John 1:10,11

He was in the world, and, although the world came into being through him, the world did not recognize him. It was into his own home that he came, and his own people did not welcome him.

When John wrote this passage two thoughts were in his mind.

(i) He was thinking of the time before Jesus Christ came into the world in the body. From the beginning of time God's Logos (G3056) has been active in the world. In the beginning God's creating, dynamic word brought the world into being; and ever since it is the word, the Logos (G3056), the reason of God which has made the world an ordered whole and man a thinking being. If men had only had the sense to see him, the Logos (G3056) was always recognizable in the universe.

The Westminster Confession of Faith begins by saying that "the lights of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God as to leave men inexcusable." Long ago Paul had said that the visible things of the world were so designed by God as to lead men's thoughts to the invisible things, and that if men had looked with open eyes and an understanding heart at the world their thoughts would have been inevitably led to the creator of the world (Romans 1:19-20). The world has always been such that, looked at in the right way, it would lead men's minds to God.

Theology has always made a distinction between natural theology and revealed theology. Revealed theology deals with the truths that came to us directly from God in the words of the prophets, the pages of his book, and supremely in Jesus Christ. Natural theology deals with the truths that man could discover by the exercise of his own mind and intellect on the world in which he lives. How, then, can we see God's word, God's Logos (G3056), God's reason, God's mind in the world in which we live?

(a) We must look outwards. It was always a basic Greek thought that where there is order there must be a mind. When we look at the world we see an amazing order. The planets keep to their appointed courses. The tides observe their appointed times. Seed times and harvest, summer and winter, day and night come in their appointed order. Clearly there is order in nature, and, therefore, equally clearly there must be a mind behind it all. Further, that mind must be greater than any human mind because it achieves results that the human mind can never achieve. No man can make day into night, or night into day; no man can make a seed that will have in it the power of growth; no man can make a living thing. If in the world there is order, there must be mind; and if in that order there are things which are beyond the mind of man to do, then the mind behind the order of nature must be a mind above and beyond the mind of man--and straightway we have reached God. To look outwards upon the world is to come face to face with the God who made it.

(b) We must look upwards. Nothing demonstrates the amazing order of the universe so much as the movement of the world. Astronomers tell us that there are as many stars as there are grains of sand upon the seashore. If we may put it in human terms, think of the traffic problem of the heavens; and yet the heavenly bodies keep their appointed courses and travel their appointed way. An astronomer is able to forecast to the minute and to the inch when and where a certain planet will appear. An astronomer can tell us when and where an eclipse of the sun will happen hundreds of years from now, and he can ten us to the second how long it will last. It has been said that "no astronomer can be an atheist." When we look upwards we see God.

(c) We must look inwards. Where did we get the power to think, to reason and to know? Where did we get our knowledge of right and of wrong? Why does even the most evil-ridden man know in his heart of hearts when he is doing a wrong thing? Kant said long ago that two things convinced him of the existence of God--the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him. We neither gave ourselves life, nor did we give ourselves the reason which guides and directs life. It must have come from some power outside ourselves. Where do remorse and regret and the sense of guilt come from? Why can we never do what we like and be at peace? When we look inwards we find what Marcus Aurelius called "the god within, and what Seneca called "the holy spirit which sits within our souls." No man can explain himself apart from God.

(d) We must look backwards. Froude, the great historian, said that the whole of history is a demonstration of the moral law in action. Empires rise and empires collapse. As Kipling wrote:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

And it is a demonstrable fact of history that moral degeneration and national collapse go hand in hand. "No nation, said George Bernard Shaw, "has ever outlived the loss of its gods." AU history is the practical demonstration that there is a God.

So, then, even if Jesus Christ had never come into this world in bodily form, it would still have been possible for men to see God's word, God's Logos (G3056), God's reason in action. But, although the action of the word was there for all to see, men never recognized him.

Unrecognized (John 1:10-11 Continued)

__ John 1:1-51 __