One immediate lesson from this verse is a warning on interpreting the Bible, and John in particular. He has just said that the world did not recognise Him and that Israel did not receive Him. Now he talks of those who did receive Him and believe in Him. So verses 10 and 11 do not imply that no one received Him. We will see one or two examples of this in John. A so-called literal understanding of the Bible can sometimes be an illiterate understanding.
Anyway, on to the main message of the verse. Verses 12 and 13 are at the heart of the chiastic structure, and are therefore the focal point of it.
Name stands for the person, for the character and nature of the person. So to believe in the Name of Jesus means to believe in who He is, who He claims to be.
To those who believed He gave the right to become children of God. Note that it is Jesus who gives the right to become children of God. This is another implicit indication of the divinity of Christ. John is full of these, places where something just does not make any sense at all unless Jesus actually is God. The word translated “right” by NIV can also be translated “power”, and some versions do so.
We are given the right to become children of God. The Greek here does mean child, not son, so is not a product of translators wishing to be gender neutral. John reserves the word son to speak specifically of Jesus as the Son of God. So when John talks about Jesus being the Son it has a special meaning. This is also an argument against the tendency of many modern translations to use gender neutral language where the original Greek does not. I am not against this in a dogmatic sense, but a pragmatic sense. There are many times where son, or man, or brothers quite clearly includes both male and female. But if the translation does change the Greek it should at least indicate that this has been done, otherwise it can result in us losing something of the significance of what the Bible actually says.
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