John 3:1-21 (8)

Verses 14 and 15 proceed to teach us about the heart of Jesus' mission, the central purpose for which He came to fulfill: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” The beginning of verse 14 refers to Numbers 21:4-9, which reads: “They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!’ Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.”

The verse says that in like manner “the Son of Man must be lifted up.” As is typical in John’s writing, the key term “lifted up” carries a double meaning in this Gospel. To illustrate, Jesus says in John 8:28, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be and that I do nothing on My own but speak just what the Father has taught Me.” Few Jews would miss this bold claim to exaltation and deity ~ I AM. But Jesus is referring to being “lifted up” on the cross. The term “lifted up” refers to both the physical lifting up of Jesus on the cross and His glorious exaltation on the cross. The critical point in John 3:14 is that Jesus must be crucified, lifted up just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert. And just as those who looked upon the snake were healed, those who “look” upon the crucified Son of Man in faith will receive eternal life. This aspect of Jesus’ ministry – Christ crucified – is the heart. The aim is to make it possible for mankind to have eternal life (v. 15). Apart from the atoning crucifixion of Christ, eternal life would be impossible for mankind. Apart from looking up to the crucified Son of Man – apart from faith – there would be no way for a person to have eternal life. In other words, the only way to have eternal life is to become a Christian.

Verse 15 explains the significance or the purpose of Christ’s crucifixion. It is so that “everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” A better translation is “every believing one will have eternal life in Him.” The words “in Him” should modify “eternal life,” because John uses a different expression when he wishes to say “believe in him.” Here the verb “to believe” is used absolutely, without reference to an object. Another instance is John 6:47, in which Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, He who believes has everlasting life.” Although the verb does not refer to an object for believing, it is not difficult from the context to infer what or who is to be believed. Basically, from verses 11-14, we must believe the whole testimony of Jesus, about where He comes from, what He teaches, and what He has come to accomplish. As for “eternal life,” this is the first time the term appears in this Gospel, although John has already referred to “life” at the very beginning, saying, “In Him was life, and that life was the light of men” (1:4). It is true that eternal life is life that will never end, but interestingly the term does not refer to duration or quantity of life, but to quality. Flesh is flesh, spirit is spirit – Spirit-life is the kind of life that comes from God, not by natural human birth. This is different than flesh-life. Eternal life is the life that is found in Christ, the life that is found in God. It is resurrection life, the life that is proper to the age of come, but that is possessed and experienced in the present by those who believe in the Son of God.

Now, the Greek original does not contain punctuation marks to indicate when a person begins and ceases from speaking. These are added by the translators. In many translations, the quotation marks suggest that Jesus speaks all the way to verse 21. But note that many translations consider Jesus’ speech to end at verse 15, and that verses 16-21 are John’s commentary and reflection. I happen to agree with this latter position, and there are several indications that from verse 16 on, Jesus is no longer the one speaking. First, at this point the text switches to the past tense, and this is what we would expect if we are reading John’s reflection about something that had happened, rather than a quotation from Jesus. Second, verses 16 and 18 refers to Jesus as God’s “one and only Son” or “only begotten Son.” John is accustomed to using this expression. For example, he uses it in John 1:14, 18 and 1 John 4:9, where we are certain that we are reading John’s words instead of quotations of Jesus. Jesus simply doesn’t use that term for Himself. Third, verse 19 uses similar expressions to echo what he stated in 1:9-11. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus finishes speaking at the end of verse 15, and that verses 16-21 consist of the commentary and reflection of John the apostle.

That said, this is noted merely because we would like to know as much as possible about the text, and as accurately as we can, not because we are trying to distinguish between words that carry divine authority and words that do not. I’m not at all saying that verses 16-21 are potentially less inspired. That’s certainly not the case. The whole Bible is inspired and infallible, and both the words of Jesus as recorded by John and the words of John come from God, and are therefore equally authoritative.

John 3:1-21 (7)

We do not hear from Nicodemus anymore, but we get to hear Jesus continue in verses 11-13: “I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the One who came from heaven – the Son of Man.”

Who is “we”? Perhaps Jesus is referring to himself and his disciples as a group. Thus the meaning would be that the community of Jesus speaks from knowledge and authority about spiritual matters, while the community of Nicodemus rejects this testimony. Many scholars think this in unlikely, mainly because the disciples at this point in Jesus’ ministry could not be described as speaking of what they know and testifying to what they have seen. But as long as the disciples are close followers of the One who truly knows and who truly speaks with authority, then there is indeed a sense in which it is appropriate for Jesus to refer to the entire group as a unit, especially in contrast with the community of Nicodemus.

The simplest explanation for “we” in this verse is that Jesus is mimicking Nicodemus when he used plurals as he first approached Jesus. The plurals here do correspond to the plurals in verses 2 and 7, but it is unnecessary to suggest that Jesus is mimicking Nicodemus, adding insult to his already spiritual stupidity. So removing the mimicry accusation, it is likely that Jesus, by using “we,” is not speaking only to “you” (Nicodemus) in verse 11, but to “you people,” that is, the people identified by the “we” in verse 2 and the plural “you” in verse 7 (the Pharisees in Nicodemus’ company.

Then Jesus switches back from the plural in verse 12. He says, “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?” What Jesus has been saying thus far belongs to the category of “earthly things.” Of course the new birth, being a birth “from above,” is heavenly in its nature and its source, but it is “earthly” in the sense that it is something that happens to people on the earth. Now if Nicodemus and his company cannot believe Jesus when He tells them about what God does on the earth, they would find it still harder to believe what He says about what happens in the kingdom of heaven.

But when we look at verse 13, verses 11-12 come together. Jesus says, “No one has ever gone into heaven except the One who came from heaven – the Son of Man.” Here's a paraphrase: “No one has ever ascended to heaven (and come back) to tell you about heavenly matters, except for the Son of Man, who has come from heaven to speak to you about these things.” The “Son of Man,” of course, is a term taken from Daniel 7:13-14, and refers to the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ. Verse 13 explains who knows about these things (Jesus), why or how He knows, and why people should believe Him. Nicodemus (and his company) ought to believe what Jesus says about heavenly matters, because Jesus came from heaven! The phrase “what we have seen” in verse 11 mainly refers to the direct knowledge of Jesus about heavenly matters, which is what He testifies about in His ministry. This also explains why Jesus can use “we” in verse 11. Although the disciples might not yet have a direct knowledge about spiritual things, they have identified themselves with Christ by following Him. It is not as if they each have a similar testimony about heavenly matters based on an immediate knowledge of heaven, but that they – as we do now – testify about the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Before moving on, let's review verses 9-13 as a whole. By now Nicodemus has twice wondered at what Jesus tells him about regeneration, the heavenly birth that everyone needs in order to see and enter God’s kingdom. So Jesus gives His assessment of the situation. As one who has come from heaven, He has direct knowledge about heavenly matters. Therefore, His testimony about the works of God is true, and He speaks with authority about spiritual things. As trained scholars and religious leaders, Nicodemus and his colleagues appear to be in the best position to understand and believe this testimony, but instead they misunderstand and disbelieve it. This in turn underscores the necessity of regeneration, for unless a person is born again, or born from above, he can neither see nor enter the kingdom of God. When it comes to spiritual things, faith and understanding are connected, but the biblical connection between these is that you must be born again, so that you may both believe and understand. Faith and understanding promote and depend on one another, but both are impossible unless one is first born again. This in turn makes faith and understanding dependent on divine sovereignty and not human decision, as Jesus, John, and Paul repeatedly declare to us. Verse 13 says that the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, has come to us from heaven. Because of this, His testimony about both earthly (natural) and heavenly (spiritual) things are authoritative and reliable.

John 3:1-21 (6)

Next is the statement, “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” There seems to be two equally valid ways of understanding this. First, it can refer to the manner in which spiritual birth occurs. The spiritual birth is like the wind. Second, the statement can refer to the born again person himself. Just as one can detect the effect of the wind but cannot fathom the activity of the wind itself, a natural man can see the effect of the spiritual man but cannot fathom the activity of the person who has been born again by the Spirit. The spiritual man is like the wind. Both interpretations are consistent with the passage and the rest of the Bible.

Now the first interpretation clearly follows more naturally from the previous verses, but the second interpretation foreshadows an idea expressed in the next several verses. To illustrate, Jesus says verse 11 says, “I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.” The spiritual man perceives a realm of reality that the natural man knows nothing about. This is consistent with the idea that the born again person is as the “wind” to the natural man. Furthermore, the second interpretation complements verse 4, where we noticed Nicodemus’ real spiritual dullness. So because the natural man cannot understand spiritual things, he cannot understand the spiritual person.

Now, just as we turned to 1 Corinthians 2:14, which says that the man without the Spirit (natural man) does not accept spiritual things, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned,” to complement our understanding of verse 4, we can continue into 1 Corinthians 2:15 to learn more. Paul says, “The spiritual man discerns or makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment.” The general principle here can be applied to all who are “spiritual,” all who have received the Spirit of God. No unbeliever can judge the Christian who has been born of the Spirit and who now walks in the Spirit.

Jesus says that flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit, and one who has been born in the flesh must also be born in the spirit to enter the kingdom of heaven. We inherit flesh-life by being born in the flesh, and spirit-life by being born by the Spirit. This means that the unbeliever is ignorant of this entire dimension of reality. The unbeliever cannot make an evaluation of the Christian. On other hand, the Christian is in contact with both flesh and spirit. He is aware of both dimensions of reality – he has been born into both, and he lives in both. Therefore, the Christian, the spiritual man, can judge or appraise “all things.” The Christian can understand and evaluate both the Christian and the non-Christian, but the non-Christian cannot understand and evaluate the Christian. So when I reject unbelief in favor of faith in Christ, it is not because I do not understand unbelief or the reasons and excuses the non-Christian gives for it. I am a Christian not because my judgment has been clouded, but because I have been enlightened by God’s grace. And when I reject wickedness in favor of righteousness, it is not because I do not understand wickedness, but I do understand wickedness and why the unbeliever transgresses. I can criticize and refute unbelief, and I can condemn wickedness, but the unbeliever cannot say anything about faith and righteousness. I know him better than he knows himself, but he does not know me and has no right to evaluate me. This is not at all a matter of experience, but of birth. In fact, the reason why a person can understand experience in any realm is because he has the faculty to process it in the first place.

A natural man is spiritually dead so that he can exercise only natural faculties. When he encounters the spiritual man, he uses natural categories to describe him, and so he is always wrong. But the spiritual man can evaluate the natural man with knowledge and authority. To summarize, unless God sovereignly gives spiritual life to a person, he cannot see or enter the kingdom of heaven. Spiritual things and spiritual persons will remain incomprehensible to him, not because these things are irrational, but because the natural man lacks the faculty to process and understand spiritual propositions. Spiritual things seem foolish to the natural man, because the natural man is foolish when it comes to spiritual things.

As noted, verses 5-8 represent Jesus’ answer to the rhetorical question from Nicodemus in verse 4, which in turn indicates the Pharisee’s failure to understand what Jesus says about being “born again” in verse 3. In verses 5-8, Jesus corrects the misunderstanding by first making a distinction between flesh and spirit, and then by explaining that He is referring to a spiritual birth when He talks about a person’s need to be “born again” or “born from above.” So now verse 9 captures Nicodemus’ reaction. He still has not received the Spirit’s illumination, so that after hearing the explanation in verses 5-8, he remains perplexed and asks, “How can this be?” And Jesus replies in verse 10, “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?” He literally calls Nicodemus, “the teacher of Israel” (NASB, NKJ, ESV). Thus he is to be blamed for being one of the best trained and most prominent scholars in the land, but at the same time failing to understand the most basic spiritual truths. We can hardly expect him to teach his people the biblical gospel of salvation.

John 3:1-21 (5)

Now verse 6 says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” Keep in mind that this continues Jesus’ answer to what Nicodemus says in verse 4. Now Paul regularly uses the word “flesh” in a sense that keeps man’s depravity at the forefront, so that the NIV translates “flesh” as “sinful nature.” But John uses it most often with a different emphasis. Namely, it is not the sinfulness or evil of it that John stresses, but the feebleness or weakness of it, especially when it comes to spiritual things.

For example, Jesus says in John 6:63, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” The verse speaks of what the Spirit can do that the flesh cannot do, but the emphasis is not on the sinfulness of the flesh. John 1:13 mentions “the will of the flesh” (KJV, NASB). Again, “flesh” here refers to that which is natural or physical, and not necessarily that which is sinful. Of course man is sinful, and of course John acknowledges this, but we are noting the precise meaning that John has in mind when he uses the word “flesh.”

Jesus reminds Nicodemus that there are two basic categories of reality, or two realms of existence. They are the flesh and the spirit, and each gives birth to its own kind, so that the flesh produces flesh and the spirit produces spirit. This being the case, a person who is born by flesh has the life of flesh, but he has no spiritual life. He can improve the flesh, educate the flesh, and dress it up, but it is still flesh, and it remains spiritually lifeless and impotent. No matter what you do to the flesh, you cannot make it into spirit. In other words, the difference between flesh and spirit is not one of degree, but one of kind or category. Therefore, it will not do, as the rhetorical question in verse 3 suggests, for a man to undergo a second birth of the flesh. He can do that for a thousand times and he will still be flesh. He will still have no spiritual life. For there to be spiritual life, he must be born by the Spirit.

A central concern in the Gospels, including this one, is to show that the Jewish people must not trust in their natural lineage as their guarantee to salvation. They tend to think that they have special favor with God just because they are the natural descendents of Abraham. But John corrects this by stating that God has chosen people from all over the world (v. 16), and not just the people of Israel. In addition, elsewhere he shows that the Jews have misunderstood what it means to be the children of Abraham in the first place. We see that exchange in John 8:39-47 as the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Abraham is our father.” “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did. As it is, you are determined to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the things your own father does.” “We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God Himself.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on My own; but He sent Me. Why is My language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me! Can any of you prove Me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe Me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

They say, “Abraham is our father,” and Jesus does not deny this (8:37), but as He says elsewhere, “the flesh counts for nothing” (6:63). Of course they are Abraham’s natural descendents, but are they like Abraham? Do they believe the same things, exhibit the same characteristics, and perform the same works? Do they welcome the Son of God with gladness and reverence, as Abraham would? No, they are ready to murder the Son of God. They are nothing like Abraham. So then they assert, “The only Father we have is God Himself.” But Jesus brings them back to the same point: Are they anything like God? Do they believe what He tells them? Do they exhibit His characteristics? Do they perform His works? Now here comes something very interesting, something very straightforward, and ties back to our exposition on John 3:4 about spiritual dullness. Jesus says in John 8:43, “Why is My language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.” Why are they unable to hear? He says, “You belong to your father, the devil.” Then, He continues, “If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe Me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

Can anything be plainer? Jesus tells them the truth, the truth about spiritual things, using simple and direct language. Why do they not understand? Why do they not believe? “The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” The devil is their father, but the devil is a liar, and this is why they cannot understand or believe the truth. They cannot process something that is not in their spiritual nature to grasp. For a person to understand and believe the truth, he must first “belong to God,” be the child of God rather than the child of the devil. Just because they are the natural descendents of Abraham does not make them the spiritual descendents of Abraham, nor does it make them the spiritual children of God. So to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, God must give birth to them – they must be “born again.” One must first “belong to God” in order to believe the truth, so that regeneration, the new birth, must come before faith.

This interpretation refutes the so common teaching of today, that we are born again by faith, that we are born again because we believe. If the condition of your soul is such that you can have faith, why would you need to be born again? Jesus says that these people have the devil as their father, and they do not “belong” to God, so that they cannot believe, they cannot have faith. We are born again by a sovereign act of God, completely apart from human decision or human effort, and it is after we are born again that we are able to believe the gospel. This means that we are entirely at God’s mercy when it comes to salvation.

Paul teaches the same thing in his letters. He writes, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God” (Romans 2:28-29). Paul re-iterates what Jesus said, that it means nothing for a person to be a Jew in a merely outward and physical sense. In fact, when it comes to spiritual things, Paul bluntly states that such a person “is not a Jew” at all. What matters, he says, “is circumcision of the heart.” This is not something initiated by human decision or performed by human effort, but it is done “by the Spirit.” Paul is just saying in a different way the same thing that is taught in John’s Gospel. Flesh is flesh, spirit is spirit. A man can enter the kingdom of heaven, a man can believe the gospel, only when he is “born again” by the Spirit, and only when the Spirit directly acts within him to perform what Paul calls the “circumcision of the heart.”

And this should not be new information to Nicodemus, for the teaching is already present in the Old Testament! Thus Jesus says in verse 7, “You (Nicodemus) should not be surprised at My saying, ‘You (all people) must be born again.’” Here He does not limit the necessity of regeneration to Nicodemus. The first “you” is in the singular, but the second instance is plural. The NIV indicates this in the footnotes. The significance is that regeneration, to be born again, is a universal necessity. The teaching is already expressed in another way in verse 3, where Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

Jesus finishes his explanation of the new birth in verse 8, proceeding to reveal even more about the nature of this spiritual birth. It says, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” The word translated “wind” is also the word for “spirit.” It seems clear that Jesus intends to say that a man can detect the effect but not the cause of spiritual birth. Therefore, it is usually agreed that “wind” is the correct translation, rather than “spirit,” and that Jesus is making an analogy between the wind and the Spirit’s work in spiritual birth. Moreover, it would not be surprising if this double meaning of wind and spirit is intentional, as we have already mentioned that the Gospel of John uses words that carry multiple meanings to convey theological ideas.