Imagine! You, as a believer, are God's child!

1 John 3:2-3
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The other thing in the paragraph we are dealing with is the incredible change that will take place in believers when Christ returns. John takes great pleasure in assuring his readers of the fact that they are actually “children of God.” Truths of that nature take a long time to sink in. But even when we understand a bit more perfectly that God is our father and we are privileged to be his sons and daughters, it is till true that there are things that “no eye has seen” and “no ear has heard” – in fact, they are “what no human mind has conceived” (1 Cor. 2:9). These things are gradually coming into focus for the serious Spirit-filled believer, but when Christ returns the final stage of transformation into Christ-likeness will take place.  John says, “We shall be like him, because (taking the Greek hoti in a causal sense) we shall see him as he really is.”
         We marvel at God’s remedy for the fallen state of the human race, what he did to change it, and how it works out. In other settings I have referred to this as “The Grand Old Story.” To be sure we are all on the same page let me summarize the most exciting and rewarding “novel” of all time. It begins in Garden of Eden with the first couple enjoying the friendship of God in that perfect setting. Tempted by Satan they disobey and are alienated from God and removed from the Garden. Like the prodigal son they wander in the far off country of Sin until they remember how pleasing and satisfying was their former condition. Returning (i.e., repenting and trusting the sacrificial gift of his Son) they are welcomed into the arms of his Father to “live happily ever after.”
         So the change begins when they return from the distant land of .Sin, but even then a complete and perfect knowledge of God is beyond their ability to understand. Then that focal point in history arrives and the skies break open to reveal the Son returning on a white horse (Rev 19.11-16) to take believers to heaven. That is when the scales of our limited ability to understand are removed from our eyes of our soul and we will be transformed in the most complete sense – John says, “We shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is.” Imagine that! To be like Him. Not “sort of” but “like him!” Imagine the transforming effect of seeing God in terms of who he actually is! Sin is banished and its powerful control over sinners is gone. We won’t even want to sin. No wonder that we who have this hope (absolute confidence in that which will certainly happen) live a different kind of life, namely, we “purify” ourselves  (v. 3) in preparation for the great eschatological purification