“THE SON CAME SO YOU COULD BECOME”
John 1:6-13
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:6-13 ESV)
The passage before us this morning breaks down very nicely into three headings. Those three headings are 1. Receiving; 2, Believing; 3. Becoming.
What we are going to do this morning is to take each of these headings and examine the individual parts, and then put them all back together. In these verses John answers for us how it is that you and I become a child of God. The implication in John’s words is that not all of us are apart from Christ God’s children. That creates confusion in many people because they have heard somewhere along the way that God is everyone’s father. We hear about the universal father hood of God. God is the loving, gracious Creator of us all, we are all made in his image, but the Bible reserves the right to be called a child of God to only those who have received Christ. If you or I can only be called a child of God if we have received Christ then answering the question of what it means to receive Christ, to believe in Christ takes on the dimensions of importance and urgency.
Let’s start with…
1. RECEIVING
Last week we focused on the sad reality that the Creator came to his creation and his creation rejected him. Jesus Christ came to his own people, we could say he came to his own “kin” and they too rejected him.
Thankfully that was not the end of the story. Like Paul Harvey this morning we get “The Rest of the Story.”
There is that wonderful word of contrast that signals a change of direction, John begins verse 12 with “But to all who did receive him”. That is the rest of the story. The rest of the story is that the rejection of the Creator, the rejection of the light, the rejection of Jesus Christ was not then and is not today a total or a complete rejection.
Let me for the moment just plant this question in your mind, and then I will endeavor to answer the question in a few moments.
Here is the question, why do some, in the face of such widespread rejection of Christ, why do some receive him? File that away for a few moments.
What does John mean when he writes about those who did receive Christ? Let’s begin by defining the word. The word receive means to “lay hold of”, “to grasp”, to “obtain”. It is more than just “intellectual assent”. Perhaps it would be easier to define receive by pointing out what it doesn’t mean. Receiving Christ is much more than just believing the facts about Christ. You can believe that Jesus was a real person, you can even believe that Jesus was the Creator but that is not the same as receiving Christ. I can’t remember ever talking to even one person who has denied that Jesus Christ wasn’t a real person. I’m afraid that many people consider themselves to be “Christians” simply because they believe some facts about Christ, or they acknowledge some of the things that are true about Christ. But we must not make the mistake of equating believing some facts about Christ is the same as receiving Christ. Don’t misunderstand me, there are certain facts that you have to believe about Christ in order to become a child of God, but simply agreeing with those facts does not make you or anyone a child of God.
When you grab hold of something you normally do so for a reason. Don’t you grab hold of something because of some expectation you have for what you are grabbing? Don’t we desire to obtain something or someone because of the benefit that we are going to gain from our obtaining? If you are falling off the roof and the last thing between you and the ground is the gutter you are going to grab the gutter with the expectation, with the desire for that gutter to stop your fall and keep you from breaking your neck.
2. BELIEVING
John says “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” What does it mean to believe, or specifically to believe in his name? Notice carefully how John has written this verse. First he says “But to all who received him,” now notice what is not there, what is not there is a little word we call a conjunction. What is not there is the word “and”. John does not say that you have to receive Christ and believe in Christ. That would be requiring two different things. What John is doing here is making two parallel statements. Think of it this way, John is saying the same thing two ways.
In other words to believe Christ is to receive Christ, to receive Christ is to believe in Christ.
At this point we need to slow down and do our best to understand what it means to believe and then what does it mean to “believe in his name.”
Let’s start with what it means to believe. Again many people say they believe in Christ, but the belief they hold is not the belief that the Bible requires of us. We need to let the Bible define for us what it means when it uses the word belief. |