1 John 3:1 · World English Bible
1 John 3:1 Meaning See How Great a Love the Father
See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him.
What does 1 John 3:1 mean?
Sonship is no achievement, and that is what makes it unbearable to the ambitious. Nothing was earned, nothing is owed; the relationship is already the case, and only the long habit of thinking oneself separate keeps it out of sight.
From the Indian Guru reading below.
1 John 3:1 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Indian Guru
AWARENESS
Indian Guru
Sonship is no achievement, and that is what makes it unbearable to the ambitious. Nothing was earned, nothing is owed; the relationship is already the case, and only the long habit of thinking oneself separate keeps it out of sight.
To be called a child is to be given back wonder, eyes that have not yet decided in advance what anything means. The crowd cannot recognise such a man, because recognition runs only through what a person already carries within; whoever has never tasted silence has no category ready for someone full of it.
Indian Guru lensGo deeper in the app
Indian Guru lens
Live 1 John 3:1 today
- Walk part of your commute today without earbuds and let one ordinary thing be genuinely interesting, the light on a building, the sound of the street. Do not label it, just look.
- Let someone misunderstand you today without correcting them. They are reading you with what they have, and it costs you nothing to let that stand.
- When you catch yourself trying to earn your place, in an email, in a review, in a room full of people, pause and ask what you were trying to secure. It was already yours before you started working for it.
What would I see today if I had not already decided what it was?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen · beginner's mind
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's, few. Wonder returns the moment you stop deciding in advance what anything means.
Hinduism · Upanishads
What you are looking for you already are. Nothing has to be earned, only uncovered, since the separation was never real.
Sufism · Rumi
You can only recognise in another what already lives in you. Whoever has never been quiet has no name for the quiet in someone else.
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