V6-9 – A man came, one sent from God, and his name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.
Starting in verse 6, we see the first mention of John the Baptist. Verse 7 says he came to testify about Jesus. We cannot underestimate the importance of John the Baptist. Remember that his birth was foretold by the angel Gabriel in Luke 1. Matthew 3:3 says that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of Isaiah 40. Indeed, John had the unique mission of preparing the people of Israel for the arrival of Jesus. Jesus told a group of listeners in Matthew 11 that John was one of the most important prophets to have ever lived! And what is amazing about John is that he never once looked for credit in what he did. His life was completely focused upon the arrival of Jesus. John could’ve received a lot more attention than he did, but in John 3:30 we see his attitude, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Probably not many people would willingly copy John’s statement. However, his attitude should be ours!
In verse 7 we see the purpose of John’s work…”so that all might believe through him”. However, the purpose was not to make people believe in himself, but rather to believe in Jesus! How many people make huge efforts to get attention for themselves? How many people spend much of their life trying to make themselves great? But how many people work hard to make someone else look great? We see here that John worked hard to get people’s eyes on Jesus, not on himself. John wanted for everyone to see how great Jesus is.
Something that comes up as a question in my mind is how to reconcile “so that all might believe through him” with other passages where it is clear that not all will be saved. The Bible also seems to teach that God chooses people to be saved. This is a concept that I’ve fought long and hard with, but I see no way around it and am done fighting it. I’ll just give a few examples to support this. In 1 Thessalonians 1:4, Paul says that we know God chose you Thessalonians because when we preached to you our message came with conviction and the Holy Spirit. In other words, we know God chose you in advance because when we came to you God was at work. In Romans 8:29 God foreknows believers. To “know” someone in the Bible oftentimes has a sense of intimacy. So God “knows” his people before the world began! You and I had nothing to do with him choosing to foreknow us. Ephesians 1:11 says that God works everything in accordance with his will. This applies to everything… even to individual salvation. Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us (believers) in him (Jesus) before the foundation of the world. He chose us. He chose you if you’re a believer. He chose me. God ensured that there would be a group of believers. Some would like to believe that God chose merely a group of people, and that that does not extend to him choosing individuals. However, I don’t see how that can work. If I choose for the NY Knicks to win the NBA championship this year, doesn’t that imply that I chose current players like Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, etc to win? If God chooses a group to be saved, then this presupposes that that group is composed of individuals who are also chosen! I don’t see how a Christian could say that God chose believers as a group but not me as an individual. The only way this could work is if I by my own will placed myself in this chosen group. However, 1 Corinthians 1:30 says that it is because of God that I am in this group in Christ! 1 Corinthians 2:14 says that a natural (unsaved) person does not and cannot understand the things of God. So how can I put myself in this group of believers if I can’t even accept the things of God? To understand the things of God, I must be changed, regenerated, by God. So again, it is God who places me in this chosen group!
So how do we reconcile this with John preaching “so that all might believe”? I’m not sure how to best answer it, but one thought that comes to mind is that in one sense God truly does desire that all would be saved, but at the same time he doesn’t. That seems contradictory, but we humans do it all the time. Parents typically don’t enjoy disciplining their kids, but they do so anyway because they have a higher desire to improve their child’s future behavior. So one hand, we parents don’t like disciplining our kids, but one the other hand we do! We have two wills at work at the same time. I see no problem in applying this to God, and this is how the Church has historically understood God’s ways. He does desire in a sense that all to whom John preached would believe, but yet he did not choose all of John’s listeners to be saved. This answer may not be satisfactory for some, but I’m ok with not understanding everything about God.
V9-13 – 9This was the true Light that, coming into the world, enlightens every person. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.
Again we return to Jesus as the Light. Jesus as the light enlightens every person. Now we need to ask what is meant by “enlighten”. I don’t think we have to make this too complicated. In English, when we say that we “shed light” on something it means we made something better understood. I think it has, more or less, the same meaning here. Jesus gave us greater understanding as to who God is. Hebrews 1:1-3 says this, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 [a]in these last days has spoken to us [b]in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the [c]world. 3 [d]And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and [e]upholds all things by [f]the word of His power…” Do you see that? God spoke to us through his Son. The Son is also his radiance and the “exact representation” of his nature. When we look upon the Son, we see God. Through Jesus we come to have a clearer understanding of God. In this way, Jesus “enlightened” us.
Verse 10 is a very sad verse. Jesus came to his own creation. John 1:3 says that Jesus is the creator. Nevertheless, his own creation did not know/understand/recognize him. How dull must we humans be to not even recognize the creator! If any verse points to our natural depravity, this has to be one of the top ones! And yet we see the same concept at work in our day. How many blessings do we receive, and yet many fail to recognize the one who blessed us? How many people look at nature and don’t conclude that someone great and powerful must have designed all of it? We have evidence of God all around us, and yet many people are too dull to acknowledge it or willfully reject such an acknowledgement!
And verse 11 says that because we didn’t know him, we didn’t accept him. It’s very true that we tend to reject those things that we don’t understand. And by not accepting, John is saying that we killed him in a nice way. It’s not that we ostracized him or mocked him…the Romans and Jews worked together to kill the Son of God.
Let’s go to verse 12. Verse 12 is better news. Not all rejected Jesus! The same is true in our time…not all reject him. To those who love and follow God, God adopts those persons into his family. Connecting this to verse 13, we learn that those who are adopted by God were born of him. He gave them life. It was God’s decision to give life to those who would believe. This verse highlights that the decision to believe didn’t come from ancestry or our will; rather, those who believe were born of God. In other words, you believe because you were born of God. This verse shows the supremacy of God’s will in the matter.
And this doctrine of adoption is truly a wonderful teaching. My wife and I adopted 4 kids. When I think back on the process, our kids did absolutely nothing to be adopted. We first had the desire and plan to adopt kids. Out of that desire, we began looking for kids that needed adoption. And we were matched with the kids we would later adopt. We did all the paperwork, we flew out to Texas to meet them… we initiated everything. They did nothing. All they did was receive the benefits of our choosing them. I think this is the same for Christians. You and I did nothing to be saved. God had the desire and plan to have adopted children long before we were born. He knew we would fall into sin, but he planned to save us. Yes, I did have to exercise faith, but many of us believe that even the act of having faith was due to God’s Spirit working in us and regenerating us (see 1 Corinthians 1:30, 2:14). He brought forth in time what he had planned in eternity past! The beauty of this teaching is that God gets all the credit. It also makes me all the more thankful for what he did.
Thinking Theo 
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