To Receive Jesus

Minister:
Date: AM
Text: John 1:12
Psalters: 238, 233, 35, 72
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
  1. The fact.
    1. The Belgic Conf. speaks of receiving Jesus in Art. 29 and 35.
    2. To receive Him is to embrace Him by a living faith in His name (Self-revelation in the sphere of redemption).
    3. It is to have Jesus.
      1. The heavenly Father, through the work of the Spirit, gives you to Jesus and gives Jesus to you.
      2. This is true for the newest and weakest as well as the most mature Christian: we are fully, finally, irreversibly justified.
  2. Those who receive Him experience the wonder of God’s gift that they have the right actually to be children of God.
    1. This word emphasizes the spiritual, ethical side of our sonship, implying our being born of God.
      1. It speaks of a relationship of likeness: the son is like his father, bears the image of his father, to be like Him (cf. I John 3:1,2).
      2. This great honor is ours over against whatever man (including ourselves) think of us.
    2. When we are given the ability to receive Him and believe in Him, instead of rejecting Him, we experience this great “power.”
      1. To receive Christ, therefore, is to receive the right to sonship.
      2. That this is our right (“power”) is found in God’s gracious works.
  3. The experience.
    1. We constantly need to receive this right because we sin. We need to be assured of forgiveness.
    2. From the Old Dispensation perspective, their right to be children of God had not yet been established.
      1. We grow in the consciousness of sonship.
      2. In this sense we long to be fully His children, to be completely like Him.