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Personal Forgiveness

by Ray Clendenen

            While Gigi and I recently drove to Colorado and back, we listened to various audio books. One is called The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting, by Alice Miller. Among other things, this book attacks the fourth commandment for advocating submission to parental abuse. Even though that aspect of the book is based on some false premises, the book contains some helpful information and got me to thinking about the biblical teaching on forgiveness.

            The eighteenth-century English poet Alexander Pope wrote, “To err is human, to forgive divine.” Whatever that is taken to mean, forgiveness is highly regarded. Most people desire it and many seek it, though it is often hard to give it. C. S. Lewis wrote, “We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.”[1] Feeling unforgiven and feeling unforgiving can both be unpleasant. Jesus taught us the necessity of forgiving others (Matt. 6:12–15; 18:21–35; Luke 17:3–4) and practiced it himself (although Luke 23:34 is not in all ancient Greek manuscripts), as did the martyr Stephen (Acts 7:60).

“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. . . . For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.” (Matt. 6:12, 14)

“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?” “I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven.” (Matt. 18:21–22)

Then, after he had summoned [his servant], his master said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed. So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.” (Matt. 18:32–35)

            On the other hand, if Jesus is always forgiving, how does he also speak of coming judgment (John 5:22–30)? Could it be that the difficulty we often have with forgiving those who have harmed us, or who are harming us now, is shared by our Savior? Or could it be that Jesus’s requirement that we forgive others does not apply in every case? Or does forgiveness look different in some situations than in others, such as the situation of someone who continues to harm us? Finally, how is God’s forgiveness of us like or unlike our forgiveness of one another?

            In order to see this issue more clearly, let’s consider briefly the nature of forgiveness as suggested by the most common Greek words for it. The most common word for “forgive,” aphiemi, in many contexts means to “leave” or “abandon” something, at least temporarily. When Jesus called his disciples to follow him in Matthew, “immediately they left [aphiemi] their nets (Matt. 4:20). They also “left [aphiemi] the boat and their father” (4:22). In the next chapter, Jesus tells them that when they are worshiping at the temple and remember that a fellow believer has something against them, they should “leave” [aphiemi] their gift and go seek reconciliation (Matt. 5:24). In verse 40 of the same chapter, he tells them that if someone demands their shirt, they are to “let him have [aphiemi] your coat as well.” That is, they should “leave” it with them. This same verb is the one used in Matt. 6:12–15 with the meaning “to forgive.” It means to “leave” what you have against someone and walk away. The Greek lexicon explains that another meaning of the word is “to release from legal or moral obligation or consequence.” This is the sense in the case of a person who chooses to erase someone’s debt, releasing them from the obligation to repay (Matt. 18:27, “Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him, and forgave him the loan.”). This would be the sense in a similar situation in which someone “drops the charges.”

            Jesus also uses the verb aphiemi in the sense of “leaving alone,” that is, not involving yourself in bothering or trying to hinder them. In Matt. 15:14 in response to the disciples’ informing him that the Pharisees had taken offense at something he said. He replies that the Pharisees are like weeds that God will eventually uproot. “Leave them alone! They are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.” In a positive sense, Jesus later tells his disciples (Matt. 19:14), “Leave the children alone, and don’t try to keep them from coming to me.” Even later, while Jesus and his disciples were eating at Simon’s house, a woman comes and anoints Jesus’s head with perfume (Mark 14:3–9; cf. John 12:7). The disciples “scold her” for wastefulness, but Jesus tells them, “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her [or “causing her trouble”]? She has done a noble thing for me.” Finally, the verb is used with this sense in Acts 5:38. When Peter responded to the Sanhedrin that “We must obey God rather than people,” the Jewish leaders were “enraged and wanted to kill them” (v. 33). But the Pharisee Gamaliel counseled them to “stay away from these men and leave them alone. For if this plan or this work is of human origin, it will fail.” Perhaps in some situations, personal forgiveness may involve simply leaving the offender alone.

            When someone has violated God’s laws and acted wickedly, committing sin, we have no right or authority to forgive them, that is, to release them from whatever penalty God will bring against them. Whether he chooses to punish them in this life or after death, or both, or rather chooses to be merciful and gracious and to bring them to repentance and forgiveness on the basis of the work of Christ in their place, that is all up to him.

            The verb used in Matt. 18:27 for “released” (apoluo) is another verb that could be translated “forgive” (Luke 6:37, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”) or “set free” from sin (Rev. 1:5, “To him who loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood”). It means more literally to “send away” and is used of divorce (Matt. 19:3–9) but also of releasing a prisoner (Matt. 27:15–26; Acts 4:21; 5:40). This verb is made up of the verb luo, meaning to “loose” or “set free,” plus the preposition apo, meaning “from.” Jesus uses the verb luo when he tells his disciples to enter the village and “untie” the donkey and colt they would find there (Matt. 21:2). It’s also used of untying a sandal so that it could be removed (Mark 1:7). Jesus compares healing a woman from the bondage of a debilitating disease on the Sabbath to untying an ox so that it might be led to water (Luke 13:15–16). Like apoluo, it could also be used of releasing a prisoner (Acts 22:30; Rev. 20:3, 7).

            So what does Jesus mean when he tells us to forgive others?

1.         Forgiving sin is God’s job, not ours. We cannot remove guilt from anyone, nor should we try to protect them from deserved temporal punishment. Neither do we have the right or authority to pass final judgment on others (“Do not judge” in Matt. 7:1). And when we offer correction, we must do so with humility, love, and mercy, giving very careful attention to our own faults before we attempt to help someone else with theirs (Matt. 7:5; 18:15–17; Gal. 6:1–5).

2.         Forgiving another person for harm they’ve done to us means that we should abandon any plans to do them harm of any kind in return. This may be pictured as untying them from us and letting them go free, leaving them to God to deal with as he sees fit—denying ourselves the pleasure of yanking on their rope from time to time. David Garland writes, “True forgiveness neither excuses the sin nor ignores what happened. It means that you still relate to that person in spite of what happened but also in light of what happened.”[2] Failure to forgive in this sense can do enormous harm to oneself and to others. Paul instructs us to “let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice” (Eph 4:31). But Acts 8:23 also speaks of being “poisoned by bitterness and bound by wickedness.” According to Heb. 12:15, bitterness can cause many people trouble and defilement.

3.         However, we also have to give attention to Jesus’s command to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44; also Col. 3:12–14). As Jesus says in Luke 6:27, we should “do what is good to those who hate you.” Beyond not causing them harm, Jesus calls us to seek their welfare. But what this involves Jesus leaves to be determined by the situation. It does not necessarily mean to support them financially or to invite them to all our parties and shower them with presents. However, Jesus does elaborate that doing what is good for them may in some cases mean “lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Such gifts, however, may not always be for their good. Paul says that a repentant offender should be forgiven and “comforted” (2 Cor. 2:7), a verb that also includes encouragement and urging to live a godly life (see 1 Thess. 2:11–12), but it does not include making them comfortable in their sin.[3]

4.         The situation of someone who continues to cause us harm, whether physical, emotional, financial, or otherwise, calls for special attention. We can avoid causing them harm, and we can seek their genuine welfare without involving ourselves with them or placing ourselves in harm’s way. We can “leave them alone.” As Jesus says in Matt. 5:44, we can certainly pray for them. But the New Testament’s instructions on church discipline, both from Jesus (Matt. 19:15–17) and from Paul (1 Cor. 5:1–13), indicate that the harmful influence of unrepentant wicked people should not be tolerated or allowed to remain in our churches or in our lives. The forgiveness that Paul advocates in 2 Cor. 2:5–13 and in the letter to Philemon is for a repentant offender. The Greek word for “forgive,” however, in 2 Corinthians 2 is charizomai, meaning to “give freely and graciously.” It can also refer to cancelling a debt (Luke 7:42–43; 2 Cor. 2:10; 12:13; Eph. 4:32; Col. 2:13; 3:13). The person Paul discusses in 2 Cor. 2:5–13 could be the man in 1 Cor. 5:1–13, but if so, he has been guilty of more than sexual immorality. He has also done Paul personal harm.

            The conclusion is that we should not just latch onto one or two Bible verses on personal forgiveness and absolutize them. Rather, we must take into consideration all that the New Testament has to say on the subject.

[1] C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958), 27.

[2] David Garland, 2 Corinthians, The New American Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 1999), 127.

[3] See Garland, 127–28.

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Jesus’s Last Word to Nicodemus (3:14–15)

       14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

Having explained to Nicodemus about the new birth from Ezekiel, Jesus leaves him with these words about eternal life based on an account from Numbers 21. It involves a puzzling comparison between Jesus’s crucifixion—being “lifted up”—and Moses lifting up an image of a snake on a pole.

The episode in Numbers takes place at the end of the wilderness wandering, after the exodus generation of Israel has died, with the exception of Joshua, Caleb, and Moses. They have just experienced their first victory over the Canaanites in Num 21:1–3. But rather than moving north into the promised land, God has them head south into the Arabah toward Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba to go around Edom. On the way, Num 21:4–9 recounts Israel’s final incident of complaining, followed by God’s judgment and provision of a solution through Moses. Three incidents of the first generation complaining on the way to Sinai are recounted in Exodus 15, 16, and 17. Three more incidents are recounted on the way to Kadesh in Numbers 11–12, culminating in the Lord’s oath that they would never see his rest (Ps 95:9–11).

Now the second generation is following in the steps of their fathers. They are “impatient because of the journey” (Num 21:4) and sick of the “wretched food” God had provided (v. 5). So God sent among them snakes that were “poisonous,” literally “burning” or “fiery,” a word perhaps describing either the feeling of being bit or the inflamed wound. Many died before representatives begged Moses to plead for them before God, who, rather than taking away the snakes, instructed Moses to create an antidote. The antidote would be “a fiery thing” mounted on a pole, which CSB renders “a snake image” (ESV, “a fiery serpent”; NRSV, “a poisonous serpent”; NIV, “a snake”; NLT, “a replica of a poisonous snake”). Simply looking at the image after being bitten would keep one from dying, that is, “he will live” (v. 8). Perhaps Israel is near the copper mines of Timna, since he makes the image out of copper or bronze (copper plus 10% tin). In the 1960s archaeologists found a Midianite tent shrine in Timna, within which was a five inch copper snake.

God’s provision of life in response to Israel’s sin involved looking at the image of an unclean animal, one that also symbolized evil. But all sacrifices involved blood and dead animals, things that in themselves made someone unclean. The homeopathic nature of God’s cure for the impatient and ungrateful people is somewhat parallel to the act of the Philistines who had captured the ark in 1 Samuel 4. Terrified at the damage done to their temple of Dagon and the outbreak of tumors, they returned the ark to the Israelites accompanied by a guilt offering of “five gold tumors and five gold mice,” which God accepted (see 1 Sam 6:1–21). A modern analogy might be found in our using disease-causing germs to create vaccines. Perhaps God used such an image so that Israel would be discouraged from worshiping it, although that didn’t work for long. Some in Israel eventually began burning incense to it (see 2 Kgs 18:4). Of course, to God the most important thing seemed to be the “fiery” nature of the image. Making it out of copper even made it reddish in color, perhaps suggesting sacrifice (compare the red heifer sacrifice, cedar wood, and the scarlet cord in Numbers 19). Perhaps the most striking thing is that although bringing a sacrifice for sin always involved touching the animal, laying hands on it, here was deliverance by merely looking at something that perhaps represented a sacrifice.[1]

Why did Jesus use this episode to illustrate the salvation and gift of eternal life he would provide by dying on the cross? The principle of “look and live” was certainly in view. John the Baptist called upon people to “look” at Jesus (1:36). Jesus invited the disciples to “come and see,” as did Philip (1:39, 46). Jesus promised they would “see heaven opened” (1:51). In 6:40 Jesus said, “Everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Jesus healed the blind and made them see (9:7). In 14:19 Jesus told his disciples, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too.” At the crucifixion, John quotes Zech 12:10 in John 19:37: “They will look at the one they pierced.”

Jesus used the verb for “lift up” again in John 12:32–33: “As for me, if I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself.” Then John explains, “He said this to indicate what kind of death he was about to die.” There was a physical aspect to being “lifted up,” but there was also the aspect of resurrection and exaltation. In drawing all people to himself, he would bring them up with him into eternal life, resurrection, and exaltation. Some translations such as NIV interpret the phrase “in him” as modifying “eternal life” rather than “believe.” As we saw in 1:4, this is certainly where life must be found. “Eternal life” refers to the life of the age to come, which is only ours if we are joined to Christ by faith. The word “must” means that the cross is absolutely essential to our gaining eternal life and that this was God’s sovereign plan.

[1] For these suggestions, see Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers, TOTC (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1981), 157–58.

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Going to the Well on 9/11

by E. Ray Clendenen

I read this morning about a woman named Emma Gatewood. In 1954 at the age of 67, after raising 11 children, she began hiking. Her husband Percy had recently beat her so badly that he broke her teeth and jaw and cracked her ribs, nearly killing her. She was granted a divorce—unheard of in those days—and she raised her last three children alone. Her youngest daughter Lucy, who witnessed the brutal violence, showed her mom a National Geographic article about the Appalachian Trail and urged her to set out on an adventure. So she set her mind to tackle the 2,168-mile trail. She was the first woman to walk the Appalachian Trail solo in one season. She completed the hike three times, the last at age 75, making her the first person to do so. She also walked 2,000 miles of the Oregon Trail, averaging 22 miles a day. In total she walked alone through 14 states. It was described as “an act of self-care, healing, resistance, independence, and a way to regain her inner and outer strength and to find her way back to herself.” I don’t know anything about her spiritual condition, only that a situation of cruelty and brutality resulted in her finding inner peace and inspiring others. I can identify because several years ago I began coping with a time of personal crisis and desperation by hiking—not the AT, but at Radnor Lake, several times a week.

The United States has always been a pluralistic nation, full of all kinds of self-interest groups vying for attention. Two devastating world wars full of cruelty, hate, and heroism led to a stream of nationalism that has lately dissipated to a trickle. On this day in 2001 a murderous act of heartless brutality united us for awhile and made us feel like a nation again. Singing America the Beautiful together was almost a spiritual experience.

A domestic act of brutality resulted in a personal journey for inner peace. A national act of brutality resulted in a spirit of unity and compassion for one another. These were significant events that affected many lives. But their scope and power for change were limited. About 2,000 years ago another act of cruelty and brutality against one innocent man resulted in a death with global and eternal results that began as a trickle but has become a river of living water.

About three years before that event that has become a historical and spiritual continental divide, Jesus the Jewish carpenter and fisherman met a disregarded member of society, a Samaritan woman, at a well.

10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
15 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”

“The gift of God” Jesus refers to in v. 10 is God’s Spirit, as we can see from several OT prophetic texts such as Isa 44:3–4, where the gift of the Spirit is associated not only with water but also with Jacob. God’s people are not to fear,

“For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your descendants and my blessing on your offspring. They will sprout among the grass like poplars by flowing streams. This one will say, ‘I am the Lord’s’; another will use the name of Jacob; still another will write on his hand, ‘The Lord’s,’ and take on the name of Israel.”

The Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch as Scripture, which is why Jesus says to the woman, “If you knew the gift of God.” Several NT texts as well speak of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus the Messiah came to bring. And at the feast of Tabernacles recounted in John 7, Jesus would declare,

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” He said this about the Spirit. Those who believed in Jesus were going to receive the Spirit, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37–39)

John uses two different terms for “well” here in chap. 4. In v. 6 he uses pēgē, also used by Jesus in v. 14, associated with “living water.” Pēgē was actually the term for a spring or fountain (see Jms 3:11; 2 Pet 2:17; and over 90 times in the Old Testament). In Rev 21:6 the one seated on the throne declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life.” The other word for “well” John uses (vv. 11–12) is phrear, referring to a pit or shaft, typically leading to a water supply. Although the OT doesn’t mention Jacob’s well, a reliable tradition identifies it with a well located a little less than a mile from what was probably ancient Sychar. The well still exists today at the base of Mount Gerizim, which the woman refers to in v. 20 as “this mountain.” The well is now about 100 feet deep and is fed by an underground spring.

The term “living water” is used in the OT of running water, especially fresh, spring water. The prophets also use “living water” in a figurative sense to describe spiritual water that brings life. Isaiah promised a day when Israel would “joyfully draw water from the springs of salvation” (Isa 12:3). Jeremiah uses the phrase “living water” to describe the Lord. He condemns the people for abandoning the Lord, “the fountain of living water,” and digging “cisterns for themselves—cracked cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jer 2:13). The psalmists also use water to symbolize the Lord’s faithful, life-giving provisions for his people. “People take refuge in the shadow of [his] wings” are said in Psalm 36 to be “filled from the abundance of your house. You let them drink from your refreshing stream [lit. “the stream of your delights”; the latter word in the singular is ʿēden, i.e. Eden]. For the wellspring [pēgē in LXX] of life is with you” (Ps 36:7–8). Psalm 42 begins, “As a deer longs for flowing streams [lit. “streams/channels of water”], so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?” (Ps 42:1–2). Finally, Psalm 63 begins, “God, you are my God; I eagerly seek you. I thirst for you; my body faints for you in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water” (Ps 63:1).

Jesus’s promise is that if a person will “ask” him, he will give us the spiritual water that will become a spring and even “streams of living water flow[ing] from deep within.” Then why do we so often thirst? Is it because we lack spiritual resources? Or is it because he puts us in situations that drive us to the well? When we as Christians come to the end of ourselves, we are driven to the well. But we need to go to the well . . . every . . . day. We need to drink deeply from that well of living water every day. We need to dive into those waters and let them inundate us every day. Does that mean five minutes of Bible study and a five-second prayer? Does it mean an hour of Bible study and another hour of prayer? It means as long as it takes. Until we are full and satisfied and fortified.

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Nicodemus’s Response to Jesus (3:9–13)

9 “How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.
10 “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied. 11 “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven—the Son of Man.

Nicodemus’s question expresses disbelief at the “earthly things” Jesus has said, that is, about the basic biblical teaching on new birth being required of earthly people if they are to experience “heavenly things” regarding the kingdom of God. Jesus points out to Nicodemus that he is speaking in ignorance because no one has “ascended into heaven” to discover heavenly truth. He is confronted, however, with the only one who can be a source of heavenly truth, the Son of Man, who has “descended from heaven.”

Nicodemus began the conversation with Jesus by admitting that Jesus was “a teacher who has come from God” and that “God [was] with him.” And this was not just a tentative hypothesis that was subject to confirmation or refutation. This, said Nicodemus, was something “we know” to be true (v. 2; this is probably why Jesus somewhat sarcastically uses the plural in v. 11 when he says “we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen” and when he addresses Nicodemus in the plural “you/y’all”). It amounted to a conclusion based on the belief that it would be impossible for anyone to do the things Jesus was doing if this were not the case. So the matter of Jesus’s identity was settled. Or was it? Did Nicodemus really believe this? His response to the first thing Jesus tried to teach him, that a person needed to be reborn to see God’s kingdom, was that this was impossible. Then Jesus elaborated on the new birth with instruction on the divine work of water and Spirit and Nicodemus’s need for it. In 3:7 Jesus explicitly applies the principle to Nicodemus by using the word you. Again, Nicodemus responded in v. 9 that it was impossible for “these things” to happen. The verb “be” translates the verb ginomai that has occurred 13 times before in John with the meaning “come into being” or “become” or in 1:28 and 2:1 to “happen.”

Evidently, Nicodemus, like many biblical skeptics throughout history, thought he was an authority on what was possible and what was impossible. Even many Bible scholars have expressed disbelief at the “possibility” of God flooding the earth, Sarah giving birth and nursing a child at age 90, God parting the Red Sea, feeding three million people in the Wilderness, making a donkey talk and an ax head float, and so forth. I guess Nicodemus had forgotten God’s question to Abraham in Gen 18:14, “Is anything impossible for the Lord?”[1] He had also forgotten God’s promise to the Jewish exiles in Zech 8:6 that he would return to Jerusalem and dwell there: “The Lord of Armies says this: ‘Though it may seem impossible to the remnant of this people in those days, should it also seem impossible to me?’—this is the declaration of the Lord of Armies.” Of course he hadn’t heard what the angel Gabriel had told Jesus’s mother when she asked him how she could have a child without having had sexual relations with a man[2] (Luke 1:36–37): “Consider your relative Elizabeth—even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Nicodemus could not have heard Jesus later telling his disciples regarding the salvation of a rich person, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26//Mark 10:27//Luke 18:27).

So Nicodemus, an avowed expert in what is possible, had let his reasoning lead him into a contradiction. If God really was with Jesus and had sent him to teach, how could he teach things that were impossible? Someone might suggest that Nicodemus was not really expressing disbelief but rather wonder. For example, we use the word incredible in two senses. One is the equivalent of “impossible to believe,” but the other is “extraordinary” or “amazing,” as in the 2004 movie The Incredibles. Could Nicodemus have just been asking for further information, like Mary? That he was at this point expressing his refusal to accept what Jesus was saying is clear from the parallel between him and those at the Passover who had phony faith (2:24–25). But Jesus makes it explicit in 3:11–12: “you do not accept our testimony” and “you don’t believe.” Nicodemus was clearly refusing to accept the teaching of this One he “knew” had “come from God.”

I’m reminded of one of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek TV show. When the Enterprise encounters a life-destroying space probe calling itself “Nomad.” It thinks Captain Kirk is its “Creator” and that its mission is to seek out and eliminate imperfection, including any life forms it considers imperfect. On the verge of killing everyone on board the Enterprise, Captain Kirk confronts the probe and demonstrates to it that its behavior is based on contradictory “beliefs.” By mistakenly identifying Kirk as its Creator, it shows itself to be imperfect. Its failure to follow through with its mission by eliminating itself compounds its imperfection. Eventually the satellite must deal with the contradictory situation by destroying itself. How does this apply to Nicodemus? His statement of disbelief in v. 9 is the last thing he said to Jesus. If this was all we knew of him, we’d have to say he never saw God’s kingdom. If he did come to faith and experience a rebirth by the Spirit, the Nicodemus we find in John chap. 3 had to destroy himself in order to be rebuilt from the ground up. He had to be reborn and become a new creature. As we’ve seen, there is evidence from John 7:50–52 and especially 19:38–42 that this is in fact what happened.

Can we learn anything, though, from the Nicodemus of chap. 3? Those of us who’ve come to believe that Jesus is the divine Son and who have fallen at his feet in repentance and faith and pledged our loyalty to him and our desire to follow him wherever he leads—are there any teachings of Jesus we find it hard to accept, or obey? How about the teachings of his divinely chosen apostles and others who wrote the New Testament? How about the divinely chosen prophets and other spokesmen who wrote the Old Testament? Are there any biblical teachings that we meet and say, “That’s impossible. I can’t accept that.” A preacher once asked his congregation how many people believed John 3:16. Everyone’s hand went up. Then he asked how many people believed Psalm 23. Everyone’s hand went up again. Then he asked how many believed Nahum 1:7. This time only about half the hands went up. The rest weren’t going to commit to it without reading what it said. Of course, some of those people may have been unsure there was a book of Nahum in the Bible. But if all Scripture is not only “inspired by God” but is also “profitable” (2 Tim 3:16), isn’t the Christian obligated not only to accept and obey all of it but also to study all of it, and even to like it (see Psalm 119)? All of us have favorite Bible books and those that we don’t give much attention to. “The Old Testament Prophets are always so negative!” More to the point, are there any passages or teachings or commands in Scripture that you have trouble accepting and obeying? Are we sometimes like the three-year old “cupcake kid” who stole cupcakes at his grandmother’s and won’t listen to his mother or even let her talk to him. He keeps saying, “Linda, Linda, lookit! You’re not listening to me!”[3] There’s Jesus’s command, for example, to “love your enemies” (Matt 5:44), “don’t worry about your life” (Matt 6:25), and self-denial as a requirement for discipleship (Luke 9:23). What about church discipline? In 1 Cor 5:11, for example, Paul tells the Corinthian Christians,

I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person.

This is a difficult teaching, and one that has to be handled carefully. Perhaps you have trouble with other biblical teachings, such as Paul’s command to avoid lying but to “speak the truth,” or to keep from sinning when you get angry, to avoid taking anything that isn’t yours, or using foul language but rather only “what is good for building up someone in need” and giving “grace to those who hear” (Eph 4:25–29). What about his command to wives to “submit to your husbands as to the Lord” because he is “the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”? Or his command to husbands to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church” and “as their own bodies”? (Eph 5:22–28). Even Peter admitted that there are some things in Paul’s writings that are “hard to understand” (2 Pet 3:16). Yet, as a friend of mine, Andy Naselli, recently tweeted, “It’s not okay to say, ‘The Bible teaches x, but I don’t like it.”

As we’ve seen, Jesus rebuked Nicodemus for considering himself to be “a teacher of Israel” and yet failing to understand, to apply to himself, and to teach everything found in the Scriptures, in his case those passages dealing with spiritual transformation. As Carson suggests,

Doubtless he himself had for years taught others the conditions of entrance to the kingdom of God, conditions cast in terms of obedience to God’s commands, devotion to God, happy submission to his will; but here he is facing a condition he has never heard expressed, the absolute requirement of birth from above. Even after Jesus’ explanation, he is frankly sceptical that such a birth can take place.[4]

Are there any teachings in Scripture that we are failing to give proper attention to or just ignoring? Perhaps even the necessity of dropping everything we’ve been clinging to and reaching for Jesus? Or perhaps God is even trying to speak into my life in other ways, and I am coming up with excuses not to listen to him.

[1] Of course, Elihu was probably correct in Job 34:10 when he said, “It is impossible for God to do wrong, and for the Almighty to act unjustly.” And as the author of Hebrews declared, “It is impossible for God to lie” (Heb 6:18).

[2] Interestingly, Mary does not use the verb dunamai, “it is possible,” in Luke 1:34 but says (literally), “How will this be?”

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFYsJYPye94.

[4] Carson, 198.

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Nicodemus Comes to Jesus (John 3:1–2)

1 There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
2 This man came to him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.”

Undoubtedly John intends us to interpret his account of the “man” (anthrōpos) Nicodemus beginning in 3:1 in light of his emphatic statement in 2:25 that Jesus did not need to consult anyone “about man [anthrōpos]” because “he himself knew what was in man [anthrōpos].” Repetition of the word for “man” may tell us that Nicodemus is different from them. The Greek conjunction de introducing the chapter often, though not always, means “but.” However, the statement in 2:6, “Now six stone water jars had been set . . .,” begins with this word. Furthermore, the meaning “but” is found mainly where the word joins clauses, rather than at the beginning of a section as here. So the conjunction here does not tell us a contrast is intended. John’s intention is more likely that Nicodemus is an example of the kind of superficial believers referred to in 2:23–25. According to Dan Wallace, “The evangelist is moving from a generic principle in 2:24–25 to a specific illustration of this principle in chapter 3.” He further explains that “immediately after this pronouncement about Jesus’ insight into man, the evangelist introduces the readers to a particular man who fits this description of depravity.”[1] Bruner suggests that Nicodemus may even have been a spokesman for the superficial believers, perhaps suggested by his words in v. 2, “we know.”[2]

The phrase “from the Pharisees,” which occurred first in 1:24, suggests that Nicodemus might be like the “priests and Levites” who interrogated the Baptist in 1:19–28. The phrase occurs next in 7:48 pointing to their unbelief: “Have any of the rulers or [any from the] Pharisees believed in him?” And in each of its other three uses (9:16, 40; 18:3) it also refers to Jesus’s opponents. As McHugh states, “The words define succinctly the man’s religious character.”[3] His identification as a “ruler of the Jews” means he was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Another clue that Nicodemus is intended as an example of inadequate or phony faith is his reference to “these signs you do” in v. 2, which echoes 2:24.

The next clue about Nicodemus is that he visited Jesus “at night” (v. 2). Some might take this as a sign of his social ineptness or even rudeness: he was the kind of person who would intrude on someone at night. But this would be reading modern sensitivities into the text. It’s usually taken as indicating Nicodemus’s fear (or at least prudence) that his consulting Jesus might be discovered by some of his fellow Pharisees. As John tells us in 12:42, many of the Jewish “rulers” did later “believe in him,” although the genuineness of their faith is questioned, not only by their failure to “confess him” out of fear of being “banned from the synagogue,” but by their preference for “human praise more than praise from God” (12:43). The Pharisees mostly controlled the synagogues and used this to keep people in line. McHugh points to “an abundance of rabbinic texts proclaim[ing] the virtue of studying the law deep into the night” and proposes that “Nicodemus seeks not the cover of darkness but the blessings of the night.”[4] Keener notes, however, that studying Torah at night was probably only necessary for those who worked by day, which would not have included Nicodemus.[5] Morris points out that Jesus would have been busy with the crowds during the day, and night would be Nicodemus’s only opportunity to have a private, uninterrupted consultation with this remarkable rabbi.[6] This may be true but is unlikely to be his point.

Besides implying secrecy, the time of Nicodemus’s visit probably also is symbolic of his spiritual condition.[7] He was one coming out of the darkness to seek the light (see John 1:4–5; 3:19–21). Jesus later told his disciples, “If anyone walks during the night, he does stumble, because the light is not in him” (11:10). Then even later John tells us that after Jesus predicted that one of his disciples would betray him, Judas, “after receiving the piece of bread, . . . immediately left. And it was night” (13:30). Finally, we learn that at some point Nicodemus did put his faith in Jesus. He and Joseph of Arimathea prepared Jesus’s crucified body and buried him in a nearby garden tomb (19:18–42). Nicodemus is identified there as the one “who had previously come to him at night” (19:39), marking the significance of the fact. We also learn there that evidently fear did not necessarily indicate unbelief, for such fear prompted Joseph of Arimathea, “a disciple of Jesus,” to come to Pilate “secretly because of his fear of the Jews” (19:38). Notice that Jesus does not criticize or ridicule Nicodemus’s faltering faith or fearfulness in coming to him at night.

John tells us of a spectrum of people from varying social levels and circumstances who “came to” Jesus for various reasons and in various ways.[8] Rather than a simple fisherman, a woman of questionable morals, or a man blind from birth, Nicodemus was a Pharisee (that is, a really serious religious person), a ruler of the Jews, and a teacher of Israel. He was prominent enough that we know his name. He was evidently healthy, financially stable, highly respected, well educated, socially connected, and a member of the group that felt most threatened by Jesus and therefore had the greatest animosity toward him. Surely he was not a prospect for discipleship. Nor did he walk the aisle at the beginning of the first verse of “Just As I Am,” like the unnamed Samaritan woman. He was initially skeptical of what Jesus had to say. His faith evidently started very small and grew very slowly.

John doesn’t really tell us why Nicodemus came to Jesus. Jesus identifies him as “a teacher of Israel” who doesn’t seem to know the first thing about God’s truth (3:10). Yet, on the basis of “signs” that were like nothing he’d ever seen before,[9] Nicodemus claims to “know” that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God.” Evidently Nicodemus acknowledges that there may be some things he doesn’t know that he might learn from Jesus. Is he applying for admittance into Jesus’s school of discipleship? Or perhaps he just wants a seminar from this gifted teacher. He begins his audience with the Savior by raising several topics that he presumably would like Jesus’s response to: “his claim to being a rabbi [a professional teacher of the Torah], his function as a teacher, his origin from God, and the signs he has performed.”[10] (Notice that Nicodemus is recognizing only Jesus’s membership in some rather commendable groups rather than his unique status as the rabbi and teacher to end all rabbis and teachers, and as the Son of God.)

But rather than letting Nicodemus set the agenda for their conversation, Jesus offers his own topic, which Nicodemus accepts: the necessity of new birth for one to see God’s kingdom. Jesus was not avoiding difficult questions with subterfuge or rudely dismissing Nicodemus’s concerns in order to pursue his own. Jesus had an ability, coveted by every counselor, many of whom imagine they possess it, to see through all the smoke in a person’s life into their heart. Like a smart missile that is incapable of being thrown off course by camouflage, decoys, or evasive maneuvers, Jesus zeroed in on what Nicodemus needed to hear. Jesus’s knowledge of “what was in man” (2:25), exhibited earlier in his knowledge of Nathanael and the other disciples (1:47) and later in his knowledge of the Samaritan woman (4:17–18) and Judas (see 13:21–30), is exhibited in his dealing with Nicodemus. What Nicodemus needed was “the kingdom of God.” Was that a longing in his heart? If so, Jesus’s answer to his longing came as a total and initially incomprehensible surprise.

[1] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 597, 228–29, respectively.

[2] Bruner, 167.

[3] John F. McHugh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on John 1–4 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 219.

[4] McHugh, 220.

[5] Keener, 536.

[6] Morris, 211.

[7] See Jörg Frey, The Glory of the Crucified One: Christology and Theology in the Gospel of John (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2019), 130.

[8] The verb ἔρχομαι followed by πρός occurs in John 31 times, more than in the combined Synoptic Gospels.

[9] This is probably the sense of “no one could [is able to] perform these signs unless God were with him.”

[10] See F. P. Cotterell, “The Nicodemus Conversation: A Fresh Appraisal,” ExpTim 96 (1984–85): 239, as cited by Stanley E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 306–7.

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Jesus at Passover: Phony Faith (John 2:23–25)

           23 While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. 24 Jesus, however, would not entrust himself to them, since he knew them all 25 and because he did not need anyone to testify about man; for he himself knew what was in man.

John 2:13–25 divides chronologically into when the Passover was ”near” (vv. 13–22) and “during” the Passover (vv. 23–25). It also alternates its focus between various groups of nonbelievers and Jesus’s disciples:

money changers                    vv. 13–16
disciples                                  v. 17
Jewish leaders                       vv. 18–20
disciples                                  vv. 21–22
many who saw the signs      vv. 23–25

According to John 1:10–13, there were two possible responses to Jesus: some people “received” him and were reborn, becoming “children of God”; but the rest of the world, even “his own” for the most part, refused to receive him and remained in darkness. This passage, as well as the following account of Nicodemus, looks more closely at the second group and finds a third possible response.

John tells us in 20:30–31 that Jesus did many signs that are not recorded in his Gospel (also see 21:25). Here we find that some of them were done at the first Passover of his ministry. Read by itself, v. 23 sounds as though the “many” at the Passover were like the disciples in vv. 11 and 22. They both saw Jesus’s signs and “believed”—in both cases the same form of the verb is used (aorist indicative, episteusan). Verses 24–25, however, correct our mistaken interpretation, which was based on external observation alone. We find here that not everyone who sees Jesus with amazement and even enthusiasm (“saw” is from theoreō, which is also used in 6:2, 19; 7:3) and can be said to “believe” in him in one sense actually has the kind of faith that “receives” Jesus, experiences rebirth, and becomes God’s child (1:11–13). It’s possible to “see” without really seeing and to “believe” only superficially, like the seed that fell on rocky ground and “grew quickly” but then died because “it had no root” (Matt 13:5–6). John’s description of these people believing “in his name” also invites comparison to those in 1:12 who “believe in his name” and become God’s children. But whereas the verb form here is a simple past, “they believed” (Gk. aorist), pointing to an event that took place in the past, the verb form for “believe” in 1:12 is a present tense, pointing to a continuing belief. Although we can’t see below the surface of someone’s profession of faith and evaluate its genuineness, we can see the time span of their faith, which gives strong evidence of genuineness. As Keener points out, “signs-faith, unless it progresses to discipleship, is inadequate.”[1]

We also notice that whereas the disciples “believed the Scripture”[2] and Jesus’s “statement” about his resurrection (v. 22), the “many” at the Passover simply believed Jesus could do miracles. The contrast is expressed in vv. 24–25, however, by means of a play on the verb pisteuō, which usually means “to believe/trust” but can also mean “to entrust.” They trusted in his name, but he did not “entrust himself to them” because they were untrustworthy.They were “unbelievable believers.”[3] Once there was a lady at the beach reading under an umbrella when a little boy approached her. He asked if she was a Christian. She said yes. Then he asked if she went to church. Again she said yes. Then he asked if she read her Bible. She told him she read it every day. Finally, he said, “Then would you hold my quarter while I go swimming?” He wanted to entrust his quarter to someone who was trustworthy. Sometimes we entrust ourselves to someone such as a doctor or perhaps someone who has offered to testify on our behalf in court. John’s statement about Jesus not entrusting himself to these nominal Christians has an intriguing implication that he does entrust himself to those who truly trust him.[4] One way this might work itself out is suggested by Acts 1:8, in which Jesus declares to his apostles before his ascension, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” At least on the surface, this is not a command to witness; it is a statement of fact. Jesus has entrusted to us the job of pointing people to him by the power of the Spirit, by means of our words and our lives, and so exalting his name in all the earth. He has no plan B in case we fail (which we do). He is trusting us to be his witnesses. These professing believers in John 2 might look genuine to us, but we could only judge by observing the surface. Jesus, however, sees below the surface and knows that their expressions of “trust” do not extend below the surface, and so they are untrustworthy. They “had no root.”

But this is not all Jesus knows. Verse 24 says “he knew them all.” But v. 25 goes further to suggest that the problem was not in these men alone. They were mere representatives of everyone who has not been born again, from above, by the Holy Spirit (see 3:3–8). Jesus knew these people because “he himself knew what was in man.” This is actually a divine attribute (see 1 Sam 16:7; 1 Kgs 8:39; Ps 139:1–4; Jer 11:20; 12:3; 17:9–10; 20:12; Acts 1:24). Because of spiritual blindness (see Rom 1:22; 2 Cor 4:4) and a life ruled by sovereign self (in its many manifestations), not one person is “trustworthy,” that is, capable of truly casting ourselves into the arms of Jesus, apart from the work of God’s Spirit. “Signs-faith” is still self-worship, interested only in what the worker of signs can do for me. Brennan Manning speaks of our need for “ruthless trust.”[5] In the foreword to Manning’s book by that name, Richard Foster explains that “ruthless” refers to a lack of pity or compassion for others. Manning, he says, points it at us and charges that we tend to have way too much pity or compassion for ourselves. Our egocentric lives are full of self-pity, “self-indulgence, self-will, self-service, self-aggrandizement, self-gratification, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency, and the like.”[6] The antidote, he says, is “ruthless trust” in the One outside of ourselves who came from heaven to be our life and light. But this kind of heroic, “unwavering trust” can only be the work of God’s Spirit in us, a work these so-called believers in John 2:23–25 had not yet experienced.

Jesus gave another example in Luke 18:9–14 of what we might call fake faith, or faux faith, or imposter faith in his parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to the temple to “pray.” Luke tells us Jesus was speaking “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else” (v. 9). The Pharisee, Jesus says, “was standing and praying like this about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I’m not like other people—greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of everything I get.’” The man claimed to be “thanking God” when he was actually just bragging.

I taught for several years at a college whose undergraduate dean, George B. Davis, testified that, after serving in the pastorate for many years, he came to teach at the college only to discover that he himself was not a believer. He had never truly given his heart to Christ, which he promptly did. Another example was the great British NT scholar R. V. G. Tasker, who was one of the earliest evangelical biblical scholars to oppose the liberal theology being taught in Britain in the mid-20th century. He lectured and wrote books advocating the full authority of the Bible, the deity of Christ, his substitutionary atonement, and other fundamental doctrines. He also served for many years as NT editor of the new series of Bible commentaries published by the new evangelical press called Tyndale. But before he began to advocate evangelical Christianity, he was a noted liberal NT scholar at the London School of Theology. Then God introduced him to the London preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones, whose influence brought Tasker to his knees before Jesus.

So there are actually many ways to respond to Jesus, and we don’t have the spiritual equipment to sort them all out, but Jesus, being the Son of God, does have that ability. He knows us all. The bottom line for us, perhaps, is that he must ask ourselves what kind of faith we have. As Bruner points out, we all have “bifurcated hearts.”[7] We must, as Paul said, “examine” ourselves (2 Cor 13:5).

[1] Keener, 531. Bruner, 159, speaks of “sign-believers.”

[2] Klink, 185, points out that the disciples “had come to see as authoritative and complementary the word of God and the Word of God.”

[3] Bruner, 160.

[4] See Carson, 184.

[5] Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

[6] Foster, “Foreword,” in Manning, Ruthless Trust, x.

[7] Bruner, 170.

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Thoughts on the Passing of a Christian Friend

The sad news of the passing of a Christian lady named Cheryl after her long battle with cancer led me to look at John 11. The question of why Jesus had allowed Lazarus to die, even though he could have prevented it, is raised three times by three different people or groups. And even though Jesus knew what he was about to do, when he heard the question the second time, this time from Mary, we are told he was “deeply moved in his spirit and troubled,” and he wept (CSB translation, but essentially the same as others). The NET Bible note says the Greek verb translated “deeply moved” “indicates a strong display of emotion, somewhat difficult to translate — ‘shuddered, moved with the deepest emotions.’” 

Then when Jesus arrived at the tomb, he was “deeply moved” again. Jesus knew/knows Cheryl (and her family) as well as he knew Lazarus and his sisters. Even though she lives now and will be raised, Jesus is “deeply moved.” He’s experiencing our deep pain at her passing and is weeping—even bawling—over it. We also have no reason to dispute the Jews’ interpretation of Jesus’s tears: “See how he loved him[her]!” Frederick Dale Bruner says that the hymn “And Can It Be?” could have been sung, “And can it be, that Thou, my God, wouldst cry with me? Amazing love, how can it be?”
Just some thoughts.

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Jesus’s Opening Week: A Deep Exegesis of John 1:1–2:11

Interview with author E. Ray Clendenen

  • I can see this is a book about the first week in Jesus’s ministry. But the cover puzzles me. What does it have to do with football?

The idea of the cover is to bring to mind the excitement that many people feel as football season (or some other sport) approaches. My son and I enjoy NFL football, and 2019 will be the 100th anniversary of the NFL. Draft day was in April, training camps begin in July and August, and pre-season games begin in August. The 2019 season officially begins in Chicago on Sept. 5 and will end with the Superbowl on Feb. 2 in Miami. If our desperate world had realized the significance of Jesus’s opening week, with the baptisms in the Jordan, Jesus “drafting” his first disciples, and the kickoff of his ministry at Cana on the seventh day of his opening week, people would have gone wild. Those of us who know how momentous that week was have every reason to paint our faces, wear silly costumes, and scream at the top of our lungs.

  • What prompted you to write this book?

Having spent 40 years in the ministry trying to serve Christ with one hand and serve myself with the other, my life fell apart and I found myself in pieces. Then God began to rebuild me by immersing me in his Word and his Spirit and using the loving kindness of counselors and friends. Then a few years ago at Christmas I began studying the incarnation of Christ and then the doctrine of the Christian’s union with Christ. That led me to the book of Colossians and then the Gospel of John. As I feasted on the truths I found especially in John, I had a burning desire to share with others what I was learning. So my wife Gigi and I invited some friends from church to our house for a weekly Bible study on John. I prepared written notes for the study, which I began thinking might be of help to others. So I began converting those notes into this book.

  • What stands out as the most important thing you’ve learned in your study of the Gospel of John?

My studies in John have given me a renewed sense that God in Christ has removed my sin, guilt, and shame and united me and other believers to Christ, his own beloved Son. He loves us with the same love he has for his divine Son and has welcomed us into his family. In effect, we sit around his table, we listen to him, we talk to him, and we feel his love for us, and we go out and invite others to the table.

  • Who did you have in mind as the primary audience of your book?

My primary audience is Christians who are discouraged by the struggle with the sins and sorrows of life. I’m especially concerned for those in ministry who need a renewed sense of the loving mercy of the God of life and light who came to us in Jesus Christ to reconcile us to himself and to welcome us into his family.

  • It’s common to hear people talk about Jesus’s “passion week,” but the idea that he had an “opening week” is new to me. Why do you think we don’t hear more about that?

The climax of the earthly life of Jesus was clearly the cross and the resurrection. That’s where all the Gospels lead us, and that’s what our Christian lives are mainly based on. So it’s natural for us to celebrate the last week of Jesus’s life with its giant crescendo into the cross and resurrection. But just as the Old Testament helps us understand the New, so what precedes Jesus’s passion week in the Gospels helps us understand the meaning and significance of the cross and resurrection. Besides, as John’s final crescendo and Jesus’s passion week begins in 12:1 with the chronological announcement that “six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany,” so John’s overture that prepares us to understand and appreciate Jesus’s mission is heard in his prologue and Jesus’s first week, that is, John 1:1–2:11. Richard Bauckham pointed out this parallel, and I’ve found it to be quite powerful.

  • Jesus’s addressing his mother as “woman” in John 2 has always bothered me. How can we understand that as being anything but disrespectful?

Although the Greek word gunē and the English word “woman” are generally equivalent, they are not used exactly the same. Yes, a man addressing someone as “woman” can imply dominance and disrespect. But besides also meaning “wife” or “bride,” gune is used nine times in the Gospels as a polite address to a woman. The important thing about the word choice is that it does not mean “mother.” It suggests that Jesus has begun his divinely ordained mission in earnest and that his primary responsibility is now to the Father. No longer is he at his mother’s beck and call. Perhaps an equivalent translation would be for Jesus to call her “Mary.”

  • Your bibliography lists 16 different commentaries on John. Those and many other books and articles are cited in over 400 footnotes. What does this book on John 1:1–2:11 have that can’t be found in other books and articles that are available?

The citations in my book almost always point to someone’s work I largely agree with, so there is certainly overlap between my work and the work of others. But this is always the case with the progress of ideas. Every writer climbs on the shoulders of others in order to reach a bit further. I can only hope that my suggestions extend our understanding of this passage just a bit. As far as the commentaries I’ve used, they are all excellent, but except for John McHugh’s critical commentary on John 1–4, they aim at dealing with the whole book of John in only one or two volumes. I’ve tried to swim down deeper into the well of a much smaller passage. Also, commentaries generally focus on what a text meant and don’t deal as much as I’ve tried to do with what the text means to us theologically and practically. I’ve also tried to clarify the sense by using many illustrations, often from my own life.

  • Your subtitle mentions something called “deep exegesis.” What is that exactly?

I got the term from Peter Leithart’s book, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture. I’d been pondering what I should call the kind of exposition of Scripture I was trying to do in my book. It doesn’t fit the traditional “commentary” genre, and I didn’t think “devotional commentary” fit either. “Theological exposition” was closer, but I do critically examine the words John uses. Then I read Leithart and felt he might express my vision. I don’t know if he would approve of my appropriation of his term, but he speaks of getting at the riches of Scripture by “squeezing everything we can from the text as written.” He also speaks of paying attention not only to what’s in the text but to the gaps left by the author, the “crucial missing elements.” Some of that involves the Old Testament background. We also sometimes expect John or Jesus to say one thing, when in fact he says something else. And we don’t always understand the relationship of something in the text to the context. I think there’s theological depth, for example, between Mary’s telling Jesus about the lack of wine and his response regarding an “hour” that “has not yet come.” So I decided, with apologies to the author, to use his term for what I’m doing.

Condemnation through Rejection of the Light of Jesus (John 3:17–21)

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. 21 But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”

Christian Standard Bible

In v. 16 John spotlighted God’s love that prompted him to give his only divine Son to the world to bring eternal life to the perishing, to everyone who would look to him in faith. Now in these verses, which begin with another “for,” like v. 16, John elaborates on Jesus’s mission. Why does John begin by telling us what Jesus did not come to do? It’s because although he didn’t come to condemn, that doesn’t mean that many in the world won’t be condemned. Although saving and life-bringing was his mission, condemnation would in fact be the result for many, who would refuse to receive the light and life that he brought—that he is. John wants us to be clear that Jesus did not come from heaven on a mission of judgment on the wicked, as many expected the Messiah to do, but rather to save the perishing who would come to the light.

The verb translated “condemn” is krino, which has various uses in different contexts, but they all have to do with deciding. The use here is the most negative, involving passing a judgment or sentence of condemnation. But we also use “judgment” when we go shopping for groceries, clothes, or a car. We’re looking for something that meets certain criteria involving quality but also appropriateness to our needs, our budget, and our personal desires. The verb may just mean to “choose,” or it may involve a value judgment regarding which is better, or even which fruit is rotten and needs to be thrown away. Our word crisis is related to this word krino. It’s a fork in the road. The dictionary says that a crisis is “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.” It can be “a time when a difficult or important decision must be made,” a “critical decision.” It can also be “the turning point of a disease, when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death.” It can be what we call “a defining moment” in our lives.

These verses speak of the “critical” character of Jesus’s mission. The divine will had no other purpose than to save. Jesus wasn’t on a mission to “search out and destroy” rotten people, but rather to save any people in this condemned world of darkness who would come toward the light. By refusing to come to him, however, many people demonstrate the fact that they “have already been condemned.” The verb in v. 18 is a perfect tense pointing to a situation they’ve placed themselves in by refusing to believe in the “name,” that is, the merciful, saving character of the unique Son of God. As long as they are unbelieving, they have “missed the boat,” or, as we are more likely to do and as I have done (once by falling asleep in the terminal), they’ve “missed the plane.” I was able to catch a later plane. But Jesus is the only plane to the divine presence, and to miss him is to miss out and be left with nothing but our darkness and our “evil deeds,” occupying ourselves with the worthless, reprehensible things that we love—or is it hate?

Verse 19 begins by saying, “This is the judgment.” The Greek word is krisis. If I were to claim that Jesus is repulsive, you might kick me out the door, or you might think I meant that some people think he’s repulsive. But Jesus actually is repulsive—the same way that the north pole of a magnet is repulsive, that is, to another magnet’s north pole. Jesus is repulsive to those whose self-love and pride cause them to cling to their wicked lifestyle and to run and hide from the light out of fear of being “caught.” The verse is ironic in light of v. 16. God loved the world by sending his only unique Son to save people from perishing in darkness, but many hate God and love their darkness and would rather perish there. Haters of light run from it in fear and shame so that who they won’t be exposed. But lovers of light run to it to escape the darkness and become children of light. To them Jesus is attractive.

As I reflected on how Jesus’s coming divides believers from unbelievers, I remembered my high school chemistry and how we would separate out certain elements that were invisibly in a solution. The process is called precipitation. It’s used to remove impurities from water or to extract valuable minerals that are in a liquid solution.

As John explained in 1:4–5, darkness is in conflict with light, but light banishes darkness. In a book by Annie Dillard I’ve been reading, called Teaching a Stone to Talk, in one chapter she describes her experience in the Amazonian jungle. She speaks of the sun going down, “pulling darkness after it like a curtain.”[1] It may look like that. But the fact is that they can’t coexist—especially spiritual light and spiritual darkess. Darkness must retreat. So Jesus, who came to save, is the “fork in the road,” the crisis. Just as vv. 1–8 speak of the necessity of new birth, so vv. 16–21 speak of the critical necessity of believing. Another way of saying how important something is in one’s life is to say that it’s crucial. Do you know where that word comes from? It comes from the Latin crux, which means “cross.” The cross is crucial; new birth is crucial; faith is crucial. It’s the turning point. Jesus is the critical turning point, the crucial turning point.

[1] p. 76.

God’s Motivation of Love (John 3:16)

16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Here John begins his discourse on the Jesus-Nicodemus dialogue. Interpreters differ as to where Jesus’s speech ends. The red letters in the CSB continue through v. 21. On the other hand, some end Jesus’s words after v. 13. Carson, however, argues that reference to the Son of Man is so characteristic of Jesus that v. 14 must come from him,[1] and the sentence structure and logic brings v. 15 with it. The term rendered “one and only Son” (monogenēs) in v. 16 is elsewhere never used by Jesus but only by the author (1:14, 18; 1 John 4:9). So John 3:16 is probably the beginning of John’s comments on what Jesus has said to Nicodemus.

Although the one who would “lift up” Jesus in v. 14 isn’t specified, surely the purpose of the lifting stated in v. 15, “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life,” is God’s purpose for the lifting. Therefore, he’s the one who would do it, parallel to Moses, who was the one who lifted up the snake in the wilderness. The provision of eternal life for all who would believe was the reason for the cross. The word “for” in v. 16 then introduces God’s motivation for wanting people to have eternal life—his love for the world.

The standard word for love in Hebrew (ʾahab) is first used of God’s love in Deut 4:37: “Because he loved your fathers, he chose their descendants after them and brought you out of Egypt by his presence and great power.” It’s found next in Deut 7:7–8: “The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. Because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your fathers, he brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” The basis for God’s love is never explained except to say that it isn’t based on our loveliness. We might call it the “unmoved mover” hidden in the heart of God. That doesn’t mean that God’s love has no foundation or cause, and it certainly isn’t random or arbitrary. It just means that God has not divulged to us his reasons for loving his rebellious, corrupt, selfish, wicked human creations. What we do know is that it’s the basis for his work of redemption. He’s not a cold, calculating, Machiavellian God, just using us for his own purposes. Rather, he’s motivated by love for us. Out of love for a rebellious world he promised to send a human offspring to crush Satan’s head. Out of love for the world he preserved Noah and his family. Out of love he chose Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David, through whom he would bless the nations. Out of love he raised up Joseph and Mary and sent Jesus, the one and only Son of God, into the world as a light to the nations. And out of love he lifted up Jesus on the cross as the ultimate and final Lamb of God. He would be the sacrifice that would take away the sin of the world. Also out of love, Paul tells us that God has given us his Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). Furthermore, nothing can stand against us, and we will be “more than conquerors” because of God’s love, from which nothing can separate us (Rom 8:35, 37, 39). This is because the length, width, height, and depth of God’s love for us is incalculable (Eph 3:18). Therefore, the one who loved us “to the end” (John 13:1) will love us forever and will continue to be on our side.

So John 3:16 tells us two things about God’s love. It tells us how God has shown us his love, and it tells us the limitlessness of God’s love. The rendering of the KJV, “For God so loved,” is not wrong but has almost certainly been misunderstood. The word for “so” does not mean “so much” but “thus, in this way.” Elsewhere it often follows “just as” and means “so also” and can even be a conjunction meaning “so then.” It’s used 14 times in John and never with the meaning “so much.” For example, in 3:8 Jesus says, “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So [or “thus”] it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” In 3:14, Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so [or “so also”] the Son of Man must be lifted up.” In 7:46, the temple guards sent to arrest Jesus returned to the chief priests and Pharisees empty-handed and explained, “No man ever spoke like this [that is, “thus”]!” Finally, after the resurrection, John tells us in 21:1, “After this, Jesus revealed himself again to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias. He revealed himself in this way.” Then he proceeds to recount the incident of Jesus appearing to the fishermen from the shore. In 1 John 4:9, our author even paraphrases John 3:16 but uses another Greek construction, meaning “by this,” that everyone recognizes as expressing manner: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”

The first point of John 3:16, then, is to tell us that God, after demonstrating his love for the world by promising salvation, then choosing the human instruments through whom he would bring salvation, then by showing his saving power in the exodus from Egypt and later even in a new exodus from Babylon, has finally, “in these last days” (as Hebrews 1:2 says), not only sent but “given” us his “one and only Son,” through whom we can have eternal life only by believing in him. This is how we know God loves us.

John’s second point is how much God loves us. It comes from the fact that just as Abraham was prepared to give his “only son Isaac, whom [he] loved” to God out of a combination of fear, faith, and love (Gen 22:1, 12, 16; Heb 11:17), so God gave us his “one and only Son” out of love. Scripture gives us many heart-wrenching pictures of the love of a parent for an only son or only child and the boundless pain felt at their loss (see Judg 11:34; 2 Sam 18:33; Jer 6:26; Amos 8:10; Zech 12:10; Luke 7:12; 9:38). We only have to look at Abraham, Jephthah, and David to be moved by their grief and so to feel the love of God for giving up his only Son. Just listen to David’s grief: “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!” This shows the limitlessness of God’s love for us. As Paul says, “If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” So we know that God will spare no expense, no price is too much, he will go to any lengths to show us his love. It has no bounds.

Much more could and should be said about this verse. We could discuss the significance of the word “world,” which John uses of darkness and unbelief. As Carson says, “God’s love is to be admired not because the world is so big and includes so many people, but because the world is so bad.”[2] Then we could examine the verb “give” and ponder the nature of the divine sacrifice. We could also meditate on the phrase “everyone who believes,” rendered in the KJV by the powerful “whosoever believeth.” We could also wrestle with the meaning of the verb “perish” as the opposite of eternal life. And finally, we could discuss the nature of “eternal life” and the fact that John speaks of it not only quantitatively, as life without end—everlasting—but also qualitatively, a sharing in the divine life.

[1] Carson, 203.

[2] Carson, 205.

John’s Discourse on the Jesus-Nicodemus dialogue (3:16–21)—God’s Motivation of Love (3:16)

16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Interpreters differ as to where Jesus’s speech ends. The red letters in the CSB continue through v. 21. On the other hand, some end Jesus’s words after v. 13. Carson, however, argues that reference to the Son of Man is so characteristic of Jesus that v. 14 must come from him,[1] and the sentence structure and logic brings v. 15 with it. The term rendered “one and only Son” (monogenēs) in v. 16 is elsewhere never used by Jesus but only by the author (1:14, 18; 1 John 4:9). So John 3:16 is probably the beginning of John’s comments on what Jesus has said to Nicodemus.

Although the one who would “lift up” Jesus in v. 14 isn’t specified, surely the purpose of the lifting stated in v. 15, “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life,” is God’s purpose for the lifting. Therefore, he’s the one who would do it, parallel to Moses, who was the one who lifted up the snake in the wilderness. The provision of eternal life for all who would believe was the reason for the cross. The word “for” in v. 16 then introduces God’s motivation for wanting people to have eternal life—his love for the world.

The standard word for love in Hebrew (ʾahab) is first used of God’s love in Deut 4:37: “Because he loved your fathers, he chose their descendants after them and brought you out of Egypt by his presence and great power.” It’s found next in Deut 7:7–8: “The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. Because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your fathers, he brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” The basis for God’s love is never explained except to say that it isn’t based on our loveliness. We might call it the “unmoved mover” hidden in the heart of God. That doesn’t mean that God’s love has no foundation or cause, and it certainly isn’t random or arbitrary. It just means that God has not divulged to us his reasons for loving his rebellious, corrupt, selfish, wicked human creations. What we do know is that it’s the basis for his work of redemption. He’s not a cold, calculating, Machiavellian God, just using us for his own purposes. Rather, he’s motivated by love for us. Out of love for a rebellious world he promised to send a human offspring to crush Satan’s head. Out of love for the world he preserved Noah and his family. Out of love he chose Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David, through whom he would bless the nations. Out of love he raised up Joseph and Mary and sent Jesus, the one and only Son of God, into the world as a light to the nations. And out of love he lifted up Jesus on the cross as the ultimate and final Lamb of God. He would be the sacrifice that would take away the sin of the world. Also out of love, Paul tells us that God has given us his Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). Furthermore, nothing can stand against us, and we will be “more than conquerors” because of God’s love, from which nothing can separate us (Rom 8:35, 37, 39). This is because the length, width, height, and depth of God’s love for us is incalculable (Eph 3:18). Therefore, the one who loved us “to the end” (John 13:1) will love us forever and will continue to be on our side.

So John 3:16 tells us two things about God’s love. It tells us how God has shown us his love, and it tells us the limitlessness of God’s love. The rendering of the KJV, “For God so loved,” is not wrong but has almost certainly been misunderstood. The word for “so” does not mean “so much” but “thus, in this way.” Elsewhere it often follows “just as” and means “so also” and can even be a conjunction meaning “so then.” It’s used 14 times in John and never with the meaning “so much.” For example, in 3:8 Jesus says, “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So [or “thus”] it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” In 3:14, Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so [or “so also”] the Son of Man must be lifted up.” In 7:46, the temple guards sent to arrest Jesus returned to the chief priests and Pharisees empty-handed and explained, “No man ever spoke like this [that is, “thus”]!” Finally, after the resurrection, John tells us in 21:1, “After this, Jesus revealed himself again to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias. He revealed himself in this way.” Then he proceeds to recount the incident of Jesus appearing to the fishermen from the shore. In 1 John 4:9, our author even paraphrases John 3:16 but uses another Greek construction, meaning “by this,” that everyone recognizes as expressing manner: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”

The first point of John 3:16, then, is to tell us that God, after demonstrating his love for the world by promising salvation, then choosing the human instruments through whom he would bring salvation, then by showing his saving power in the exodus from Egypt and later even in a new exodus from Babylon, has finally, “in these last days” (as Hebrews 1:2 says), not only sent but “given” us his “one and only Son,” through whom we can have eternal life only by believing in him. This is how we know God loves us.

John’s second point is how much God loves us. It comes from the fact that just as Abraham was prepared to give his “only son Isaac, whom [he] loved” to God out of a combination of fear, faith, and love (Gen 22:1, 12, 16; Heb 11:17), so God gave us his “one and only Son” out of love. Scripture gives us many heart-wrenching pictures of the love of a parent for an only son or only child and the boundless pain felt at their loss (see Judg 11:34; 2 Sam 18:33; Jer 6:26; Amos 8:10; Zech 12:10; Luke 7:12; 9:38). We only have to look at Abraham, Jephthah, and David to be moved by their grief and so to feel the love of God for giving up his only Son. Just listen to David’s grief: “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!” This shows the limitlessness of God’s love for us. As Paul says, “If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” So we know that God will spare no expense, no price is too much, he will go to any lengths to show us his love. It has no bounds.

Much more could and should be said about this verse. We could discuss the significance of the word “world,” which John uses of darkness and unbelief. As Carson says, “God’s love is to be admired not because the world is so big and includes so many people, but because the world is so bad.”[2] Then we could examine the verb “give” and ponder the nature of the divine sacrifice. We could also meditate on the phrase “everyone who believes,” rendered in the KJV by the powerful “whosoever believeth.” We could also wrestle with the meaning of the verb “perish” as the opposite of eternal life. And finally, we could discuss the nature of “eternal life” and the fact that John speaks of it not only quantitatively, as life without end—everlasting—but also qualitatively, a sharing in the divine life.

[1] Carson, 203.

[2] Carson, 205.

The Impossibility of Starting Over (John 3:3–8)

The Amazing News of New Birth (3:3–8)

       3 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”

       5 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. 8 The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

The Impossibility of Starting Over

How can I become a new person? That’s evidently the question millions of people are asking, since marketing tells us that so many products and services have the ability to make a new man or a new woman out of us. We all want a make-over, or a do-over. We want another chance to get it right. It would be nice sometimes just to hit RESET or to REBOOT. Sometimes we think a change of circumstances or location will fix us, but it never does, because we’re still there. One evening at a restaurant Gigi told me about a song she really liked. She played it for me and I liked it too. I even made part of it her ringtone when she calls me. It’s a Lynyrd Skynyrd song called “Free Bird.” Here are some of the lyrics.

Things just couldn’t be the same
Cause I’m as free as a bird now
And this bird you’ll never change
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
And this bird you cannot change
And this bird you cannot change
Lord knows, I can’t change
Lord help me, I can’t change
Lord, I can’t change

Is the songwriter right?

When I was about 19 and in college, I was just beginning to grow in Christ. I bought a notebook at the college store and started recording what I was learning and what I was thinking about. Being a wannabe poet, I tried to express my longings in a poem.

Dear God, forgive this feeble species
for adulterating our only source of life—
for fragmenting Christ into a million different pieces,
and then changing each to suit ourselves.
If only we could start again—
erase all that we have done and begin anew
to see the essence of life as you have shown it,
and carry the picture of Christ with us through all.
But how can the mind of man lose what it has taught itself
and start again to know of Christ?

Even if we could start again, the second time around might be even worse. So starting over can be scary. It can also be discouraging. No one likes to have to go back to the start in a game, especially if you’re close to the finish line. It can even be humiliating. In the movie Regarding Henry, Harrison Ford plays an unscrupulous, ruthless lawyer, whose wife and daughter hate him. Then he gets shot by a robber and suffers brain damage and memory loss. He doesn’t recognize anyone and has to relearn to talk, walk, eat, read, and write. But he learns all those things and to everyone’s surprise becomes a kind, gentle, loving man. I can testify as well that starting over can be painful and humiliating. So can Moses, who had to start over. So can the apostle Paul. In John 3, Jesus meets a man who needs to start over, but who is either unable or unwilling to recognize it. After all, he is “a man from the Pharisees, . . . a ruler of the Jews,” a prominent “teacher of Israel” (lit. “the teacher of Israel”) named Nicodemus.

Nicodemus began his conversation with Jesus by stating what “we know.” I went to seminary full of questions. I think I irritated my fellow students in class sometimes by asking so many questions. Many of the students had been to Christian colleges and knew many things I had not been exposed to in my studies in anthropology in a secular university. I think many of the professors spoke more to them than to me and assumed knowledge that I didn’t have. I may also have been a bit skeptical and wanted to make sure the professors had good reasons for the things they were saying. Other students asked questions too, of course. I often thought their questions were intended more to show off what they knew than to gain new knowledge and understanding. Nicodemus may have been like one of these. He was a Jewish teacher and leader and wanted to begin by making sure Jesus knew he wasn’t ignorant or stupid. He and his buddies knew some things. Jesus wasn’t talking to a religious novice. After making this point, perhaps Nicodemus meant to continue with a question about the finer points of the kingdom of God. But he never got there. Jesus knew what was on his heart and “replied” to the unstated question. He wasn’t impressed with what Nicodemus knew.

What Jesus said was surely meant to baffle Nicodemus and make him aware of what he didn’t know. Verse 7 tells us Nicodemus was “amazed” by what Jesus told him. In v. 8 Jesus even uses an illustration of the “wind” (the same word meaning “spirit”), and says to Nicodemus, “you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going.” Jesus is calling his attention to the vastness of Nicodemus’s ignorance. When Nicodemus confirms his ignorance with a question in v. 9, Jesus even humiliatingly asks, “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” In other words, “Is it possible that you aren’t really as smart as you thought you were?” When I was a teenager I ran across this ancient proverb:

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool, shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a student, teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep, awaken him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise, follow him.

Jesus is clearly the wise man. But when Nicodemus came to Jesus, he seems to have been a fool. Fortunately for him and for us, though, Jesus did not shun him.

The repetition of several terms in these verses helps us identify what we should pay special attention to. We’ve already noticed the word “know,” which occurs three times. Another such word that occurs six times in vv. 2–9 is easily overlooked. The Greek word is dunamai (related to English “dynamite”), meaning “to be able/possible.” Its importance is masked in English by having to translate it with such words as “could,” “cannot,” and “can.” Nicodemus uses it first when he informs Jesus of what he knows: No one is able to perform such signs unless he is God’s messenger. Jesus does not disagree, but he wants to redirect Nicodemus’s attention. He picks up Nicodemus’s word and says, in effect, “You think it’s impossible to do such things without being sent by God? I’ll tell you something even more impossible. It’s impossible for anyone to even see God’s kingdom without being born again (or “from above”). Later Jesus talks about entering the kingdom. Perhaps he is alluding here to Moses, who at first was allowed only to see the promised land (Deut 34:1–4).

But Nicodemus misses Jesus’s point about seeing God’s kingdom and focuses on the impossibility of being born again because he thinks it involves the impossibility of reentering his mother’s womb and then coming out again. Jesus, he thinks, is talking nonsense. The word translated “again” usually means “from above,” as in 3:31 (“The one who comes from above [Jesus] is above all. The one who is from the earth is earthly and speaks in earthly terms”) and 19:11 (where Jesus tells Pilate, “You would have no authority over me at all . . . if it hadn’t been given you from above”). But Nicodemus takes it according to its alternate meaning of “again,” which fits the context here too but causes Nicodemus to misunderstand. Jesus tries again to focus Nicodemus’s attention on the kingdom of God by pointing out the impossibility of entering it without being “born of water and the Spirit.” This phrase should cause Nicodemus to realize he’s talking about something spiritual, not physical. But it doesn’t help. A birth brought about by the Spirit seems to Nicodemus to be just as impossible. He responds in v. 9 (lit.), “How is it possible for these things to occur?” He is not only baffled but incredulous. Part of Nicodemus’s difficulty may have been the assumption of most Jews that God’s kingdom was something coming in the future and, more important, was something faithful Jews already had a ticket for since Abraham was their father (see John 8:33–40).

Another interesting repetition that’s easily missed is the word “unless,” which occurs three times (lit. “if not”). Some things are impossible unless something else is true. That is, there is one and only one thing that can make the otherwise impossible possible. It’s absolutely essential, the sine qua non, a Latin phrase meaning “without which nothing.” Life is impossible, for example, unless oxygen is present. Even water requires oxygen. It’s also impossible to play ball unless we have a ball. It’s the sine qua non of ball playing. It’s also impossible to enter a foreign country unless you have a valid passport. Nicodemus is again the one to use this word first, and Jesus picks it up for a reason. Doing the things Jesus did would be impossible unless he is doing God’s work. That’s the one necessary thing, Nicodemus recognizes, the sine qua non, that can make Jesus’s works possible. Jesus responds that an even more amazing and essential thing that can make the impossible possible is the new birth. It’s the only thing that can turn the impossibility of seeing the kingdom of God into a possibility. Jesus underlines its importance by saying it again in different words in v. 5. Being “born again” means to be “born of water and the Spirit.” It’s the only thing that can make entrance into God’s kingdom possible.

No one could miss the importance of the word “born” in vv. 3–8. It occurs eight times—more than any other word. In v. 6 Jesus explains that birth is what determines whether someone is “flesh” or “spirit.” He is not speaking in Pauline terms of our sinful nature, but rather of our being strictly human and therefore powerless when it comes to spiritual realities. Being “spirit” is absolutely essential to entering God’s kingdom. So how does one become spirit? This is another recurring word in these verses. It’s the Greek word pneuma. It occurs five times here, although with three different meanings. In v. 6 it describes the spiritual nature of someone who is able to enter God’s kingdom: we must be “spirit.” It can also refer to “wind,” as Jesus uses it in v. 8 for what “blows where it pleases.” It’s what Nicodemus often hears but has no ability to understand. But the first and most important appearance of pneuma is in v. 5, when Jesus says one must be “born . . . of the Spirit.” Jesus uses the phrase again in vv. 6 and 8. In these verses it refers to the One we consider the third Person of the Godhead or Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

A repeated phrase in these verses helps us understand how important the Spirit is. This phrase is found on the lips of Jesus in John’s Gospel 25 times. The KJV rendered it literally if oddly (to modern ears): “Verily, verily, I say unto thee.” I like “Most assuredly, I tell you.” Its purpose is to mark especially important things Jesus has to say. The first time Jesus uses it is in 1:51 introducing his promise that the disciples would see heaven opened. He uses it with Nicodemus in v. 3 when he declares how impossible it is to see God’s kingdom without the new birth. Then he uses it again in v. 5 when he explains that it’s impossible to enter God’s kingdom without being “born of water and the Spirit.” Only God’s Spirit can cause a spiritual birth that can take a person who is nothing but flesh—earthbound humanity—and make them “spirit,” that is, having a new, spiritual nature. Only people radically transformed by God’s Spirit can enter God’s kingdom. The reason Jesus’s message to Nicodemus is so important is that he has not yet experienced it. He thinks he can approach the kingdom on the basis of what “we know.” He’s no more equipped to enter the kingdom of God than a shrimp is to whistle, a caterpillar or a robin’s egg is to fly, or a tadpole to hop, croak, and eat flies. Nicodemus is nothing but flesh. That’s why he can’t even understand what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus’s message to Nicodemus teaches us that the things we often value so much because we think they make us special are nothing but useless baggage and a crushing millstone on our spiritual journey (Phil 3:3–9). This may include our pedigree or ancestry, what our forefathers may have been or done, the clubs or other groups we may belong to, our education, our experience, our “scars,” our accomplishments or honors, or the accomplishments or honors won by our children or even friends (“the mayor is a personal friend of mine”). All those things can be nothing but worthless hindrances to entering an eternal relationship with God.

But if Nicodemus did come to experience rebirth by the Holy Spirit, as he evidently did, not only was he granted entry into the kingdom of God, but he was radically changed into a new man. Before he came to know Jesus, if someone had asked him who he was, doubtless he would said something like “I’m Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, a teacher of Israel.” Afterward, his answer would have been quite different.