John 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
The world did not know nor recognize its creator. If you don’t know your source, you will not know your reason for being. John 1:10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. This lack of recognition is a stark indictment of our ignorance and a condemnation of the intelligence of those who claimed to be waiting for the Messiah. A child recognizes its mother and its source of being, and we, so-called adults, do not recognize our source of existence. When did we become blind to our source? 2Cor. 4:4 Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God. If you know your source, you will also know your place in the ever-expanding plan of our God. There needs to be a willingness on our part to choose to know who we are in Him and what we are to do to fulfill our created lives.
When God created man, in essence, God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, with reason and insight.” That is the fundamental difference between man and beast: we are cognizant of reason and insight. Part of knowing our source is also knowing our place (God is God, and we are not). When our understanding and reason have been submitted to God, we can live a life in righteousness while understanding why God created us. John the Baptizer understood his reason for being, but also understood his place in God’s plan. John 1:27 He is the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to untie.
A person can be as vicious as an animal that bites the hand that feeds it because, like the animal, people forget who the source is and where their provision comes from. These people no longer know their place in the order of life and have lost the knowledge of who their God is. Yet they remain stubborn to the fact that they do not need God. Rom. 1:22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. In one breath, people can curse God and in the next praise the sunset. The scriptures describe what happens to a mind’s ability to reason when God is not acknowledged in life. Rom. 1:20 For even though they knew God, they did not honour Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Insight and reason leave when we reject the Lord, who is our eternal source.
Jesus came to His own chosen people and was rejected on every level of life. John 1:11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. Satan used the finer points of the law to anger those who were in charge of interpreting the law. These priests had changed the laws of God into the laws of convenience to fit their hierarchy. Jesus knew His source and His place in God the Father’s salvation plan. Jesus did not break the laws of God, but broke the traditional interpretations of the said laws. Satan tried to set a trap to kill the saviour of mankind, but set a trap for himself. Raymond Chandler said it best when he wrote, “There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.” 1Cor. 2:8 None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Satan thought the trap he set for Jesus was foolproof, but ended up exposing who the fool really was.
Like the devil, many forget who the source of life is. The devil has no new tricks. He is still trying to tempt people into believing there is someone or something to believe in that is better than God. From the beginning of time, the serpent’s strategy has been to get people to look to themselves rather than God. Satan lied to Eve about who her eternal source was. The devil deceived Eve into mistrusting the integrity of God and choosing another supplier to meet all her life’s needs. Gen. 3:5 For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. The temptation of eating something that was forbidden and would open her eyes, plus she would become aware of another type of knowledge, was a great temptation. In essence, Satan said to Eve, “You can become your own source of life and ditch God’s covering over your life.” This turned out to be the worst decision in the history of all mankind. We are still suffering the consequences of those choices that Adam and Eve made.
The gracious blessing that we have today is that we can now turn our hearts back to the living source of eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Jesus has made it possible for us to revisit the choices made in the Garden of Eden and choose God the Father as our only God and provider for living, and give our hearts the vision for moving forward in the plan God has for each one of us. From this time onward, we can dedicate our lives to staying righteously connected to the Lord of glory, and we can do this by not replacing Him on the throne of our hearts. As we accept our place in the plan of God, we can now be at peace with why God created us. Jer. 1:5a Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart. If we accept the fact that there is a plan for our lives, and God is the only source to fulfill it, we will finally rest in who we are in Christ. That is a good place to be.
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