John 1:6-13 (3)

08/17/08
John 1:6-13
Hudson UMC

Two weeks ago, when I last had the privilege of delivering a message from God’s word to you, we considered the words in chapter one, verse ten, which told us that, though the world came into being through Christ, the word of God, this same world did not know Him. Now, we are going to consider the other side of that coin. After the condemning words of verse ten that paints our ignorance of Christ in such bad colors, the apostle follows up with a tremendous promise. John states that, “to all who received him, who believed on his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” I hope to explain, what this means, first by talking about how we are not made the children of God of blood, or the will of the flesh, or the will of man, and then to talk about how we are made the children of God of God and how this is different from the others.

John takes the time to name three specific ways that we are not made to be the children of God. It is very important that we understand each of them. The reason for this is because the society that we grew up in will tend to lead us to any one of these three methods, none of which are how God sees things. I pray that, as we consider these things, that you might begin or continue to think deeply about your relationship with God. Questions like, “What is my relationship to God?” “On what is this relationship based?” “Can I trust in it?” and others are deeply important and will quite literally fundamentally shape the way you live life. It is absolutely worth considering these questions, and I challenge you to give them thought not only this morning, but throughout the week and throughout your life.

The first of the three ways that John tells us is not how we are made the children of God is that we are not born of blood. Now, in a sense, we are indeed born of blood, since our claim that we are the children of God is based entirely in the blood of Christ, spilled on a cross, but in another sense, we are absolutely not born of blood. To talk about someone becoming the child of God by being born of blood is to use inheritance language, that is, if this were the case, there would be something inherent in our heritage that makes us the children of God. One of the things that this would mean is that, so long as we are of the right lineage, as long as we are from the “right” family and people group, nothing on earth or in heaven can keep us from being the children of God. This is very encouraging until we realize that this way of thinking has a very dark side as well. It also means that, so long as we are not of the right lineage, as long as we are not from the “right” family and people group, nothing on earth or in heaven can ever make us the children of God. This is especially disconcerting for us who are in this room because the only people God has set aside as having some kind of claim to Him based on their race is the Jews; in fact, there were many Jews talked about in the Gospels who saw their relationship to God in precisely these terms. We will hear later in this very Gospel about people who claimed nothing for their acceptance in the eyes of God than that they were the children of Abraham.

Why is it good that this is not the case? No matter how you slice it, there is no getting around the fact that, if we are made the children of God by being born of blood, the Good News of Jesus Christ is not for everyone. In fact, we might question whether it is for anyone. After all, if the only thing that matters is who your parents and grandparents are, your fate is sealed, whether good or bad. Nothing can change your eternal destiny. Why would anyone ever want to preach a Gospel that says to one person, “You will be saved no matter what you do” and to the other, “You will be condemned no matter what you do”. Our preaching, our faith, our lives would become completely irrelevant. However, this is not the case. Not only can we tell that this is not how things work by examining the rest of the New Testament, John tells us so plainly right away.

The next way that we are not born the children of God is we are not born of the will of the flesh. This might be the most difficult to get our heads wrapped around. It is also potentially the most offensive aspect to our American upbringing. After all, we are told that anything is possible and we can attain our greatest dreams as long as we are willing to work hard. What John is telling us at this point is that our acceptance in the eyes of God is not dependant on how good we are or how hard we work. In this he is also telling us that we could work as hard we can, never spending a moment in idleness, being driven by a vision and a goal and yet we can still not really be the children of God.

This is very counter culture, so it would not be a bad idea to spend a moment and spell out why it is good that our salvation isn’t determined by how our founding father’s would have made it. The whole idea that we can be made the children of God by being born of the will of the flesh is based on human effort and willpower. It is dependent on us being “good enough” or working “hard enough”. Of course, this begs the question, “What does it mean to be ‘good enough’?” and “What does it mean to work ‘hard enough’?” Ultimately, since we are talking about being “good enough” for God, it is His standards that we would be held to. If we hope to be good enough, we would need to be able to meet the standards that God Himself has put forward. The problem is, if you read the Bible, taking it seriously, you cannot sincerely believe that you can actually live up to the incredibly demanding requirements that God demands to be “good enough” on your own. If you think otherwise today, I challenge you to read through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters five through seven and seriously consider what is said. To make our status as the children of God dependant on being born of the will of the flesh is to completely shut everyone out of heaven. It is truly good news that this is not the case.

There is still one more thing that John tells us is not how we are made the children of God. John tells us that we are not made the children of God by the will of man. I don’t often burden you with a lot of the original Greek, but I think that it gives us some clarification in this case. The Greek text at this moment seems to imply that it is not so much, “nor the will of man”, but rather, “nor the will of a husband”. You might think that this is not important, but it is more interesting that it first seems. If we were made the children of God because of the will of a husband, it would greatly limit who could be the children of God. Let me give an example from history to try and clarify what I am saying. The British reformation from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism came about during the reign of King Henry VIII. Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon, but did not have a son. This desire to have a male heir to his kingdom was the main reason that Henry decided that he wanted to separate from the Roman Catholic Church. As long as he didn’t have an heir, he was ruthless; as soon as he had a son, he calmed down, becoming just about the most Roman Catholic Protestant ever.

The point of all this is that Henry VIII did not really care if he had a lot of children, he only really wanted one, a son who could inherit the throne. If King Henry had several sons, only one of them would become king. Not only that, but it would only be the oldest son who became king. In the end, it didn’t really matter who would be the better ruler, but who was born first. If this was the way we became the children of God, we would be in big trouble, because, when our text talks about being God’s children, it isn’t just so we can feel good about ourselves, but so we can inherit eternal life. If God looked at our inheritance like secular kings have, only the person who had been a Christian the longest would inherit eternal life. If we turned to God later in life, we would be out of luck because the people who grew up in the church would be in line in front of us. So you can see the issue with this way of thinking. To be a child, either of an earthly king or of a divine king, is to have a distinction of honor. To be a child of the king doesn’t matter much unless you are the oldest. To be a child of God, regardless of how long you have been one, is to be His very favorite, and a full heir.

Now that we have discussed three major ways that we are not made the children of God, we ought to ask the question, “ok, how are we made the children of God?” Our text in John gives us the answer. We are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. What does it mean to be born of God? Some people, when viewing this part of our text in light of what came right before it, that we are not born of the will of man, interpret the fact that we are born of God to imply that we have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not we will become Christians. I don’t think that this is true. I think that it has much more to do with the fact that it is God, and not us, that gets to decide who can come to Him and who cannot.

Let us think for a moment how human beings would decide who gets to be a child of God and who does not. Regardless of what any particular person would do, how has history and our culture shown what human beings will decide? Well, it seems that human beings would say, first of all, that those who are rich should probably be the children of God; after all, they have so much money, God must love them. Another criterion that people might use to decide who can be a child of God and who cannot is how good and how honest they are. If a person is basically living a moral life, we would probably say that they are more likely to be the child of God than someone who is not, right? People have said for centuries that God doesn’t really care about what we believe, but how we live, that, so long as we are generally good people, God expects nothing more of us and there will be a place for us in heaven. All of that sounds good, doesn’t it? But where do we find that in the Scriptures? I know that not everyone considers the Bible to be authoritative, and so we cannot be surprised when those outside of the church say things like this; after all, it is in their best interest to believe things like this because they don’t believe what God has revealed. However, in the church, we are not bound by the desire of human beings, but the will of God as revealed through Christ and in the Scriptures.

So, when we look at how we, or at least humanity at large, might decide who can be a child of God and who cannot, we seem to find a common thread: We think that the children of God are the ones who are like us, or at least, how we perceive ourselves to be. And yet, this does not seem to be at all like God sees it. The Apostle John, who we trust has recorded the truth of God in his gospel, tells us that it is not absolutely every human being that ultimately becomes the child of God. Did you know that? Not every single human being will go to heaven when they die. In fact, it isn’t just those people that the world considers bad or notoriously evil that won’t. As it turns out, God has set up a way that people can become His children that is completely counter-intuitive. What does John say? “But to all who received him, who believed on his name, he gave power (Greek: authority) to become children of God”.

God has pinned the whole key to salvation, not in being from the right race or ethnic group, not in working really hard to be as good as we can, nor in setting up a class of the spiritually elite, but in simple, childlike faith. In the end, when we meet God face to face, we will not be asked how active we were in our church, nor how many committees we served on. We will not be asked how “good” we were, nor how much we knew about Jesus, but whether or not we have believed in the Son of God, who died for our sins and sent the Holy Spirit that we might be redeemed and rescued from the bondage of sin and death. Nothing else will matter on that day. Now, does this mean that we can merely say that we have faith and then live lives of sin? Of course not. There are many who do precisely this who are giving Christ and His church a bad name. The faith that John is talking about is a faith that transforms us, that makes us into new creations, who no longer pursue the ways of darkness and sin, but the way of light and Truth. The big point that I want to make, and the big point that John is trying to make is that a true and living faith in Jesus Christ is really what matters.

This way of thinking, this method of salvation might not sound good to some people; in fact, there are some who might be offended by this idea, but God is very clear that faith is the root of all salvation. The reason that John needed to be very specific about those three ways that things are not was to make absolutely sure that we would understand how things really are. It isn’t the way I would have done it; it probably isn’t the way you would have done it, but it is the way that God, in His infinite wisdom and love, has done it. And so, since God Himself has placed dynamic faith at the root of our relationship with Him, let us pursue it and live by it all the days of our lives. Let us pray.

AMEN