When I Survey
H. Hoeksema
Book 3, Chapter 6
Cast Out by His Own

"He came unto his own, and his own received him not." (John 1:11)

The apostle John begins his gospel narrative by speaking of the eternal Son of God, the Word that in the beginning was with God, and was God, and by Whom all things are made. This eternal Word, without Whom nothing is made that was made, dwells in all creation, and in Him was life, and the life was the light of men. But men are darkness, and although the light shone in the darkness, the darkness did not comprehend the light. Loving the darkness rather than the light, sinful men rejected the knowledge of God, would have none of it, and held the truth in unrighteousness. The light was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but the world received Him not. And when the apostle had thus expounded the eternal glory of the Christ as the divine Word, he continues: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." He was cast out by His own!

Perhaps, you remark that we express ourselves strongly, too strongly, when we say that the text in John 1:11 means that His own cast Him out. The text merely declares that they did not receive Him. But we must remember that no one can assume a neutral attitude with respect to the Christ of God. You cannot coldly ignore Him. When He comes to you, you cannot politely decline to receive Him, as you might do with caller that seeks an audience with you at an inopportune moment. For He is the eternal Son of God, the Christ, the Light of the world. Your attitude toward Him is always for or against. You love Him or you hate Him. You cleave to Him, or you despise Him. There is no middle ground. Besides, always He comes to His own. When He comes He is not a stranger that has no right to enter: He comes to His own house. He is not a man that kindly seeks an audience. He is no beggar that awaits your mercy. He demands attention. He speaks with authority. He comes to His own! And, therefore, His word is always with power. By it you are humbled or hardened. Over against it you obey or you rebel. You receive Him, or you cast Him out.

And the facts in this case corroborate this truth. When He came unto His own, and His own received Him not, they cast Him out. From the very beginning of His coming, and especially from the time He entered upon His public ministry, until His "hour" had come, and they nailed Him to the accursed tree on Calvary, they conspired against Him to cast Him out of His own house. Jesus is the rejected of men, the stranger to His brethren, the One that is hated without a cause, that bears the reproach of the ungodly, and that is always contradicted by sinners; but He is also the One that, by His own, is cast out of His own possession and inheritance!

Let us not overlook that this is precisely the point of the text, and this is exactly the story of His public ministry ending in the death of the cross. He was cast out of His own house! In our translation of the passage this meaning of the words is lost, and the text appears to mean that He came to His own people, and that they refused to receive Him. In the original, however, two different forms of the word that is twice translated "his own" are used. And while the second time the word occurs in the text it surely refers to the people, His own people, the first time it has a different meaning, and does not refer to men, but to things. We should, therefore, read: He came to that which was His own, to His own property, His own things, His own inheritance, and His own people received Him not, would not let Him take possession of that which was His own, cast Him out of His own house!

The question arises: to what does the Word of God refer when it states that Jesus came unto His own things? What are those things, what is that inheritance to which He came? Is John still thinking of the Christ as the eternal Word, by Whom in the beginning all things were made, and Who in the fulness of time came into the world as the incarnated Son of God? In that case "his own things" refers to the whole world. He came into the world which was His own, and the world did not receive Him. And such an interpretation would be quite possible, of course. It would give us quite a proper conception. For He that came into the world in the fulness of time is, indeed, the eternal Son of God, God of God, Light of Light, co-eternal and co-equal with the Father and the Holy Ghost. As such He is the Creator of the heavens and of the earth, the undisputed Lord of all. All things are His, for without Him was not anything made that was made. Not only so, but even as the Messiah, the Christ of God, the Son of God in human flesh, He is the sole proprietor of all things, of the whole world. For He is, in God's decree, the firstborn of every creature, Who as the firstbegotten of the dead and as the Head of the Church, must have the preeminence in all things. It is God's good pleasure that in Him all the fulness shall dwell, and that all things in heaven and on earth shall ultimately be gathered into one glorious creation, one house of God, under and in Him as the Head over all. As the Christ, He is the Anointed, ordained of God to be King over all forever, to Whom the Most High from all eternity spoke the word: "Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." Ps. 11:7,8. And when He came into the world, He came as God's Son, who was appointed heir of all things, Heb. 1:2. To be sure, therefore, it would be quite proper to understand the words of John 1:11 in this sense. Christ came into His own world, which as the Son of God He had made, over which He was absolute Lord; and which, as the Christ, He had received as an inheritance from the Father. Into this world He had come in the beginning, but His own in Adam had not received Him, but cast Him out, preferring the lie and the slavery of the devil. Into this world He came in the fulness of time as the heir of all things, to reclaim it, to redeem it, and to lead it to the heavenly level of His eternal kingdom. And when He thus came, the world received Him not, but cast Him out once more by nailing Him to the accursed tree. That is the sin of the world. Always they mean to cast the living God out of His own house!

Nor do I think that this meaning must be excluded from the text, for the coming of Christ unto His own in Israel, and His coming into the whole world are intimately related, cannot be separated. When He came to Israel in the fulness of time He also came to the world. Yet, it would seem, in the light of the context, that the passage has more immediate and direct reference to the fact that Christ came to His own in the nation of Israel. This seems to be the distinction between this verse and the immediately preceding one. There we read: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not." And then, as if referring to something far more specific and serious, to a far more intimate relation and unexpected refusal, the eleventh verse continues: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Although, therefore, the general reference to the whole world as being His own is not excluded, the immediate and special reference is, no doubt, to the fact that He came to Israel, to all the things Israel stood for, and that His own people received Him not, but cast Him out of His own heritage.

In coming to Israel, He came to the Old Testament Church, to the old dispensational theocracy as it had been instituted and was based on Moses, and supported by all the prophets, the house of God that had been supervised by the mediator of the Old Testament. And that entire house, and all that was in it was Christ's. When Christ came, He came literally to His own things, to His own temple, His own altar, His own temple service, His own sacrifices and offerings, His own sabbaths and holy days. His own passover and feast of the firstfruits, His own covenants and promises, His own kingdom and throne, His own law and prophets, His own priesthood. The whole house was His. And the promised land and people were His. They were the sheep of His own fold. They were His by divine right, for the whole house and all that pertained to it had been given Him by the Father from before the foundation of the world. Moreover, He had founded that house and built it: Moses had only been His agent and representative. It was He that had delivered His own with a mighty arm out of the house of bondage in Egypt, He had led them through the Red Sea, He had instituted the old covenant at Sinai, He had led them through the wilderness, He had been the manna they ate, and the water they drank from the rocks had been supplied by Him. He had led them into the land of Canaan, had established the throne of David on Mount Zion, and the house of God on Moriah, and He had spoken to them through all the prophets. Moreover, all these things were but shadows of Himself. They all pointed to Him, and without Him neither the law nor the prophets, neither the temple nor the altar, neither the kingdom nor the throne of David had any meaning. Indeed, all these things were His own, and He was their Lord, the Anointed over the whole house of God!

And He came to it all in the fulness of time. He came to His own in the incarnation, for He assumed the flesh and blood of the children, and took on Himself the seed of Abraham out of the house of David, and this seed, and this royal house were His own. And by assuming the flesh and blood of the children He came not merely to, but into His own house. He came to His own through His public ministry, for in His preaching and mighty works He revealed Himself as the One that was expected, that had spoken to them through all the law and the prophets, through all the sacrifices and shadows, and that now had come unto His own. When, in the synagogue of Nazareth, the book of Isaiah was handed to Him, He made plain to them that He spoke from His own Scriptures, and that the gospel preached by Isaiah was His own gospel, that was fulfilled by Him. When He cleansed the temple He prophesied that He had come to rebuild the house of His Father in His own body. And thus He came to His own to fulfill all the law and all the prophets, to redeem His own, to change the shadows into eternal realities, to replace the sacrifices of bulls and of goats by His own, perfect self-sacrifice, the earthly temple by the everlasting covenant and tabernacle of God, the priesthood of Aaron by that according to the order of Melchisedec, the old theocracy by the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, the earthly throne of David by the everlasting throne at the right hand of God. He came to remove the shadows and reveal reality, to break down the old forms that the essence might come to light!

Thus He came unto His own.

But His own, that is, His own people, received Him not. For Israel was, indeed, His own people, not merely in the sense that He was of their flesh and blood, but in the far deeper and more intimate sense that they were the sheep of His own fold. They were the Church. They were the people of God. In distinction from all the nations of the world they had been chosen and formed into God's own peculiar possession. They were the people God had given to Christ from before the foundation of the world. For as the apostle Paul writes: they were "Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever, Amen." Rom. 9:4,5. They, His own people, who expected Him, and who of all people would be expected to give Him a hearty reception, received Him not, but on the contrary, cast Him out of His own house! Fact is, that they had always done so, when they maltreated and stoned the prophets, all through the old dispensation. But when He came, and they recognized Him, they said: "This is the heir, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance." Matt. 21:38. And always they conspired against Him to cast Him out. Even when, in the beginning of His public ministry, He preached His own gospel from His own Scriptures in His own synagogue, they meant to cast Him down from the precipice. Lu. 4:16ff. And often they took up stones to kill Him. And when finally His hour had come, they took hold of Him and brought Him into their court, and when they had diligently inquired, and He had declared under oath that He was the Christ, the Son of God, the heir that had come unto His own, they judged that He was worthy of death. And with the help of all the world they led Him outside of Jerusalem, and nailed Him to the cross. They cast Him out. His own received Him not! The Church excommunicated the Christ of God!

But, you ask, how was this possible? How could His own fail to receive Him? And why did they cast Him out? The answer to the first question is found in the words of Romans 9:6: "For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel." Always the line of election and reprobation cuts through the Church, according to God's own sovereign counsel of predestination. Always there is in the Church in the world the spiritual seed of the promise and the carnal seed. And always the carnal seed, those that are of Israel without being real Israel, persecute the spiritual seed, and cast out the Christ. For often the true spiritual Israel, the remnant according to the election of grace, is small, few in number, while the wicked grow as the grass, and are in power. It was so in Israel of old, in the fulness of time, when Christ came to His own. The true flock of Christ was small, the carnal seed abounded, and the latter were in power and sat on Moses' seat. The carnal seed were the leaders of the people, the scribes and Pharisees, the high priest and the chief priests and elders. And they sought their own righteousness, not the righteousness of God. They wanted a carnal Messiah, that would establish a carnal kingdom, in which they could serve the lusts of the flesh, enjoy the honor of men, and continue to cover up their inward corruption by a cloak of righteousness and piety. Hence, they wanted to keep the shadows, and hated the spiritual reality of the kingdom of God Christ came to establish. For they realized that in Christ's kingdom they would be exposed as naked and miserable, and that they would have to repent of their iniquity in order to enter therein. And repent they would not. For they loved the darkness rather than the light. And so they cast the Christ out of His own house, that they might continue to make it a den of robbers!

But mark the unsearchable riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God: it was exactly through their rejection of Christ, through their casting Him out and nailing Him to the accursed tree, that the Most High fulfilled His purpose of redemption! For the stone which the builders despised is become the head of the corner! For of their cross the Christ made His altar! The blood they shed in their hatred of Him, He willingly poured out as the blood of reconciliation! Even as they cast Him out, and through that very act, He came unto His own, and entered into the inheritance God had given Him from before the foundation of the world. The shadows they wanted to maintain by casting Him out find their end and fulfillment in the very cross to which they nailed Him! And thus were laid the foundations of eternal righteousness upon which the everlasting tabernacle of God is established, and on which the throne of David stands for ever and secure!

And thus also He became the Redeemer of all whom the Father had given Him, not only of Israel but of all nations. And while the rest are blinded, the election obtains salvation. Rom. 11:7. They receive Him through the power of His own grace. And to as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God! "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!...For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever! Amen." Rom. 11:33,36.