John 1:6-13
There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Isaiah 42:5–9
I am the Lord, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.
I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me,
so that from the rising of the sun
to the place of its setting
men may know there is none besides me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord, do all these things.
“You heavens above, rain down righteousness;
let the clouds shower it down.
Let the earth open wide,
let salvation spring up,
let righteousness grow with it;
I, the Lord, have created it.
“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker,
to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground.
God reveals himself and invites us into sonship through grace
One of my greatest weaknesses is for names. I am hopeless at remembering names. I can be introduced to someone and literally within seconds I have forgotten what they said was their name. And to be honest, I'm not always so good with faces either. One of the issues of having worked in different contexts over the years is that I sometimes struggle if I meet people where I don't expect them to be .... I am thrown because I'm meeting them out of context. I've been thrown before now by meeting patients in church, or church people in the surgery.
One of my favourite witticisms of doctors and former doctors like me in such circumstances is to say, with mock embarrassment, 'I'm so sorry, I didn't recognise you with your clothes on’. The one good thing about my time working in prison is that most of my contacts there are serving life sentences, so I am very unlikely to meet them out of context!
And sometimes this name- and face-blindness is genuinely awkward. Last summer I was invited to a Clergy garden party at the Bishop's house in Gloucester. Clergy are terribly cliquey and they were all huddled together in groups, and we didn't know anyone. So on those occasions I always seek out someone else who's standing looking awkward because they don't know anyone either.
And there was a couple standing under a tree by themselves, so I went over and got chatting. After some time I suddenly realised that just six months before I had spent an entire morning with the wife, who is a curate in training, assessing her progress in her job. I had been to her house, drunk her coffee, met her husband, and spent several hours with her and her boss talking about her work. And written a report for the Bishop. And I had completely failed to recognise her, just a few months later. It was embarrassing. But actually, it wasn't as embarrassing as it might have been because she clearly didn't recognise me either!
Today's passage from John's Gospel is also about recognition.
We're continuing in this short Prologue to the Gospel of John — it's a passage that is so familiar because we read it every Christmas in our carol services. It's a passage that effectively summarises what John will be telling us as his story unfolds - it's a summary, a prologue, an overture to his Gospel.
You'll be familiar with those wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, which always begin with an overture that's composed of little riffs of all the wonderful melodies and songs we shall hear as the story unfolds, put together into a grand piece that plays just before the curtain rises. And so with John also - he has knit together in this first chapter a series of themes that he will return to as the story unfolds.
And today's section, verses 6-13, is about recognition: recognising who Jesus is. But I'm going to use a more theological term than Recognition: which is Revelation. And we'll also consider a second R - Regeneration. Which conveniently gives me my two headings - Revelation and Regeneration.
1. Revelation
There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. John 1:6-7
We learned last week from verses 1-5 that Jesus, the living Word of God, is the author of life itself, and the bringer of spiritual light.
Because:
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. John 1:3-4
And now, we discover that there is a herald who proclaims that light: John the Baptist.
God wanted no-one to be mistaken about the significance of the ministry of Jesus Christ: in the style of the great Old Testament prophets, a new prophet had come,
dressed in clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, eating locusts and wild honey. Mark 1:6
John the Baptist came to proclaim the revelation of God. To help us recognize Jesus.
God is a god whose nature is to reveal himself. It is always God who takes the initiative - God whose sends the prophets, God who calls his people out of slavery in Egypt, God who speaks his word, gives his commands, meets with those he has chosen to carry forth his message. God who cried out to Saul on the Road to Damascus. God who speaks into our hearts, making us aware of our sin and rebellion, drawing us close to him. God who calls us. It is God who reveals himself. Revelation is in his nature. And he revealed himself in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he revealed his arrival through a man named John, who came as a witness to testify concerning that light, baptising in the wilderness, that through him all men might believe.
But here's the shock:
The true light that gives light to every man (Jesus) was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. John 1:9-11
The world - Jews, Gentiles, men, women, children - simply failed to recognize Jesus. They just did not understand who this was. Even the Jews, who had been waiting for centuries for their Messiah, failed to see that he was the very one they had been waiting for. His own did not receive him. They failed to grasp this astonishing, epoch-making, history transforming revelation from God. They were blinded, even to the message of John the Baptist. We know from Mark's Gospel that people came in their droves to be baptized by John in the desert - in search of spiritual renewal. And as he baptized, John's message was clear:
"After me will come one more powerful than I, .... I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Mark 1:7-8
And yet still for most the penny failed to drop. They got baptized, they confessed their sins - and still they did not welcome Jesus into their hearts. As Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians:
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Corinthians 4:4
The cares of life, the pressures of money and family and relationships and all the other things that bubble up to be our priorities, have blinded us to the truth of God's revelation: That Jesus Christ is the saviour of the world.
But of course, not everyone is blind. There were those who followed Jesus from the very beginning, despite the dangers. And although largely to this day the world still does not recognize him, there are countless millions who do follow him, even though at times it feels like we wade upstream against the tide of a society which refuses to accept his call on its life. And if we do follow him, remember, it is purely because God has revealed him to us. We did not seek him out: he found us.
2. Regeneration
Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. John 1:12-13
'Yet' is a great word. The Greek word here in the scriptures has a kind of assertive force: and yet, in the sense of 'this isn't the end of the story' ... 'there is good news'...
… to all who received him he gave the right to become children of God.
And the word 'right' is forceful too - it's an absolute right. If God invites you into his family then your place is secure. We have seen recently a member of our own royal family lose his place there; to have his styles and titles removed. To do that is the constitutional right of The Sovereign - it is a Royal Prerogative.
For Christians, that Royal Prerogative works in reverse - God chooses to give us the right to become part of his Royal Family - to become children of God. And we don't get there by our genetic pedigree, nor by how well we behave, or by working it out for ourselves - not even by our parents deciding.
It is a gift of God. It is his decision. He reveals himself - and if we accept him, if we allow him into our hearts, he regenerates our souls. He gives the immediate and absolute right to be adopted into the family of Christ - co-heirs with him of eternity. In short, to be born again.
And who is the agent of this rebirth, this regeneration? Of course, it is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Isaiah passage prophesied that so beautifully:
"I, the LORD, ... will make you (Jesus) to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. Isaiah 42:6-7
Prisoners don't release themselves. The blind do not open their eyes and regain sight by themselves. We don't find our own way out of deep darkness. But he is our light: he is our vision; he is our freedom. In him we have royal status, the styles and titles of children of God in Jesus Christ.
As an older man, the Apostle John wrote for us once again in his epistles:
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:1-2
So where does that all leave us? In short, thankful, and wanting to live for him. Thankful that he enabled us to recognize Jesus as Son of God. That he opened our eyes - that he freed us, that he brought us out of darkness. That he gave us royal robes of righteousness, that he has invited into all eternity, that we might live for him as sons and daughters of God. We have seen his revelation - and we have experienced his regeneration.
If you sense he is calling you, and you haven't yet opened your heart to him, then what are you waiting for? The hymn-writer Horatius Bonar caught the sentiment beautifully in the hymn:
I heard the voice of Jesus say, “I am this dark world's Light;”
Look unto Me, your morn shall rise, and all your day be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found in Him my star, my sun;
and in that Light of life I'll walk till travelling days are done.