Wednesday, April 09, 2008

A Stranger in His Own Place

“He was in the world, and the world was made by Him,
and the world knew Him not.
He came unto His own, and his own received Him not.”
John 1:10–11
There is probably nothing worse in this world than the feeling of being rejected. The very worst kind of rejection is when friends and family who should love you most, turn on you and despise you. That is exactly how John describes Jesus’ time on this earth.
John has already told us that Jesus, who is 100% God, created the universe, and was sent by the Father to earth to bring life the world. We might expect that the world would be awaiting its Creator and Redeemer with open arms, but the exact opposite was true. The men and women whom Jesus created rejected him. The irony could not be more striking: His very creation turned its back on Him. He came to his creation, to his people to whom he had given life, and they refused him. They treated him as an outcast. They didn’t recognize him as their Creator; they acted like he was just one more reject.
Two things in these verses are particularly noteworthy. First, Jesus did not come to earth to vacation or party—his incarnation was a humbling descent from the glory he eternally enjoyed with His Father in heaven. And when he came to earth, he did not come as royalty or a celebrity; rather, he came in the lowliest of circumstances and suffered the full gamut of human hardship. Second, we need to keep in mind that we, in our natural state before salvation, also rejected Christ. We may think that since we were not profane and outspoken before we were saved, we were not really that bad. But just “living life” without regard to Jesus Christ who gave us that life is rebellion of the first order. We were once part of the world, although created by Him, that refused to acknowledge Him.

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