IT’S A GAME many of us seem compelled to play. We see children with their parents, then start looking back and forth trying to decide whether Junior looks more like Mom or Dad. The game can start even in infancy. From the moment she first meets her granddaughter, Grandma may insist she looks like Dad. Then Grandpa says no, she looks just like her mom.

Big brother stands in the corner and says nothing. But secretly, he thinks she looks more like a big pink blob.

It’s not either/or, of course. When my son was young, people usually said he looked just like me, and my wife and I sometimes thought so too. Then we saw a picture of my father-in-law in his youth — he could have been a doppelganger for our son at the same age. The one difference? Our son has my nose. For that matter, so does our daughter, a fact for which she is not particularly grateful.

Family resemblances, though, go beyond physical features. Children learn their parents’ habits and values. They may root for the same sports teams (lest they get kicked out of the house). They may even pick up their parents’ gestures and verbal tics. I suspect that this is why some people so often see family resemblances even in adopted children. It’s not just that they expect to see a resemblance, so find what they’re looking for; it’s that the kids dress, act, and sound like a member of that family should.

Something similar, perhaps, could be said about the family of God.

EARLIER IN HIS letter, John wrote about having fellowship with and abiding in both the Son and the Father. At the end of chapter 2, he says that “everyone who does what is right has been born of him” (1 John 2:29, NIV). Jesus, the Son of God, lived a righteous life; all those who are born of God should therefore show a family resemblance by doing what’s right.

It’s reminiscent of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. …Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt 5:43-45a, 48)

Anyone can love the people who love them. But to love your enemies? That shows our family resemblance to a God who loves with incomparable grace and mercy. “So be perfect like your heavenly Father,” Jesus says. As we’ve seen before, to be “perfect” doesn’t mean flawless, it means mature, complete — or if you like, grown up. Jesus is what spiritual maturity looks like; our goal throughout life is to become more and more like our Father in heaven.

We are born of God, John suggests; we are God’s children. That adoption into God’s family is a gift of love, and at the beginning of chapter 3, John wants his readers to share in his amazement: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1a). (Some of you may have an old Maranatha! praise song playing in your head right now…)

And as he continues, John strikes the note of family resemblance:

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. (1 John 3:1b-2)

John has already told his readers not to love the world, in terms of internalizing its habits and desires. And they can expect the world to return the favor. Remember, when John uses the word “world,” he’s usually referring to humanity in opposition to God; by definition, therefore, “the world…did not know him.” His point, by extension, is that the world also can’t understand believers. The more believers embody the character of God, the more they walk as Jesus walked, the stranger and more out of step they may seem to others who don’t honor God.

And the family resemblance continues into the future. “Now we are children of God,” John says, but what will we become? Again, we might imagine that the conflict which split the community left some folks with doubts about their destiny, prompting John to reassure them that God has promised them eternal life (1 John 2:25). Indeed, John is already looking toward the future at the end of chapter 2, encouraging believers to live in a way that will help us be confident about standing face to face with Jesus when he eventually returns (2:28).

Here at the beginning of chapter 3, then, John seems to say, We should live with an eye toward the day Jesus returns. God hasn’t revealed everything about that day yet; I can’t show you a picture. But I’ve seen the resurrected Jesus. I remember his sudden appearance to us when we were cowering with fear in a locked room. I remember his appearance to us when we were fishing, and how we had breakfast together on the beach. Who knows what we’ll see when he returns? All I know is that we’ll see him as he truly is, in all his glory and majesty. And somehow, some way, we’re gonna be just like him.

Talk about your family resemblances.

This is what it means to have an eschatological perspective on life, to live in the present with a hopeful eye toward the future God has promised. And that is what John will say next: if we truly have that hope, our lives should show it.