John 1:12 - to those who believe

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.

John 1:10,11 - A failure of recognition

1:10

This verse describes the tragedy of the situation. Jesus came into the world, the world that He had made, yet this world did not recognise Him. Sin blinds, and the greatest evidence of this is that we failed to recognise the Son of God when  He came.

There are so many amazing things in this verse. God, the creator of all things, came into the world. Consider the vast difference there is between us and God, just imagine the scale of that difference. We are mere men, but God is eternal, everything was created by Him.

We think we are so wise, yet when the creator of the world came to us we rejected Him.

1:11

The tragedy was compounded by the fact that the Israelites themselves did not recognise Him. For the rest of the world you might say the rest of the world had an excuse, Israel had no excuse. God had created the nation in the first place. He had rescued them from slavery, He had interacted with them, saved them, judged them, spoken to them, revealed Himself to them in many ways. Yet they did not recognise their God when He came to live among them. This is the true tragedy of the human condition.

The juxtaposition of the world and Israel is significant. Israel is in many ways a microcosm of the problems of man and the salvation of God. The Old Testament could fairly be described as a record of the sins of Israel. In Jeremiah in particular we see the utter depravity of the heart of Israel. Then we see the grace of God, the working of God and the promises of a new heart. We also see promises of salvation going out to other nations. The good news is that in Christ there is salvation for all, and it is in Christ that unity between Jews and Gentiles will be found (Eph 2:11-20). This is still true today. Israel will only find true peace when she turns to Christ, the Palestinians will only find peace and prosperity when they turn to Christ. And this is the only way for their to be peace and unity between Israel and Palestine.

John 1:8,9 - Jesus the light

1:8

Having stated that John the Baptist was a witness to the light, John makes it absolutely clear that he was not the light. Now John contains none of John’s preaching, nor his baptising, in particular the baptism of Jesus Himself. However, John was not “anti John the Baptist”. He makes several mentions of how John the Baptist pointed people to Jesus. This was John the Baptists proper purpose, the purpose he himself delighted in. What needed addressing was the tendency of some to wrongly venerate John the Baptist and to miss the point.

1:9

Some thought that John the Baptist gave light, but he only pointed to the light. The true light was coming into the world. With preachers, prophets and evangelists we need to make sure that we focus on who they are pointing to.

Jesus is the light for everyone. A common view is that all religions are basically the same, but such a view is evidence only that the person has not really thought it through. Ravi Zacharias has said “most people think all religions are superficially different, but essentially the same”, the truth is “religions are superficially similar, but fundamentally different”. And Jesus is the light for everyone. It is not arrogant of Christians to claim that everyone needs to believe in Jesus, it is simply stating the truth.

The “world” is a favourite word of John’s, the problem is that he uses it in a variety of ways, slipping easily from one meaning to another. The variety of meanings includes:

• the universe
• the earth
• the human population
• most people
• people opposed to God
• the human system opposed to God

So there can be an issue at times in determining in which sense he is using the word.

John 1:6,7 - A witness to the light

1:6

John’s gospel is somewhat different from the others in the way that it deals with John the Baptist, indeed he always refers to him simply as “John”, rather than “John the Baptist”, and does not mention any of John’s baptising. Why is this? It is possible that there were some who gave  wrong place to John the Baptist, so John wants to make it clear that John the Baptist’s purpose was to point to and prepare the way for Jesus. Moreover, John the Baptist himself knew that this was his purpose.

“There was a man sent from God “. Unlike the Word, John the Baptist was just a man, but he was sent by God. We can have an unhealthy habit of worshipping people rather than God. God may send someone as a preacher, evangelist, teacher, prophet or whatever, but they are just men. We should respect them and honour them, but respect them for what they are, which is servants of God, and every servant of God has the purpose of pointing people to Jesus. Indeed if someone, or even ourselves, start to point people to ourselves then we need to watch out.

1:7

This verse contains so many of the themes of John. He talks about those who testify to who Jesus is. The role of John the Baptist was to be a witness to testify to who Jesus is. Of course, we can apply this to ourselves as well. Our role is to bear witness to who Jesus is. Jesus is the light, we have already seen light mentioned in previous verses, and it is a word that will be repeated many times in John. And the goal of all this is that people will believe in Jesus.

John the Baptist came not draw attention to himself, but to draw attention to Jesus. Words for testify and witness are used far more often in John’s gospel than in the others. Similarly, believe is used numerous times.

That little word “all” is the centre of much debate between Calvinists and Arminians. Calvinism sees God as having an elect and Jesus came specifically to save and call the elect. His death on the cross was atonement specifically for the elect. So they see the word “all” here, and in similar contexts, as meaning “all the elect”. Arminians, on the other hand, see Christ as opening up the way for people to believe. Now one might say that the text obviously says all and means all, but then we see many instances in John of people not believing. So things are not so simple. Nor am I going to seek to resolve the Calvinist-Arminian controversy! I will say I tend towards the Calvinist side without being hardline on it.

Sermon on the reliability of the New Testament

A sermon on the reliability of the New Testament:
A Word to rely on, a Word to live by

If you want to know more about New Testament reliability and related issues here are some useful links, and where I got a lot of my information from.

James White

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXrX7_dRyV0

There are many more excellent talks and debates by him.

Dan Wallace

http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbbible.aspx?pageid=8589952769

http://www.apologetics315.com/2009/08/dan-wallace-mp3-audio-is-what-we-have.html

If you want to know about the formulation of the New Testament canon, then the following book is very good:

The Canon Revisted - Michael Kruger

John 1:5 - Light shining in the darkness

The previous verse has just said that the life in Jesus is the light of all people. Since we sinned, said we could manage without God, we have chosen to live in darkness. But Jesus has come into the world, He is the light of all people, so His light shines in the darkness. Remember that verse 1 is a parallel on Genesis 1:1. In the creation we read that God said let there be light (Gen 1:3).  And the darkness has not “understood” or “overcome” the light. The Greek word can be translated either way, and both contain truth.

The darkness does not understand who Jesus is. Listen to non-believers speak about Jesus and it will range from being a misunderstanding to  complete rubbish. For instance, in the recent debates on so-called same-sex marriage some supporters of the idea have claimed Jesus on their side. Or they just see Him as a “good man” (though they rarely agree with much of what He actually said!).

But it is also true that the darkness has not overcome it. We see in John’s gospel the battle between light and darkness. Later John lived through times of great persecution, and the church has gone through many such times. These days Christians in the Middle East are experiencing terrible suffering. Yet these attempts to crush Christ have never worked, and they never will.

John 1:4 - Life

Life is one of the repeated themes of John. We also find the link between light and life in Psalm 36:9:

For with you is the fountain of life;

in your light we see light.

Life comes from Christ. As soon as we try and live without God we cut ourselves off from the source of life. It is like a laptop computer that refuses to plug into the mains. It will seem to function as  normal for a while, but then it will start to lose power and eventually die. So it is with the human race.

The life of Christ is light for all people. Look at society and consider what is still good. It all emanates from God. We see this most clearly in the West where our legal and social systems had Christian roots. Of course this wasn’t perfect, but there was a Christian heritage in there. These foundations have helped to make our societies stable. Yet now we are abandoning these foundations as quickly as we can, not just saying that we don’t need them, but positively rejecting anything linked to Christianity. Indeed it is almost a crime (and sometimes actually is a crime) to hold to Biblical teaching on certain matters, such as homosexuality.

The good news is that if we repent and return to Christ then we will rediscover the source of life and the light in our life will return. And there is no darkness that it cannot banish, but that is straying into the next verse.