The Two Responses to the Person of Jesus

1. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:10-11). 

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2. “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” (John 1:12-13).

There only two responses to Christ as He walked the earth, are the same two responses to Christ we have today.

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1. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:10-11). Genesis reveals the Creator God, who spoke the world into being (Genesis 1:1) through Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16) and continues to uphold the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). The fact that Christ is the “logos,” or Word of God, should resonate with all humanity which has been created by and for Christ; however, many still rejected God Himself when He became a man to reclaim His creation as His own. The author John refers to the “world” as the broad sense of mankind's natural fallen state of alienation from the father, yet spiritually blind to his condition (Howell, 2). More specifically, the majority of Jesus Christ's own people, followers of Judaism, spurned His message (Elwell, 848), even though it is the fulfillment of their very prophecies and promises. Instead they chose to trust in their lineage from Abraham to be counted as children of God, the chosen people.
   
   
2. “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” (John 1:12-13).  John indicates that some did receive Christ, His disciples and a handful of others regardless of their lineage (Elwell, 848). These were given the status of God's children, not through sexual procreation, but through a spiritual rebirth (John 3:1-21) of divine initiative and activity (Howell, 2). Thus, God's children (chosen), who were selected as the decedents of Abraham from among all God's children (created), saw their exclusive claim to the title through bloodlines extinguished as Christ reopened inclusion as one of God's children (chosen) to all of God's children (created) if they are “born again” (1 John) into God's family by receiving Christ and believe in His name.