Commentary on the Gospel of John

                             Chapter One

                                                                                                                                             Verses 11-13

God originally intended that only the Hebrew people would obtain salvation by His grace. But when most of the Hebrew people of Jesus' day rejected Him as their Messiah, then God sent His Apostles to preach the gospel to the Gentiles so that one Gentile would be saved by grace for every Israelite who ever rejected salvation by grace. Romans 11:7-25.

Every Jew or Gentile who repents and believes that Christ has saved them by His grace becomes a son of God. They possess the righteousness of Christ Himself by which they can be accepted by God to live in Heaven with Him forever. God can only accept absolute perfection into His presence. II Corinthians 5:21; I Peter 1:3-4. Although they will never be equal to Christ, God will give them some of the powers and privileges of Christ Himself. They will possess spiritual bodies like that of Christ. They will be able to will themselves to be spirit, travel to any part of the universe in an instant, and then will themselves to return to a physical body. God will supply all their needs so that every wife and her husband will be able to make love. God will assign every wife to her husband just as He did with Adam and Eve. Marriage ceremonies are a human invention. I John 3:1-2; Philippians 4:19. All of the rest of humanity who receive a lesser form of salvation, God will recreate to live on His recreated earth with physical bodies only, but with the same created righteousness that He gave to Adam and Eve. I Corinthians 15:35-50.

Verse 13 teaches that human will and human efforts have no part whatsoever in God's salvation by grace. The Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin, and He imparts spiritual salvation by grace to the believer the moment that believer repents and puts their faith in Christ's power to save them. John 16:7-11; I Corinthians 6:11. The believer does nothing for his salvation. He only pleads for God to give it to him. If God should will, he could withhold His salvation by grace even then, but He never does that. God has promised that He will give His salvation by grace to everyone who sincerely pleads for it. John 6:37; Romans 10:13. The believer saved by grace happens to be "born of God" by the power of the Holy Spirit. John 1:13; I John 5:1.