John Chapter 3

Chapter 3

A man named Nicodemus, a leader among the Pharisees, comes to Jesus at night and humbly says that he knows Jesus must be from God, since no one could do the miraculous things Jesus has done if God weren’t with them. Jesus responds with a paradox: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Nicodemus is confused and asks how on earth an old man is supposed to be re-born. No one can re-enter into their mother’s womb for her to give birth to them a second time. But Jesus isn’t speaking literally; he means that one must be born “of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying … The wind blows wherever it pleases. You can 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.”

Nicodemus is still confused, and asks how this can be. Jesus gently reprimands him. “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?” Jesus explains that he and his followers speak of what they know and are witnesses of what they have personally seen, but for some reason some people will still not accept their testimony. Jesus has spoken to Nicodemus of earthly things but Nicodemus has not understood; how, then, will he understand once Jesus begins to speak of heavenly things? Nonetheless, Jesus takes pity on the ignorant but open-hearted Pharisee, and explains the message of the kingdom of God in more detail so that Nicodemus might understand. “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man,” Jesus explains. In the ancient days, Moses lifted up a snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must also be lifted up.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Jesus explains that God sent him to save the world, not condemn it. Whoever believes in the Son of God is not condemned, but whoever does not believe “stands condemned already” because of their rejection. “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light … for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

After this, Jesus and his disciples pack up and head out to the Judean countryside, where they begin baptizing people. John the Baptist is also in the same region, and an argument springs up between one of John’s disciples and another Jew about baptism. Some of John’s followers anxiously inform him that Jesus – the man John has been preaching about and whom John had recently baptized – is now baptizing people himself! John calms them down, and reminds them that he, John, is not the Messiah, and that in fact it’s been his job to prepare everyone for the coming of the Messiah. The bridegroom is the most important man at the wedding, John tells them, and John himself is basically the groom’s best man. He’s a helper, not the star, and now that Jesus has arrived John’s joy is now complete. “He must become greater; I must become less.”

John continues that the one who comes from above, Jesus, is above all; the one who speaks from the earth, John, “belongs to the earth” and is below Jesus. John says that Jesus testifies to what he’s seen and heard but no one will believe him. However, anyone who accepts what Jesus has testified thereby asserts that God is truthful. Jesus speaks the words of God, and God “gives the Spirit without limit.” God loves his Son, Jesus, and “has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”

Commentary

Why did Nicodemus come to Jesus at night? And apparently alone? All the other Pharisees so far have been sure to converse (loudly) with Jesus during the day, with as big an audience as they could find. It seems like Nick genuinely wants answers to his questions, rather than just wanting to grandstand like the other Pharisees, but doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s honest-to-goodness interested in what Jesus has to say, so he hides it by visiting at night when no one’s around.

(Although, presumably, John, or someone who would later talk to John, must have been around to be able to witness and record this event for the book later. Unless Jesus told the disciples about this incident, or Nick himself later converted and told them.)

Re: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You can 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.” Whuh? I have no idea what this means. A baptized person is like the wind, and you can’t tell what direction they are going? Buh? The nearest I can make of this is that maybe the spirit is what’s like the wind, being invisible and all. But you can tell the wind’s direction because you can feel what direction it’s blowing. Or just watch stuff being blown by the wind to tell what direction the air is coming from/going. Maybe it means that although an observant observer would be able to tell this stuff, an oblivious watcher wouldn’t have a clue, just like oblivious onlookers of Jesus and his followers don’t have a clue what they are doing? I’m probably way overthinking this.

Re: “one must be born ‘of water and the Spirit.'” If “born of water” means “baptized”, then that sounds like a pretty raw deal for anyone who dies unbaptized. However, according to the notes my assumption that “born of water” = “baptism” could be incorrect. The notes say that “born of water” could refer to a person’s physical birth (i.e. a reference to the amniotic fluid; the mother’s water breaking before birth occurs, etc. – this would also jive with the “flesh giving birth to flesh” versus “spirit giving birth to spirit” parallelism in the next sentence); and “born of the Spirit” in the second part of the verse would refer to actual baptism. If that’s the case, then it implies that a believer can be “baptized with the Spirit” (i.e. adopted in Jesus’ family, “saved”, etc) without having to actually go through the official ritual of being dunked with water or whatever. A person can be saved without having to do some particular ceremony. That would also fit with John 1, where John said that anyone who believes in Jesus/God are saved (to “all … who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”) whether they have a baptism ceremony or not. If so, then the baptism ceremony, while beneficial to the recipient, is not required to get into heaven.

Re: “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man.” This sort of reinforces the hazy notion of pre-Christ theology I sussed out from previous chapters (e.g Luke 23 and John 1). The idea being that heaven was closed to humans altogether until Jesus came and opened it; before Jesus, if you were bad you went to hell, and if you were good you went to a sort of in-between gray area (Purgatory?), where there was no suffering but you were still separated from God. Then when Jesus died he went and opened the gates of heaven, so now all who believe in him can get in. I have no idea if that matches (or is anywhere even close to) the “official” understanding, but it’s what makes sense in light of what we’ve read so far.

Re: “In the ancient days, Moses lifted up a snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must also be lifted up.” At first I thought this referred to Exodus 4, where God tells Moses that Moses gets to be God’s spokesman from now on, and Moses worriedly asks what to do if people don’t believe him. God tells him to take the wooden staff he is holding and throw it on the ground. Moses does, and the rod turns into a snake and wiggles around in the dirt. When Moses picks the snake up, it turns back into a rod again. This could be an analogy for Jesus, the bringer of the new covenant just as Moses was the bringer of the old, having divine power from God to change the substance of things, along with an additional metaphor thrown in about Jesus being “lifted up”, bodily, on the cross, just like the rod was lifted up in Moses’ hand.

However, the notes say that this reference actually refers to something completely different. According to the notes it refers to a time when Moses, after having saved the Jews from slavery in Egypt, was leading them through the desert, and the people started to get frustrated. They were given food but didn’t like it and complained a lot, so God sent poisonous snakes among them. The people realized they should quit while they’re ahead, and repented of their complaints. God then told Moses to make an image of a snake and put it on a pole, and anyone who had been bitten by one of the poisonous snakes could look at the bronze snake and be cured. (Numbers 21)

First of all, wtf? God decided to punish people by inflicting them with poison snakes? Whaaat? We’ll get into this story more once we actually get into the Old Testament, I suppose, but for now, my “wtf” is firmly established on the record, until we get there in the reread and determine What Is Going On. The only thing remotely similar between this story and Jesus is that people could look at the bronze snake to be healed, and similarly people can believe in Jesus and be healed. However, I’m pretty sure the similarity ends there. That story is bizarre and makes no sense.

Re: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” I quoted the KJV here, as you could tell by the -eths. The KJV might be impenetrable in places, but its language just sounds so classy. Anyway, this verse basically summarizes the entire Bible into one sentence. No small feat!

Re: “Whoever believes in the Son of God is not condemned, but whoever does not believe ‘stands condemned already’ because of their rejection.” What about people who are good people, but just don’t believe in Jesus? The only explanation I can think of is that being a “good” person means following the in-born moral laws (don’t murder, don’t steal, etc, that we all basically know by instinct.) If Jesus represents the source of those moral laws, then even people who have never heard of Jesus, or have heard of him but only gotten incorrect or incomplete information, can still make a conscious decision to accept or reject God, based on their acceptance or rejection of the natural moral rules that God has made in-born in everyone. Therefore, someone who is a good person (follows the natural moral law), even if they don’t believe in Jesus for whatever reason, has still accepted God by their acceptance of the moral law. The assumption is that if they knew about or had “the full story” about Jesus, that they would see that their stuff all jives together and accept Jesus. I have no idea if my theory there is accurate or not. If it’s not, then the opposite meaning of the verse would indicate that anyone who disbelieves in Jesus is condemned, regardless of how good a person they are. It’s also unclear from the verse whether Jesus is speaking about everyone who ever has or ever will live (i.e. speaking on a universal scale), or if he’s only speaking about the current populace of Jerusalem, who of course have seen his miracles up close and in person and have much less excuse to reject them.

Re: “Men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” I can think of many people whom this would apply to, including myself in some cases.

Re: the wedding analogy. Jesus represented as a bridegroom we’ve seen before. However, if Jesus is the groom, who’s the bride? Who’s he getting married to?

Re: “He must become greater; I must become less.” It takes a lot of cajones to be able to make this statement (if you’ll pardon my spanish.) Few people are secure enough to be able to agree to a downgrade of their own position, even if it’s to benefit someone they love. Even his followers don’t get what he’s doing. John’s got a lot of unappreciated dedication going, is what I’m saying.