ANNOUNCER: In John 1:12, what does it mean to receive Jesus? Why is this the only place in John’s Gospel where it is used? And how is it related to believing? Hello, friend. Thank you for joining us today. This is Grace in Focus, a radio ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. We’d love you to come visit our website, faithalone.org. Many reasons to connect with us there, including our annual national conference. You can get all the information you need about it. And just a reminder that pre-registration on the website does end in a couple of weeks. So time is of the essence, get registered soon. And we also need to know if your children are going to be a part of our VBS this year. The theme is, “Believe in Him for Life,” it’ll be a great time. Hope you come and join us, get registered today at faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s question and answer discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob. We’ve got a question from Donald. John 1:12. His question is, what is meant here by the word “receive”? How can I explain this verse to prove salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone? Does receive here mean welcome or believe? Thank you.

BOB: Good question, Donald. And there’s a lot of ways you could do this. One of the simplest is to say, whatever John 1:12 is saying, it’s supporting the message of the entire book. It’s not contradicting the message of the entire book. Now this happens to be the only place in John where receiving Him is given as something which results in people being born of God, verse 13, or being a child of God, verse 12, only place. But over and over again, 50 or more times probably, we find that the one who believes in Him will not perish, but has everlasting life, like John 3:16, or John 4:10-26, and so many other passages. So what we would say, first of all, is whatever this verse is saying, it’s supporting the message of the whole book. 

But the second thing is, look at the immediately preceding verse. “He came to His own, and His own received Him not.” Well, the issue there wasn’t that the people of Israel failed to invite Jesus into their hearts. Didn’t Donald say, what did he ask, is it welcoming or is it believing? The issue isn’t even that they’re not welcoming Him in the sense of giving Him hospitality, or welcoming Him in the sense of being friendly to him. I mean, the issue is you’ve got to believe in Him, and that’s all through John’s Gospel, 3:16, “Whoever believes in Him will not perish, but has everlasting life.” John 6:47, “He who believes in Me has everlasting life.” Or John 11:26, “He who lives and believes in Me shall never die.” Over and over again, that’s the issue. 

And even in John 1:12, notice that he defines what it means to receive Him when he says “to those who believe in His name.” “Those who believe in His name,” that expression is in apposition to the words, “To them He gave the right to become children of God.” The “to them” is a dative plural, just like “to those who believe” is a dative plural. And “to them He gave,” goes back to “as many as received Him.” The point is, all of this is interconnected. And when he’s saying “even to those who believe in His name,” he’s describing those who have received Him. 

It’s a mistake to say that we understand what it means to believe by using this figure of receiving. Instead, the accurate thing to say is we understand what John means by receiving by the words believing in his name. 

SAM: Right, and that’s made even clearer, I think by John 20:31, we consider the purpose statement. He didn’t say I wrote these things that you may receive. He said, believe, and so that’s the primary term, or primary vocab that he’s using. And I think you’re right, that’s when he uses an outlier word like this. It’s a lot easier. But even then, even within this verse, he says “to those who believe in His name.” So it’s not even separated from that concept of believing even within the verse. 

BOB: Now, I might mention that some people want to link John 1:12 with Revelation 3:20, which says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with Me.” The problem with it is, that verse is clearly a fellowship verse. That’s what “the dining with Him and he with Me” is talking about is fellowship. The door there is not the door of an individual’s heart; that door there is referring to a local church and the church opening the door. And it’s basically saying anyone within that church, that opens the door, I’ll come in and fellowship with that person. 

But in any case, it’s not an issue of opening the door so you can be born again. Very few commentators say that, because the only way you’re going to say that is if you have a bias that you’re imposing upon Revelation 3, because the preceding verses to that explain how we open the door. He says, be zealous and repent. So the way that we open the door is by being zealous for good works and repenting from our complacent attitudes, which you see in the context of Revelation 3:14-21. 

SAM: Right, and that’s where it can get confusing if you want to talk about evangelism. People’s terminology, I think, can confuse unbelievers, and believers frankly, because it’s not incorrect to say receive Jesus in order to have everlasting life or go to heaven or however you want to phrase it. Because John is using the word receive here, but it’s not the best or clearest way I think for us in English to evangelize. I think using the word believe is more easily understood, and there’s more Scripture that you can reference to back it up. Because like you just pointed out, you have received here, and it is evangelistic. It is about everlasting life. 

But then in Revelation 3:20, the knocking and letting Him into your church or as heart as some people see it is not evangelistic. So I think you can get kind of tangled up in analogies in this kind of language if you’re not careful. So I would recommend sticking to believe and using the word believe or faith rather than saying letting him into your heart, receiving him. Because then you get closer and closer to, making him Lord of your life or other terms like that where there’s no biblical backing for that being an evangelistic message. 

BOB: Absolutely. 

ANNOUNCER: It’s coming, it’ll be here before you know it. What am I talking about? The Grace Evangelical Society’s National Conference 2026, May 18th through the 21st at Camp Copass, an absolutely beautiful campground in North Texas right on the lake with lots of recreation, great food, a great place to stay, wonderful fellowship, and wonderful Free Grace Bible teaching. Information and online registration now at faithalone.org/events. First timers waive registration fees. Faithalone.org/events.

BOB: If we want to use synonyms for receive in this context, this isn’t like receiving a parcel where I sign for it or receiving a parcel where I stick my hand out or something, there’s nothing physically to receive here. The receiving Him was not grabbing Him or whatever. You could use if you wanted to synonym for receive, believe, because that’s what John does at the end of the verse, but you could also use the other word that Donald used is welcome. As many as welcomed Him, that is welcomed His message. You have to believe in His name or believe in His message. And so if you wanted to say welcomed His words, welcomed His teachings, welcomed His truth, yeah, that would be fine, or any kind of synonym for that. 

For example, in John’s gospel, he uses other synonyms like drinking living water or eating the bread of life. Those are both synonyms he uses and they’re synonymous with receiving. I mean, drinking living water is receiving Jesus’ promise of everlasting life. Eating the bread of life is receiving His promise that the one who believes in Him will never hunger. Or drinking the living water is receiving His promise that the one who drinks this living water will never thirst again. 

So I think it’s important to recognize that this idea of receiving, once we try to put it on a physical plane and say what you need to do is invite Jesus to come into your heart. I’ve heard stories of little kids crying because they’re like, there’s not room in my heart for Jesus. They’re going to explode if Jesus were coming to their heart. 

When I pastored during the doctoral program, this friend of mine, Charlie Oldenburg, and I, met with all the children in the church. I think they were around age 7 to age 16 or 17, and it was a small church. So this was about nine kids, something like that. And I remember specifically meeting with two sisters. And I met with each one of them separately because I didn’t want the one to say something to influence the other one. So I first met with the older sister and I said, so if God said, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you say? And her answer is, well, I invited Jesus into my heart. So I get to go to heaven. I said, okay, great. Why should inviting Jesus into your heart get you into heaven? Oh, I have no idea. Other than that’s what mom and dad told me. So I did it. I was thinking, that’s why I should get into heaven because mom and dad said if I did that. And I said, do you know where you would support that with the Bible? No, do you mind if I show you? No. And so then I walked her through and showed her John 3:16 and other verses and she came to faith. And I later baptized her. 

Then I talked to her sister. Same thing. Why should God let you in? Because I invited Jesus into my heart. Why should that let you in? Crickets. She was like, well, because mom and dad said if I did that, I’d be going to heaven. And I explained that through the Bible, it’s a matter of believing in him. And so she too was baptized shortly thereafter. 

I think it’s important that we don’t think that somehow if we tell, especially children, to receive Him, that we’ve made it clearer. We’ve made it simpler for them. What we’ve made it is confusing to them. 

SAM; Right. I mean, I think even if we’re talking about children, even other things like drinking living water, eating bread, that might be confusing too, depending on age and other things. So I think the clearest, John 3:16 is such a complete verse. It’s such a blessing that John wrote that, that God gave that to us. Because it’s so clear, it’s so easy to understand, it’s so easy to memorize. That should be the starting place. And then if that’s not enough to make it clear to somebody, that’s when you go to other concepts, other symbols and analogies. To me, that seems like the easiest way to explain it to somebody, like Christ explained it to Nicodemus.

BOB: I like it. And obviously, Donald, John 1:12 supports John 3:16. It’s not giving some separate message. It’s the same message as stated in different language. 

So I hope that helps. I love the question. I love that it was short and simple and easy to follow. And make sure to send your questions to radio@faithalone.org. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus. 

ANNOUNCER: We invite you to check out our Monday, Wednesday, and Friday five minute YouTube videos at YouTube Grace Evangelical Society. You will love the content and learn a lot. There are a lot of costs involved in staying on the air. That’s why we so much appreciate our financial partners. If you’d like to learn how to become one, you can find out more by going to faithalone.org.

On our next episode: what does it mean our transgressions being removed as far as the east is from the west? Please join us for that discussion. And until then, let’s keep grace in focus.