Why do people reject Jesus as their Savior?

Men trust to themselves, to their own feelings, to their own judgments. Have these never played them false? Have they ever been true before God? What suicidal folly not to distrust themselves, and look to God, cry to God, ask of God, what is His way, His truth, His Son! But no: this were to believe and be saved; and they will not. They are too proud. They will not bow to the Word that arraigns them as sinners, even though it sends them the message of remission of sins on their faith. They feel that such grace on God's part supposes utter guilt and ruin on theirs, and this they are too hard, too proud, to own. They believe not; they are not of the Saviour's sheep. Criminals, heathen, perhaps, may need a Saviour; not decent, more, religious men like themselves! They do not, will not, believe, and are lost, not because they are too great sinners for Christ, but because they refuse Christ as the Saviour, and deny their ruin as sinners. They prefer to go on as they are, like the great mass of men: God, they think, is too merciful; and they hope to improve some day if they feel not quite right to-day. Thus are they lost. Such is the way and end of many an unbeliever now, as of the Jews then.

There are many reasons why men do not love the Lord Jesus. Some feel no need of Him. They understand that He is a Saviour; but a Saviour is what they do not desire. Others have no congeniality with Him. They understand that his character is divine that His love of holiness is as intense as His hatred of iniquity, and as they love the world, and love their own way, and love the pleasures of sin, they feel that they cannot love the Lord Jesus.

Alas! this wonderful presentation of the pleasure of God in Christ made manifest the true condition of man under the power of sin, Satan, and death. The natural man desires to be left alone to go his own way, do his own will, and gratify his lusts. Naturally we prefer the pleasures of sin to the pleasure of God. The light of the presence of Christ only proved that men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. The light was too strong for sinful men, and so they rejected Christ, nailed Him to the Cross, and put out the light of the world.

(V. 12). "The night is far spent the day is at hand". When Christ was present in the world He could say, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world" (John 9:5). In those wonderful days, He proved that He alone could dispel the darkness by declaring the love of the Father. He proved, too, that He had the power and the grace to remove all the evil that the darkness had brought in. He relieved man of every pressure, met every need, and delivered from the power of the Prince of darkness. Hunger and want, pain and sickness, sorrow and death, all fled in His presence. Alas! men loved darkness rather than light. They loved the sins which, in the presence of the light, troubled their consciences. Being unable to pursue their sins, and gratify their lusts in the presence of the light, they put out the light of the world. Christ is gone, and His absence leaves the world in darkness. As they could not put up with the light of His presence, they have to put up with the wars, the want, the sorrow, and the distress which results from sin, during the night of His absence.

And this is the thing that God lays to their charge. Light is come into the world, and they have loved darkness because their works were evil. Could there be a more just subject of condemnation? It was no question of their not finding pardon, but of their preferring darkness to light that they might continue in sin.

This makes the light disagreeable to him. It wakes up his conscience, brings before him the day of manifestation; recalls to his mind his life of truancy from God, his atheistical ways, his love of self, his uncleanness, his folly, disobedience and dissoluteness; puts God in a new, but true, light before him; it condemns his lust and pride and worldliness; it puts him in his rightful place as a poor devil-deceived, sinful, degraded object, a good-for-nothing child of wrath; and this he cannot do with, therefore he turns away from its searching beams. “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Men preferred the darkness to the light. The light was hated.

This is truly now the natural condition of man as fallen; and with this understanding of it, we may speak here of the natural man. As such the things of the Spirit are alien to him, the new-creative power of God must work in him before he can discern them. They are too remote, make too much demand upon him, stir too much his apathetic conscience. The light shines, but amid the darkness; men love the darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil: the darkness is real, but it is the soul's choice for itself, not God's choice for it. He cometh not to the light, because he will not submit to the condemnation of his evil deeds. The acceptance of this condemnation is the way out of his condition, through the ready grace which is at hand to meet him.

The reason for the contrary attitude is described by the words of Scripture. We read, "Every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God" (John 2:20-21). The Apostle Peter tells us of scoffers "walking after their own lusts," that such are "willingly … ignorant" (2 Peter 3:3, 5). This brings out a most important truth that the inability and reluctance to receive the truth of God is very largely because of what is moral. Often a man wants to go on with his sin, or the flesh has a natural dislike to God. May be the searching character of the light, and the restraining influence of the Bible are resented. It is not the head that is so much at fault as the heart. "Walking after their own lusts … willingly ignorant" well describes these latter-day scoffers.

Toward the middle of man's night God raised up a great light for the people which sat in darkness, and for them which sat in the region of the shadow of death, light sprang up. He sent His Son into this world, and in His Son was life, and the life was the light of men. This true light so bright and resplendent, was that which, coming into the world, lighted every man; but the darkness, by which the mind of man is blinded through sin, comprehended it not. Alas, it was wilful blindness on his part. The Lord tells out the secret of it, "Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

The purpose of the message is "to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light." Light is come into the world; and although He who was the Light of it when in it is gone out of it again, rejected by it, yet the light streams now from an open heaven, in principle as Paul saw it. Thus men have only to have their eyes opened to see it too. Here is their responsibility, and here too is their guilt, that they love the darkness as in our Lord's time, because their deeds are evil. Evil ever craves the cover of darkness; and there is one in the world, — alas, the prince of it, — who is ready effectually to blind the minds of those that believe not, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them (2 Cor. 4:4). So the Lord adds here, "that they may turn from the power of Satan unto God; that they may receive remission of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith that is in Me."