John 1:13

John 1:13. Which were begotten, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The spiritual history of those who are spoken of in John 1:12 is here continued, and the nature of their sonship more fully defined. It is easy to see that in the three clauses there is a distinct progress of thought, the second (containing the thought of ‘will') being more definite than the first, the third (in which ‘man' is substituted for ‘flesh,' a person for human nature in general) being again more definite than the second. The three clauses, however, really express but one main idea; what that is must be learnt from the contrast in the closing words, ‘but (they were begotten) of God.' These believers have received the right to become ‘children of God' by virtue of a true spiritual filiation, being begotten of God. The contrast to such a sonship is the very claim which is so strongly made by the Jews in chap. 8, and the validity of which our Lord altogether denies. The recollection of that chapter, which only brings into bold relief the habitual assumption of the Judaism of that day, will be sufficient to explain the remarkable emphasis of this verse, the threefold denial that men become children of God by virtue of any natural hereditary descent. Although it is the claim of the Jews that is here in the writer's thought, yet, as often elsewhere, the Jews are the type of the world at large; by others besides Jews like presumptuous claims have been made, others have rested in the ‘divinity' of their race. It is very possible that the peculiarity of the first clause (literally ‘not of bloods ') may be thus explained.