For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life

 

 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."  Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."  Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"  Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.'  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."  

 

Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?"  Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things?  Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness.  If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?  No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  

 

"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.  And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.  But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

 

- John 3:1-21 

 

On Saturday, we read that the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.  When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.  And he said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away!  Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!"  Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."  So the Jews answered and said to Him, "What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  Then the Jews said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?"  But He was speaking of the temple of His body.  Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.  Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man. 

 

 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."  John's Gospel makes it clear to us that not all of the Pharisees, and not all the members of the Council (Sanhedrin), were antagonistic to Jesus.  My study Bible says that Nicodemus believed that Jesus was from God, but his faith was still weak.  As we can read, he was afraid of his peers and therefore came to Jesus by night.  As we will read in future chapters in this Gospel, Nicodemus faith following this conversation with Jesus will grow to the point of defending Christ before the Sanhedrin (John 7:50-51), and eventually he will make a bold public expression of faith in preparing and entombing the Lord's body (John 19:39-42).  In the Orthodox Church, Nicodemus is commemorated together with the Myrrhbearing Women and Joseph of Arimathea.  My study Bible notes that according to some early sources, Nicodemus was baptized by Peter and consequently removed from the Sanhedrin, and forced to flee Jerusalem.  

Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."  In terms of the phrase born again, the word "again" in the Greek (ἄνωθεν/anothen) can also be translated "from above."  My study Bible says that it clearly refers to the heavenly birth from God through faith in Christ (John 1:12-13).  This heavenly birth is baptism and our adoption by God as our Father (Galatians 4:4-7).  My study Bible comments that this new birth is just the beginning of our spiritual life, with the goal being entrance into the kingdom of God.  

Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"   In what we will come to see as characteristic of John's Gospel, Nicodemus misunderstands, and so asks this question about a second physical birth.  Misunderstandings occur frequently in John's Gospel (see John 2:19-21; 4:10-14, 30-34; 6:27; 7:37-39; 11:11-15), and are ways to help us to grasp the concepts Jesus conveys, often needing to use metaphor.  As my study Bible puts it, these opportunities are used by Jesus to elevate an idea from a superficial or earthly meaning to a heavenly and eternal meaning. 

 

 Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' "  Here Jesus "fleshes out," so to speak, the idea of baptism, and our adoption as a child of God (see John 1:13).  My study Bible reminds us that to become a child of God is a spiritual birth by grace, through faith, and in the Holy Spirit.

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."  This is a play on words:  the Greek word πνεῦμα/pneuma means both wind and Spirit.  The working of the Holy Spirit in the new birth is as mysterious and unknown to us as the source and destination of the blowing wind.  Likewise, my study Bible says, the Spirit moves where He wills and cannot be contained by human ideas or agendas.  

Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?"  Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things?  Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness.  If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"  According to St. Chrysostom, earthly things is a reference to grace and baptism which are given to human beings.  These are earthly in this sense; not that they are "unspiritual," but in the sense that they occur on earth, and they are given to creatures.  The heavenly things, my study Bible explains, involve the ungraspable mysteries of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father.  They relate to Christ's eternal existence before all time and to God's divine plan of salvation for the world.  It says that a person must first grasp the ways in which God works among human beings, before one can even begin to understand things that pertain exclusively to God.

"No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."  Moses lifted up an image of a serpent in order to cure the Israelites from the deadly bites of poisonous snakes (Numbers 21:4-9).  This miracle-working image, my study Bible tells us, prefigured Christ being lifted up on the Cross.  As believers behold the crucified Christ in faith, the power of sin and death is overthrown in them.  Just as the image of a serpent was the weapon that destroyed the power of the serpents, so the instrument of Christ's death, it says, becomes the weapon that overthrows death itself.  

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."  To show the reason why the Son must be crucified ("lifted up" -- see above), Jesus declares the great love of God not only for Israel, but for the world.  This single verse, my study Bible says, expresses the whole of the message of John's Gospel, and even of all salvation history.  

"He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.  And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.  But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."  My study Bible explains that while Christ came to save and not to condemn, human beings have free will.  Therefore we are free to reject the gift of God -- but one is effectively self-condemned by one's own rejection of this light, a preference for spiritual darkness (John 1:4-5).  The word "condemn" here in Greek also means to "judge."

Today's reading is incredibly packed with spiritual concepts to begin to understand.  How does baptism work?  How are we born of both water and the Spirit?  Why must it be this way?  How do we become born again into a spiritual life of adoption as children of God?  Jesus uses the image of being "born again" -- with its context of a word meaning both "again" and "from above," so that we begin to grasp concepts that are truly mysterious in the ways that we can.  He moves forward to explain to Nicodemus, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."  And moreover, this birth and the workings of the Spirit are as unknown to we human beings and as mysterious as the origin and destination of the wind that blows.  And Jesus moves from this expression of the work of the Spirit among us (that is God the Holy Spirit) to His own identity as Son:  Jesus Christ, the unique Son of Man, is from heaven and has come down from heaven, but to be "lifted up" upon the Cross.  That is, He, heavenly being, Second Person of the Trinity, will be lifted up to an earthly death -- so that as Moses with the image of the serpent defeated the sting of the serpents, Christ will defeat the sting of death (1 Corinthians 15:55).  There is an interesting ancient component to this wisdom, in that the Greek word for "poison" also means "medicine."  In our understanding of the Son of Man who comes from heaven to be lifted up on the Cross, to transfigure and transform human earthly life, so He "remits" the poison and venom of the sting of death through His heavenly power to heal.  That word is φάρμᾰκον/pharmakon, from which is derived a similar word that contains the meaning of scapegoat, once thought as a means of purging society of its ills.  In the raising of Christ on the Cross, all three of these meanings are present in some sense -- but with the additional understanding of the Son of Man who comes from heaven, and has the ultimate power to save and to heal everything.  Even as falsely accused and sentenced -- the One who was sinless -- Christ's more potent power, as the "stronger man" (see Luke 11:20-23), works to reconcile and heal all to itself, turning an instrument of cruelty into one of salvation for the whole world.  And this love of God is so all-encompassing and powerful, so absolute over all, that it saves not just the world as we know it, but the entire κόσμος/cosmos (which is the word translated as "world").  That is, the whole universe, the entire created order.  The fullness of this mystery is, once again, beyond what we from an earthly perspective can understand and belongs to God, but God's love we can understand, and we can return in faith, in trust -- in the love we return to God.  If we want to understand, in broad strokes, the character of God and of the light, it is to love (1 John 4:8); while the darkness is cruel and malicious (as seen in demonic behavior in the Gospels).  This is the fullness of the light we're asked to embrace and invited to participate in, by grace in turn illuminating us and filling us with that light.