John 1.11-13

John 1.12 is well known in the soul-winner's handbook:

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,

Ignoring for a moment that they usually quote it without the rest of the sentence (or even the rest of the thought, as happens most often with Romans 3.23), the verse seems a powerful statement in some respects to the Reformed position.

Post-reformation decision theology states, "If you believe, then you're born again," and John 1.12 is often trotted out as a proof text. Both the Reformers and the Catholics would disagree, however—regeneration (the new birth) precedes belief.¹ (Naturally the two groups go in a somewhat different direction thereafter.)

So today someone mentioned John 1.12 as a proof that the Calvinistic persuasion that one must be regenerated before believing was wrong.

But I think that if we look a bit more carefully, we'll find a somewhat different picture painted here:

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.

Something should immediately bother us here: God's giving people who are born of God (verse 13) the right to become children of God (verse 12). Doesn't this seem a little obvious?

We might attempt to get around this by saying, "Well, everyone is God's child," which is sometimes done. Being a child of God is, in other words, basically just contingent on being physically born. But we know that this doesn't square with the rest of the verse, which gives us the idea that the birth isn't physical.

A perhaps better approach is to treat the phrase "children of God" as a title. We're still stuck with the obviousness of the statement, but we avoid any glaring issues with the spiritual nature of verse 13.

The key in this approach is verse 11, where we read that Jesus came to his own people and was rejected by them. His own people were Jews. Recall that the Israelites were always God's children, and they were considered his children by being born a Jew. (There were, of course, means of naturalization, e.g., circumcision.) They considered themselves children of God by virtue of their physical heritage. We see this in John 8:

39 They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what 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 what your father did." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God."

The Jews, in other words, considered God to be their father because Abraham was their father. They excluded Gentiles because of genetics.

This, I think, is the message of John 1.12. Those who did receive Christ were given the same rights and standing as God's children that formerly belonged exclusively to the Jew. This was not based in physical birth, but in spiritual birth. Those who received Christ were born of God and were invested with the right that belonged to the Jews, who rejected Christ (v 11).

The verse does not say that if we believe, we're born again. It speaks to the unity of the body of Christ (cf Ga 3.28). It is clear that man is not born spiritually of his own will, but rather of God. There is no synergy in the new birth.


[1] This follows from the fall. Fallen man cannot in any way remedy his condition; the flesh cannot believe. (The works of the flesh are enumerated in Galatians 5, and they're all evil.) We are dead in sin (Ep 2) and must be made alive before we can believe. This spiritual birth is "being born again," or regenerated. It doesn't happen by believing—the spiritually dead don't believe. They just can't.

One Sermon

I think if I were given the opportunity to preach, I would turn it down. But if I were forced to preach a sermon, and I had just one to preach, I think I'd probably talk about Psalms 22-24 (at great length, given my logorrhea).

The Psalms are a personal passion of mine. It's the first book I remember consistently reading. It was a comforting book, though I think at the time (8th grade, perhaps) I would've been hard-pressed to explain why. I've gotten the impression through online conversation, mostly, that one of the reasons that the Psalms are so beloved is their raw emotion and wordsmithing. We're attached to the words of comfort and imprecation, and not without reason.

But the real power of the Psalms for me rests in their ability to provide us with a deeper understanding of Jesus Christ, the Godhead, and the gospel.

Everyone knows that Psalm 22 is a picture of the crucifixion. The details provided are exacting, and Jesus quotes it from the cross ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"). What's terrific is that the Psalm ends on a note of praise and triumph.¹ The call to worship and the promise of everlasting praise gives me goosebumps.

What is more rare, though, is to connect Psalm 22 and Psalm 23. Look how it opens, for a moment, when we think of it in light of the burial. It follows nicely on the triumph of the end of the 22nd Psalm and enhances it—"You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies" stands out in sharp relief as God "spoiled principalities and powers" through the cross (Co 2.15).

And what of Psalm 24? It is the resurrection. Handel picks up on this in The Messiah, where he puts verses nine and ten to music. Christ is the King of Glory in this Psalm, returning, I think, to heaven after successfully finishing the work that he came to earth to do.²


At the end of the day, we're presented with a view of the death, burial, and resurrection all from a different point of view than we're accustomed to from the gospels. It's more personal in a very real sense. Psalm 22 is written in the first person; it's actually Christ speaking here!

And they leave a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. We can Hansel and Gretel our way through other Psalms and pick up on key words and phrases that set them off as Messianic. For example, "I will pay my vows" appears consistently in Messianic Psalms. Another good indicator that we're dealing with the gospel is the presence of the congregation or the assembly.

I suppose mileage varies for everyone, but the Psalms have consistently provided me the most intimate access to the Lord that I've known. I suppose if I ever grow up as a Christian, I'll be better at getting that from other books; but until then, I'll happily feast on what's there. If you're interested in good reading on the subject, I'd look at Spurgeon's Treasury of David. It's out of copyright, so grab it, print it, whatever. If you use a SWORD-compliant Bible program, Crosswire carries it as a commentary (your program will probably support module installation without using the web).


[1] See also Ps 34.1-4,20. We may argue pretty successfully from the Psalms, I think, that Jesus Christ is the great worship leader. At least one of the over-arching themes of the Psalms is what roles he fulfills.

[2] It's fair, of course, to point out that there are eschatalogical ramifications to this Psalm, too, and I would be remiss not to at least mention it. I'm certainly no expert on end-times theology (it's one area I've neglected), and I wouldn't deny that we could probably put this easily at the end of time, too. But connecting the three Psalms like this seems neater to me, and Scripturally consistent.

The Passover

The first of the listed topics I wanted to look at quickly is the Passover. It seems likely to me that I'll bang some other drums before I get to the other topics (the Psalms is a personal favorite), but these pictures are too good to pass up.

We know explicitly from Scripture that the passover is a type of Christ; see Jn 1.29, 1Co 5.7. The idea of Christ as a Lamb embodies the notion of the Passover.

The month of the Passover is the first month of the year in the Jewish calendar, and so the first image we're confronted with is that of a new beginning. It parallels our new life in Christ, I think.

As with the other plagues on the land, this was used to make a distinction between the Israelites and the Egyptians (Ex 11.7). So, too, we see that the death of Christ makes a distinction between Satan's children and God's children. What we often miss is that every firstborn in Egypt, Israelite and Egyptian alike, was under condemnation. They were all under the sentence of death. Likewise, all of humanity stands condemned before God; his children are distinguished by the blood of Christ. (We see later that the Passover was only to be eaten by Israelite citizens or those circumcised, which emphasizes the distinction further.)

The people were instructed to avoid all leaven. We see this symbol used repeatedly in the NT for human works and effort (Mt 16.6,12; Ga 5.9); in type, it represents that nothing is to be added to the work of Christ.¹

The people were also instructed to observe the passover for ever (Ex 12.24), just as we are to understand that the death of Christ is forever effective.

They were not to break any of the bones when they killed the Passover (Ex 12.46). In a fulfillment of prophecy (Ps 34.20), we read of Christ that none of his bones was broken (Jn 19.36).


If I'm permitted to read a bit between the lines here, I think we see some other interesting bits. It seems likely to me that the sacrifices were killed by the head of the house, so the father would see to it that the lamb selected was proper (a year old, without blemish; Ex 12.5, cf. Ep 1.4) and would slaughter it.

The picture becomes more poignant (to me, at least) when we realize that the father applied the blood to save his child—the firstborn did not save himself.

The blood alone was effective at mitigating judgment; the firstborn's feelings on the subject had little bearing on whether he woke up the next morning. His faith, in other words, affected how he slept, but it didn't keep him alive. This seems consistent to me with what (I think) the New Testament says about redemption—that it is accomplished solely through the faithfulness of Christ, by the power of his blood.


[1] We read of three times that Christ blesses bread in the gospel of Mark: the feeding of the four thousand, the feeding of the five, and the passover meal that he shares with his disciples. After the first two miracles, we expect—and rightly—that when Christ blesses the bread, it abounds. But here, he says, "Take, eat, this is my body" (emphasis added). And we see that his death is sufficient to cover all our sin. There is nothing to be added.