. And that righteousness is rooted in the character of Jesus. That Jesus is upright, Jesus does what is right, Jesus is the one who kept the law for our sake, who lived the perfect life that we should have lived, He died the death we ought to have died, and He rose again for our justification, our sanctification, our glorification.

And so those who are born of Him do what is right because He’s righteous. We take on that shape, right? And if we’re asking the question, “What does it look like to become more like Jesus? What does it look like to grow into His image?” It’s to grow increasingly in that reality that those who are born of Him do what is right. We love and begin to love, and we can sing with the Psalmist, “I delight in the law of the Lord. On it I meditate day and night.” Not out of obligation, not out of fear, right? Because God has already lavished His love on us, we’re already sons, we’re already daughters, we’re already connected to Jesus who is the vine, who nurtures us. But now that we are in that place, we are in God’s family, He’s given us what we need, and He is growing us, our relationship to the law changes. It’s no longer this taskmaster that destroys, but instead, it’s a guide that points us to Jesus, our need for salvation, and points us to the character of God—that this is who God is. If we’re going to be righteous, if Christ is righteous, that’s what we’re going to become. Not perfectly on this side of heaven, but progressively as the Spirit shapes us and grows us towards Him. And so we can live as children of God, those who actually have a new identity, who have a new nature, who have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light through the work of Jesus.

No Condemnation

Verse 3: “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” All of those who have this hope in Him. At the end of the day, friends, we can stand confident and unashamed. We can receive the love of God, we can live as children of God because of the hope we have in Jesus. That when we stand there before the judgment seat of God, we will not be condemned. But instead, the words we heard earlier from Romans 8: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”

When we stand before the judgment seat of God, the words, “no condemnation,” will be spoken. You will not be condemned. Though you are rightly called a sinner, though you are rightly called an enemy of God apart from Christ, you will not be condemned as a sinner. You will not be condemned as an enemy, but instead you’ll be welcomed as a child of God. As you’re connected to Jesus, as you receive the love of God, as you live as a child of God born out of that reality. And as we’ll talk about in the benediction this morning: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

The reality is that as God instructs us this morning through the apostle John, He’s instructing us in our response to what He is doing in us. He’s instructing us to go to Jesus. He’s instructing us to cling to Him, to cling to righteousness through those things. But at the end of the day, He also shows us that it is He who is doing this sanctifying work in us. The power for us to change does not come from us, but it comes from our vital connection to Jesus. So as we look ahead to that day that is coming, that day that is near, the day that the apostles and the prophets looked ahead to so powerfully in scripture, when Jesus will return, when our faith will be made sight, how can we stand confident and unashamed before our Lord and our Savior Jesus? By continuing in Him, by receiving the love of God, and living as children of God, as He empowers us through the work of Jesus and the work of His Spirit in our lives.

Closing Prayer

So friends, we look not to our own power, not to our own work, but we look to our good Savior, Jesus, who calls us to Himself this morning. And maybe this morning, that’s not you. Maybe, as I’ve gone through this, you’re like, “Well, I’m not a Christian.” But you can be. And the Spirit of God calls you to Himself this morning. Would you go to Jesus? Would you look to Him in all things?

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for your grace that you love us. May you open our hearts and our minds to you. May we rest in Christ. May we look ahead to that day when He will appear. And may we not look ahead with dread, but instead look ahead with great confidence and a sense of unashamedness, trusting that you will do that work in us, that you will make us like Jesus, that you will grow us and mature us in all the ways that we need. We ask all these things in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.