Simple questions (2)

John the biographer, writing around AD 90 is recalling (see above) that another John, John the Baptist, was “a man sent from God”. This man was a contemporary relative of Jesus and only slightly older. They were both around 30 years in AD 30 when John “came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all men might believe through him.”

This light was not any old light – not candles or daylight or anything like that. It was “true light” to which John the Baptist was bearing witness. “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.”

The question arises: who or what is “the light” that John witnessed about? John the biographer has not yet told us in his book. All that he has written so far about “the light” (see last week’s Info for Islanders) is this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

 

That’s the first simple question. To whom or to what did John the Baptist point as being “the true light, which gives light to everyone.”? That light, around AD 30, “was coming into the world”.

The second question then arises. What had happened to “the light”? John the biographer writes (see above) “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own (his own things), and his own people (his own human beings) did not receive him.” 

Who then “did not receive” the one who came to all that had been created through him? We know that the Jerusalem leaders and the Roman authorities there in AD 30 put him to death. But what about after that? Of whom can it now be said that they “did not receive him”?

But, perhaps more important, what about those who “did receive him”?

John the biographer tells us. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

From this it seems that two things happened to “all who did receive him”. But what do they actually mean in practice? First, these “who did receive him, who believed in his name” were given the “right to become children of God”. What does that mean? I know the name of my father and mother. What is it to become a child “of God”? 

Second, these “who did receive him, who believed in his name” “were born … of God”. What does this mean? It’s a simple question, isn’t it. It’s the answer that’s intriguing.

But, taking these together, is it really correct that those “who did receive him, who believed in his name” not only had the right to become “children of God” but also received within themselves a life distinct from the life which arose within the womb of their mothers? They were “born … of God”.

 

What does that mean? Does “born of God” mean having new life and a new Father? Do you think that Christianity is all about going to church so as to be seen to be respectable, to play the part… ?