All Saints Day III — What We Will Be

The Promise Beyond What We Know

Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.

— 1 John 3:2

One of the most remarkable things about the Apostle John's words is their extraordinary honesty. “What we will be has not yet been revealed.” Here is a man whose faith in Jesus Christ was profound, whose understanding of the Christian life had been shaped by years of discipleship and spiritual reflection, and who nevertheless acknowledged something that remains just as true for us today: we do not know exactly what we will become. Throughout these All Saints Day reflections, we have considered people whose stories may have disappeared from human memory, and the quiet transformations of the heart that even their closest companions might never have witnessed. Now we turn toward an even greater mystery. What has become of those who have gone before us? What awaits us when our own earthly lives are finished? John does not pretend to possess every answer. He tells us what he believes God has promised, while acknowledging that much remains unrevealed.

Human beings have developed an astonishing variety of beliefs about death and what, if anything, follows it. Some believe that consciousness ends permanently when the body dies. Others believe in an immortal soul that continues to exist apart from the body. Christians themselves have long differed over the condition of the dead before the resurrection, the nature of eternal life, and the relationship between our present bodies and whatever form our future existence may take. We may hold strong convictions, and we may have thoughtful reasons for them. But none of us can offer a complete, publicly verifiable description of what it will be like to experience the resurrection. Will we recognize one another? What will our bodies be like? How will we experience time, memory, or relationships? Scripture offers promises and glimpses, but not a comprehensive explanation. And John, rather than filling those gaps with speculation, is willing to say that what we will be has not yet been revealed.

I find the biblical image of death as sleep especially meaningful. Imagine visiting a family home where someone you love is asleep upstairs. That person is not participating in the conversations downstairs. They may have no awareness of what is happening around them. Yet nobody imagines that they have ceased to belong to the household. Their place in the family remains. Their relationships remain. We do not stop counting them among those who are present simply because they are resting. Scripture frequently speaks of those who have died as sleeping, and Christians have understood that image in different ways. Some believe the dead rest without consciousness until the resurrection; others believe they are consciously present with Christ. But the image itself offers a beautiful reassurance: death need not mean that someone has been erased from the family of God. The sleeping person has not been forgotten. The relationship has not been canceled.

And perhaps that is one of the deepest meanings of All Saints Day. We remember people who no longer walk among us, whose voices we cannot hear and whose hands we cannot hold. Some were beloved parents, grandparents, teachers, and friends. Others lived so long ago that we know little more than their names, and still others have disappeared almost entirely from the historical record. Yet our inability to see them does not mean that their lives have become meaningless. On the first day of this series, we considered those who left no descendants to preserve their memories. Yesterday, we considered the inward victories and spiritual journeys that may have remained invisible even to those who knew them best. Today, we acknowledge that the future God holds for his children also lies beyond our present vision. We do not know everything about their past, everything about their hearts, or everything about what awaits them. But we believe that God knows.

John's confidence, however, is not merely confidence in the existence of something beyond death. He writes, “What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” He distinguishes between what remains unknown and what faith allows him to affirm. We do not yet know precisely what we will be, but John believes that our future is bound to Christ, and that whatever transformation awaits God's children will be wonderful beyond our present understanding. Notice, too, that he does not say we must wait until some distant future to become members of God's family. “We are God's children now.” Our belonging is already established, even while our transformation remains unfinished. There is a wonderful humility in this combination of certainty and mystery. Faith need not mean claiming to know everything. Sometimes it means knowing whom we trust, while admitting how much we have yet to discover.

And so, as we remember the saints, perhaps we can resist the temptation to imagine that we must understand every detail of their present condition or future destiny. We can honor their lives, preserve their stories, give thanks for their influence, and trust that God's purposes extend beyond the limits of our knowledge. We can also remember that our own stories are not finished. The person I am today is not necessarily the person I will be tomorrow, much less the person I will become when God's promises are fulfilled. There is still room for growth, for healing, for forgiveness, and for transformation. The saints who have gone before us remind us that human life reaches beyond what any one generation can see or understand. We do not know exactly what we will be. But we are God's children now, and we trust that God has not finished with us yet.

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