...receive Christ in your life everyday...

“12 But to all who received Jesus, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God”  John 1:12-13.

John points out that not everyone rejects Jesus.   Some believe in Jesus and welcome Him into their lives to lead them and direct them in life.   Jesus considers all who receive Him as His children — children of God! This opens the door to the fact that men and women are not born children of God, but that we “become children of God” not by physical, human birth, and not by our own will, but by the “will of God” John 1:12-13.

I was born to a father and mother, but I truly do not become their child on a much deeper level until I have grown up and left the home.  It is then that I am called to continue to love them and welcome them out of gratitude and love throughout their life and throughout my own life.   I  then become their child in a much deeper and more authentic way than by just my physical birth alone.   I could have chosen to leave them and live the remaining years of my life without any significant consideration of them as my parents.   One path brings me closer to my father and mother; the other path distances me significantly from them.

John is telling us that we enter into a life-long and mature, intimate relationship with our Father in heaven not by our own choice and will, but by the grace and love of God.   We build an eternal relationship with God — we truly become children of God — through Jesus Christ alone, whom we must “receive” and in whom we must “believe.”   In the Christian Church the path to becoming a child of God through Jesus Christ is expressed in our Baptism.   In every way this is a new birth, a second birth, wherein we are born again.   A little later in Chapter 3 John introduces us to a Pharisee named Nicodemus to whom Jesus says:  “5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”  John 3:5-8.    Jesus says that to become a child of God you must be born again, and that such a new birth comes from the Holy Spirit of God who graces and blesses “whomever it pleases.”

In other words, our new and second birth does not originate from us, but we are “born of the Spirit”  John 3:8.

Did you notice that John says “only those who believe in the name of Jesus” are children of God”  John 1:12?   To believe in the name of Jesus is an old Hebrew concept that speaks not of the name by which a person is known but that a person’s name speaks of a persons nature and substance.   The Psalmist says it so well:  “Those who know Your Name trust in You, for You, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you”  Psalm 9:10.   To believe in the Name of Jesus is to believe in Jesus as He really is, to believe in God’s character, God’s nature.   For “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we (children of God) trust in the name of the Lord our God”  Psalm 20:7.

So today is a big day for each of us.  Will you and I receive Jesus into our lives?  Will we believe in the name of Jesus?   I invite you to do just that, and to speak in your own words to Jesus, praying that He will give you the grace today to receive Him and believe in his Holy name. I think we need to do this everyday — and what a genuine practice this is!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.