We are going to pick up where we left off last Christmas at John 1:6-13 - the summary of the response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The incarnation of the Second Person of the Godhead was an amazing miracle of saving grace (vv.1-5), and one would expect that the response of a world trapped in darkness would be to rejoice at seeing such the light of their salvation burst onto the scene of history. And yet that is the opposite of what happened (vv.10-11). When the Light was given to everyone, most people did not receive him: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. ... Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:16-19, 36).
