John the Baptist is introduced as the inaugural witness to Jesus (1:6-8). His witness is inaugural in the sense that he testified about Christ before Calvary and the Resurrection.
John, like Jesus, was “sent” from God the Father in the sense of “sent with a message” (1:6). The purpose of John’s witness about Jesus was to create faith in God by “enlightening” people with the truth of God’s revelation in Jesus (1:7). John’s witness pointed to Jesus as the Light of God, not to himself (1:8).
Verses 9-13 move toward the incarnation of the Word. Verse 9 shows the Word/Light as shining over each individual without exception, the Light which reveals what a person truly is before God. Since He is the “true” Word/Light, He reveals true human character without possibility of distortion that an imperfect light would have. Thus, the witness about Jesus confronts every person. The Word/Light serves as a true standard of comparison so that people created in the image of God can distinguish between the purity of God’s revelation in the Word and what sin has made of that image.
The Word entered into the created world, yet people of the world largely and actively are opposed to His revelation of God and refuse to recognize their dependence upon the Word/Creator (1:10). The unbelieving world failed to establish a relationship with Him (“know”). Verse 11 includes a difference in the two occurrences of “his own.” The first is “his own things” and the second is “his own people.” Phillips translates: “He came into his own creation, and his own people would not accept him.” On one level verse 11 is a reference to creation in general, but on a personal level it refers to humanity in need of redemption.
Both of these “worlds” largely rejected him, but some believed and welcomed the Word/Light as presented (“in His name,” 1:12). God’s own authority (“the right”) rewarded those who did believe with a new status: “To become what they were not before” (A. T. Robertson). Their “birth” as children of God had nothing in it of initiative from a human standpoint, whether of physical descent or the mere fact of being human: “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (NIV). Rather, new birth was uniquely and completely a gift of life with God from God (1:13).
Dr. David Moore can be contacted at dm5867se@outlook.com
