In Chapter 1 of his Gospel, the Apostle John wrote, “[11] He came to His own [the Jews], and His own did not receive Him. [12] But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: [13] who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
This passage teaches us three ways in which one does not become a child of God, that is to say, one of God’s elect, one of this chosen people, and one way in which a man does.
Commenting on this passage, Gordon Clark wrote, “Verse 12 says that in contrast with the Jews who rejected him, Jesus gave to those who accepted him the right or power to become children of God. These people are identified by the fact that they believe in his name.”[2]
One of the great issues at the time of the Reformation, one of the great doctrines of the Bible, is that one is pronounced righteous in the sight of God based on belief alone in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is those who have faith in Christ who are God’s elect, who are God’s chosen people.
John goes on in verse 13 to describe three ways in which men do not become children of God. For our purposes, we will deal with the first one only. Writes Clark,
“The primary meaning of this text is that the believer is born of God and is not born of something else. These believers were given the authority, or privilege, or power to become the children of God…. They did not previously have this power. It is a gift, a gift that God gave to some people and not to all people. This is the Calvinistic doctrine of unconditional election…If one asks, in view of verse 12, how Christ can be ‘received,’ the first part of the answer tells how Christ cannot be received. The first way not to receive Christ is the way of bloods. The plural doubtless refers to the parents…it directly denies the common Jewish conception that salvation depends on physical descent from Abraham. That this was a common opinion is seen from Matthew 3:9, where John the Baptist upbraids the Jews for thinking that they are safe because ‘we have Abraham as our father….’”
The only way a Jewish person can be among God’s chosen people is through faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ. Being merely a physical descendant of Abraham does not confer this status upon anyone.
This is shown in a number of other New Testament passages. In Ephesians 1:4, Paul wrote, “just as He [God the Father] chose us in Him [Jesus Christ] before the foundation of the world.” Who is the “us” in this passage? Was Paul writing to ethnic Jews who rejected Jesus, or was he writing to believers? He was writing to believers, as we can see from the opening verse of Ephesians, where Paul wrote, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus….” Paul was writing to believers and, most likely, to a church that had a mix of Jewish and Gentile Christians, all of whom God “chose.”
In Galatians 6:16, Paul wrote about the “Israel of God.” Was he writing about ethnic Jews, or was he referring to the church, the body of Christ? The context demands that we understand his reference to the “Israel of God” as a reference to the church comprised of believers of every tribe, tongue, and nation.
It is on this elementary point that the Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, repeatedly err. This error would be bad enough if it were a privately held belief. But as it stands today, it affects the policies of entire nations.
There are many in the United States today who, holding the mistaken belief that unbelieving, ethnic Jews are God’s chosen people, urge the government to ever greater commitments to the Zionist state of Israel to the detriment of the liberties and lives of the American people. Ideas do indeed have consequences. Let us pray that the Lord would be merciful to the United States and defeat the unchristian and foolish counsel of the Zionists.
[1] https://x.com/tperkins/status/1984641580318539843
[2] Gordon H. Clark, What is Saving Faith? (The Trinity Foundation, 2003), 106.
Lux Lucet 
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