Jesus is the light of creation. Jesus gathers up in Himself the wisdom and the revelation of nature about God. But people did not recognize Him as the Messiah, the promised One.
There is an interesting construction in Greek grammar in verse 11. There are two different genders employed. “He came to His own” is in the neuter gender, meaning, His own things, His own place. But the second “His own,” is masculine gender—His own associates, His own relatives, His own family “did not receive Him.” This is clearly a reference to people. Jesus came to the place where God had put His name, to the land that had been promised to Abraham; He came to the Temple that was dedicated to His Father, and His own people in that place. Those who had been instructed for centuries that there was One coming who would bear their transgressions upon Himself, neither recognized nor received Him.
But those who believed received new, spiritual life. Though Messiah was rejected, and the Creator unrecognized, God produced a whole new creation, a new humanity came into being.
John clarifies new birth by listing the mistaken ways people think they can come to God.
• New birth is “not blood-begotten;” not by inheritance or human ancestry. We can’t get into God’s kingdom by being raised in a Christian family.
• New birth is “not flesh-begotten;” we do not become Christian by self-determination. It’s not done by positive thinking or a strict adherence to a particular moral code.
• New birth is “not sex-begotten.” It is not by human procreation.
New birth is done by God—solely and totally. This growth is a process. God has designed it so. But the promise is that to those who have begun they will stand at last like Him, sons of God.
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