Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - John 1:10 - 1:14
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The relation of Jesus to the world:
v. 10. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.
v. 11. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.
v. 12. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name;
v. 13. which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
v. 14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
At the time when John was bearing witness of Jesus, He was already in the world, He had become a part of the physical world as true man, He was subject to the usual laws governing man and his relation to the universe. And all this was true, though He had been the Creator of the world; the whole world, without reservation, with everything it contains, is His work, He made it, Col_1:16; Eph_3:9; Heb_1:2. But in spite of the fact that He was in the world and had created the world, the people of the world did not know Him, did not acknowledge Him. The people did not recognize their own Creator, so thoroughly is the world estranged from God. The entire world consists of people in need of redemption, and yet the majority insists upon being counted with those that are lost. The representative part of the world will not acknowledge and accept Him. See 1Co_1:18-25. This is defined and explained more exactly in the next sentence. Into His own He came, to His own property, to the vineyard which His Father had planted, to the chosen people of the Old Testament. But those that belonged to Him, the men and women of His own race, that had received so many evidences of His grace and goodness, did not receive Him, were far from welcoming Him. The great mass of them rejected Him and His salvation. "The rulers in the children of Israel and the great multitude, since He did not come as they had imagined He should (for He came, simple and without ostentation, had no honor), would not acknowledge Him as the Messiah, much less accept Him, though St. John went before Him and testified of Him, and though He Himself very soon came forward, preached with power, and did miracles, that He truly should have been recognized by His miracles, Word, and preaching. But all that did not avail much... For the world nevertheless affixed Him to the cross; which would not have been done if they had held Him for what He was."
But some there were, some few true Israelites, that received Him as the promised Messiah, and that therefore believed on His name, put their full trust for their salvation in Him. To receive Christ, to believe on Him, and to trust in His name, are expressions covering the same process; they are synonymous. To such as accepted the Word of the Cross He gives the great privilege or right to become the sons of God by adoption, Gal_4:4-5. He works faith in their hearts. They enter into the right, the proper relation to Him, they accept Him as their Father. This process of becoming children of God is now contrasted with the corresponding process of physical birth; The children of God are produced in a wonderful way, unlike that of natural procreation and birth. In nature children are formed out of blood and body substances of human flesh and by an act of the will of man. But this birth does not make a person a child of God. The children of God are born out of God. He is their true Father; to Him alone and to no human, earthly agency, power, or will do they owe life and being, spiritual birth and existence. Regeneration is the work of God, and it is His work all alone. By their receiving this testimony concerning Christ, as it was proclaimed by John, into their heart, this marvelous change has been wrought in the Christians. God has thereby made them partakers of the divine nature. Faith, which receives the Word and Christ, is wrought by God through the Word. Thus the believers have the manner and nature of their heavenly Father: a new spiritual, divine life is found in them. And though they are not born out of the essence of the Father, like the only-begotten Son, yet by adoption they have all the rights of children. They are heirs, with Christ, of the bliss of eternal salvation, Rom_8:17.
Just how this was brought about, that God could gather children out of the midst of a world that did not accept His Son, is shown in that incomparably beautiful passage of the incarnation of the Word. The Word, the eternal Son of the eternal Father, became flesh, assumed the true human nature according to body and soul. And instead of appearing only at irregular intervals, He had His dwelling among us, He partook of all the joys and sorrows of a true human existence; there could be no doubt as to the reality of His humanity. While He is and remains the eternal Logos, He is yet true man, subject to time and space, in every way like unto us in all the natural needs of the flesh, only without sin. And while He did not make an open, triumphant show of the divine nature which was His even in the state of humiliation, yet, the evangelist writes, we viewed His glory. The disciples had a good and full opportunity to convince themselves by close and intimate scrutiny upon many occasions that He was truly the Son of God, the eternal Logos. He still possessed the glory, the supernatural glory, of the only-begotten Son of the Father, Psa_2:7. The Father had begotten Him from eternity; He became flesh in the fullness of time, retaining, however, the full control of His divinity, lower than the Father only according to His humanity. His glory and majesty, His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, which mark Him as true God, became evident time and again in His miracles; rays of His glory penetrated the veil of His humanity as easily as the rays of the sun penetrate glass. Christ is therefore not only almighty God, but also almighty man; not only omniscient God, but also omniscient man; not only omnipresent God, but also omnipresent man. And this only-begotten Son, in His work as Savior, is full of grace and truth; grace and truth are concentrated in Him, they are the sum of His essence. The free and unmerited love and mercy of God is found in the person of Jesus, in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. The manifestations of His glory are supplemented by that of His grace. There is nothing of the insincere human quality in this grace with which the Son of God accepts sinners, but He is full of truth; He is the truly good, the personification of all goodness. True grace, true mercy, the fullness of unmerited divine compassion is found in Christ, true God and man, Psa_89:2; Psa_98:2.