True Light and New Birth True Light and New Birth
Andrew Crawford / General Adult The Gospel of John / John 1:6–13 The True Light has come into the world Background For the last two weeks, we’ve been studying the Gospel of John. John is writing to all people as evidenced by John 20:31 “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.” John the Apostle starts out by describing the Word of God who is somehow also with God, and also is God at the same time. Jesus is this Word, he created everything, He gives both life and new life, and as we’ll see in the coming weeks, he became flesh and came to earth. John the Baptist (vv 6-8) John the Baptist’s Mission (vv 6-7) John was sent by God to prepare the way for Jesus. John 1:19-23 “And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”” Mark 1:1-3 “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”” One commonality of all 4 Gospels is the ministry of John the Baptist. He’s integral to the rest of the NT because he is a tie between the OT and the NT. He’s like an OT prophet in that he calls people to repentance and reminds them of God’s judgment, but he’s also a bit different in that he points to the Messiah right there! The OT prophets also pointed to the Messiah, but never a complete picture. It’s not that John the Baptist woke up one morning and decided to proclaim the Messiah’s advent, he was commissioned specifically by God to go before Jesus as a herald. John the Apostle often uses foreshadowing in his writing. Foreshadowing in literature is when an author gives a hint of something that they pick up on later and explain more fully. In this section John the Apostle introduces John the Baptist and hints at his mission and message and then jumps back to Jesus being the Light. We can see even in this section, how John introduces the light, jumps over to John the Baptist, and then returns to light, expounding more fully that the light is Jesus. Why was John the Apostle being so clear about who John the Baptist was not? It may be that some of the original readers of this gospel were putting too much emphasis on the importance of John the Baptist (cf. Acts 19:3–4 ) and that John was aiming to rectify any misunderstandings at the outset (cf. also vs 15, 26–27). Guthrie, Donald. 1994. “John.” In New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, edited by D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham, 4th ed., 1026. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press. John the Baptist came to bear witness so that all might referred to Jesus as the Messiah and went to believe through him. As we’ll see in the next section, not everyone believed, so was John’s mission a failure? No! John the Baptist faithfully pointed to Jesus as the Messiah and he went great lengths to differentiate himself from “the one greater than he” — Jesus. John the Baptist’s Message (vv 7-8) John’s message was calling people to repent from their sin and prepare their hearts for the coming of the Messiah. Matthew 3:7-12 “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”” John the Baptist pointed to the Messiah (vv 8) As we will see in the coming weeks, John was very careful to not claim to be the Messiah or even claim to be anything close to the Messiah. He’s a signpost, that’s it. If I’m driving on the road, and the sign says, Dallas to the left, I don’t stop at the signpost and think I’m in Dallas. I may have quite a distance to go still. The Light has come (vv 9-13) Jesus is the Light (vv 9-10) John uses many metaphors for Jesus. An example of metaphor is a line from Shakespeare, “my love is a red, red rose.” He’s not in love with a literal rose, Shakespeare is making a comparison of his love and a rose and how they’re similar. Then, we as readers get to explore all the nuances of a metaphor. In the preceding section, Jesus is the Word of God. In some sense Jesus is the embodiment of God’s self revelation. Later in this chapter John is going to call Jesus the Lamb of God. Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life ( John 6 ), a good shepherd ( John 10 ), the door that protects the sheep ( John 10 ), the true vine. Not only will Jesus be resurrected, but he IS the resurrection and the life. ( John 11 ) Calvin Page 37 The true light was. The Evangelist did not intend to contrast the true light with the false, but to distinguish Christ from all others, that none might imagine that what is called light belongs to him in common with angels or men. The distinction is, that whatever is luminous in heaven and in earth borrows its splendor from some other object; but Christ is the light, shining from itself and by itself, and enlightening the whole world by its radiance; so that no other source or cause of splendor is anywhere to be found. He gave the name of the true light, therefore, to that which has by nature the power of giving light Light illumines, shows the things in the dark. When you’re a kid and you KNOW there’s something lurking in your dark closet, a good parent can turn on the light and let you look inside and see there’s nothing there. Jesus was Rejected (v 11) Jesus refers to himself as the Light of the World John 8:12-20 “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.” This rejection of Jesus by “his own [people]” doesn’t mean that Jews can’t trust Christ — all of the disciples, and the first 120 believers in Acts were Jewish. What the Apostle John is teasing out for us is that Jesus came to bring people from all nations and languages into the Kingdom. Jesus brings new life (vv 12-13) Jesus is the fulfillment of everything in the OT. Ezekiel 11:19-20 “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” Jesus came to bring us abundant life John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The Pharisees thought that life came from obedience to the minutia of the law, and searching the scriptures as an end to itself. John 5:39-40 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” That Jesus brings new life is the point of John writing his gospel: John 20:31 “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.” What is this life that Jesus talks about? Nirvana? An eternity of your favorite hobbies? Reunion with dead friends and family? John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles. New Birth (vv 12-13) Through Christ we are made new The theological concept here, is regeneration. where GOd the Holy Spirit makes a spiritually dead human heart alive. Without regeneration, we cannot know God; we cannot be made new. What we need is a new heart that can love God. Our hearts by themselves cannot love God as we were created to do. The new birth doesn’t depend on anything except God’s grace Just as a baby cannot create itself and be born, so we cannot recreate ourselves and make ourselves reborn. Verse 13 explicitly describes the new birth — it’s not from normal parentage lines, it’s not from the will of the flesh, it’s not from the will of man, it’s according to God’s will. The new birth brings us into a new family. As physical birth or adoption brings us into a new family, so spiritual birth brings us into a new adopted family. Even if you didn’t have loving parents, even if you only have one parent for whatever reason, by faith you can be born into a much greater family than anything the world can offer. John the Apostle will pick up on the theme of new birth in John 3 . Application Questions
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Andrew
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