11 30 14 The Free Offer of Salvation John 1:12
We have seen two main themes in the Gospel of John in recent weeks. The first theme is in the first nine verses, namely, The Divine Infinite Glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 1:1 ESV: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
6 “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. 9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.”
The second theme is the Total Depravity of Sinful Man in John 1:10-11: “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own things and his own (people) did not receive him.” The World at large was not expecting Jesus at all, so it’s not a shock that they rejected Him, but His own people, who had hundreds of promises over hundreds of years rejected the Light of the World; that is still the case in most of the World today. The ultimate Rejection! But… Not everyone rejected the Lord of Glory. The Gospel of salvation in our Lord Jesus is offered freely and it is the most Glorious privilege to those who receive it. There IS hope in Verse 12: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
"Yet to all who received Him,"
Vs. 12: Literally: Yet to all who received (lambano) Him, He gave them the right (authority) to become children of God, even to those who believe into His Name.
The majority of humanity does not respond to Jesus, and the majority of Israel did not respond, but SOME do! Last week we saw Jesus’ own people REJECTED the Promised Messiah; Verse 11 carried the negative of the word “receive”, which means REJECTION, and here we see that “SOME” received Him: To RECEIVE JESUS is to take him to yourself and to entrust yourself to Jesus.
To RECEIVE Jesus is more than a nod of the head or the raising of the hand or the repetition of a simple prayer. To RECEIVE JESUS is to acknowledge all of His claims: His claims about man and his sinful condition, His claims concerning salvation, and His claims concerning Himself. To receive Him is to confess Him as Savior and Lord. To reject Jesus is an act of defiance against the LORD of Glory and against God’s provision but to receive Him is to have Life in Him and to receive Him is the responsibility of every man but only few will do so.
IMPORTANT: (Between this week and next the striking balance between human responsibility (“to receive, and to believe”) and divine responsibility (“born of God”) is revealed.)
To “RECEIVE” Jesus is only PART of what it means to “BELIEVE”: To BELIEVE in CHRIST means that you DO RECEIVE Him and that you DO ACTIVELY FOLLOW Him. A person actively believes, receives, and follows. Receiving Him is not merely passive. In John 17:8, Jesus said, in speaking of those who are HIS OWN: “For the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they RECEIVED them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.”
And in John 10:4: Jesus said: “When he puts forth all his own,(that is, all who believe and receive Him ) HE GOES AHEAD OF THEM, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” They recognize, believe and follow because they received Him.
“He gave them the right to become children of God”
Look at the next phrase: He gave them the right. The entitlement attitude of American culture (which is sinful pride) will be its own destruction! It says: “I have my rights! I “deserve” more than I have and if I don’t get what I WANT, I am going to throw a fit!” If you would receive from God what you deserved in His economy, there would be NO MANKIND TODAY on the face of the earth: YET, to all who received Him, HE GAVE THEM THE RIGHT to become children of God.
The tense of the word “gave”(didomi) tells us that the subject, “He”, the Word, the Light of the World, attained an action or event. His is an ACTION of GIVING something to the undeserved. When Jesus GIVES something, the action is completed and attained. What is it that Jesus gives?
Jesus gives the RIGHT (exousia) or AUTHORITY, but not in the sense of power, to become children of God: This right originates in God’s authority, not in man’s. THE WORD, who is God’s authority, GAVE THE RIGHT to CHILD-SHIP. It is not the result of faith. You have no authority within yourself to do this, and it is not initiated in any way by you: “The Right” is the pure act of the Son given by God to provide for you a change of status: THE RIGHT to CHILD-SHIP, from being dead in sin and a child of the devil, to life in Him, NOT “to be” but to BECOME a child of the Most High God, which originates from God.
“He gave them the right TO BECOME”: The word for “become” is “ginomai”. It is not “to be” but TO BECOME; You have a CHANGE in STATUS when THE LIGHT ACTS upon you, but it is only to those to whom the WORD gives authority who are FULLY AND COMPLETELY HIS CHILDREN; they are HIS CHILDREN ETERNALLY to whom the LIGHT, the WORD and the LIFE gives the RIGHT! We are His CHILDREN in the fullest sense ONLY when He gives the authority… and we respond and receive. THEN and only then will we truly FOLLOW Him AS His Children. Jesus said in John 3:18: “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Who are the true CHILDREN OF God (teknon)? Listen carefully! Human beings are called “God’s children” but they are ONLY God’s children in the fact that He created mankind. Listen! In the Biblical sense, there are two categories of “children”, a person is either a Child of God by the AUTHORITY of God or they are a child of the devil.
In John 8:44-47, Jesus said: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning,(he kills and destroys) and does not stand in the truth,(he lies and deceives) because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (and neither did most of Israel!)
We are not “children” of God naturally, in the same sense that Jesus is THE SON of God. Jesus, the SON of God carries rights and privileges associated with SUPREME Sonship. No human being will ever BE Jesus! He has ALWAYS been the Son. There is a difference in KIND between Jesus and all of His human “brothers”. Human beings who enter the Kingdom of God do so by God’s ADOPTION, not by our natural state of being, as is the case with Jesus. (ontology) Yet to all who received Him, He gave them the right (authority) to become children of God,
"To those who BELIEVE"
Yet to all who received Him, He gave them the right to become children of God, EVEN TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE, actually, “to the ones believing”, (pisteuousin) present participle based on the noun for “faith” (pistis) and the verb for “believe” (pisteuō). John does not use the noun for “faith” always uses the verb, which stresses the fact that “to believe” is ACTIVE. Faith is associated with activity and there are three points in the New Testament which are always included in the topic of faith or belief.
One is that Faith includes “knowledge of” or intellectual understanding of the truth of God’s revelation. Faith does not rely on your amount of “head knowledge”, but God utilizes His Word to bring you TO faith. Our minds are part of His process.
Secondly is “assent” or persuasion. You receive knowledge through your mind but then you are persuaded of that knowledge in your Heart. You assent to God’s grace for you in Jesus Christ. You are persuaded that He is your only hope for forgiveness and life.
Thirdly, when you have an understanding of God’s Word concerning the sinfulness of man and your personal spiritual dead condition, and you are persuaded that God’s grace in Jesus Christ is your only hope, you know in your mind and heart that you must trust Him alone for your life. You have a desire to exercise trust in Him alone, and so you surrender your will to the will and work of Christ’s finished work, no longer relying in any way on your vain work to accomplish what Christ alone can do!
Along with these three, believing in the name of the Lord Jesus is confessing openly the object of one’s faith. People openly admit their trust or distrust in all sorts of things: People and products, philosophies and fallacies, sports heroes or celebrities. They are not ashamed of stating their positions clearly after they have clearly been persuaded one way or another, and Faith in the Lord Jesus confesses openly that JESUS IS THE CHRIST, and that I trust in Him alone as My Savior and My Lord.
Remember that we examined the purpose of John’s testimony about the Light in John 1:7: “He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.” John 3:15-18: “so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Consider all the things we said about BELIEVING and becoming a child of God, and realize that “believing” or “NOT believing” is the dividing line once the truth has been revealed.
John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
"In His Name"
The “name” in ancient culture was more than a label or a means of identification; one’s name included the person’s character and the entire nature of the person himself. True belief in Jesus declares that “I believe in all that His name represents according to His own Word. I believe in His NAME and in all that the Bible reveals about Him. I believe that He is Immanuel, that He is God with us. I believe Jesus to be the GREAT I AM of the Old AND the New Testament. That He is Lord.”
To believe in Him asserts that I believe Jesus to be the child referred to in Isaiah 9:6: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
C.H. Dodd said this about faith in Jesus: “The way of victory is not a confident assertion of our own better selves, (faith is not about self-improvement) but FAITH, and faith necessarily refers us to something beyond ourselves. The victorious faith of the Christian is TRUST IN God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ His Son. It means committing ourselves to the love of God as it is expressed in all that Jesus Christ was and all that He did.” Jesus (as well as the Apostle Paul and Peter) would add that it includes abandoning everything else in the world to follow Christ alone, since He alone is Savior and Lord. We yield ourselves to the one who alone bears that Name, the LORD Jesus Christ!
John 1:12 presents the free offer of the Gospel of Grace in Christ: “But to all who DID receive him, who believed in His Name, HE gave the right to become children of God.” Do you hear the message and do you accept that message. Have you entrusted yourself to Jesus all of His claims about Himself and also His claims about your inability to save yourself. Will you believe, receive and follow Him as your Savior and as your Lord? If not, He still invites you today to come to Him, to confess your need for forgiveness and salvation in Christ alone.
OUTLINE
Two Themes: The Divine Infinite Glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. (1-9)
The Total Depravity of Mankind.(10-11)
1. “Yet to all who RECEIVED (lambano) Him:”
To entrust oneself to Jesus.
To acknowledge His claims.
To confess Him as Savior and Lord.
Persons who “receive Him” actively BELIEVE, RECEIVE, and FOLLOW Him. (John 17:8,10:4)
2. “He GAVE (didomi) them the RIGHT” (exousia):
THE RIGHT to CHILD-SHIP, from being dead in sin to life in Him, originates from God not from man.
The Right” is the pure act of the Son given by God to provide for you a change of status.
3. “To BECOME (ginomai) CHILDREN of God” (teknon):” John 3:18
You have a CHANGE in STATUS when THE LIGHT ACTS upon you, but it is only to those to whom the WORD gives authority.
Human beings who enter the Kingdom of God do so by God’s ADOPTION, not by our natural state of being.
4. “To the ones BELIEVING (pisteuousin) into His NAME:”
Believing is Knowledge of, Assent to (persuasion) to, Trust in and Surrender to Jesus (Allegiance).
Confessing openly the object of one’s faith.
His NAME is all that the Bible reveals about Him.
We yield ourselves to the one who bears that Name!
