Before turning his attention to the New Testament, Kuyper actually pauses to consider the situation of Israel with regard to its Messiah. He notes how Jesus observed Israel’s special status as the preparation place for salvation of the World, and therefore, the place of greater judgement due to the greater light granted to her.
In Jesus words of lament in Matthew 23:38 – “See, your house is left to you, desolate.” – Kuyper sees the plight of his Jewish contemporaries who oppose Christianity, serving Mammon instead of the Lord and not blessing the church. He sees them as guilty but not as a vanishing people, and trusts that there will be an end time turning of Jews to Christ. He asserts that Jesus knew better than anyone the place of the Jews in the salvation of the whole world and that “the Baptism of the nations has replaced the circumcision of the Jews”.
In the story of John the Baptist, “the eternal Light is put in the context, not of Israel but of the world in general, for whom the incarnation of that eternal Light was intended.” John the Baptist is spoken of as ‘greater than all’ but how is this so? It is because of his fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 40:3 concerning the one who ‘makes straight a highway for our God’ that John “occupies a place between Israel and the Christ… he does not call people to Israel, but calls people from Israel and invites them to Jesus”
Again Kuyper notes that “the eternal Word stands in twofold relationship or connection to the world. The first is that as Creator of that world he is its Life and its Light, and that he has remained the Light of the world even after the darkness of sin had come over that world. This is common grace. And in the second place, as mediator of God and man he has entered this world now to dwell among us, which means particular grace.”