John 1:10-13
As I was preparing this message I decided to “google” the word “believe.” Just in case you haven't replaced your dictionary in the past couple decades, that means using an online search engine or tool, especially Google, to find information about a topic. As it happens, I used Yahoo to google “believe” but that’s not the important point of this story.
I found several listings of quotations using the word “believe.” Many of the quotes were designed to be slogans or mottos for motivational posters. When I looked at them I found the majority of the quotes used the word in some variation of “Believe in yourself.”
The Apostle John used “believe” as a watchword of his Gospel. He even tells his readers that his purpose is to inspire them to believe. Yet, he never says “Believe in yourself.” Near the end of his Gospel John explains why he wrote.
“Jesus showed many more proofs from God in front of his followers, but these are not written in this book. These proofs have been written, so that you, the reader, might believe this: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. If you believe this, you will have life by his name.”
John’s Gospel tells us to “Believe…in Jesus.” John spends much of his Gospel helping us understand who Jesus is. Why? John wants his readers to know who Jesus is so we will understand why our response to him must be belief.
Without such faith in Christ, we can’t even claim to be a Christian. We’re sometimes confused about that. Some even seem to believe being born into a Western culture makes them a Christian. For this reason most missionaries don’t refer to converts as Christians, they call them believers.
At heart a missionary, John knows that calling people to believe in Christ is no easy task. Those who call others to such faith and those who attempt to respond to that call face a great challenge. Why?
The answer to that question tells us a lot about our world.
I’m not a pessimist but we should never forget Christ was born into a world hostile to God’s intrusion. It was a world filled with darkness. Several times in this Gospel John will use the concept of darkness to describe the spiritual condition of the world. John sees the world in the throes of a battle of light against darkness.
The light invades the darkness through the Logos which John introduces in the first verse when he says, “In the beginning was the Word (Logos).” How did the world respond to the coming of the Light? John tells us in verse 5:
The light keeps shining
in the dark,
and darkness has never
put it out.
in the dark,
and darkness has never
put it out.
The world sought to “put out” the Light but could not.
The hostility of darkened humanity against God was seen in the world’s response to the coming of Christ. The language of these verses indicate that John had in mind a specific set of events taking place at a particular time and in a particular place, events that finally led to the crucifixion.
He who created the world came into that world and was not recognized. That is how great the darkness was, the darkness created by sin. The world rejected him and, consequently, treated him with contempt. Jesus would later stress that this very pattern would be the experience of his disciples; they, too, would go unrecognized.
The darkness found its most insidious expression in the rejection of Jesus by his own people. The phrase translated as “he came to his own” was often used to mean “he came home.” Those who should have been most prepared for his coming missed him when he came. Instead of welcoming him, they crucified him.
John, Jewish himself, has no vendetta against the Jews. He is simply telling the story as it happened. While Jesus enjoyed popularity in the early days of his ministry, the more his countrymen understood he would not be the Messiah they had expected, the less they were content with him. If he would not conform to their expectations, they would not accept him. The response of Jesus’ own people was only a microcosm of the world’s reaction to the truth.
It’s a reminder to us that the world has not only rejected God’s assessment of our human problem, it has rejected the heaven-sent resolution to that problem.
The world pushes us toward unbelief. It applauds unbelief as daring, an expression of freedom and sophistication.
At a political fund-raiser comedienne Margaret Cho mocked the notion of sin. We’re not all sinners she said, how could one person eating an apple make us all sinners? Besides, if she really ate from the tree of knowledge, she should have eaten more than one apple—maybe baked a pie.
The notion that we humans are infected with a condition which is beyond our control to resolve is unpalatable to us.
Gary Burge puts it this way
“The great irony of Christian theology is that the very medicine that can cure the human condition is rejected. It is naïve to think that the world is eagerly waiting for some disclosure from heaven. Such a disclosure is welcome if it comes in the world’s terms, if it is a message that affirms the systems of the world, upholding the personal aggrandizement of power and the prowess of human capacity. But if it names the darkness for what it is, if it describes sin for what it does, if it identifies unbelief in its many sophisticated forms, then the Word will experience sheer antagonism. If the Creator of the world now calls for dominion as its Creator and Lord, the world will have no part.”
As long as this condition persists, we remain estranged from God. But John tells us there is a way to escape that estrangement. But making that escape demands we break away from the world’s influence.
The power of the darkness is strong; those who would believe must go contrary to the tendency to embrace the darkness. It is difficult to go against the current but John tells us there are those who do.
In every generation there are men and women willing to accept the ridicule, to face the criticism, to be misunderstood, to be counted as fools—all because they believe in Christ.
While some rejected Christ some “received” him, which John equates to “trusting in his name.” It means they accepted his claims about himself and trusted he would do all he said he would do.
It means that when we hear him tell the most spiritual among us “You must be born again” we will accept his diagnosis.
It means that when he declared “I am the way, the truth, and the life” we will surrender our pride and trust him alone to bring us to God.
It means his promise “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness” will fill us with assurance.
When we believe in him in that way, we enter into a new spiritual status. John says, “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Their trust in Christ was the foundation for a new relationship to God. Those who believe are given “the right” or “authority” to become “the children of God.” The word translated as “authority” contains the idea of status and privilege. Those who trust Christ enjoy all that comes from the status of being God’s children. It suggests a relationship of intimacy and closeness. Those who were once estranged from God now have a new relationship with him. They may call him Father.
The church father Athanasius stated it in this way, “The Son of God became a man, so men might become sons of God.” Jesus Christ is the Son of God as no one else is the son of God. Yet, through faith in Christ we can enter into a relationship with God which can only be described that of a Father and child.
That relationship is rooted in God’s grace. John says God “gave” believers the right to be his children. The word “gave” is often used to describe a gracious, unmerited gift. Believing is important because it opens the door for God’s grace.
John suggests a kind of universalism that would have shocked some in his day. It’s shocking today. To some the very thought of God loving those who aren’t like us is unbelievable. Some who heard the first Christian evangelists believed they were spiritually secure because of simple heredity or nationality. (Of course, some Americans believe the same thing.) They had been born into the right nation and that guaranteed God’s blessings. John, echoing what he had heard Jesus teach and saw him model in his ministry, tells us our hope of a new relationship with God is not rooted in our heredity but in God’s grace.
This means that those of us with no spiritual heritage to recommend us, no lofty status in our society, no special capacity for spirituality can have hope. Our hope rests in God’s grace, not our goodness.
Because of this, those who have placed faith in Christ have come from every race and nation. The Biblical mandates to do missions and evangelism is a mandate to call people to believe in Jesus Christ. It is not a mandate to call others to believe in the American way, not a mandate to call others to believe in the Baptist way, not a mandate to call others to believe in the Western way, it is a mandate to call others to believe in Jesus Christ. Only by believing in Jesus Christ can we enter into a new relationship with God.
CONCLUSION
As a church, you and I have to understand that calling others to believe in Christ is not an easy task. Sometimes we who have found such satisfaction in our faith find it hard to believe that there are those who will not trust him. Yet, that is the way of this dark world—a world in fundamental rebellion against God. John understood this. Watching how people responded to Jesus, he concluded, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness more than they loved light…”
What are the roots of unbelief? Why do some people believe and others resist the call to faith?
Unbelief may be rooted in genuine confusion.
Unbelief may be rooted in persistent moral rebellion.
Unbelief may be rooted in intellectual arrogance.
Unbelief may be rooted in profound disappointment.
Ultimately, whatever the individual explanation for the refusal to believe, the cause is the power of the darkness.
But the great news is: people don’t have to remain in the dark.
As bleak as John’s picture of the world may be, he allows us to see a gleam of hope.
Yes, the world is in rebellion against God.
But, in spite of the world’s rejection of his Son, God graciously accepts as his children those who trust Christ.
What keeps us going as a church is this great truth, this wonderful vision, this hope: Those who break away from the world’s influence to trust Christ enter a new relationship with God.
That’s why we keep calling men and women to believe.
