Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text. Sermon text is found in John 1:6-13. John 1:6-13. There was a man sent from God whose name was John, this man came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. To those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Let us sing our prayer for illumination. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. whose wisdom still directs us. Praise him for the word made flesh. For the spirit which protects us ever.

Please be seated and rest in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope you’re not bewildered by the three outlines for today’s sermon. There is the normal adult outline which has observations on the text or actually begins with textual notes and then observations. There’s the children’s outline which hopefully is helping them to attend to the sermon and the teaching of God’s word. And then there’s a third outline that is really just for those who have an interest in the sort of literary structures.

Last week in the question and answer time after the sermon there was a question about the arrangement of the seven days and the outline I brought today outlines John 1-21 according to a possible 7-day structure and so I’ve provided that for you just for your peruse at a later date. I won’t go over it in any kind of detail. I have drawn some crude lines on it to show the chiastic nature where it seems like the fourth day is kind of a pivot point and we can draw correlations between the events that we’ve structured in the first, second, third to the fifth, sixth and seventh by giving you textual markers on the right hand side of the page that seems to indicate that after that stunning clause at the beginning of John’s gospel—”in the beginning”—drawing direct correlation to Genesis, that he wants us after we have these series of these expressions “the next day,” “the next day” and “the next day,” due to the length of time required for a task, “the next day” and then “on the third day.”

Seeming that God wants us to think in terms of a sequence of days after this initial phrase “in the beginning” that points out that what we have involved here in the gospel of John is a recreation.

Now one of the reasons I point this out, and the only thing I want you to think about here a little bit, is that with the way I’ve structured this chiastic structure of this opening portion of John’s gospel delineated by these time references, on the fourth day you have Jesus calling the beginning of the disciples. The disciples, like John as we’ll see as we go through this gospel, are lights that shine. And while today’s text tells us that John is not the true light—the light by which all other light is defined—later Jesus will refer to John as a lamp, a burning lamp. And his people are called light of course throughout the rest of the New Testament. We’re lights that shine in the midst of darkness.

And so what we see in the context, if this is a correct rendering of the outline of these first portion of the book, is the kind of the center pivot point is what Jesus comes to effect and that is this new creation that shines forth in the context of the world—a new humanity as it were, not based on race but on the will of God. And we said that in the context of our prologue, verses 1 to 18, really we have that same kind of pivot point there. Today we get to verse 12 which, according to last week’s outline which we don’t have today, we showed a structure where 12 seems to be the pivot point again of the prologue and again, 12 is the statement that there are those who did receive Christ and they became those who had the right to become children of God, the power they had power as children of God. So that is kind of the focal point of all of this—that today’s sermon is really on the powerful children of God and this is the middle of three sermons on this prologue as we’ve broken it down and it is the pivot point of the prologue and I think that it’s the pivot point of the account of the recreation in John 1-21.

So it’s of great importance to us to understand who we are in Jesus. Now to accomplish that today I want to simply go through the text verse by verse making a few notes as we go and then draw out five observations on the text.

**Verse 6**

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. Again we have this anticipation. We have this word who’s coming. We’ve said that word is identified in the first five verses as pre-existent with God. Jesus has no beginning or end. He’s uncreated. He is part of the eternal trinity. He does not have—well, the second person of the trinity does not have a beginning. When we speak of Jesus taking on human flesh, there’s a birth there. But the second person of the trinity has no beginning. He’s pre-existent.

One small comment that occurred to me on that as I walked around the streets of Canby this last week. We are in the midst of a culture that tries to impart an evolutionary mindset to the citizens of this culture. And what the intent of that is for people that are thinking, and I tend to probably think too much, but maybe some of you do too—as you walk around the world, what the world in opposition to Christ wants you to do is as you look at other people and as you look at yourself is to see an animal. You know, an animal evolved no doubt as a higher form in some ways or some would say a lower form but nonetheless on a line of being with animals and not being made in the image of God.

That is a radically different worldview than what the first few verses of John tells us—that Jesus created whatsoever has come into being. And men particularly, now as we focus on this middle part of the prologue, are born again and they represent the image of God. So man being made in God’s image, being reckoned back to within the beginning is critical to the worldview of this gospel. And it is absolutely critical to the worldview of the Christian.

When you walk around and look at people, you’re not supposed to think ape. You’re not supposed to think animal. You’re supposed to think image of God. This is a person walking around who images God. That’s why they speak. That’s why they dress. That’s why they exercise dominion, good or bad, either straight or perverted. They’re made in the image of God. It’s a very important thing to raise our children up—when we look at other people to look and think about: this is a person made in the image of God.

Now, that image may be perverted, but it’s there nonetheless, and it’s critical to our worldview.

Well, now we get to one of these images of God, a man in verse 6, a man sent from God. So he is distinguished in a way here. You know, we’re going to draw comparisons and contrasts with John as we go through this. And the comparison is John is a man. But the contrast is—which is also somewhat of a comparison—is that he’s sent from God. John is the preeminent. He’s the capstone of the prophets of the Old Testament. He is the last prophet who comes as the friend of the bridegroom. He describes himself, later in the next couple of chapters, to prepare the bride and bring the bride not to him but to the groom.

So John has this distinctive place as the high culmination of Old Testament prophecy as it were. And remember that the prophetic word has been closed for 400 years. And now John comes and the prophetic word is uttered forth again to prepare people for Jesus.

Now this is not the John who wrote the gospel, little children. This is John the Baptist. Some people call him, some Reformed people like us like to call him John the Baptizer. We really won’t have to deal with that in the Gospel of John because he’s not referred to by that title. He’s simply referred to as John. So you have John the Baptizer that’s being spoken of. He’s the man sent from God whose name was John. Not the John who wrote the gospel. That’s a different John. John who wrote the Gospel of John is one of the 12 disciples. John who was the baptizer was not one of the 12 disciples. He dies before Jesus actually fulfills his ministry. He’s beheaded by King Herod.

So he’s the baptizer, not the evangelist. His name, though, is interesting because we’re automatically struck with the fact that we have two Johns already. We know that John wrote this gospel and here’s another John. And it’s almost as if God has given us a double witness to the meaning of this name. And the name John basically means that God is gracious or Yahweh is a gracious giver. So right away what we expect to see as we see John’s name presented to us here is exactly what we’ll see unfold in the next few verses: the grace of God in giving recreative life to his people and then causing them, as we’ll see next week, to abound grace upon grace, blessing upon blessing. God is a gracious giver. So he sets us up for all of that with naming John here for us.

**Verse 7**

This man came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe. He was not that light, but was said to bear witness of that light. So again, there’s a there’s a comparison but a contrast. Now John is contrasted with the true light, the epitome of light, the Lord Jesus Christ. He comes to bear witness, to bring a light, but he is not the true light. He’s not the source of light or the definition of it.

And we can almost see here, as we’ll talk about in a little bit, that throughout the Gospel of John, we have these comparisons with the old covenant, predestination, that is rather, and the new covenant, what happens as a result of Jesus coming and that comparison and contrast is happens here in verses 7 and 8.

The purpose that John is sent by God is to be a witness. Now this is a very important theme in all of John’s writings. Over half—or roughly half, but almost exactly half actually—of the verb and noun “to witness” or “a witness” in the entire New Testament, half of those occurrences happen in John’s gospel, his epistles in the book of Revelation. So witness is a big deal and we’ll see it as we go through the Gospel of John.

And we want to say just a few things about that. John has this distinct witness again because he is called as the forerunner for Messiah to prepare people for the coming of Christ. But—and we’re not that, you know, we’re not one sent from God in a special sense. We’re not an apostle, most of us. We’re not a pastor or whatever. And the pastors are not the same status as the apostles or the same as the prophet John. We’re not sent in that sense, but we’re sent in a normal sense as emissaries of Christ certainly.

And while he has this distinctive witness to testify to the Lord Jesus Christ and to bring men to that light through his testimony, we can see from what I think implications for our witness. And what we see here is that the testimony that John bears is explicitly said not to be to himself. It is explicitly said that John’s witness or testimony is to Christ. He points to Christ, not to his own experiences, not to himself.

Now, experiences have a proper place in the spreading of the gospel. We know that from Paul writes about some of his experiences. But never must those experiences somehow make the primary content of our testimony or our witnessing be ourselves and what God has done with us. No, the primary testimony or witness that we bring to the world is of Jesus the savior, the true light. John comes as a witness to bear witness of that light, not of himself.

And the purpose that John comes to do this is to affect belief—that all through him might believe. Now, this is significant because it’s preparing us for a little shift. The first cycle we talked about in verses 1 to 5: God, Jesus’s creator. He’s pre-existent. He’s life and light. And the world is darkness. And they try to conquer Jesus. That’s where it leaves us.

Well, here in this next cycle, the presentation of Christ, he’s light and the implications of that. And he has a forerunner who will bring people who will exercise belief or faith in him. So the purpose of this testimony is that men might exercise belief.

This is the same purpose of the entire gospel of John. In John 20:31 we read that these are written—that is, that these accounts of what Jesus did in the Gospel of John—these are written for what purpose? This is witness: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

We’re going to see here in a couple another verse or two that this belief is in the name of Jesus. And here in chapter 20:31, it tells us that we’re to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. He is the son of God. If you do not believe in the deity, the pre-existence of the Lord Jesus Christ and that he is Messiah come to save his people from their sins and that he was incarnated—as these verses will tell us—then you do not have life.

Who is Jesus? Is Jesus a good moral teacher? Well, if that’s what you think Jesus is, you do not have life. Is Jesus a man who began as a man, but somehow through his actions and the actions of God became then finally God? No, that is wrong also because you must believe that he is the Christ, the son of God—is defined in this gospel and this gospel tells us from beginning to end that Jesus is pre-existent. He exists eternally in the context of the trinity.

So Jesus in a correct formulation of him is absolutely essential to the orthodox faith. And without this understanding of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, people are in darkness they are in death. So we need to have a correct understanding of the purpose.

This John’s ministry is the same as the purpose of John the gospel writer’s ministry: to believe in this Jesus who is presented in these gospels, that he is Messiah, he is the savior, he is the son of God, and as a result of that believing that we might indeed have life in his name.

I would encourage us as we work our way through this gospel to—as families or as individuals—to memorize that key verse 31 of John chapter 20, to memorize verse 12 which is at the center I believe of this prologue. We read in both these that we, rather, we read that men might believe, that men might believe is the purpose of this gospel and also I think it’d be good to memorize little short pathetic statements that Jesus will make throughout this gospel.

Let me give you an example of one. In John chapter 5, Jesus comes to a man who’s been paralyzed for 38 years—the sinner of years that they wandered in the wilderness, 38 years. He’s in the wilderness of being paralyzed sitting by the pool of Bethesda where an angel comes down and stirs the waters and one person only gets healed. So you know we have a picture in some way of the Holy Spirit and moving over the face of the waters and bringing life but in a limited sense. 38 years in the wilderness.

Well, now Jesus is there. And now Jesus will come and he doesn’t need the pool of Bethesda. He is the lifegiving water of God. So again, there’s comparisons to Old Testament and contrasting with Old Testament. But here’s what I want you to remember about that story. Children particularly—when this man is sitting there and he can’t get into the water. Jesus comes up to him in verse six of chapter 5 and he says to the man, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Or New King James: “Do you want to be made well?”

Do you want to be made well?

Now, we know in this church we teach that every Lord’s day, Jesus comes to us to minister to us through the person and work of the Holy Spirit in his word. But see that Jesus really in a sense asks us these same pathetic questions and statements he makes throughout the Gospel of John. I think it’s proper to think of that as what he does here every Lord’s day. When you enter into the sanctuary, begin to quiet for the worship of God, you should maybe hear Jesus saying through his word in spirit: “Do you want to be made well today?”

In other words, do you recognize your need for correction? Do you recognize that you sinned this last week? That you grieved your heavenly father and that you hurt people around you and indeed you sinned against your own soul. You wronged your own soul in sinning? Do you recognize you have some moral bentness to you? Do you want to be made whole? Do you want to obey Jesus? Listen to us today and what this gospel tells us. Do you desire to obey what this gospel will instruct you in? Do you desire to exercise faith or belief in the Lord Jesus Christ? Now believe.

So what I’m saying is it’s good to memorize the prologue verse 12 of chapter 1, verse 31 of chapter 20. So that’s 1:12, 20:31, and 5:6 (the second half of verse six and chapter 5). It’s good to memorize these things and remind ourselves the purpose of this gospel. The purpose of the spirit speaking through his word to you today is that you might believe in Jesus and continue on believing and that in that belief you might have life abundantly, that you might be made well.

At the end of the day, you should ask yourself, was I healed today? Not in some kind of physical supernatural sense, but in a supernatural sense because it’s the lifegiving power of the Holy Spirit that comes to you through his word to correct and transform you, to change you from the sins that you entered into this last week, to transform you to manifest this new creation that Christ has affected by his work and call.

Now when we say to believe in Jesus it doesn’t mean to give intellectual assent. It doesn’t mean just to say okay I believe he was a real person. Now I’m a child of God. Now I have eternal life. No. To believe means to—can we could say that it means to trust. You trust Jesus. Or rely upon might be another word as well. Do you rely upon the Lord Jesus Christ?

If I told you that you can safely cross a frozen pond, for instance, you may say, “Well, I believe you, but I’m not going to try it.” That’s not belief. That’s not biblical belief. If you believe what I tell you, you will walk across the frozen pond. You will have no fear of walking across that frozen pond because you’ve placed reliance. You’ve trusted. You’ve relied upon my witness to the solidness of that ice that you have to walk over in terms of crossing the pond.

Well, that’s what belief means in the Bible. It means we say to believe in Jesus, it means to trust him or to rely upon him.

Children, you should ask yourselves and adults, we should ask ourselves every Lord’s day, do we want to be more obedient to the Lord Jesus? Do we want to have more joy this week than we had last week? Do we want to be healed of the difficulties, the sins that so easily encompass us and prevent us from entering into the full joy of the Savior? And our answer to that, of course, every Lord’s day should be yes. That is the very thing we want is for God to minister glory, knowledge, and life to us in the context of the divine worship service.

**Verse 9**

That was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. Now, if you’re using the New King James, there ought to be probably a comma after light and a comma after man. So, “That was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world.”

In other words, “coming into the world”—the best Greek exegetes, and I am not one of those, but the exegetical commentaries that I rely upon tell me that the best way to translate this verse is to put “coming into the world” as modifying not “every man” but rather the light that’s coming into the world. So in other words, Jesus is the true light to which John witnesses. That light is now coming into the world and that light that is now coming into the world is the light that gives light to every man.

Very significant. Every man is enlightened to a certain degree. This is the penultimate verse of the Bible for Quakers because this is the verse they base the idea that everybody has an inner light and if you just leave man alone in a penitent cell, a penitentiary, a prison cell over his misdeeds to meditate, he’ll get better. And of course, we know that’s not true. That’s not what the text means.

But it does mean that light shines forth and illumines both the good and the evil in men. And it means that no man is without excuse, that somehow he didn’t know about Jesus or didn’t know that God is who he was and didn’t know that he was a sinner. Every man has enough light to condemn him in the sight of God.

So that’s what this means. I believe, and very importantly too, I think that this text tells us that this light is now coming into the world. There’s this movement, right? There’s this movement from the first cycle to now the second cycle. The incarnation of Jesus is going to be talked about in the next cycle beginning in verse 14 of the prologue. And here that incarnation is spoken of in a sense because this light is coming into the world, becoming incarnate in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

**Verses 10-11**

He was in the world and the world was made through him and the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own did not receive him.

Now again here it’s not exactly clear what’s being said. Some people think that there’s a parallelism here. In other words, it talks about the world and then it talks about his own. He came into the place that is the world and he came to his own, the people that were created in his image. That is one possible meaning of the text. Another is that he comes into the world in general—the world of all men—and he came to his own, specifically referring to the Jews, to those in the context of Jerusalem its environments or to Galilee and prophet honored his hometown.

He comes to his own and his own even refuse him, and the Jews refuse him and reject him by and large for the most part.

I’m not sure which it should be, but in any event, the point is clear and that is that as this presentation of Jesus’s light is talked about and that it begins to have an effect on the world, the light is coming into the world, then men’s response to that light is articulated for us in two ways. Some men—the world and his own—reject him. They’re that darkness that are seeking really to suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness. They don’t like the light shining upon them. And so there are those men who will not receive him.

Now it’s interesting here. These are very concrete words that are used. “The world doesn’t know him.” Well, we know that the word for knowledge or “to know” is the same in the Hebrew. And remember the gospel of John uses as its base the Hebrew Old Testament, as is evidenced by “in the beginning” at the beginning and many more things. And we know that knowledge or “know” in the Bible usually refers to love. A man knows his wife. Jesus comes for a bride and John the forerunner describes himself in the next few chapters as the friend of the bridegroom. But the world—the bride—doesn’t know him, doesn’t love him in other words. And the world does not receive him. He’s the suitor that comes knocking at the door as it were and they say no, we don’t want you in here.

Now I think literally we can apply those statements to the rest of the gospel of John, or at least the first half of the gospel of John, as he’s rejected by man. Men do not receive him warmly into their physical homes. In other words, they don’t have him into their house. They don’t like it. They don’t like him. They don’t like his presence in their house. And they don’t love him.

Now, that helps us because now to know Jesus and to receive him takes on a little more form for us. I know the theological constructs of knowing Christ and receiving him and all that stuff. But, you know, in the very simple words that are used here, this demands of us an a response. Will we receive Jesus into our homes? And do we love him? Do we know him in the sense of loving him? And do we receive him in the sense not just of saying, “Yes, I received Jesus into my heart. Now I’m going to go about my life the way I want to go about it”?

Do we receive him into our homes? Do we practice hospitality to the saints? Because Jesus said, you know, as much as you’ve done it unto the least of these, you’ve done it unto me. If you call yourself a Christian and yet do not exercise Christian hospitality, I think this verse should scare you a little bit. I think it should challenge you. I think it would make you feel that you need to be healed of that difficulty of showing hospitality and love to God’s people because that’s at the core of the reception of Jesus in the words that are given to us here in verse 10. Love and hospitality. These are what’s centered upon. This is what belief means. To believe and rely upon Jesus is to love him and to receive him into our lives—every detail—and it is to love and receive his people in very practical terminology.

Many Jews did not love Jesus. Many Jews did not receive him into the context of their homes.

**Verse 12**

But see now we start up the path, don’t we? Now we sort of were there before—the light shines in the darkness. The darkness can’t comprehend it. In other words, the light shines through. But now we get to the middle of this prologue and now we have this essential “but.” Jesus comes, the world rejects him. But there are those that are called and born again by God who will indeed receive him.

“But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in his name.”

Now the word “right” here means privilege, right, authority, power. He gave them power to become children of God. Power to manifest their divine birth. That’s you. You as a child of God have been given the power, the right and authority and the bonafides as it were to exercise the attributes as children of God, to shine forth Jesus. You’re giving that right or authority as many as received him, who love him and acknowledge him, to those who believe in his name.

Now this phrase “to believe in the name of Jesus” is found only in this gospel and John’s first epistle in the context of the New Testament. And what John means by it is an acceptance of Jesus to the full extent of his revelation. An acceptance of Jesus to the full extent of his revelation.

Pull out the Lutheran hymn in front of you and turn to page 134 if you will please. We will at some point in the hopefully not too distant future be reciting in the context of our worship the Athanasian Creed—a creed that most of us are not all that familiar with. Most of us are very familiar with the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed and those are excellent credal formulations. But the third creed that the historic church has always held to be as definitive and as much a test of orthodoxy in what the scriptures teach as the other two is the Athanasian Creed.

Now, it’s not used a whole lot for two reasons. One, it’s long—as you can see, takes up two whole pages. It’ll take us a while to recite it when we do. But the other greater reason is because this creed, as many councils of the church, by the way, did both affirm a set of principles or truths rather about Jesus and the Father and the Spirit. They affirm those things, but it also says that if you don’t affirm these things, then you’re not a the receiver of eternal life.

So it affirms and denies. And the councils of the church have always said that Jesus as he comes as light affirms truth and creates it. But he also convicts darkness.

Well, this Athanasian Creed begins by saying, “Whosoever will be saved before all things, it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.” Catholic means universal, not Roman Catholic, okay. “Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled without doubt, he shall perish everlastingly.”

Whoa. Well, this creed has upped the ante. This creed has said that not only are we going to affirm things about who God is, but if you do not believe these things, then you are subject to be subject to perish everlastingly.

“The Catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in trinity and trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one. The glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.

“Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet there are not three eternals, but one eternal. As also there are not three un-uncreated or uncreated. It should be my text has an error in it. Uncreated, nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.

“So likewise, the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Spirit Almighty. And yet there are not three Almighties, but one almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And yet they are not three gods but one God. So likewise, the Father is lord, the Son lord, and the Holy Spirit lord. And yet they are not three lords but one lord.

“For like as we are compelled by the Christian charity to acknowledge every person by himself to be God and lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there are three gods or three lords or there are three gods or three lords. The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, neither made nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

“So a distinction of the persons of the trinity and yet equality. So there is one Father, not three fathers, one Son, not three sons, one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. And in this trinity, none is before or after another. None is greater or less than another, but the whole three persons are co-eternal and co-equal. So that in all things, as a force said, the unity and trinity of the trinity in unity is to be worshiped.

“He therefore that will be saved must think of the trinity. Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds, and man of substance of his mother, born in the world.

“Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh, subsisting, equal to the Father as touching his Godhead, inferior to the Father as touching his manhood, functional inferiority, not essence. Who although he is God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ, one not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God, one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

“For as the reasonable soul in flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ, who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into heaven. He sits on the right hand of the Father God Almighty. From then he shall come to judge the quick and the dead, at whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies and shall give account of their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.

“This is the Catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.”

To believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is to believe in the full revelation, the name encompasses all of the person of what this gospel has told us. And this gospel has told us that Jesus is a member of the Trinity, that he is pre-existent, creator God, begotten of the father but uncreated and that he exists in the context of what Athanasius who wrote the Athanasian Creed affirms in this creed.

Sounds weird to our ears to say you got to believe in the trinity to be saved. But that is absolutely what these scriptures tell us. You must believe in the name of Jesus. Not just in whatever you think Jesus might mean, but as given to us in this gospel. And Jesus is fully defined as pre-existent deity, creator, the second member of the trinity. And except we believe in that, we have no life. We are everlastingly perishing apart from that.

**Verse 13**

Finally, verse 13 may seem like “give the right, the ability to become children of God, we can decide whether we do or not want to.” That’s not the point. The point is the power to manifest this. And this is clearly pointed out in verse 13.

“Because these that receive Christ, that believe in his name, were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

So there’s no physical creation that can bring about children of God. There are three phrases here: “not of blood.” Some think that relates to the process of conception itself. Some thinks it relates to race. In any event, it means not by physical lineage or physical descent of blood. “Nor of the will of the flesh.” And most commentators see in that not of the sexual desires of man and wife, proper or improper, that cannot produce children of God. Nor can family planning.

“Nor of the will of man.” Family planning can’t do it. The will of man—we think we’re going to have a child and we’re going to plan for it. We’ll try to make sure we hit the right times to conceive and all that stuff. All that’s proper. Everything I’ve just said is all proper and good. But it is not the way children of God come. It is not the will of man. It’s not the decision of man respecting physical lineage or even his own salvation.

It is rather the will of God that is alone responsible or determinative for creating children of God. Most—some commentators, and I believe very properly—see in this verse a reference to the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man. Jesus was born, incarnated as the will of God, as the Holy Spirit came upon Mary to cause her to conceive the Lord Jesus Christ in his incarnation. That’s very important because that means that those of us who are going to be these lightbearers as John were are those who have been the miraculous receivers of the movement of the Holy Spirit to bring us to this new life, this new creation.

In the beginning, the new creation springs forth. And it is us that is specifically being discussed in this prologue. That’s why verse 12 forms the center—that we become these powerful children of God. And we must always remember, you know, that could lead to pride, but there’s no pride in it if we understand that we have nothing to do with this new beginning as it were. We are born of the will of God.

**Children’s Outline Application**

All right. Now let’s make—well, actually I should help the children answer the question nine. When someone is a child of God, it is a miracle certainly because we are depraved. We hate God in our natural state. We suppress the truth of God and righteousness. The darkness tried to put out the light. So it’s a miracle that God transforms us then into those who will love and receive him. When someone’s a child of God, it is like the virgin birth because it’s not the will of man. It’s rather the will of God and it is a result of the Holy Spirit’s work. And so the spirit is brought into the prologue here in the context of the new birth of those who are in Christ.

**Five Observations on the Text**

All right, observations on the text.

**First: Literary Structures and Credenda Agenda**

First, we have some literary structures here that I want to mention—again, *Credenda Agenda*, that publication from Idaho, the wonderful name you know that it means belief and then actions. Credenda—what creed do you use? What’s your belief structure? And then what does that call you to do in terms of an agenda? And so that is an ordering principle throughout the scriptures.

And here we see that same thing being worked out, don’t we? We’ve had some truths about Jesus presented in this prologue. And now when we get to the center of it at verse 12, verses 11 and 12, a response, an agenda, a response to those truths of Jesus are called for. What are you going to do?

When the word of God is preached every Lord’s day or when you read the word of God in your homes, that word comes to you and tells you stuff about God and then it calls for you to engage in action to respond to this truth. We’re doing the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Verse question two: “What rule is God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?” “The word of God which is contained in the scriptures of the old and new testaments is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.”

So we start with the word. That’s the revelation. “In the beginning was the Word.” And the catechism goes on to ask “What do the scriptures principally teach?” Okay, we started with the word. What do they teach? “The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God” (credenda) “and what duty God requires of man” (agenda).

And so the prologue sets us up for that same thing. The gospel is a revelation of Jesus. It informs us about Jesus. But as surely as it does that, it calls us here: Are you going to receive him or not? Are you going to live in the context of being powerful children of God or not? Will you be healed? What is your ethical response to the presentation of God in this gospel?

**Second: Cyclic Overview**

Secondly, there is an overview at work here. I’ve talked about this again today, but I believe that verses 1 to 5 form a cycle, verses 6 to 13 a cycle, and 14 to 18 another cycle. And all these cycles—there’s a presentation of an aspect or a focus on an aspect of Jesus. He was creator, pre-existed in cycle one. Then there’s the implications of that. It begins to work in the context of the world. And then finally, there’s a response of the world to that working, that manifestation of Jesus in the world.

And so here in the middle of this prologue, Jesus is light. And he gives light to every man as he comes into the world. There’s a there’s action of Jesus’s light in the context of the world through his incarnation. And then there’s a response of people positively and negatively.

And each of these cycles up. We’ll see that we began with in cycle one: the response of man was to try to suppress the light but the light keeps shining through it. It’s an old song I used to like and the one of the chorus goes: “In darkness through my being here away from you the bright light of your star confronts me shining through” and the guitars and through. Well, that’s the way our life is, you know. We walk around and we end up in despair or hopelessness or sin but if we always fix on the Lord Jesus Christ and his work, the bright light of his star, the natal star, comes shining through into our darkness. That was the first cycle.

Here in the second cycle, not only is the light not put out—as it shines through, it brings forth a new creation and powerful children of God who are enabled to work out the implications of their relationship to the Father through the Son. And then in the third cycle, next week, the good stuff. Grace upon grace, blessing upon blessing. And there’s no mention in the third cycle of the dark guys anymore. The darkness of the old creation is gone by then.

You see, so the prologue sets us up for the full implications of what the rest of the gospel revealed to us. Jesus is creating a new world. The gospel begins the first half with rejection, but it ends the first half with reception. It ends with his instructions to his disciples, his prayer for the disciples, his work for the disciples, his empowerment of the disciples. And that’s the way history moves in the context of that.

**Third: Comparisons and Contrasts**

Third, literary structure here—comparisons and contrast. We’ve seen it here: Jesus and John kind of alike but not alike. Old Testament, New Testament movement. “In the beginning” referring to Genesis but going before the beginning and describing the eternal trinity. And then a new beginning is being talked about in John. Continuity, discontinuity at the same time.

Break the continuity to the Old Testament and you have no idea what John is talking about. And if you have no idea of the Old Testament references, you really do not have a full appreciation of the beauty of the discontinuity as we move from old covenant to new covenant with what has happened with Jesus. It’s it fills this gospel—this comparison and change.

**Continuing Forward**

Next verse, next week, Jesus tabernacles among men. There was a tabernacle where the Shekinah is shown forth in the Old Testament, but now the great tabernacle of man has now come. Jesus…