Verses 1-36
Chapter 3
3:1-6 There was a man
who was one of the Pharisees who was called Nicodemus, a ruler of the
Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him: "Rabbi, we know that
you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do the signs
which you do unless God is with him." Jesus answered him: "This is the
truth I tell you--unless a man is reborn from above, he cannot see the
kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him: "How can a man be born when he
is old? Surely he cannot enter into his mother's womb a second time and
be born?" Jesus answered: "This is the truth I tell you--unless a man is
born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born from the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of
the Spirit is spirit."
For the most part we see Jesus surrounded by the ordinary
people, but here we see him in contact with one of the aristocracy of
Jerusalem. There are certain things that we know about Nicodemus.
(i) Nicodemus must have been wealthy. When Jesus died Nicodemus
brought for his body "a mixture of myrrh and aloes about an hundred
pound weight" (John 19:39), and only a wealthy man could have brought that.
(ii) Nicodemus was a Pharisee. In many ways the Pharisees were
the best people in the whole country. There were never more than 6,000
of them; they were what was known as a chaburah (compare Greek #2266),
or brotherhood. They entered into this brotherhood by taking a pledge
in front of three witnesses that they would spend all their lives
observing every detail of the scribal law.
What exactly did that mean? To the Jew the Law was the most
sacred thing in all the world. The Law was the first five books of the
Old Testament. They believed it to be the perfect word of God. To add
one word to it or to take one word away from it was a deadly sin. Now if
the Law is the perfect and complete word of God, that must mean that it
contained everything a man need know for the living of a good life, if
not explicitly, then implicitly. If it was not there in so many words,
it must be possible to deduce it. The Law as it stood consisted of
great, wide, noble principles which a man had to work out for himself.
But for the later Jews that was not enough. They said: "The Law is
complete; it contains everything necessary for the living of a good
life; therefore in the Law there must be a regulation to govern every
possible incident in every possible moment for every possible man." So
they set out to extract from the great principles of the law an infinite
number of rules and regulations to govern every conceivable situation
in life. In other words they changed the law of the great principles
into the legalism of by-laws and regulations.
The best example of what they did is to be seen in the Sabbath
law. In the Bible itself we are simply told that we must remember the
Sabbath day to keep it holy and that on that day no work must be done,
either by a man or by his servants or his animals. Not content with
that, the later Jews spent hour after hour and generation after
generation defining what work is and listing the things that may and may
not be done on the Sabbath day. The Mishnah is the codified scribal
law. The scribes spent their lives working out these rules and
regulations. In the Mishnah the section on the Sabbath extends to no
fewer than twenty-four chapters. The Talmud is the explanatory
commentary on the Mishnah, and in the Jerusalem Talmud the section
explaining the Sabbath law runs to sixty-four and a half columns; and in
the Babylonian Talmud it runs to one hundred and fifty-six double folio
pages. And we are told about a rabbi who spent two and a half years in
studying one of the twenty-four chapters of the Mishnah.
The kind of thing they did was this. To tie a knot on the
Sabbath was to work; but a knot had to be defined. "The following are
the knots the making of which renders a man guilty; the knot of camel
drivers and that of sailors; and as one is guilty by reason of tying
them, so also of untying them." On the other hand knots which could be
tied or untied with one hand were quite legal. Further, "a woman may tie
up a slit in her shift and the strings of her cap and those of her
girdle, the straps of shoes or sandals, of skins of wine and oil." Now
see what happened. Suppose a man wished to let down a bucket into a well
to draw water on the Sabbath day. He could not tie a rope to it, for a
knot on a rope was illegal on the Sabbath; but he could tie it to a
woman's girdle and let it down, for a knot in a girdle was quite legal.
That was the kind of thing which to the scribes and Pharisees was a
matter of life and death; that was religion; that to them was pleasing
and serving God.
Take the case of journeying on the Sabbath. Exodus 16:29
says: "Remain every man of you in his place; let no man go out of his
place on the seventh day." A Sabbath day's journey was therefore limited
to two thousand cubits, that is, one thousand yards. But, if a rope was
tied across the end of a street, the whole street became one house and a
man could go a thousand yards beyond the end of the street. Or, if a
man deposited enough food for one meal on Friday evening at any given
place, that place technically became his house and he could go a
thousand yards beyond it on the Sabbath day. The rules and regulations
and the evasions piled up by the hundred and the thousand.
Take the case of carrying a burden. Jeremiah 17:21-24
said: "Take heed for the sake of your lives and do not bear a burden on
the Sabbath day." So a burden had to be defined. It was defined as
"food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a
goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound,
oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an
eye-salve," and so on and on. It had then to be settled whether or not
on the Sabbath a woman could wear a brooch, a man could wear a wooden
leg or dentures; or would it be carrying a burden to do so? Could a
chair or even a child be lifted? And so on and on the discussions and
the regulations went.
It was the scribes who worked out these regulations; it was the
Pharisees who dedicated their lives to keeping them. Obviously, however
misguided a man might be, he must be desperately in earnest if he
proposed to undertake obedience to every one of the thousands of rules.
That is precisely what the Pharisees did. The name Pharisee means the
Separated One; and the Pharisees were those who had separated themselves
from all ordinary life in order to keep every detail of the law of the
scribes.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and it is astonishing that a man who
regarded goodness in that light and who had given himself to that kind
of life in the conviction that he was pleasing God should wish to talk
to Jesus at all.
(iii) Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews. The word is archon (Greek #758).
This is to say that he was a member of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was
a court of seventy members and was the supreme court of the Jews. Of
course under the Romans its powers were more limited than once they had
been; but they were still extensive. In particular the Sanhedrin had
religious jurisdiction over every Jew in the world; and one of its
duties was to examine and deal with anyone suspected of being a false
prophet. Again it is amazing that Nicodemus should come to Jesus at all.
(iv) It may well be that Nicodemus belonged to a distinguished
Jewish family. Away back in 63 B.C. when the Romans and the Jews had
been at war, Aristobulus, the Jewish leader, sent a certain Nicodemus as
his ambassador to Pompey, the Roman Emperor. Much later in the terrible
last days of Jerusalem, the man who negotiated the surrender of the
garrison was a certain Gorion, who was the son either of Nicomedes or
Nicodemus. It may well be that both these men belonged to the same
family as our Nicodemus, and that it was one of the most distinguished
families in Jerusalem. If that is true it is amazing that this Jewish
aristocrat should come to this homeless prophet who had been the
carpenter of Nazareth that he might talk to him about his soul.
It was by night that Nicodemus came to Jesus. There were probably two reasons for that.
(i) It may have been a sign of caution. Nicodemus quite frankly
may not have wished to commit himself by coming to Jesus by day. We must
not condemn him. The wonder is that with his background, he came to
Jesus at all. It was infinitely better to come at night than not at all.
It is a miracle of grace that Nicodemus overcame his prejudices and his
upbringing and his whole view of life enough to come to Jesus.
(ii) But there may be another reason. The rabbis declared that
the best time to study the law was at night when a man was undisturbed.
Throughout the day Jesus was surrounded by crowds of people all the
time. It may well be that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night because he
wanted an absolutely private and completely undisturbed time with Jesus.
Nicodemus was a puzzled man, a man with many honours and yet
with something lacking in his life. He came to Jesus for a talk so that
somehow in the darkness of the night he might find light.
When John relates conversations that Jesus had with enquirers, he has
a way of following a certain scheme. We see that scheme very clearly
here. The enquirer says something (John 3:2). Jesus answers in a saying that is hard to understand (John 3:3). That saying is misunderstood by the enquirer (John 3:4). Jesus answers with a saying that is even more difficult to understand (John 3:5).
And then there follows a discourse and an explanation. John uses this
method in order that we may see men thinking things out for themselves
and so that we may do the same.
When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he said that no one could help
being impressed with the signs and wonders that he did. Jesus' answer
was that it was not the signs and the wonders that were really
important; the important thing was such a change in a man's inner life
that it could only be described as a new birth.
When Jesus said that a man must be born anew Nicodemus
misunderstood him, and the misunderstanding came from the fact that the
word which the Revised Standard Version translates anew, the Greek word
anothen (Greek #509),
has three different meanings. (i) It can mean from the beginning,
completely radically. (ii) It can mean again, in the sense of for the
second time. (iii) It can mean from above, and, therefore, from God It
is not possible for us to get all these meanings into any English word;
and yet all three of them are in the phrase born anew. To be born anew
is to undergo such a radical change that it is like a new birth; it is
to have something happen to the soul which can only be described as
being born all over again; and the whole process is not a human
achievement, because it comes from the grace and power of God.
When we read the story, it looks at first sight as if Nicodemus
took the word anew in only the second sense, and with a crude
literalism. How can anyone, he said, enter again into his mother's womb
and be born a second time when he is already an old man? But there is
more to Nicodemus' answer than that. In his heart there was a great
unsatisfied longing. It is as if he said with infinite, wistful
yearning: "You talk about being born anew; you talk about this radical,
fundamental change which is so necessary. I know that it is necessary;
but in my experience it is impossible. There is nothing I would like
more; but you might as well tell me, a full grown man, to enter into my
mother's womb and be born all over again." It is not the desirability of
this change that Nicodemus questioned; that he knew only too well; it
is the possibility. Nicodemus is up against the eternal problem, the
problem of the man who wants to be changed and who cannot change
himself.
This phrase born anew, this idea of rebirth, runs all through
the New Testament. Peter speaks of being born anew by God's great mercy (1 Peter 1:3); he talks about being born anew not of perishable seed, but of imperishable (1 Peter 1:22-23). James speaks of God bringing us forth by the word of truth (James 1:18). The Letter to Titus speaks of the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5).
Sometimes this same idea is spoken of as a death followed by a
resurrection or a re-creation. Paul speaks of the Christian as dying
with Christ and then rising to life anew (Romans 6:1-11). He speaks of those who have lately come into the Christian faith as babes in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). If any man is in Christ it is as if he had been created all over again (2 Corinthians 5:17). In Christ there is a new creation (Galatians 6:15). The new man is created after God in righteousness (Ephesians 4:22-24). The person who is at the first beginnings of the Christian faith is a child (Hebrews 5:12-14). All over the New Testament this idea of rebirth, re-creation occurs.
Now this was not an idea which was in the least strange to the
people who heard it in New Testament times. The Jew knew all about
rebirth. When a man from another faith became a Jew and had been
accepted into Judaism by prayer and sacrifice and baptism, he was
regarded as being reborn. "A proselyte who embraces Judaism," said the
rabbis, "is like a new-born child." So radical was the change that the
sins he had committed before his reception were all done away with, for
now he was a different person. It was even theoretically argued that
such a man could marry his own mother or his own sister, because he was a
completely new man, and all the old connections were broken and
destroyed. The Jew knew the idea of rebirth.
The Greek also knew the idea of rebirth and knew it well. By far
the most real religion of the Greeks at this time was the faith of the
mystery religions. The mystery religions were all founded on the story
of some suffering and dying and rising god. This story was played out as
a passion play. The initiate had a long course of preparation,
instruction, asceticism and fasting. The drama was then played out with
gorgeous music, marvelous ritual, incense and everything to play upon
the emotions. As it was played out, the worshipper's aim was to become
one with the god in such a way that he passed through the god's
sufferings and shared the god's triumph and the god's divine life. The
mystery religions offered mystic union with some god. When that union
was achieved the initiate was, in the language of the Mysteries, a
twice-born. The Hermetic Mysteries had as part of their basic belief:
"There can be no salvation without regeneration." Apuleius, who went
through initiation, said that he underwent "a voluntary death," and that
thereby he attained "his spiritual birthday," and was "as it were
reborn." Many of the Mystery initiations took place at midnight when the
day dies and is reborn. In the Phrygian, the initiate, after his
initiation, was fed with milk as if he was a new-born babe.
The ancient world knew all about rebirth and regeneration. It
longed for it and searched for it everywhere. The most famous of all
Mystery ceremonies was the taurobolium. The candidate was put into a
pit. On the top of the pit there was a lattice-work cover. On the cover a
bull was slain by having its throat cut. The blood poured down and the
initiate lifted up his head and bathed himself in the blood; and when he
came out of the pit he was renatus in aeternum, reborn for all
eternity. When Christianity came to the world with a message of rebirth,
it came with precisely that for which all the world was seeking.
What, then, does this rebirth mean for us? In the New Testament,
and especially in the Fourth Gospel, there are four closely
inter-related ideas. There is the idea of rebirth; there is the idea of
the kingdom of heaven, into which a man cannot enter unless he is
reborn; there is the idea of sonship of God; and there is the idea of
eternal life. This idea of being reborn is not something which is
peculiar to the thought of the Fourth Gospel. In Matthew we have the
same great truth put more simply and more vividly: "Unless you turn and
become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). All these ideas have a common thought behind them.
Let us start with the kingdom of heaven. What does it mean?
We get our best definition of it from the Lord's Prayer. There are two
petitions side by side:
Thy Kingdom come:
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
It is characteristic of Jewish style to say things
twice, the second way explaining and amplifying the first. Any verse of
the Psalms will show us this Jewish habit of what is technically known
as parallelism:
The Lord of hosts is with us:
The God of Jacob is our refuge (Psalms 46:7).
For I know my transgressions:
And my sin is ever before me (Psalms 51:3).
He makes me lie down in green pastures:
He leads me beside still waters (Psalms 23:2).
Let us apply that principle to these two petitions in the Lord's
Prayer. The second petition amplifies and explains the first; we then
arrive at the definition: the kingdom of heaven is a society where God's
will is as perfectly done on earth as it is in heaven. To be in the
kingdom of heaven is therefore to lead a life in which we have willingly
submitted everything to the will of God; it is to have arrived at a
stage when we perfectly and completely accept the will of God.
Now let us take sonship. In one sense sonship is a tremendous
privilege. To those who believe there is given the power to become sons (John 1:12). But the very essence of sonship is necessarily obedience. "He who has commandments, and keeps them, he it is who loves me" (John 14:21).
The essence of sonship is love; and the essence of love is obedience.
We cannot with any reality say that we love a person and then do things
which hurt and grieve that person's heart. Sonship is a privilege, but a
privilege which is entered into only when full obedience is given. So
then to be a son of God and to be in the kingdom are one and the same
thing. The son of God and the citizen of the kingdom are both people who
have completely and willingly accepted the will of God.
Now let us take eternal life. It is far better to speak of
eternal life than to speak of everlasting life. The main idea behind
eternal life is not simply that of duration. It is quite clear that a
life which went on for ever could just as easily be hell as heaven. The
idea behind eternal life is the idea of a certain quality of life. What
kind? There is only one person who can properly be described by this
adjective eternal (aionios, Greek #166)
and that one person is God. Eternal life is the kind of life that God
lives; it is God's life. To enter into eternal life is to enter into
possession of that kind of life which is the life of God. It is to be
lifted up above merely human, transient things into that joy and peace
which belong only to God. Clearly a man can enter into this close
fellowship with God only when he renders to him that love, that
reverence, that devotion, that obedience which truly bring him into
fellowship with him.
Here then we have three great kindred conceptions, entry into
the kingdom of heaven, sonship of God and eternal life; and all are
dependent on and are the products of perfect obedience to the will of
God. It is just here that the idea of being reborn comes in. It is what
links all these three conceptions together. It is quite clear that, as
we are and in our own strength, we are quite unable to render to God
this perfect obedience; it is only when God's grace enters into us and
takes possession of us and changes us that we can give to him the
reverence and the devotion we ought to give. It is through Jesus Christ
that we are reborn; it is when he enters into possession of our hearts
and lives that the change comes.
When that happens we are born of water and the Spirit. There are
two thoughts there. Water is the symbol of cleansing. When Jesus takes
possession of our lives, when we love him with all our heart, the sins
of the past are forgiven and forgotten. The Spirit is the symbol of
power. When Jesus takes possession of our lives it is not only that the
past is forgotten and forgiven; if that were all, we might well proceed
to make the same mess of life all over again; but into life there enters
a new power which enables us to be what by ourselves we could never be
and to do what by ourselves we could never do. Water and the Spirit
stand for the cleansing and the strengthening power of Christ, which
wipes out the past and gives victory in the future.
Finally, in this passage, John lays down a great law. That which
is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit. A man by himself is flesh and his power is limited to what the
flesh can do. By himself he cannot be other than defeated and
frustrated; that we know only too well; it is the universal fact of
human experience. But the very essence of the Spirit is power and life
which are beyond human power and human life; and when the Spirit takes
possession of us, the defeated life of human nature becomes the
victorious life of God.
To be born again is to be changed in such a way that it can be
described only as rebirth and re-creation. The change comes when we love
Jesus and allow him into our hearts. Then we are forgiven for the past
and armed by the Spirit for the future; then we can truly accept the
will of God. And then we become citizens of the kingdom; then we become
sons of God; then we enter into eternal life, which is the very life of
God.
3:7-13 Do not be
surprised that I said to you: "You must be reborn from above. The wind
blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know
whence it comes and whither it goes. So is every one that is born of the
Spirit." Nicodemus answered: "How can these things happen?" Jesus
answered: "Are you the man whom everyone regards as the teacher of
Israel, and you do not understand these things? This is the truth I tell
you--we speak what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen;
but you do not receive our witness. If I have spoken to you of earthly
things and you do not believe me, how will you believe me if I speak to
you about heavenly things." No one has gone up to heaven, except he who
came down from heaven, I mean, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.
There are two kinds of misunderstanding. There is the
misunderstanding of the man who misunderstands because he has not yet
reached a stage of knowledge and of experience at which he is able to
grasp the truth. When a man is in that state our duty is to do all that
we can to explain things to him so that he will be able to grasp the
knowledge which is being offered to him. There is also the
misunderstanding of the man who is unwilling to understand; there is a
failure to see which comes from the refusal to see. A man can
deliberately shut his mind to truth which he does not wish to accept.
Nicodemus was like that. The teaching about a new birth from God
should not have been strange to him. Ezekiel, for instance, had spoken
repeatedly about the new heart that must be created in a man. "Cast away
from you all the transgressions, which you have committed against me,
and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O
house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 18:31). "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you" (Ezekiel 36:26).
Nicodemus was an expert in scripture and again and again the prophets
had spoken of that very experience of which Jesus was speaking. If a man
does not wish to be reborn, he will deliberately misunderstand what
rebirth means. If a man does not wish to be changed, he will
deliberately shut his eyes and his mind and his heart to the power which
can change him. In the last analysis what is the matter with so many of
us is simply the fact that, when Jesus Christ comes with his offer to
change us and re-create us, we more or less say: "No thank you: I am
quite satisfied with myself as I am, and I don't want to be changed."
Nicodemus was driven back on another defence. In effect he said:
"This rebirth about which you talk may be possible; but I can't
understand how it works." The answer of Jesus depends for its point on
the fact that the Greek word for spirit, pneuma (Greek #4151),
has two meanings. It is the word for spirit, but it is also the regular
word for wind. The same is true of the Hebrew word ruach (Hebrew #7307); it too means both spirit and wind. So Jesus said to Nicodemus: "You can hear and see and feel the wind (pneuma, Greek #4151);
but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going to. You
may not understand how and why the wind blows; but you can see what it
does. You may not understand where a gale came from or where it is going
to, but you can see the trail of flattened fields and uprooted trees
that it leaves behind it. There are many things about the wind you may
not understand; but its effect is plain for all to see." He went on,
"the Spirit (pneuma, Greek #4151) is exactly the same. You may not know how the Spirit works; but you can see the effect of the Spirit in human lives."
Jesus said: "This is no theoretical thing of which we are
speaking. We are talking of what we have actually seen. We can point to
man after man who has been re-born by the power of the Spirit." Dr. John
Hutton used to tell of a workman who had been a drunken reprobate and
was converted. His work-mates did their best to make him feel a fool.
"Surely," they said to him, "you can't believe in miracles and things
like that. Surely, for instance, you don't believe that Jesus turned
water into wine." "I don't know," the man answered, "whether he turned
water into wine when he was in Palestine, but I do know that in my own
house and home he has turned beer into furniture!"
There are any number of things in this world which we use every
day without knowing how they work. Comparatively few of us know how
electricity or radio or television works; but we do not deny that they
exist because of that. Many of us drive an automobile with only the
haziest notion of what goes on below its hood; but our lack of
understanding does not prevent us using and enjoying the benefits which
an automobile confers. We may not understand how the Spirit works; but
the effect of the Spirit on the lives of men is there for all to see.
The unanswerable argument for Christianity is the Christian life. No man
can disregard a faith which is able to make bad men good.
Jesus said to Nicodemus: "I have tried to make things simple for
you; I have used simple human pictures taken from everyday life; and
you have not understood. How can you ever expect to understand the deep
things, if even the simple things are beyond you?" There is a warning
here for every one of us. It is easy to sit in discussion groups, to sit
in a study and to read books, it is easy to discuss the intellectual
truth of Christianity; but the essential thing is to experience the
power of Christianity. And it is fatally easy to start at the wrong end
and to think of Christianity as something to be discussed, not as
something to be experienced. It is certainly important to have an
intellectual grasp of the orb of Christian truth; but it is still more
important to have a vital experience of the power of Jesus Christ. When a
man undergoes treatment from a doctor, when he has to have an
operation, when he is given some medicine to take, he does not need to
know the anatomy of the human body, the scientific effect of the
anaesthetic, the way in which the drug works on his body, in order to be
cured. 99 men out of every 100 accept the cure without being able to
say how it was brought about. There is a sense in which Christianity is
like that. At its heart there is a mystery, but it is not the mystery of
intellectual appreciation; it is the mystery of redemption.
In reading the Fourth Gospel there is the difficulty of knowing
when the words of Jesus stop and the words of the writer of the gospel
begin. John has thought so long about the words of Jesus that insensibly
he glides from them to his own thoughts about them. Almost certainly
the last words of this passage are the words of John. It is as if
someone asked: "What right has Jesus to say these things? What guarantee
do we have that they are true?" John's answer is simple and profound.
"Jesus," he says, "came down from heaven to tell us the truth of God.
And, when he had companied with men and died for them, he returned to
his glory." It was John's contention that Jesus' right to speak came
from the fact that he knew God personally, that he had come direct from
the secrets of heaven to earth, that what he said to men was most
literally God's own truth, for Jesus was and is the embodied mind of
God.
3:14-15 And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be
lifted up, that every one who believes in him may have eternal life.
John goes back to a strange Old Testament story which is told in Numbers 21:4-9.
On their journey through the wilderness the people of Israel murmured
and complained and regretted that they had ever left Egypt. To punish
them God sent a plague of deadly, fiery serpents; the people repented
and cried for mercy. God instructed Moses to make an image of a serpent
and to hold it up in the midst of the camp; and those who looked upon
the serpent were healed. That story much impressed the Israelites. They
told how in later times that brazen serpent became an idol and in the
days of Hezekiah had to be destroyed because people were worshipping it (2 Kings 18:4).
The Jews themselves were always a little puzzled by this incident in
view of the fact that they were absolutely forbidden to make graven
images. The rabbis explained it this way: "It was not the serpent that
gave life. So long as Moses lifted up the serpent, they believed on him
who had commanded Moses to act thus. It was God who healed them." The
healing power lay not in the brazen serpent; it was only a symbol to
turn their thoughts to God; and when they did that they were healed.
John took that old story and used it as a kind of parable of
Jesus. He says: "The serpent was lifted up; men looked at it; their
thoughts were turned to God; and by the power of that god in whom they
trusted they were healed. Even so Jesus must be lifted up; and when men
turn their thoughts to him, and believe in him, they too will find
eternal life."
There is a wonderfully suggestive thing here. The verb to lift up is hupsoun (Greek #5312).
The strange thing is that it is used of Jesus in two senses. It is used
of his being lifted up upon the Cross; and it is used of his being
lifted up into glory at the time of his ascension into heaven. It is
used of the Cross in John 8:28; John 12:32. It is used of Jesus' ascension into glory in Acts 2:33; Acts 5:31; Philippians 2:9.
There was a double lifting up in Jesus' life--the lifting on the Cross
and the lifting into glory. And the two are inextricably connected. The
one could not have happened without the other. For Jesus the Cross was
the way to glory; had he refused it, had he evaded it, had he taken
steps to escape it, as he might so easily have done, there would have
been no glory for him. It is the same for us. We can, if we like, choose
the easy way; we can, if we like, refuse the cross that every Christian
is called to bear; but if we do, we lose the glory. It is an
unalterable law of life that if there is no cross, there is no crown.
In this passage we have two expressions whose meaning we must
face. It will not be possible to extract all their meaning, because they
both mean more than ever we can discover; but we must try to grasp at
least something of it.
(i) There is the phrase which speaks of believing in Jesus. It means at least three things.
(a) It means believing with all our hearts that God is as Jesus
declared him to be. It means believing that God loves us, that God cares
for us, that God wants nothing more than to forgive us. It was not easy
for a Jew to believe that. He looked on God as one who imposed his laws
upon his people and punished them if they broke them. He looked on God
as a judge and on man as a criminal at his judgment seat. He looked on
God as one who demanded sacrifices and offerings; to get into his
presence man had to pay the price laid down. It was hard to think of God
not as a judge waiting to exact penalty, not as a task-master waiting
to pounce, but as a Father who longed for nothing so much as to have his
erring children come back home. It cost the life and the death of Jesus
to tell men that. And we cannot begin to be Christians until with all
our hearts we believe that.
(b) How can we be sure that Jesus knew what he was talking
about? What guarantee is there that his wonderful good news is true?
Here we come upon the second article in belief. We must believe that
Jesus is the Son of God, that in him is the mind of God, that he knew
God so well, was so close to God, was so one with God, that he could ten
us the absolute truth about him.
(c) But belief has a third element. We believe that God is a
loving Father because we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that
therefore what he says about God is true. Then comes this third element.
We must stake everything on the fact that what Jesus says is true.
Whatever he says we must do; whenever he commands we must obey. When he
tells us to cast ourselves unreservedly on the mercy of God we must do
so. We must take Jesus at his word. Every smallest action in life must
be done in unquestioning obedience to him.
So then belief in Jesus has these three elements--belief that
God is our loving Father, belief that Jesus is the son of God and
therefore tells us the truth about God and life, and unswerving and
unquestioning obedience to Jesus.
(ii) The second great phrase is eternal life. We have already
seen that eternal life is the very life of God himself. But let us ask
this: if we possess eternal life, what do we have? If we enter into
eternal life, what is it like? To have eternal life envelops every
relationship in life with peace.
(a) It gives us peace with God. We are no longer cringing before
a tyrannical king or seeking to hide from an austere judge. We are at
home with our Father.
(b) It gives us peace with men. If we have been forgiven we must
be forgiving. It enables us to see men as God sees them. It makes us
and all men into one great family joined in love.
(c) It gives us peace with life. If God is Father, God is
working all things together for good. Lessing used to say that if he had
one question to ask the Sphinx, who knew everything, it would be: "Is
this a friendly universe?" When we believe that God is Father, we also
believe that such a father's hand win never cause his child a needless
tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life
any longer.
(d) It gives us peace with ourselves. In the last analysis a man
is more afraid of himself than of anything else. He knows his own
weakness; he knows the force of his own temptations; he knows his own
tasks and the demands of his own life. But now he knows that he is
facing it all with God. It is not he who lives but Christ who lives in
him. There is a peace founded on strength in his life.
(e) It makes him certain that the deepest peace on earth is only
a shadow of the ultimate peace which is to come. It gives him a hope
and a goal to which he travels. It gives him a life of glorious wonder
here and yet, at the same time, a life in which the best is yet to be.
3:16 For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son so that every one who believes in
him should not perish but have everlasting life.
All great men have had their favourite texts; but this has been
called "Everybody's text." Herein for every simple heart is the very
essence of the gospel. This text tells us certain great things.
(i) It tells us that the initiative in all salvation lies with
God. Sometimes Christianity is presented in such a way that it sounds as
if God had to be pacified, as if he had to be persuaded to forgive.
Sometimes men speak as if they would draw a picture of a stern, angry,
unforgiving God and a gentle, loving, forgiving Jesus. Sometimes men
present the Christian message in such a way that it sounds as if Jesus
did something which changed the attitude of God to men from condemnation
to forgiveness. But this text tells us that it was with God that it all
started. It was God who sent his Son, and he sent him because he loved
men. At the back of everything is the love of God.
(ii) It tells us that the mainspring of God's being is love. It
is easy to think of God as looking at men in their heedlessness and
their disobedience and their rebellion and saying: "I'll break them:
I'll discipline them and punish them and scourge them until they come
back." It is easy to think of God as seeking the allegiance of men in
order to satisfy his own desire for power and for what we might call a
completely subject universe. The tremendous thing about this text is
that it shows us God acting not for his own sake, but for ours, not to
satisfy his desire for power, not to bring a universe to heel, but to
satisfy his love. God is not like an absolute monarch who treats each
man as a subject to be reduced to abject obedience. God is the Father
who cannot be happy until his wandering children have come home. God
does not smash men into submission; he yearns over them and woos them
into love.
(iii) It tells us of the width of the love of God. It was the
world that God so loved. It was not a nation; it was not the good
people; it was not only the people who loved him; it was the world. The
unlovable and the unlovely, the lonely who have no one else to love
them, the man who loves God and the man who never thinks of him, the man
who rests in the love of God and the man who spurns it--all are
included in this vast inclusive love of God. As Augustine had it: "God
loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love."
3:17-21 For God did
not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world
might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned,
but he who does not believe already stands condemned. And this is the
reason of this condemnation--the light came into the world and men loved
the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. Every
one of whose deeds are depraved hates the light, and does not come to
the light, but his deeds stand convicted. But he who puts the truth into
action comes to the light, that his deeds may be made plain for all to
see, because they are done in God.
Here we are faced with one other apparent paradox of the Fourth
Gospel--the paradox of love and judgment. We have just been thinking of
the love of God, and now suddenly we are confronted with judgment and
condemnation and conviction. John has just said that it was because God
so loved the world that he sent his Son into the world. Later he will go
on to show us Jesus saying: "For judgment I came into this world" (John 9:39). How can both things be true?
It is quite possible to offer a man an experience in nothing but
love and for that experience to turn out a judgment. It is quite
possible to offer a man an experience which is meant to do nothing but
bring joy and bliss and yet for that experience to turn out a judgment.
Suppose we love great music and get nearer to God in the midst of the
surge and thunder of a great symphony than anywhere else. Suppose we
have a friend who does not know anything about such music and we wish to
introduce him to this great experience, to share it with him, and give
him this contact with the invisible beauty which we ourselves enjoy. We
have no aim other than to give our friend the happiness of a great new
experience. We take him to a symphony concert; and in a very short time
he is fidgeting and gazing around the hail, extremely bored. That friend
has passed judgment on himself that he has no music in his soul. The
experience designed to bring him new happiness has become only a
judgment.
This always happens when we confront a man with greatness. We
may take him to see some great masterpiece of art; we may take him to
listen to a prince of preachers; we may give him a great book to read;
we may take him to gaze upon some beauty. His reaction is a judgment; if
he finds no beauty and no thrill we know that he has a blind spot in
his soul. A visitor was being shown round an art gallery by one of the
attendants. In that gallery there were certain masterpieces beyond all
price, possessions of eternal beauty and unquestioned genius. At the end
of the tour the visitor said: "Well, I don't think much of your old
pictures." The attendant answered quietly: "Sir, I would remind you that
these pictures are no longer on trial, but those who look at them are."
All that the man's reaction had done was to show his own pitiable
blindness.
This is so with regard to Jesus. If, when a man is confronted
with Jesus, his soul responds to that wonder and beauty, he is on the
way to salvation. But if, when he is confronted with Jesus, he sees
nothing lovely, he stands condemned. His reaction has condemned him. God
sent Jesus in love. He sent him for that man's salvation; but that
which was sent in love has become a condemnation. It is not God who has
condemned the man; God only loved him; the man has condemned himself.
The man who reacts in hostility to Jesus has loved the darkness
rather than the light. The terrible thing about a really good person is
that he always has a certain unconscious element of condemnation in him.
It is when we compare ourselves with him that we see ourselves as we
are. Alcibiades, the spoilt Athenian man of genius, was a companion of
Socrates and every now and again he used to break out: "Socrates, I hate
you, for every time I meet you, you let me see what I am." The man who
is engaged on an evil task does not want a flood of light shed on it and
him; but the man engaged on an honourable task does not fear the light.
Once an architect came to Plato and offered for a certain sum of
money to build him a house into none of whose rooms it would be
possible to see. Plato said: "I will give you double the money to build a
house into whose every room everyone can see." It is only the evil-doer
who does not wish to see himself and who does not wish anyone else to
see him. Such a man will inevitably hate Jesus Christ, for Christ will
show him what he is and that is the last thing that he wants to see. It
is the concealing darkness that he loves and not the revealing light.
By his reaction to Jesus Christ, a man stands revealed and his
soul laid bare. If he regards Christ with love, even with wistful
yearning, for him there is hope; but if in Christ he sees nothing
attractive he has condemned himself. He who was sent in love has become
to him judgment.
3:22-30 After these
things Jesus and his disciples went to the district of Judaea. He spent
some time there with them, and he was baptizing; and John was baptizing
at Ainon, near Salem, because there was much water there. The people
kept coming to him and being baptized, for John had not yet been thrown
into prison. A discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a
Jew about the matter of cleansing. So they came to John and said to him:
"Rabbi, look now! The man who was with you on the other side of Jordan,
the man to whom you bore your witness, is baptizing and they are all
going to him." John answered: "A man can receive only what is given to
him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, 'I am not the
Anointed One of God,' but, 'I have been sent before him.' He who has the
bride is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom who stands
and listens for him, rejoices at the sound of the voice of the
bridegroom. So, then, my joy is complete. He must increase, but I must
decrease."
We have already seen that part of the aim of the writer of the
Fourth Gospel is to ensure that John the Baptist received his proper
place as the forerunner of Jesus, but no higher place than that. There
were those who were still ready to call John master and lord; the writer
of the Fourth Gospel wishes to show that John had a high place, but
that the highest place was reserved for Jesus alone; and he also wishes
to show that John himself had never any other idea than that Jesus was
supreme. To that end he shows us the ministry of John and the ministry
of Jesus overlapping. The synoptic gospels are different: Mark 1:14
tells us that it was after John was put into prison that Jesus began
his ministry. We need not argue which account is historically correct;
but the likelihood is that the Fourth Gospel makes the two ministries
overlap so that by contrast the supremacy of Jesus may be clearly shown.
One thing is certain--this passage shows us the loveliness of
the humility of John the Baptist. It was clear that men were leaving
John for Jesus. John's disciples were worried. They did not like to see
their master take second place. They did not like to see him abandoned
while the crowds flocked out to hear and see this new teacher.
In answer to their complaints, it would have been very easy for
John to feel injured, neglected and unjustifiably forgotten. Sometimes a
friend's sympathy can be the worst possible thing for us. It can make
us feel sorry for ourselves and encourage us to think that we have not
had a fair deal. But John had a mind above that. He told his disciples
three things.
(i) He told them that he had never expected anything else. He
told them that in point of fact he had assured them that his was not the
leading place, but that he was merely sent as the herald, the
forerunner and the preparer for the greater one to come. It would ease
life a great deal if more people were prepared to play the subordinate
role. So many people look for great things to do. John was not like
that. He knew well that God had given him a subordinate task. It would
save us a lot of resentment and heartbreak if we realized that there are
certain things which are not for us, and if we accepted with all our
hearts and did with all our might the work that God has given us to do.
To do a secondary task for God makes it a great task. As Mrs. Browning
had it: "All service ranks the same with God." Any task done for God is
necessarily great.
(ii) He told them that no man could receive more than God gave
him. If the new teacher was winning more followers it was not because he
was stealing them from John, but because God was giving them to him.
There was a certain American minister called Dr. Spence; once he was
popular and his church was full; but as the years passed his people
drifted away. To the church across the road came a new young minister
who was attracting the crowds. One evening in Dr. Spence's church there
was a very small gathering. The doctor looked at the little flock.
"Where have all the people gone?" he asked. There was an embarrassed
silence; then one of his office-bearers said: "I think they have gone to
the church across the street to hear the new minister." Dr. Spence was
silent for a moment; then he smiled. "Well, then," he said, "I think we
ought to follow them." And he descended from his pulpit and led his
people across the road. What jealousies, what heartburnings, what
resentfulness we might escape, if we would only remember that someone
else's success is given to him by God, and were prepared to accept God's
verdict and God's choice.
(iii) Finally, John used a very vivid picture which every Jew
would recognize, for it was part of the heritage of Jewish thought. He
called Jesus the bridegroom and himself the friend of the bridegroom.
One of the great pictures of the Old Testament is of Israel as the bride
of God and God as the bridegroom of Israel. The union between God and
Israel was so close that it could be likened only to a wedding. When
Israel went after strange gods it was as if she were guilty of
infidelity to the marriage bond (Exodus 34:15 compare Deuteronomy 31:16; Psalms 73:27; Isaiah 54:5). The New Testament took this picture over and spoke of the church as the bride of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:22-32).
It was this picture that was in John's mind. Jesus had come from God;
he was the Son of God, Israel was his rightful bride and he was Israel's
bridegroom. But one place John did claim for himself, that of the
friend of the bridegroom.
The friend of the bridegroom, the shoshben, had a unique place
at a Jewish wedding. He acted as the liaison between the bride and the
bridegroom; he arranged the wedding; he took out the invitations; he
presided at the wedding feast. He brought the bride and the bridegroom
together. And he had one special duty. It was his duty to guard the
bridal chamber and to let no false lover in. He would open the door only
when in the dark he heard the bridegroom's voice and recognized it.
When he heard the bridegroom's voice he let him in and went away
rejoicing, for his task was completed and the lovers were together. He
did not grudge the bridegroom the bride. He knew that his only task had
been to bring bride and bridegroom together. And when that task was done
he willingly and gladly faded out of the centre of the picture.
John's task had been to bring Israel and Jesus together; to
arrange the marriage between Christ the bridegroom and Israel the bride.
That task completed he was happy to fade into obscurity for his work
was done. It was not with envy that he said that Jesus must increase and
he must decrease; it was with joy. It may be that sometimes we would do
well to remember that it is not to ourselves we must try to attach
people; it is to Jesus Christ. It is not for ourselves we seek the
loyalty of men; it is for him.
3:31-36 He who comes
from above is above all. He who is from the earth is from the earth and
speaks from the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. It is to
what he has seen and heard that he bears witness; and no one receives
his witness. He who has received his witness sets his seal on the fact
that God is true. He whom God sent speaks the words of God, for he does
not partially measure out the Spirit upon him. The Father loves the Son
and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has
eternal life. He who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but
the wrath of God rests upon him.
As we have seen before, one of the difficulties in the Fourth
Gospel is to know when the characters are speaking and when John is
adding his own commentary. These verses may be the words of John the
Baptist; but more likely they are the witness and the comment of John
the evangelist.
John begins by asserting the supremacy of Jesus. If we want
information, we have to go to the person who possesses that information.
If we want information about a family, we will get it at first hand
only from a member of that family. If we want information about a town
we will get it at first hand only from someone who comes from that town.
So, then, if we want information about God, we will get it only from
the Son of God; and if we want information about heaven and heaven's
life, we will get it only from him who comes from heaven. When Jesus
speaks about God and about the heavenly things, says John, it is no
carried story, no second-hand tale, no information from a secondary
source; he tells us that which he himself has seen and heard. To put it
very simply, because Jesus alone knows God, he alone can give us the
facts about God, and these facts are the gospel.
It is John's grief that so few accept the message that Jesus
brought; but when a man does accept it, he attests the fact that in his
belief the word of God is true. In the ancient world, if a man wished to
give his full approval to a document, such as a will or an agreement or
a constitution, he affixed his seal to the foot of it. The seal was the
sign that he agreed with this and regarded it as binding and true. So
when a man accepts the message of Jesus, he affirms and attests that he
believes what God says is true.
John goes on: we can believe what Jesus says, because on him God
poured out the Spirit in full measure, keeping nothing back. Even the
Jews themselves said that the prophets received from God a certain
measure of the Spirit. The full measure of the Spirit was reserved for
God's own chosen one. Now, in Hebrew thought the Spirit of God had two
functions--first, the Spirit revealed God's truth to men; and, second,
the Spirit enabled men to recognize and understand that truth when it
came to them. So to say that the Spirit was on Jesus in the completest
possible way is to say that he perfectly knew and perfectly understood
the truth of God. To put that in another way--to listen to Jesus is to
listen to the very voice of God.
Finally, John again sets before men the eternal choice--life or
death. All through history this choice had been set before Israel.
Deuteronomy records the words of Moses: "See, I have set before you this
day life and good, death and evil.... I call heaven and earth to
witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death,
blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your
descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:15-20). The challenge was reiterated by Joshua: "Choose this day whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15).
It has been said that all life concentrates upon a man at the
crossroads. Once again John returns to his favourite thought. What
matters is a man's reaction to Christ. If that reaction be love and
longing, that man will know life. If it be indifference or hostility,
that man will know death. It is not that God sends his wrath upon him;
it is that he brings that wrath upon himself.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)