The Son of Man Lifted Up

Nicodemus heard about the wind of the Spirit and still could not get it. How can these things be (John 3:9)? He came with a compliment and a question, and he is about to leave with the Gospel of John in miniature.

John 3:9-12 — The teacher who did not know

Jesus does not soften it. You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this (John 3:10)? The man had the Law, the Prophets, and Ezekiel’s promise of water and a new Spirit (Ezekiel 36:25-27). He had read it. He did not see it, because seeing the kingdom takes a birth he did not have (John 3:3).

Jesus says He speaks what He knows and testifies to what He has seen, and they do not receive it (John 3:11). If they will not believe Him about earthly things, like a birth that happens to men on earth, how will they believe Him about heavenly things (John 3:12)? The problem is not missing information. It is the heart of the man hearing it (John 8:43-47) (1 Corinthians 2:14).

John 3:13 — The only One who came down

No one has gone up into Heaven except the One who came down from Heaven, the Son of Man (John 3:13). Every other teacher speaks from below. Moses went up a mountain. Christ came down from the Father’s side (John 1:18; John 6:38). He is not a rabbi reporting on Heaven. He is Heaven’s own Witness standing in a dark room with a Pharisee.

John 3:14-15 — Lifted up like the serpent

Then Jesus reaches for a story Nicodemus knew cold. In the wilderness, Israel complained, God sent fiery serpents, and the people died. God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole, and whoever was bitten and looked at it lived (Numbers 21:4-9). In the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him has eternal life (John 3:14-15).

Notice the must. The cross is not a plan that went wrong. It was set before the foundation of the world (Acts 2:23; Acts 4:27-28) (1 Peter 1:19-20) (Revelation 13:8). And notice what saved the bitten Israelite. He did not climb the pole, bandage himself, or argue with the snake. He looked. The looking did not heal him. God’s appointed remedy did.

John 3:16-17 — In this way God loved

Here is the verse every man has seen on a sign at a ball game. God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Read it the way John uses his words. The world in John is not a compliment. It is the order of men that did not know its Maker and hates His Son (John 1:10; John 7:7; John 15:18-19). God’s love is great because its object is so bad (Romans 5:8). And it is not a love for Israel only. It reaches men from every tribe and tongue, the scattered children of God gathered into one (John 11:51-52) (Revelation 5:9).

Look at how He loved. He gave. Not an offer left on the table, waiting to see if anyone bites. He gave the Son with a purpose, that the believing ones would not perish. And who are the believing ones? John has already told you. Those born not of blood or the will of man, but of God (John 1:12-13). Those the Father gives the Son, every one of whom comes, and none of whom is cast out (John 6:37-39). The love that gave the Son is the same love that gives the new birth by which a man looks and lives (Ephesians 2:4-5).

God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:17). He came as Rescuer first. The judging comes later, and He will do that too (John 5:22, 27).

John 3:18-20 — Condemned already

The man who believes in Him is not condemned. The man who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God (John 3:18). Unbelief does not put a man in danger. It leaves him where he already stood (Ephesians 2:3).

This is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil (John 3:19). Every man who does wicked things hates the light and will not come to it, so his deeds will not be exposed (John 3:20). Here is the plain diagnosis of free will. Left alone, man does not drift toward Christ. He runs from Him and calls it freedom (Romans 3:10-18; Romans 8:7).

John 3:21 — Wrought in God

But the man who does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be plainly seen that his deeds have been worked in God (John 3:21). That is the last word, and it settles who did the work. The man who comes did not manufacture his coming. He comes, and his coming shows that God already worked in him (Philippians 2:12-13) (Ephesians 2:10).

Nicodemus walked out into the night. He would come back into the light later, in public, with a hundred pounds of spices for a crucified King (John 7:50-51; John 19:39-40). The wind blew where it wished.