That You May Believe
December 19, 2021
Preached by Ben Bechtel
Scripture Reading
John 1:9-13
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.10 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, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
We are now less than a week away from Christmas. Many of us will be scrambling to finish up shopping and prepare to leave town or have family come into town. Many of us will be preparing for parties and feasting. And many of us will be listening to Christmas music and overloading on sugar to get into the Christmas spirit. Despite all this hustle and bustle as it’s called, Christmas first before it is a season of light, is a season of darkness. Christmas, and Advent in particular, the time leading up to Christmas, is a time for us as the church to face down the darkest parts of our world. So much of the Christmas season encourages us to just put on a happy face and to ignore the darkness of our world. But without looking headlong into the darkness of our world, the darkness of war, of poverty, of selfishness and greed, of depression and sickness and death, we will not be able to see the light and life of Jesus in all its glory and beauty.
This passage is a confrontation. In this passage Jesus confronts the forces of darkness with the light and life of heaven. This is a passage of good news! But with that confrontation of darkness comes a confrontation with the darkness in each of us. This passage presents us with a question and a choice: when Jesus shines his light into your heart what will he find there and how will you respond? In the words of one church leader, “Advent is not for sissies.”[1]
1. The World (vv. 9-11)
So far in John’s introduction to his gospel (what we call the Prologue) he has acquainted us with the Word, who not only was present with God during creation but who himself is God. The Word existed before anything was made and through him all things were created. Jesus is God and he made the world. He also introduced us to John the Baptist, this messenger who was not the light but who was a faithful human witness to the light. Now after speaking about John the Baptist, the one who was not the light, John returns to speak of Jesus, the true light (vv. 9-10a):
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him…
This is remarkable in the context of what John has said so far. The Word who was God, through whom the world was made entered the world. God became a man. The infinite took on finite human flesh. As C.S. Lewis has said, myth has become fact.[2]
I wish we had more time to meditate on that point in and of itself, but that is not the goal of this text this morning. I do want to meditate though on that point in verse 9 where it says the true light which gives light to everyone is coming into the world. Crime TV shows are a dime a dozen these days, so I’m sure all of us have seen at least a few episodes of CSI or NCIS or something. Oftentimes in these shows when they arrive at a crime scene, they will turn out the lights and turn on a blacklight. When the blacklight comes on it reveals things which were otherwise hidden to the naked eye, helping the detectives to get to the bottom of the case.
What John is saying here in verse 9 is that Jesus’s coming was like a blacklight shined into the hearts of all people. Jesus Christ and the testimony about him, when it gets close to you, will reveal what is truly in your heart. Even this morning as the word of God is preached, the blacklight of the “capital w Word” is shining into you. What is revealed when the light shines into the world? Let’s keep reading in verses 10-11:
10 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, and his own people did not receive him.
Now what does the text mean here when it says he came to his own? Likely this is referring to his own people, the Jewish people. He came to his own people, his own family, and they did not receive him.
Think of a family, a good family, in which parents raised good loving children. Let’s say the first Christmas after the kids move out, the parents go to one of their children’s homes for the holidays. They arrive at the door with turkey and presents in hand only to be told they are not welcome and left out in the cold. Those parents would be devastated! The children they gave their lives for, the ones they loved and disciplined and sacrificed for, do not want them.
God loved and served and sacrificed for his people, the Jews. He freed them from slavery in Egypt, he gave them his good laws to follow, he led them into an abundant land with crops and cities they didn’t have to work for, and he promised to send them a savior, even after all their rebellion, who would save them from their sins and establish God’s kingdom. The Jewish people’s deepest questions about love, belonging, purpose, and meaning were all tied up in their hope for this Messiah to come. The very one who made the world, the same one who raised Israel as his beloved son, came to his people and they wanted nothing to do with him. This is the great tragedy of the book of John, how Jesus’s own people reject him, and eventually give him over to death.
We may all agree that the world is a dark place that needs light. Look at the news and our public discourse right now. Everyone thinks that the world is an evil place without knowledge. We can all agree on that. But notice what verses 10-11 tell us about the particularity of our darkness. What is the worst part about our ignorance and evil? We are naturally predisposed to and reject the one who can fix it. We think we are the children of light to push back the darkness. We are all bent on being our own saviors.
As the gospel of John continues, it becomes clearer why the Jewish people reject Jesus. In John 8 Jesus is in dialogue with some of the Jewish religious leaders. Let’s read verses 37-44 of that chapter:
37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” (you are not the solution; you’re part of the darkness)
39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” (children of Abraham therefore children of God) 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.
You see, they think they are the good guys, that they have the right to be children of God simply because of their Jewish ethnicity. In reality Jesus says this in and of itself just gives you the right to be called children of Satan. You see why they rejected him. He challenged their notion that they can be their own savior.
It’s not just the religious Jewish people of the past though who think they are the solution, that they can bring light to the darkness, it is us modern, western people as well. Religion writer Tara Isabella Burton in her book Strange Rites shows how modern secular people are just like the Jewish leaders. Many people live their lives today according to what Burton calls “the wellness command.”[3] The imperative goes something like, be the best version of yourself. Whether it be through diet or exercise or through your sexual fulfillment or any other thing, seek your own happiness. Actualize your full potential and you can be happy and whole. Essentially, you are the only reason why you don’t have light and life in your life. Be our own savior!
Those are just ways we try to be our own saviors individually. What about the collective ways we do this? Many of us think that if only our political party could enact its policies and drive away the ignorance and evil of the other party then light would finally dawn. Many in our world think that if we can simply create the right technologies that human beings can know all things and be free of death itself. Still others think that if only we could get a society to abide by a certain set of moral codes that the darkness would be driven away.
Each of those solutions to the darkness begins with us. It comes from within our sphere of reality. We ultimately are the heroes in each of these narratives. And this is the darkest part of the darkness of this world. As we cling to ourselves as the source of light, we cannot recognize the true light. The Word was in the world, who made the world, yet the world did not know him. Tragedy.
2. The Light of the World (12-13)
Yet, although we are all in darkness in the world, although we are all blind, although we are all on the wrong side of history in this sense, and although we vehemently cling to our own ability to save ourselves, Jesus comes to confront us with his grace (vv. 12-13):
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
To all who receive Jesus, in other words, all who believe in him, all who are born of God can experience a different reality. They can be children of God.
In John’s prologue we find many themes set up which will arise again later in the book. Such is the case with this language of being born of God. In John 3, when the religious leader Nicodemus comes to Jesus, Jesus tells him that he must be born again (John 3:6). Many of you will recognize that phrase, churched or not. I’m afraid this phrase has crossed into the realm of cliché and jargon. What does the Bible mean when it speaks of being born again?
Well, to start let’s think about human birth. How much say did you have in selecting your family? Did you choose where you would be born or what parents you would have? That’s lunacy. Ok, another question. Did you contribute anything to your own birth, from the time of conception until you emerged into this world? Again, lunacy to even ask the question. And that is precisely John’s point! It is lunacy for us to think that we have the resources to bring light to this dark world. It is lunacy to think that our human scheming and imagination can make things right. Light breaks in from beyond our horizon. For anything to change in this dark world we must be born again, born from above, born by the same Spirit that conceived the Lord Jesus in the womb of the virgin Mary. This is why Christians make such a big deal about the virgin birth of Jesus. Without that, we are doomed to our own devices! We need someone outside of this created world to enter into it to redeem it. We need a real miracle.
If this isn’t clear enough already, John clarifies by telling us what being born again does not mean in verse 13. First, being born again, becoming a child of God doesn’t happen by means of blood. Think bloodline. Think the Jewish people and what they were clinging to. God is not a respecter of persons. We are not made born again as children of God based on our pedigree—our family history, or what college we attended, or what ethnic group we belong to. Second, being born again doesn’t come about as the result of human willpower. You cannot will God to make you his child, you cannot will light into your life and life of this world, any more than you willed your parents to conceive and birth you, which is to say, you can’t. It’s a non-starter. It’s incoherent to talk and think like that. No human effort can make light and life dawn in your life and in this world.
This is where the gospel becomes offensive to our sense of self. No matter how happy, fit, sexually fulfilled, and self-actualized you are, you will never be able to bring light and life into your life and into the world. No matter how wealthy you are, how good of a reputation you have, what your ethnic background is, what college you attended you will never be able to bring light and life into your life and into the world. No matter what political party you support, what social programs you get behind, or how much you advance human progress you will never be able to bring light and life into your life and into the world. Your own achievements, efforts, pedigree, or social status do not give you the right to become a child of God.
What we all need is a savior, someone from outside our horizon of possibility, someone who is God himself, to invade our world. What we need is to receive Jesus Christ. Faith, that receiving of Jesus, is like a breath of relief as we fall worn out and desperate into the arms of our true savior. When we receive him, we are given the right to become children of God. This is what we mean as Christians when we speak of Christianity being a religion of grace. The only hope we have of becoming children of God, of transformation, of attaining meaning, purpose, and significance comes from outside of us. Jesus Christ has invaded our reality to give us and this world a complete overhaul. Jesus Christ has faced down this realm of darkness and taken our darkness upon himself by dying on the cross. He is the savior we have all been looking for. All we have to do is receive him and light and life will enter our lives and the world through the power of God’s Spirit working within us. Heaven has invaded earth and Jesus has given you the right to become a child of God simply by you opening up your empty hands of faith to him.
Several Bible scholars refer to verses 12-13 as the heart of John’s gospel. I think this claim is correct, not just because believing in Jesus is a theme that runs throughout the book, but because John directly states that this is his purpose in writing this gospel at the end of his book. In John 20:30-31 he writes:
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
This thesis statement makes my wife and all the other English teachers in our church proud. John does not make us guess how he wants us to respond to his account of Jesus’s life, ministry, death, and resurrection. He wants you and I to believe that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is the Savior, and to have life in his name. Light and life to all he brings.
Just as John is unambiguous, let me be unambiguous this morning in the goal of this sermon. Today, in response to what you have heard, I want you to receive Jesus as savior. You have been confronted today with the message of the gospel, that you cannot save yourself. You need a Savior from outside of your reality, from outside of your realm of possibility, to break in and transform you. Jesus is shining his blacklight into your heart this morning. What will be revealed?
If you’re here this morning and you recognize that you have been living your life trying to be your own savior, turn to the one that is greater than you. If you have been confident in your ability to be your own savior, may you humble yourself and come to Jesus. He will embrace you in his arms.
To the many of you this morning who are Christians, who would claim Jesus is your savior, believe in him anew today. Believe that he is savior even over those parts of your life where you still want to cling to your own willpower, ingenuity, achievements, status, or whatever else. Relax into your savior and enjoy your rightful privilege as a child of God, given to you by sheer grace. Heaven has come to us. Jesus has come to bring us light and life. The question is, will you receive him?
[1] Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, ????.
[2] See C.S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock, 63-67.
[3] Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions For a Godless Age, 98.
Family Discussion Questions
The sermon only hinted at this, but what do you think it means that the Word was in the world? How could God enter into the world without becoming part of the world?
What does John mean when he speaks of being born of God in verse 13?
Have you received Jesus as Savior? If so, where in your life are you still clinging to your own resources, achievements, and efforts? What part of your life do you need to receive Jesus into afresh?
