John calls us to behold a love unlike anything the world can offer: the astonishing, otherworldly love of God that does not merely forgive sinners, but makes them His children. This love gives us a new identity now and a greater hope for what we will become when Jesus returns. And as we fix our hope on seeing Christ and becoming like Him, His radically different love begins to make us different too, producing lives increasingly marked by His goodness.
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.