John 3 - The New International Commentary

3:1 Someone once said, “If you want people to read what you’ve written, don’t write about Man, write about a man.” The repetition of the noun “person” or “man” (anthrōpos) links the story of Nicodemus closely to what precedes. Having hinted at the evil in the heart of the human “person” generally (2:25), the writer now focuses on one “person” in particular. Nicodemus is the first character since chapter 1 to be identified by name,* and he is further described both as a man “of the Pharisees” and “a ruler of the Jews.” The mild adversative in the expression, “But there was one person,” raises the question of how typical Nicodemus is of the “many” who “believed in Jesus’ name” and to whom he did not “entrust himself” (2:23–25). Is Nicodemus a typical example of this group or is he an exception? Did Jesus “entrust himself” to Nicodemus or not?

On the face of it, there are signals that raise suspicions. Not only is Nicodemus part of a group whose faith Jesus did not find acceptable, but he belongs both to “the Jews” and to “the Pharisees” in particular, that is, to those who had sent a delegation to John (1:19, 24), and been told that John proclaimed One “whom you do not know” (1:26). As one of “the Jews,” he seems to belong with those who had challenged Jesus’ authority at the temple (2:18, 20). More specifically, he is “a ruler [archōn] of the Jews.”* By “ruler” it is frequently understood that he belonged to the Jewish ruling council, or Sanhedrin,* but this is far from certain. More likely, the term is used more generally here to refer to a leader of some kind among the Jewish people (see “Israel’s teacher,” v. 10). While the “many” who believed at this first Passover are not identified as “rulers,” the group mentioned later who “believed in him but because of the Pharisees would not confess him” are introduced specifically as “rulers” (12:42). The Gospel writer, even while suggesting that the faith of such “rulers” was inadequate, seems to take a certain satisfaction in pointing out their attraction to Jesus and his teachings. Later, when the Pharisees ask (rhetorically), “Have any of the rulers believed in him, or any of the Pharisees?” (7:48–49), the writer quickly brings Nicodemus, both ruler and Pharisee, on the scene (7:50–51)* as if in refutation of their claim, confirming the impression here that he belongs to those who “believed in his name” at this first Passover.

2 Nicodemus “came to him,” just as Jesus had come to John (1:29) and Nathanael had come to Jesus earlier (1:47). Wherever this expression occurs in the Gospel, it raises at least a possibility that the person is “coming” in faith, or giving allegiance in some way (see 3:26; 5:40; 6:35, 37, 44–45, 65; 7:37; 10:41; note especially the parallelism between “coming to me” and “believing in me” in 6:35 and 7:37–38). This appears to be the case here. If he was one of those who “believed in his name” (2:23), it is natural that Nicodemus “came to him.”* But why “at night”? It is not uncommon for this writer to pay attention to the time of year (10:22) or time of day, whether the precise “hour” (1:39; 4:6; 19:14) or more generally, “night” (13:30; 21:3; compare 6:16–17; 20:19) or “morning” (18:28; 20:1; 21:4). Here it is important to distinguish between Nicodemus’s possible reason for coming at night and the Gospel writer’s reason for calling attention to it. As for the first, he may have come out of fear, or a desire for secrecy. This would align him with those other “rulers” who believed in Jesus, but “because of the Pharisees would not confess him for fear of being put out of the synagogue” (12:42). Later, his companion, Joseph of Arimathea, is said to have been “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews” (19:38). At that point Nicodemus himself is reintroduced, and possibly the accompanying reminder that he had come to Jesus “at night” (19:39) implies that he too was a secret disciple, and for the same reason. But in contrast to the “rulers” of 12:42, who “loved the glory of humans instead of the glory of God” (12:43), the writer puts no blame either on Joseph in chapter 19 or on Nicodemus here.*

As for the Gospel writer, why does he call our attention to “night” as the setting of the encounter? Every other use of “night” in this Gospel has negative associations. “Night” was when Judas departed (13:30). “Night” was when the disciples caught no fish (21:3). “Night” is when “no one can work” (9:4), and when someone who tries to walk “stumbles because the light is not in him” (11:10). It is virtually equivalent to “the dark” (3:19) or “the darkness” (1:5; 8:12; 12:35, 46) in this Gospel. But what does this say about Nicodemus? Did he come at night because he “loved the dark” (3:19) and “walked in the darkness” (8:12; 12:35)? Or did he come out of the darkness, offering allegiance to One already identified as “the Light” (see 1:4–9)? On this reading, Nicodemus “comes to the Light, so that his works will be revealed as works wrought in God” (v. 21).* The reader has little basis on which to decide between the two options, and for the time being must leave Nicodemus’s motives and spiritual condition an open question.

Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know* you have come from God as a teacher.” There is no reason to doubt either his sincerity or the aptness of his characterization of Jesus. “Rabbi” is the same designation by which the disciples addressed Jesus earlier (1:38, 49), and instead of explicitly translating it again as “teacher” (as in 1:38), the Gospel writer allows Nicodemus to do it for him. The use of the title marks Nicodemus as a disciple (see 3:26; 4:31; 9:2; 11:8), or at least a potential disciple (6:25). Jesus is known to his disciples in this Gospel as “Teacher,” and he accepts that designation (13:13–14). In recognizing Jesus as one who has “come from God,” Nicodemus is saying as much as Jesus’ disciples were willing to say later even after lengthy instruction prior to his passion (16:30). Yet the acknowledgment does not in itself imply either Jesus’ preexistence, or that he has come down from God in heaven (compare vv. 13; 6:33, 38, 42, 63). The reader knows these things (from 1:1–14), but also knows that even John could be identified as a man “sent from God” (1:6) with no connotations of preexistence or divinity at all. Whatever one may say about Nicodemus’s faith, his knowledge is far from complete. The reader is way ahead of him. But when Nicodemus goes on to mention “these signs,” the immediate impression is just the opposite: Nicodemus, like the rest of the Passover believers, seems to know of “signs” done in Jerusalem that the reader knows nothing about. This, as we have seen, is unlikely (see 2:23). “Signs” here (as in 2:23) should be understood rather as “deeds” or “works”* that the reader does know about: that is, Jesus’ provocative actions in the temple, and (since Nicodemus calls him “teacher”) perhaps his words as well. To Nicodemus they are “signs” because he finds them significant, drawing from them the conclusion that Jesus has “come from God” because “God is with him.”*

3 A casual reading could suggest that Jesus simply ignores what Nicodemus has just said, but this is not the case. Rather, the form of Nicodemus’s comment, “no one can do these signs … unless God is with him” (v. 2), anticipates the form of Jesus’ immediate response (v. 3): “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (italics added). Jesus’ words echo, even mimic, Nicodemus’s words of praise, reversing the clauses so that together the two pronouncements form a chiasm.* Far from ignoring Nicodemus’s comment, he matches one impossibility with another. Just as it is impossible to do what Jesus has been doing unless “God is with him,” so it is impossible to “see the kingdom of God” unless one is “born from above.” With this a dialogue begins, clearly marked off like the dialogue between Jesus and “the Jews” at the temple in 2:18–20. That is, Jesus “answered and said to him” (v. 3); Nicodemus “says to him” (v. 4); Jesus “answered” (v. 5); Nicodemus “answered and said to him” (v. 9); Jesus “answered and said to him” (v. 10). The last answer concludes the dialogue as Nicodemus fades from the scene.

This second “Amen, amen” pronouncement, like the first (1:51), is Jesus’ reply to an acknowledgment of who he is by someone addressing him as “Rabbi” (Nathanael in 1:49, and now Nicodemus). This time he speaks to Nicodemus alone rather than to a group, as in the case of Nathanael.* Yet the necessity of rebirth is not just for Nicodemus but for “someone” or anyone (tis), and the intended audience will become more inclusive as the dialogue proceeds (see vv. 7, 11, and 12), maintaining the impression that Nicodemus is representative of a larger group. The phrase “born from above” (that is, anōthen) recalls for the reader the elaborate characterization of God’s “children” as those born “not of blood lines, nor of fleshly desire, nor a husband’s desire,” but “born of God” (1:13).* It is not a matter of physical birth, but of divine rebirth or transformation.* The reader can recognize, therefore, that “from above” means simply “of God,” or “from God.”* God must become Father* to those who would “see the kingdom of God.”

While Jesus has been hailed as “King of Israel” (1:49), the phrase “the kingdom of God” is mentioned only twice in the entire Gospel of John: here and in Jesus’ attempted clarification in verse 5 (compare “my kingdom,” repeated three times in 18:36). To “see the kingdom of God” could mean either to have a visionary experience like that promised to Nathanael and his companions (1:51),* or to experience salvation. Jesus speaks often in the synoptic Gospels of “entering” or “inheriting” the kingdom of God, but only once of “see[ing] the kingdom of God.” Some of “those standing here,” he said, “will not taste of death until they see the kingdom of God” (Lk 9:27). Luke implies that this was fulfilled eight days later when three of the disciples “saw his glory” (9:32). Here in John’s Gospel it is those who were “born of God” who “looked at his glory” when “the Word came in human flesh” (1:13–14), and to whom “he revealed his glory” in Cana of Galilee (2:11). “Seeing glory” (17:24) or “seeing life” (3:36) are also expressions for final salvation, however, and the same is true of “seeing the kingdom of God” (compare v. 5, where Jesus explains “seeing” as “entering”). Nicodemus (unlike the “ruler” who questioned Jesus in Lk 18:18) has not asked about salvation or eternal life, but Jesus responds to him as if he had: salvation is impossible—unless a person is “born from above.”*

4 His reply indicates that Nicodemus hears the pronouncement very differently from the reader: “How can a person be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” (italics added). First, it is often assumed that he hears the adverb anōthen not as “from above” (which would make no sense to him), but as “again.”* In one sense, this is not a misunderstanding because it would seem that a birth “from above” is necessarily a second, or new, birth.* But a better way of putting it is that he seems not to have heard the adverb at all. His reply focuses solely on the notion that a person already alive must be “born.” Such a birth is by definition a “new” or “second” birth, even without an accompanying adjective or adverb.* Second, he hears “born” as a reference to physical birth as from a “mother’s womb,” not to the act of begetting, as from a father, whether human or divine.* His rhetorical questions assume that Jesus is calling for a second physical birth, and Nicodemus dismisses any such idea as “impossible” and patently absurd.* With this he becomes a spokesman for precisely the kind of misunderstanding the Gospel writer warned against at the outset (“not of blood lines, nor of fleshly desire, nor a husband’s desire,” 1:13). As far as the reader is concerned, the sarcasm backfires. What turns out to be ridiculous is not Jesus’ pronouncement, but Nicodemus’s crudely literal interpretation of it. Entering the womb a second time is as absurd as building a temple in three days (2:20), or having a camel go through the eye of a needle (see Mk 10:25). Yet at the same time the incredulous words, “How can?” and “Can he?” actually reinforce the point that salvation is “impossible” without the rebirth of which Jesus has spoken.

5 Jesus responds by restating what he said before in slightly different words: “Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and Spirit,* he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus calls attention to the adverb “from above,” which Nicodemus had overlooked, by redefining it as “of water and Spirit,”* and he redefines “seeing” as “entering” the kingdom of God. “Entering” picks up on Nicodemus’s own terminology about “entering” the mother’s womb, but brings the discussion back to the matter of salvation, which Nicodemus seems to be avoiding. It is not a question of “entering” the womb again (v. 4), but of “entering” the kingdom of God (see Mt 5:20; 7:21; 18:3; 19:23–24; Mk 9:47; 10:23–25; Lk 18:25; Acts 14:22). Jesus will develop the idea of being “born of the Spirit” in verses 6–8, but “water” is mentioned only here. Nicodemus will respond to neither.

The reference to “water and Spirit” has called a forth a variety of interpretations. The reader will notice, for example, that John earlier contrasted his own role of “baptizing in water” (1:26, 31, 33) with Jesus’ role as the One who would “baptize in Holy Spirit” (1:33). This suggests that being “born of water and Spirit” could have something to do with water baptism and baptism in the Spirit, whether viewed together or separately.* We will learn shortly that Jesus himself, like John, “baptized” (presumably in water) in Judea, to the point that his baptizing ministry was perceived as rivaling John’s (3:22, 26; 4:1–3). His comment here might therefore be understood as an endorsement of John’s ministry of baptism, and (if it had begun by this time) his own as well. Another proposal (mostly in popular literature) has been that “born of water” refers to physical birth, whether from the standpoint of water in the mother’s womb, or of water as a euphemism for the male sperm (compare 1 Jn 3:9).* This need not mean simply that a person must first be born physically (which should go without saying) and then born spiritually. The phrase could be read “of water, even Spirit,” with “water” expressing the idea of physical birth and “Spirit” making it immediately clear that physical birth is only a metaphor for the birth of which Jesus speaks.* Thus “born of water and Spirit” means simply “born of Spirit.”* Defenders of this view can point out that in verses 6 and 8 Jesus forgets about water and mentions only the Spirit. The difficulty, however, is that while “water” is a possible metaphor for physical birth, it is not an obvious one. The Gospel writer already used a number of expressions for physical birth and “born of water” was not among them (see 1:13).* He did this, moreover, in order to draw the sharpest possible contrast between physical and spiritual birth (“not” of blood lines, etc., “but” of God) rather than to point out analogies between them. In the present context Jesus himself will draw an equally sharp contrast between the two: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (v. 6). The incongruity of understanding water as physical birth can easily be seen by substituting “flesh” (which clearly does mean physical birth) for water, yielding a self-contradictory phrase, “born of flesh and Spirit” or “born of flesh, even Spirit.”

On the face of it the baptismal view has more in its favor, yet it sets rather narrow limits to the application of both “water” and “Spirit.” While both terms are used in connection with baptism (1:33), they are also used in a variety of other ways in this Gospel that have nothing to do with baptism. “Water,” for example, can evoke images either of cleansing (9:7; 13:5), or of sustaining life by the quenching of thirst (4:10–14; 6:35; 7:37–38), and in this respect it is explicitly identified as “the Spirit” (7:39). “Spirit,” too, can be either the “life-giving” Spirit (6:63) or the agent of purification (as in 1:33). As has often been observed, “water” and “Spirit” are governed by a single preposition (ek, “of,” or “from”), suggesting that they are viewed together here, not separately.* “Water” by itself, so far at least in the narrative, has no particular significance. The water of John’s baptism (1:26, 31) anticipates a greater baptism “in Holy Spirit” (1:33), and ordinary water (for “purification,” as it happens, 2:6) waits to be transformed into “the good wine” that reveals the glory of Jesus (2:9–10). Here, too, “water” needs “Spirit” in order to have significance.

Moreover, if “water and Spirit” together were introduced to explain “from above,” then the latter should in turn help explain “water and Spirit.” The reader’s first encounter with the Spirit in this Gospel was “coming down” from the sky (1:32–33), and the present passage confirms that first impression that the Spirit is indeed “from above.” Nor is it strange to think of water as coming “from above.” We need not imagine anything so esoteric as Odeberg’s celestial divine seed, or “efflux from above” (n. 41). We need only think of rain.* John’s Gospel never uses the imagery of rain, yet when Jesus tells the Samaritan woman of “living water,” and she asks him, “From where [pothen] do you have the living water?” (4:11), his implied (though unstated) answer is, “from above” (anōthen). The woman looks down into the well for her water, but Jesus has water from the opposite direction. Similarly, Nicodemus may not know from where (pothen) the wind comes (v. 8), but the reader knows that the Spirit is “from above.” As for the water in the pool of Siloam where the man born blind washed and received his sight, the Gospel writer pauses to remind us (9:7) that the very name “Siloam” means “sent,” as if from God in heaven.

In short, if both water and Spirit mean “life” in the Gospel of John, then birth from “water and Spirit” means the beginning of new life “from above,” or what this Gospel calls “eternal life” (zōē aiōnion). The word “life,” used only twice in the Gospel so far (1:4, “In him was life, and the life was the light of humans”), will recur again and again beginning in this chapter (vv. 15 and 16, twice in v. 36, plus thirty more occurrences in chapters 4–21).* “Born of water and Spirit,” therefore, becomes simply the writer’s way of defining “the kingdom of God” as “life” or “eternal life,” with the effect of actually replacing “kingdom of God” with “life” (the term “kingdom of God” never occurs again in the Gospel of John). Such an interpretation does not exclude a baptismal reference, but allows the reader to think more broadly about “water and Spirit” than simply the act of water baptism. It is confirmed by the fact that “water and Spirit” also evokes a number of biblical prophecies about spiritual cleansing in connection with the promise of a new covenant with the people of Israel,* yet even without knowing these prophecies the reader is well equipped (possibly at once, and certainly on a second reading or hearing) to understand Jesus’ words adequately within the framework of the Gospel itself.

6 Jesus continues by reminding Nicodemus of the principle that like produces like. In contrast to other expressions of this principle in the New Testament (for example, Mt 7:16–20; 12:33–35; Gal 6:7–8; Jas 3:12), his point is not that “flesh,” or “what is born of the flesh” (compare 1:13), is “at enmity with God” (compare Rom 8:7), or at war with “spirit” (compare Gal 5:17) or with “what is born of the Spirit” (compare Gal 4:29). His point is simply that “flesh” and “spirit” are different spheres of reality, each producing offspring like itself. “What is born,” whether of flesh or Spirit, is neuter here (in contrast to “everyone born” in v. 8), perhaps as an equivalent to the Greek neuter nouns “infant” or “child.”* “Flesh” is human nature, which, because it is mortal, tries to gain a kind of immortality by reproducing itself (see 1:13). Instead it produces only that which is mortal like itself. “Spirit” differs from “flesh” not in being immaterial as opposed to material, but in being immortal as opposed to mortal. “Flesh” is subject to death; “spirit” is not. Even the Word, when he “came in human flesh,” became subject to death, while “the Spirit” (and consequently “spirit”)* means life, and only life. This verse, with what precedes it, affords a basis in the Jesus tradition for Paul’s pronouncement that “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Cor 15:50). The latent implication of Jesus’ word is that those “born of the Spirit” are no longer “flesh” but are themselves “spirit” (see v. 8)—not that they are no longer human or no longer in the body, but that they “have eternal life” (compare vv. 15–16) and are consequently no longer mortal (compare 8:51; 11:26).

7 Jesus now repeats for yet a third time the notion that a person must be “born from above” (compare vv. 3, 5). “Don’t be surprised” is almost equivalent to “No wonder,” linking the pronouncement to what Jesus has just said in verse 6.* If it is true that “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (v. 6), then, of course, “You people have to be born from above.”* But the expression “you must” is not used here as an imperative, “Be born from above,” as if it were something a person could simply choose to do. The impersonal verb dei, “it is necessary,” points to a divine necessity (in John’s Gospel alone, see 3:14, 30; 4:4, 24; 9:4; 10:16; 12:34; 20:9).* Yet the necessity is not an inevitability, as if Jesus were promising, “You will be born from above, like it or not.” Rather, what “is necessary” is what God has decreed as the means by which a person sees or enters the kingdom of God. “You must be born from above” is simply a more direct and positive way of saying, “Unless you are born from above, you cannot see the kingdom of God.” This third formulation differs from the first two in speaking not of an indefinite “someone” (as in vv. 3 and 5), but specifically of “you” (hymas, plural). The pronoun embraces both Nicodemus and those he represents (compare his own use of the plural “we know” in v. 2), primarily the believers to whom Jesus “would not entrust himself” at this first Passover (2:23–24).* They had “believed in his name,” but something more was “necessary”: they had to be “born from above.”

8 Jesus now introduces an odd metaphor—odd because the metaphor and the reality it represents are expressed by the same noun (to pneuma), which can be translated as either “the Spirit” or “the wind.” The reader, in light of verses 5 and 6, would ordinarily read it as “the Spirit,” except that the accompanying verb, “blows” (pnei), is a word never used of the Spirit in the New Testament, but used quite naturally of the wind.* Moreover, its “sound” (phōnē) is far more easily understood as the sound of the wind than as the “voice” of the Holy Spirit.* Schnackenburg calls the verse “a short parable,” with the interpretation introduced by the words, “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”* The analogy is of course that the wind is invisible; we cannot see or know “where it comes from or where it goes,” or why it changes direction, yet we hear the sound of it and see its effects. Jesus could have then concluded simply, “So it is with the Spirit,” but this would have made no sense with the same word being used for both wind and Spirit. Consequently, he concludes by mentioning “everyone born of the Spirit” (echoing “what is born of the Spirit” in v. 6). Because “born of the wind” is not a plausible option, the reader knows that Jesus is once more using pneuma to mean “Spirit” (as in vv. 5–6),* and that “wind” was only a momentary metaphor.

What is less clear is whether or not Jesus’ words should be read as a conscious statement about “the children of God,” those who “received him” and “believed in his name” (compare 1:12–13), or would later do so—that is, about the author and readers of the Gospel themselves (the “we” of 1:14). Are Christian readers to infer that they are those whose origin and destiny, whose comings and goings, are a mystery to the rest of the world? Jesus will later make just such a statement about himself: “I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going” (8:14), and this will become a recurring theme in his teaching.* Unlike Nicodemus, who thought he knew that Jesus had “come from God as a teacher” (v. 2), his opponents later in the story will admit that “We do not know where this man is from” (9:29). Pilate will ask him, “Where do you come from?” and Jesus will not answer. He will tell his questioners and those sent to arrest him, “Where I go you cannot come,” and they will not understand what he means (7:34; 8:21). But there is no such mystery about the comings or goings of Jesus’ disciples. They, in fact, are as baffled as the Jewish authorities about where Jesus is from or where he is going. “You will seek me,” he tells them, “and just as I said to the Jews that where I go you cannot come, so I say to you now” (13:33). Only after many questions and much anxiety does he finally make known to them his origin and destiny: “I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going off to the Father” (16:28; compare 13:3). Even then, they seem to grasp only the first half of his pronouncement, coming back full circle to what Nicodemus had said at the beginning: “By this we believe that you have come from God” (16:30; compare 3:2).

Yet here, in speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus sees Christian believers, with all their limitations, in the same way he sees himself, as in some sense “from God”* and destined to return to God again.* While they may not know it,* Jesus knows it, and his pronouncement serves to remind the Gospel’s readers of their divine heritage and calling.* The readers, standing outside the story, are not subject to quite the same limitations as the disciples within the story. The reminder that the world does not understand them, even as it did not understand Jesus, places them in a privileged position, affirming their identity as a sectarian community belonging to God, a counterculture in a hostile society (compare 15:18–19).*

9–10 The dialogue now draws to a close as it began: Nicodemus “answered and said to him” (v. 9), and Jesus in turn “answered and said to him” (v. 10). Nicodemus’s last question, “How can these things be?” not only echoes his earlier question in verse 4 (“How can a person be born when he is old?”), but recalls the whole series of impossibilities that dominated verses 2–5: “no one can” (v. 2); “he cannot” (v. 3); “How can?” and “Can he?” (v. 4); “he cannot” (v. 5). Nicodemus is still unable to fathom the mystery of which Jesus has spoken. “These things” are not the elusive ways of the wind in Jesus’ metaphor, but (as in v. 4) the mystery of being born “of the Spirit” (v. 6) or “from above” (v. 7).*

“You are the teacher of Israel,” Jesus replies, “and you don’t understand these things!” There is strong irony in his words: “these things” (tauta) on Jesus’ lips echoes what Nicodemus has just said, and “the teacher” (where we might have expected simply “a teacher”) frames the whole dialogue of verses 2–10 by reminding us of Nicodemus’s initial confidence about Jesus that “we know that you have come from God as a teacher” (v. 2). Jesus, in a kind of mock confession,* now defers to Nicodemus as “the teacher” (ho didaskalos), while at the same time reminding him that he does not know or understand what Jesus is saying. Jesus’ reply can be punctuated as either a question or a statement of fact. Most commentators read it as a rhetorical question, expressing surprise that Nicodemus is not familiar with the new birth: “You are the teacher of Israel, and you don’t understand these things?” Sometimes the implication is drawn that “these things” are clearly taught in Jewish Scripture, and therefore quite accessible to Nicodemus and to all who faithfully study and teach the Scriptures. This, however, is not the case.* While the Hebrew Bible predicts the coming of the Spirit and freely uses the imagery of water, nothing in it prepares Nicodemus (or the Christian reader) for Jesus’ solemn declaration that “unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (v. 3). There is no interrogative particle here, and Jesus’ words can just as easily be read as an exclamation: “You are the teacher of Israel, and you don’t understand these things!”* The words “you don’t understand” simply confirm the repeated notion of impossibility (from the human standpoint) that has marked the dialogue from its beginning. The argument is from the greater to the lesser: if even “the teacher of Israel” does not understand this birth “from above,” how can anyone else? If there is surprise here, it is an ironic or feigned surprise, for Jesus has already stated clearly that Nicodemus has no knowledge or understanding (see v. 8) of the new birth or those “born of the Spirit.” Still, the question, “How can these things be?” was not an exercise in futility. The answer will come in due course, not by human wisdom or ingenuity but by divine revelation.

11 With this, “the teacher of Israel” disappears from the scene. If verse 10 was a question, it goes unanswered, and if it was an exclamation it puts Nicodemus to silence. He is still being addressed (“Amen, amen, I say to you,” singular), but he himself does not speak again until 7:50–51, when he offers a timid word in Jesus’ defense. For the third time in the chapter (compare vv. 3, 5) and the fourth time in the Gospel Jesus adopts the “Amen, amen” formula to introduce a series of pronouncements of special importance: “we speak what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, and you people do not receive our testimony.” The plural verbs “we speak,” “we know,” “we testify,” “we have seen,” and the plural pronoun “our” where we might have expected the singular “my,” are striking. This is the characteristic revelatory language of John’s Gospel, but when we hear it again it from Jesus’ lips it will always be in the first-person singular, not the plural: “I speak” (8:26, 38; 12:50), “I know” (8:14, 55), “I testify” (5:31; 8:14, 18), “I have seen” (8:38).

Why is it plural here? One possible answer is that Jesus includes his disciples with himself in the pronouncement. Just as Nicodemus is part of a larger group, so too is Jesus. Yet Jesus’ disciples have not been mentioned since 2:17 and 22. They play no explicit part in his encounter with Nicodemus, even though their presence with Jesus in Jerusalem is presupposed (see below, v. 22). Another suggestion is that Jesus aligns himself with the biblical prophets, or perhaps specifically with John, who was earlier said to “have seen” and “testified that this is the Son of God” (1:34). Another is that Jesus and the Father speak with one voice.* Still another is that the plurals refer not only to Jesus and his disciples within the narrative, but to his continuing testimony in and through the Johannine community in its mission to, and its conflict with, the Jewish synagogue at the time the Gospel was written.* Or perhaps Jesus is simply mocking Nicodemus, as he did with the phrase “the teacher of Israel,” by echoing the self-assured “we know” of verse 2.* A solemn “Amen, amen” pronouncement, however, is an unlikely vehicle for satire. Jesus is deadly serious in assuring Nicodemus of the validity of the revelation he brings to the world. The fact is that there is no way to tell who, if anyone, is included with Jesus in the “we” and the “our.” Plural or not, the accent is on Jesus’ activity, and his alone. As the writer will shortly make clear, it is “the One who comes from above” or “from heaven” (v. 31) of whom it is said, “What he has seen and heard, this he testifies, and no one receives his testimony” (v. 32), and this person can only be Jesus. In the present verse Jesus could just as easily have said, “I speak what I know, and I testify to what I have seen, and you people do not receive my testimony.”

The question therefore remains: Why the plurals? The most plausible answer is that it is still too early in the Gospel for Jesus to speak authoritatively in the first person as the Revealer of God. Aside from the “Amen, amen” formula itself, Jesus does not begin to speak authoritatively as “I” until he meets the Samaritan woman in chapter 4.* All ten of the occurrences of the emphatic “I” (egō) in chapters 1–3 are on the lips of John, not of Jesus.* Here if anywhere we might have expected it because here Jesus solemnly attests to the validity not of a single pronouncement (as with the “Amen, amen” formula) but of everything he has said or will say. He speaks with unique and sovereign authority, but the plurals serve to deflect the uniqueness somewhat until John has yielded up the spotlight to Jesus (vv. 27–30), and until Jesus has been more formally presented as “the One who comes from above” and who “testifies to what he has seen and heard” (vv. 31–32). Only then will Jesus be ready to use the emphatic “I,” and he promptly does so (repeatedly) in the next chapter.*

What is surprising about Jesus’ testimony, both here and elsewhere in the Gospel, is that it is based, like John’s, on what he has “seen” (compare “seen and heard,” v. 32). This we might have expected from John (see 1:34; 3:29), but not necessarily from Jesus—until we remembered that the Word was “with God in the beginning” (1:1–2) and that although “No one has seen God,” it was Jesus, “the One who is right beside the Father, who told about him” (1:18; also 5:37; 6:46; 8:38). Jesus, because of his preexistence, “speaks what he knows” and “testifies to what he has seen” in a way no human witness can do—not John (1:34), not the anonymous witness to the crucifixion (19:35), and not the Christian community (1 Jn 1:1–2). Their testimonies are all derivative, while his is the very fountainhead of Christian revelation. The conclusion, “you people* do not receive our testimony,” also echoes the opening account of Jesus’ reception in the world, “his own did not receive him” (1:11), and at the same time anticipates the notice that “no one receives his testimony” (3:32). If the Gospel writer knows the end from the beginning, so too does Jesus in his final words to Nicodemus. But we have yet to hear from him an echo of the note of hope sounded in 1:12, that “to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.” Ironically, even though Jesus is speaking to one who presumably had “believed in his name on seeing the signs he was doing” (2:23), the promise of that verse is at this point unfulfilled. The reader has learned what is “impossible” (vv. 2, 3, 4, 5, 9), but has not yet heard the positive message of salvation. That will come in verses 14–21.

12 Having made his point about divine revelation, Jesus now reverts to “I” in speaking of himself (not, however, the emphatic “I”). Possibly the “Amen, amen” formula still governs the brief discourse that follows. Nicodemus seems to have disappeared, but Jesus continues to address those whom Nicodemus represents, whether all of Israel (v. 10) or those who believed in Jesus at the Passover (2:23–24). His pessimism about them (as expressed in v. 11) also continues, with a charge that “you do not believe,” and the rhetorical question “How will you believe?” These indictments are framed by two conditional clauses: “If I have told you people earthly things,” and “if I tell you heavenly things.” The first is oriented to the past and to reality, assuming that Jesus has actually told them “earthly things.” The second points to the future or “something impending,” holding out the possibility that Jesus will tell them “heavenly things.”* The argument is from the past to the future, and from the lesser to the greater: if they have already heard “earthly things” and not believed, how can they believe “heavenly things”?*

The reader is left wondering: What are the “earthly things” (ta epigeia) of which Jesus has spoken? Are they the experience of the new birth (vv. 3, 5, 7) and the work of the Spirit in the lives of believers (v. 8b)? Or are they the purely physical realities of birth (v. 4) or the wind (v. 8a)? If the former, then why is the new birth said to be “from above” (vv. 3, 7)? But if the latter, how can one not believe in such natural occurrences as birth, or the blowing of the wind? A third alternative is to view the “earthly things” as just such natural occurrences or physical realities, yet “not regarded as complete in themselves but as pointing parabolically to Christ and to God’s activity in him, and intended to provoke faith”—that is, as parables or metaphors.* Much later, Jesus will make a distinction to his disciples between speaking “in parables” and speaking “openly about the Father” (16:25; also v. 29). The specific “parable” in mind there involves physical birth as well (16:21–22), and it is quite possible that Jesus is making a similar distinction already in this early encounter with Nicodemus and his friends.* On this interpretation, the phrase “earthly things” is almost synonymous with metaphor or figurative language. The presumption is that when we are dealing with spiritual realities such as birth from above (“heavenly things,” if you will), they are more easily understood when couched in metaphorical language. But if the metaphors are not understood and the hearers do not come to faith (as is the case here), there is little hope that a direct and explicit presentation of the “heavenly things” will do any good.* Logically, the reader could infer from this that Jesus will not speak of “heavenly things” in this Gospel. In fact the opposite is true, for in due course he will do exactly that.

13 Jesus now explains why he, and he alone, has the right to speak of the “heavenly things” (ta epourania). This second “Son of man” pronouncement, like the first (1:51), uses the imagery of ascent and descent to make a statement about his unique relationship to God. Now it is no longer angels “going up and coming down,” but the Son of man himself. Yet here, as in the first pronouncement, the actual title “Son of man” is introduced only at the end. With these words, Jesus reinforces the note of impossibility and human limitation which has dominated his conversation with Nicodemus from the start, while at the same time transcending it with a mighty and decisive exception: “no one has gone up to heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of man” (italics added). Jesus’ words now reaffirm what the Gospel writer claimed from the start, that “No one has seen God, ever. It was God the One and Only, the one who is right beside the Father, who told about him” (1:18). Others in Jewish tradition (especially certain apocalyptic traditions) were said to have seen God or ascended into heaven, but Jesus here denies that any of them actually did so.* Only he has been to heaven. Only he can tell of “heavenly things,” and his revelation alone can be trusted (compare v. 11). Through him all the impossibilities become possible, and through him the way to rebirth and eternal life is opened for those who believe.

Taken literally, the pronouncement implies that Jesus has already “gone up to heaven,”* which is hard to visualize if, as we have been told, he was “with God in the beginning” (1:1–2), or “right beside the Father” (1:18). One suggestion often made is that ei mē (‘except’) functions here as a simple adversative (“but,” or “but only”) yielding the paraphrase, “No one has ascended, but one has descended, the Son of man.”* Yet none of the New Testament passages commonly cited as parallels (for example, Mt 12:4; Lk 4:27; Rev 21:27) are true parallels. In each instance, the “exception” is not a real exception because it does not belong to the class specified (that is, “the priests” in Mt 12:4 were not included among “David and his companions,” “Naaman the Syrian” in Lk 4:27 was not included among “lepers in Israel,” and “those written in the book of life” in Rev 21:27 are not included among “things common or unclean”). Here, on the other hand, “the Son of man” obviously does belong to the class ostensibly excluded by the sweeping term “no one,” and does thereby qualify as a genuine exception. “Except” (ei mē) should therefore be translated in the usual way, not as a simple adversative.

Another proposed solution is that the speaker is no longer Jesus but the Gospel writer, looking back on Jesus’ ministry from a postresurrection perspective.* On such a reading, the pronouncement becomes one of the writer’s “narrative asides,” interrupting Jesus’ speech to remind the Johannine church that no one has ascended to heaven except Jesus because he came down from heaven in the first place (compare 6:62; 20:17). The impression that Jesus has already ascended is reinforced by a variant reading explicitly identifying the Son of man as “he who is in heaven.”* The difficulty with this interpretation is that the text gives no signal of a change of speakers. The conjunction “and,” both in this verse and the next, links each pronouncement closely to what precedes it, suggesting that Jesus is still the speaker, even though his audience within the narrative now seems to have vanished along with Nicodemus. The term “Son of man” (both here and in the following verse) confirms this, for in John’s Gospel (as in the Gospel tradition generally) “Son of man” is Jesus’ title for himself, not a title given him by others.

How then do we make sense of the pronouncement with the earthly Jesus as the speaker? The issue, of course, is not whether the historical Jesus would have spoken in this way, but whether the Johannine Jesus might have been represented as doing so.* This is the Gospel, after all, in which Jesus says, “I and the Father are one” (10:30), and even within the present chapter we are told that “He who comes from above is above all” (v. 31). To be “above all” is, on the face of it, not so different from being “in heaven.”* Yet to ask at what point in the narrative between chapters 1 and 3 did Jesus go up to heaven is to ask the wrong question. The “ascension” in view here is not so much an event in time as a way of describing who Jesus is.* Like the angels with whom he is associated (1:51), he is both an “ascending” and a “descending” Son of man (see 6:33, 38, 42, 51, 58, 62), for he knows “heavenly things,” and makes them known on earth.*

14–15 Another “and” (kai) introduces yet another “Son of man” pronouncement, the third so far in the Gospel. Once again (as in 1:51 and in v. 13) “Son of man” comes last in its clause, prompting the unspoken question, “Who is this Son of man?” Nine chapters later, when that question is finally asked, it seems to be in response to the pronouncement exactly as given here: “How can you say that the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?” (12:34).* There the reader is also told that the word “lifted up” indicated the manner of Jesus’ death (12:33). Yet here in chapter 3, when he says, “just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of man must be lifted up” (italics added), no such help is given. Nothing in the verb itself suggests death by crucifixion. On the contrary, all the New Testament uses of this verb (hypsōthēnai) outside of John’s Gospel imply prosperity or gain, and in Jesus’ case exaltation to heaven (Acts 2:33; 5:31; compare Phil 2:9). The incident in Numbers 21:8–9 was a popular subject for reflection and edification both in early Judaism and early Christianity,* but instead of attempting to expound the passage (as he does, for example, with “bread from heaven” in chapter 6), he relies on a simple analogy [just as … so] based solely on the one word, “lifted up,” a word that does not even occur in the biblical passage!

Why “lifted up?” If the verb does not come from the text of Numbers 21, where does it come from and why does Jesus use it? On the face of it, “to be lifted up” does not sound very different from “going up” (v. 13). The notion of ascending to heaven is still at work here, but the analogy with Moses and the snake requires a transitive rather than an intransitive verb. Moses put the snake on the pole; it did not get there by itself. The writer has therefore transformed the colorless “placed” or “set” of the biblical narrative (Num 21:8–9) into “lifted up” (hypsōsen), an action more appropriate to the theme of exaltation. Yet the analogy itself seems very far-fetched. How can Jesus’ exaltation or ascension be like that of a snake fastened to a pole? The pronouncement has the look of a riddle (like the riddle about destroying the temple in 2:19), confounding Jesus’ hearers and even many readers of the Gospel, at least those reading it for the first time. In chapter 2, the readers were given an explanation (2:21–22), but this time, as we have seen, no explanation is given until nine chapters later (12:33). How is the reader to solve the riddle without looking ahead for the answer? First, it is important to remember that we are reading a “Gospel,” which is by definition an account of Jesus’ passion and resurrection. All four Gospels have passion predictions, and the combination of the title “Son of man” with the impersonal verb dei (“must,” or “it is necessary”) recalls some of the explicit passion and resurrection predictions in the other Gospels.* Second, the precedent of 2:19, with its explanation in 2:21–22, alerts us to the possibility of implicit passion and resurrection predictions. If Jesus’ body is to be destroyed and raised again in three days (2:19), we may well suspect that the Son of man’s strange “exaltation” here like a snake on a pole is not quite the unambiguous triumph that the verb “lifted up” might otherwise suggest. Perhaps here too the solution to the riddle is that Jesus will die and rise again.* Finally, the verb “lifted up” recalls the beginning of the third so-called Servant Song in Isaiah: “Look, my servant will understand, and he will be lifted up and glorified exceedingly” (52:13, LXX). There the verbs “lifted up” (hypsōthēnai) and “glorified” (doxasthēnai), which become in John’s Gospel the two verbs decisively associated with Jesus as “Son of man,”* introduce one who is known not for glory or exaltation, but for redemptive suffering on behalf of his people (Isa 52:14–53:12). Such clues anticipate (and justify) for the perceptive reader the later explicit notice that Jesus would be “lifted up” by crucifixion and rising again, and in no other way (12:33; see also 18:32).

Even aside from the grotesque analogy between Jesus and a snake, the Numbers 21 passage is only partially suited to the use to which Jesus has put it. Moses lifted up the snake, while God (in one sense) or (in another) the Jewish authorities who had Jesus crucified, “lifted up the Son of man.”* It is doubtful that Moses represents either.* He put the snake on the pole so that anyone bitten by a snake “would look at the bronze snake and live” (Num 21:9, LXX), while in John’s Gospel the purpose is “that everyone who believes might have eternal life in him” (v. 15). Numbers 21 does not mention “believing,” and the Gospel of John does not mention “looking at” the crucified Son of man.* The only real correspondence is between the verb “live” in Numbers and “eternal life” in John, and even this parallel is superficial because “live” refers simply to healing, while “eternal life” means salvation, or “entering the kingdom of God” (see v. 5).*

This is the first mention of “eternal life” in the Gospel of John. The point of introducing it here is that “eternal life” is the new life resulting from being “born of water and Spirit” (v. 5), or “born from above” (vv. 3, 7). “Life” was mentioned briefly near the beginning of the Gospel as being “in him,” that is, “in” the Word, and here too “eternal life” is “in him,” that is, “in” the Son of man.* While the word order suggests that it is a matter of “believing in” the Son of man,* the verb “to believe” (pisteuein) is never used with en (the preposition for “in”) in the Gospel of John, but always with eis (literally “into,” as in 1:12; 2:11, 23), or with a noun in the dative case (meaning to accept something as true, 2:22). Jesus is not speaking explicitly of “believing in him,” therefore, but simply of “believing” (used absolutely, as in 1:6), and as a result “having eternal life in him.”* “Eternal life” is where the emphasis lies. Ironically, this life is promised to “everyone who believes” precisely in a context in which some have “believed in his name” and yet not been given “eternal life” because Jesus “would not entrust himself to them” (2:23–25). The promise of the verse is contingent on the Son of man being “lifted up.” Just as the new birth is “necessary” (dei, v. 7) in order to enter the kingdom of God, so the crucifixion of the Son of man is “necessary” (dei) in order to have that “birth from above” and consequently the kingdom of God, now defined as “eternal life.” Here if anywhere is the turning point of the chapter.

16 Here the same question arises as in verse 13. Is Jesus still speaking, or does the Gospel writer now intervene to reflect on what has just been said? This time there is no title “Son of man” to assure us that Jesus is still the speaker, and the conjunction “for” (gar) is one of the characteristic ways of introducing authorial comments or narrative asides in this Gospel.* Some English versions, therefore, place quotation marks after verse 15, signaling that Jesus’ speech has ended and that what follows are the Gospel writer’s words.* The majority, however (including the most recent versions), extend Jesus’ speech to the end of verse 21,* and the wisest course is to follow their example. While few interpreters would seriously argue that Jesus actually uttered the words found in verses 16–21 to Nicodemus and his companions at the first Passover in Jerusalem, Jesus has been introduced as “the Word,” the only Revealer of God. It is fair to assume that once he is so introduced all authoritative revelation in the Gospel comes from him, whether through his own lips or the pen of the Gospel writer.* Without a clear notice in the text that his speech is over, the reader should keep on listening as to the voice of “the One who came down from heaven, the Son of man,” for only he can speak of “heavenly things” (vv. 12–13). As we have seen, it is still too early in the Gospel for Jesus to use the pronoun “I” in delivering these oracles of God, as if he is God himself, so the text resorts to first-person plurals (as in v. 11) or to the third person (as here). The conjunction “for” does introduce an explanatory comment, but the comment is Jesus’ own. Jesus builds on the language and thought of verses 14 and 15 to explain precisely why “the Son of man must be lifted up” (v. 14). He confirms that the necessity is divine, grounded in “God,” and God’s love for the world. Having looked at the cross from the human side, by a strange analogy with a snake fastened to a pole, he now places it within the eternal purposes of God. The grammar of the verse reflects this, as Jesus echoes the correlative construction of verse 14 (“And just as … so”) with a corresponding one (“God so loved … so that he gave”).*

This is the first mention of love in the Gospel of John, and it is rather untypical in that the object of God’s love is “the world” (ton kosmon). Nowhere else in John’s Gospel (or anywhere else in the New Testament!) is God explicitly said to “love” the world, yet it cannot come as a surprise to any reader who remembers that “the world came into being through him” (that is, through the Word, 1:10), and consequently that the world was “his own” (1:11). Jesus has already been identified as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), and will be identified as “the Savior of the world” (4:42). God’s love for the world, though seldom explicit, is a given. At the same time, God has a unique and specific love for “the One and Only Son.”* We have already learned that a “One and Only” shares in a father’s glory (1:14), and that Jesus as God’s “One and Only” is himself God, “right beside the Father” (1:18). Now it becomes explicit that “the One and Only” is God’s “Son” (see 1:34, 49), and that both terms are interchangeable with “Son of man” (vv. 13, 14).

The striking, even shocking, thing about God’s love for the world in relation to God’s love for his “One and Only Son” is that the former takes priority! The verb “to love” (agapan) in this Gospel implies not so much a feeling as a conscious choice.* Often it implies a preference for one person or thing or way of life over another.* The shock of the pronouncement is that here God puts the well-being of “the world” above that of “the One and Only Son.” The notion that God “gave” or “gave up” his only Son points unmistakably to Jesus’ death,* confirming the interpretation of “lifted up” (v. 14) as crucifixion. We might have expected “God sent the One and Only Son” (as in 1 Jn 4:9), because “sent” is the operative verb for the mission of Jesus throughout the rest of the Gospel, beginning in the very next verse.* But it is important that this first reference to Jesus’ mission specify its purpose as a redemptive mission. The “giving” includes all that the “sending” does and more, for in sending his “One and Only” into the world, God gave him up to death on a cross.* The analogy that comes to mind is Abraham, and his willingness to offer up his “one and only” son Isaac as a sacrifice in obedience to God (Gen 22:1–14).* This analogy, unlike that with Moses and the bronze snake, is never made explicit, but hints elsewhere in the Gospel suggest that what God asked of Abraham was something God himself would do in the course of time.* Like the Moses analogy, it has its limits because God is not acting out of obedience to anyone but out of love for the world he has made. But while God’s love is universal, it guarantees eternal life not for the whole world indiscriminately but for “everyone who believes.” The last clause of verse 16 sounds like a refrain, echoing verse 15 with only two small changes: first, it is a matter not simply of “believing” but of “believing in” Jesus;* second, to “have eternal life” is further explained by its natural opposite, to “not be lost” (mē apolētai; compare 6:39–40; 10:28; 12:25).* This is the first hint of dualism in the discourse. Just as “eternal life” is more than simply the prolongation of physical life, so “being lost” is more than just physical death. It is, as the next verse will show, eternal condemnation and separation from God. There are no “lost sheep” in the Gospel of John (contrast Mt 10:6; 15:24; Lk 15:6), for Jesus’ “sheep” will never be lost and those who are “lost” are not his sheep (see 10:26–28).

17 Having made his point that “the One and Only Son” is given up to death (v. 16), Jesus now introduces the more neutral verb “sent” in place of “gave” to describe his mission (see n. 110). Just as verse 16 (introduced by “for”) explained the “lifted up” of verse 14, so verse 17 (also introduced by “for”) explains the reference to not being “lost” in verse 16. The same contrast expressed by the words, “not be lost but have eternal life,” is repeated in different words: “not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved.” The effect is to interpret “lost” as “judged” or condemned,* and “having eternal life” as “being saved,” thus heightening the note of dualism introduced in the preceding verse. To be sure, the accent is on the positive, as if Jesus is correcting those who mistakenly thought God’s purpose in sending the Son was to condemn the world. He will offer the same positive corrective (speaking in the first person) nine chapters later: “And if anyone hears my words and does not obey them, I do not judge [that is, “condemn”] him, for I have come not to judge the world but to save the world” (12:47; compare “Savior of the world,” 4:42). He wants to make it clear in both instances that God’s intent is a saving one, yet there is a negative subtext to his words. The early notices that “the world did not know him” (1:10) and “his own did not receive him” (1:11) still stand.* Jesus knows, and the readers know, that not everyone in the world will be saved. Some will be condemned, but he will not blame their condemnation on God. He will insist rather (in the next two verses) that they are self-condemned (compare 12:48, “The person who rejects me … has that which judges him; the word which I spoke, that will judge him in the last day”).

18 The dualism now becomes explicit, with a sharp distinction between “Whoever believes in him” and “whoever does not believe.” Jesus has just said that he did not come to condemn. This is obviously true of those who believe, for they are “not judged,” but it is also true of unbelievers. Jesus does not condemn them either because they are “already judged” by their own unbelief. These are the only two alternatives, and Jesus speaks as if the issue has been decided. While the carrying out of “judgment” or condemnation may be future (see 12:48), the verdict is handed down in the present, solely on the basis of whether or not a person has “believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God.”* The criterion for judgment is not righteousness or good works, but faith.

This raises two problems. The first is that some have “believed in his name” (2:23), and yet Jesus “would not entrust himself to them.” So far as we know, at this point in the discourse he still has not. We can infer here that these Passover believers are “not judged”—certainly not “already judged”—but can we infer to the contrary that they are already “saved” (v. 17), or “have eternal life” (vv. 15–16)?* Despite the two clear alternatives presented here, their fate remains a mystery. The second problem is that a judgment solely on the basis of faith, without reference to good deeds of any kind, is virtually unknown either in early Judaism or early Christianity (see, for example, Mt 3:7–11; 13:41–42, 49–50; 25:31–46; 1 Pet 1:17; Rev 20:12–13, 22:12). Even Paul, for all his emphasis on justification by faith alone, envisions a final judgment on the basis of a person’s works and the state of the heart that produced them (see Rom 2:6–11; 1 Cor 3:13–15; 4:5; 2 Cor 5:10). Later in John’s Gospel itself, Jesus will speak of an hour when “all who are in the tombs will hear his voice, and those who have done good things will go out to a resurrection of life, but those who have practiced wicked things to a resurrection of judgment” (5:29). Because of this, the conventional wisdom that in this Gospel unbelief is the only sin for which anyone is condemned is at best a half truth. The present verse, taken out of context, may seem to support it, but those who read on will quickly discover that the truth is more complicated. Deeds are in the picture as well as faith, and (in contrast to some versions of Reformation theology) actually precede faith.

19 By now the emphasis has shifted noticeably from the positive to the negative. Everything in verses 16 and 17 had to do with salvation and eternal life except for the brief disclaimers, “not be lost” (v. 16) and “not to condemn the world” (v. 17). But verse 18 presents a stark alternative between being “not judged” (as a result of believing) and being “judged already” (for unbelief). Now the focus shifts entirely to “judgment” (krisis), this time in the sense of “verdict” (a negative verdict as it turns out) and the reason for the verdict, to the point of sounding as if there were no salvation or eternal life for anyone: “This then is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and human beings loved the dark rather than the Light, for their works were evil” (compare 12:43). With this, Jesus drops the terminology of “the Son of man” (vv. 13–15) or “the One and Only Son” (vv. 16–18). Instead he calls himself “the Light,” echoing the dualistic language of the Gospel’s opening paragraphs. The reader will recall 1:5, for example (“the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it”), and 1:10–11 (“He was in the world, … and the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own did not receive him”). The theme of Jesus’ rejection by the world, stated programmatically in those early verses, now becomes explicit on his own lips. The second alternative in the preceding verse (“whoever does not believe is already judged,” v. 18) is now generalized and assumed to be the norm. All “human beings” are exposed (at least for the moment) as unbelievers, in keeping with Jesus’ knowledge of what was “in the person” (that is, in every human being, 2:25). The somber pronouncement that they “loved the dark rather than the Light” stands in tragic contrast to the good news that “God so loved the world that he gave the One and Only Son” (v. 16). Here again, and more explicitly than before, “love” (agapan) implies choice or preference (see above, n. 108). God put human salvation ahead of even the safety of his own Son, but instead of returning God’s love, human beings chose “the dark” instead. Just as “the Light” is a metaphor for God’s presence in the world in the person of Jesus, so “the dark,” or “the darkness,” is a metaphor for whatever opposes God and resists “the Light”—in short, a metaphor for evil.* Jesus now makes this explicit by giving the reason why humans preferred their own darkness to God’s Light—“for their works [ta erga] were evil.” Despite the strong accent on belief in verses 15 and 16b, and the stark alternatives of faith and unbelief in verse 18, Jesus wants it made very clear that divine judgment, whether present or future, is based on works after all (as in 5:29).

20–21 A noticeable feature of Johannine style in these early chapters is a sweeping negative assertion followed by a conspicuous exception. For example, “his own did not receive him” (1:11) is followed by “to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God” (1:12). “No one receives his testimony” (3:32) is followed by a notice that “the person who did receive his testimony confirmed thereby that God is true” (3:33). Here too the generalized assertion that “human beings loved the dark rather than the Light” is followed by a division of “human beings” into two groups (as in v. 18), depending on whether or not a person “comes to the Light” (vv. 20, 21). The metaphor of “coming to the Light” brings faith back into the picture, and Jesus will now insist that faith and good works go hand in hand. The person who has no faith—that is, who “hates the Light and does not come to the Light”—is the person whose works are “evil,” that is, “who practices wicked things” (compare 5:29). “Coming to the Light” is at one level an expression of allegiance no different from “coming to Jesus” as Nathanael (1:47) and Nicodemus (3:2) had done (compare 3:26; 5:40; 6:35, 37, 44–45, 65; 7:37), or coming to John as Jesus himself had done earlier (1:29). If Jesus is the Light who came into the world (v. 19), then to “come to the Light” is simply to come to Jesus in faith. But more than that, the metaphor implies full disclosure, for light by its nature illumines dark places and makes secret things public, in this case a person’s “works.” The disclosure is expressed by two verbs, similar in meaning but with opposite connotations. One kind of person “does not come to the Light, for fear his works will be exposed” (v. 20). The other kind “comes to the Light, so that his works will be revealed (v. 21).* The former proves by not coming that his works are “evil” (v. 19) or “wicked” (v. 20 and 5:29). The latter proves by “coming to the Light” that he is a doer of “the truth,” and that his works are “in God.”

All of this could come as a surprise to those who read the Gospel through the glasses of later Christian (particularly Reformation) theology, where faith precedes works, and where we prove our faith by our works (see Jas 2:18). Here by contrast good works precede faith, just as evil works precede unbelief, and we prove our works by our faith!* This suggests that the purpose of Jesus’ coming in the Gospel of John is not so much “conversion” as “revelation” of who belongs to God already and who does not.* It is perhaps no accident that the New Testament word for “conversion” or repentance (metanoia) never occurs in John’s Gospel or letters. As we have seen, Nathanael came to Jesus not as a sinner but as “a true Israelite, in whom is no deceit” (1:47). He came because in some way he already belonged to God, and Jesus knew that God was drawing him. The case of Nicodemus (3:2) is more complicated. The notice that Jesus “knew what was in the person” (2:25b) may imply that he was a sinner, but clearly he did not come as a sinner throwing himself on Jesus’ mercy. In any event, the fact that Nicodemus came “at night” suggests that he was not unambiguously “coming to the Light” as one who “does the truth” and whose works are “wrought in God.”

The expression “whoever does the truth” is surprising because the reader is expecting “whoever does good things” in contrast to those who practice “wicked things” (see 5:29). But “doing truth,” a Hebrew term for “acting faithfully” (see Gen 32:10; 47:29; Neh 9:33), was used at Qumran in connection with entering into the covenant (see 1QS 1.5; 5.3; 8.2).* There, “truth” is part of a series of virtues, along with righteousness, justice, humility, and loving-kindness.* In John’s Gospel, “truth” has not been mentioned since the “grace and truth” of 1:14 and 17, and the issue is more or less the same here as it was in those early verses: Is the meaning determined by assuming Hebrew influence on the language of the Gospel,* or is it determined by looking at the usage of “truth” (alētheia) in John’s Gospel (and the three Johannine letters)* more generally?

In 1:14 and 17 we concluded that the expression “grace and truth” referred not to the ancient covenant but to the new reality that came into the world with the coming of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Spirit. Here too it is possible that “doing the truth” means living for that new reality in the new community of faith (compare “worshiping in Spirit and truth,” 4:23, 24; “walking in truth,” 2 Jn 4 and 3 Jn 3, 4). Perhaps the most radical expression of the newness of “truth” is that of Ptolemy, a second-century Valentinian Gnostic, who noted that the “images and allegories” of the Jewish law were “well and good while truth was not present. But now that the truth is present, one must do the works of truth* and not those of its imagery.”* While John’s Gospel obviously does not share Ptolemy’s presupposition of radical discontinuity between the old law and “the truth,” it does share the assumption that “the truth” came decisively into being (egeneto, 1:17) in Jesus Christ.*

The matter is best resolved by taking into account the whole clause: “whoever does the truth comes to the Light.” In itself, “doing the truth” means just what it did in the Hebrew-speaking world: acting faithfully as one who gives allegiance to God. But the point of Jesus’ pronouncement here is that the person who truly acts in faithfulness toward God will eagerly and willingly “come to the Light [that is, to Jesus and the new community], so that his works will be revealed as works done in the power of God.” The verse does not so much presuppose the distinctly Christian (or Johannine) understanding of truth as create it, or at least introduce it. The familiar Hebrew notion of “doing the truth” is here redefined in a Christian sense as “coming to the Light,” just as in 1 John 1:6–7 it is defined as “walking in the Light” so that consequently “we have communion with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son purifies us from all sin.” The explicitly Christian term here is “the Light,” for the Light has already been personalized as Jesus (see 1:10) and is appropriately capitalized. “Truth” has not (yet) been personalized and should not be capitalized, although the careful reader may remember that “the Light” was formally introduced at the beginning as “the true Light.” “Truth” in the Gospel of John takes on the meaning of “reality,” the new reality that comes into the world in the person of Jesus, and to which Jesus testifies.* It becomes, in fact, almost synonymous with Light, and consequently with Jesus himself (compare 14:6). To “do the truth” is to do what is right by acknowledging to all the world who we are and to whom we belong.

Whether or not a person “comes to the Light” depends on a person’s “works” (ta erga, vv. 20–21). The Light will either “expose” them as evil (v. 20),* or “reveal” them as “works wrought in God” (v. 21). The cognate expression, “works wrought,”* is echoed in two other places where the works in question are works of God: 6:28 (“What shall we do to work the works of God?”) and 9:4 (“We must work the works of the One who sent me”).* The phrase “in God” does not in any way anticipate the pronouncements of Jesus’ farewell discourses, or of 1 John, about the mutual indwelling of the believer “in” the Father or the Son.* Rather, it is instrumental. “Works wrought in God” are works done in the power of God or with God’s help, and thus virtually equivalent to “the works of God” (6:28; 9:3). The latter expression is significant because in both instances it refers to the works of God through human beings, whether those who believe in Jesus (6:28–29), or Jesus himself and the man born blind (9:3–4). The case of the blind man is particularly relevant here because of Jesus’ reference to the works of God being “revealed” in him. On the face of it, there is little difference between saying “so that his works will be revealed as works wrought in God” (v. 21), and saying “so that the works of God will be revealed in him” (9:3). Can it be that Jesus (as presented by the Gospel writer) already has in mind this individual (the man born blind) as a classic example of the person who “does the truth” and “comes to the Light”? Obviously the first-time reader has no way of knowing whether this is so or not. Nathanael and Nicodemus are, as we have seen, the two examples much closer at hand. Nathanael, “a true Israelite, in whom is no deceit” (1:47), was clearly one who “did the truth” and therefore “came to the Light.” His works, we may conclude, were “wrought in God.” Nicodemus, on the other hand, is at best a flawed and ambiguous example, placed in the story to tease us into asking whether he belongs in verse 20 or verse 21, and then to ask the same question about ourselves.

Thus the end of Jesus’ long exchange with Nicodemus and the Passover believers of 2:23–25 is a restatement of the familiar Jewish notion of a judgment according to works, but with a distinctive twist. It is a matter not of salvation as a reward for good works, but of good works as a motivation for “coming to the Light” in faith. Those who “do the truth” will “come to the Light” not to glorify themselves as righteous, but to show publicly that their works are “wrought in God,” that is, that God has been at work in their lives all along. Being “born from above” (vv. 3, 7) is a process just as surely as natural birth is a process, not something that happens in a single moment of “conversion.” The end of the process is “coming to the Light,” but as we will learn later, no one “comes to the Light,” or to Jesus, without being “given” and “drawn” to him by the Father (compare 3:27; 6:37, 39, 44, 65; 10:29; 17:2, 6, 24). Salvation depends on divine election, and divine work in the lives of the elect, not on merit earned by good works. But whether Nicodemus and the Passover believers in Jerusalem belong to the Light or to the darkness is left, quite intentionally, as an open question.

H. John’s Farewell (3:22–36)

After these things, Jesus and his disciples came into the Judean land, and he spent time with them there and was baptizing. Now John too was baptizing, in Aenon near the Salim, because there were many springs there, and people were coming and being baptized. For John was not yet put in prison. So an issue came up among John’s disciples with a Judean about purification, and they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore testimony, look, he is baptizing, and they are all coming to him!” John answered and said, “A person cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify for me that I said I am not the Christ, but that I am sent ahead of him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom who stands by and hears him rejoices with joy at the bridegroom’s voice. So this, my joy, is fulfilled. He must grow, but I must diminish. The One coming from above is above all. He who is from the earth is from the earth and speaks from the earth. The One coming from heaven is above all.* What he has seen and what he heard, to this he testifies, and no one receives his testimony. The person who did receive his testimony confirmed thereby that God is true, for the one God sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things in his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will never see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

This section can be divided into either three parts or four: first, a narrative introduction briefly situating Jesus and John in “the Judean land” and “Aenon near the Salim,” respectively (vv. 22–24); second, a comment by John’s disciples about Jesus and his baptizing ministry (vv. 25–26); third, John’s reply to their implied question (vv. 27–30), and (perhaps fourth) some further reflections arising out of that reply (vv. 31–36). The question is, To whom do these “further reflections” belong? Are they simply a continuation of John’s answer to his disciples, or are they reflections of the Gospel writer? The issue is much the same here as in 2:23–3:21, where we determined that Jesus was in some sense the speaker all the way to the end. Even if, say, 3:16–21 were the composition of the Gospel writer, our conclusion was that the Gospel writer simply allowed Jesus, “the Word,” or “the Light,” to be the vehicle of the Gospel’s revelation. The question here is whether John, who was “not the Light” (1:8) can similarly be a vehicle of revelation.* While some English translators seem to have more difficulty allowing John to speak for the Gospel writer than allowing Jesus to do so,* there is no indication of a change of speaker after verse 30. I have therefore included all of verses 31–36 in quotation marks as a continuation of John’s words. There is no way to be absolutely certain of this, and at the end of the day it does not matter. In any event, 1:1–5 and 3:31–36 appropriately frame the Gospel’s first three chapters, the former introducing Jesus as “the Word” and the latter providing a setting in which “the Word” will soon begin to speak decisively.

22 “After these things” signals the end of Jesus’ speech and the resumption of the narrative,* with its characteristic geographical focus. Having “set out for Galilee” (1:43) from “Bethany, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing” (1:28), and having gone “down to Capernaum” from “Cana in Galilee” (2:11–12), and thence “up to Jerusalem” (2:13), Jesus now comes “into the Judean land” (that is, into Judea) with his disciples. We have heard nothing of Jesus’ disciples since 2:17 and 22, where we glimpsed them not within the actual narrative but “remembering” it after the resurrection. The disciples have had no real part in the story since 2:12, when they “remained there” in Capernaum with Jesus and his mother and brothers. At that time they numbered no more than five, and whether or not their number has grown we do not know. Now Jesus is “spending time with them there” again, only this time “there” (ekei) is in Judea. Some interpreters have reasoned that since Jerusalem is already in Judea, the narrative presupposes that Jesus is coming from somewhere else, Galilee perhaps. But this would require either a rearrangement of the text (for which there is no evidence), or the assumption that the author is simply taking over the language of an earlier source in which Jesus was coming from Galilee to Judea.* More likely, “into the Judean land” means simply into the Judean countryside in distinction from the city of Jerusalem.* A “canonical” reading could tempt us to imagine a parallel here to the later Christian mission from “Jerusalem” to “all Judea and Samaria” to “the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8), for Jesus will shortly move on to “Samaria” (Jn 4:4), announce a great “harvest” there (4:35–38), and be hailed as “Savior of the world” (4:42). But even aside from the lack of evidence that John’s Gospel knows the book of Acts, the parallel is doubtful, for when Jesus leaves Judea, his intended destination is not Samaria, and certainly not “the end of the earth,” but Galilee, where he had been before (4:3; compare v. 43).

Jesus’ sojourn with his disciples is of undetermined length, a kind of interlude between significant ministries in Jerusalem (2:13–3:21) and Samaria (4:1–42). Unlike other such interludes in the Gospel (that is, 2:12, 10:40–42, and 11:54) its location (in contrast with John’s specific location, v. 23) is given vaguely as “the Judean land.” We know only that Jesus and his disciples were somewhere in Judea, but we do learn for the first time that Jesus “was baptizing” (compare v. 26). This will later be qualified by the notice that “Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were” (4:2), yet so far as we know at this point in the story, Jesus is indeed “baptizing in water” just as John had done earlier (see 1:26, 31). John had said that Jesus, by contrast, would “baptize in Holy Spirit” (1:33), but the statement here that Jesus “was baptizing” (without further qualification) clearly implies water and not Spirit baptism.* The remarkable feature of the notice is that the reader is allowed no actual glimpse of Jesus (or his disciples) actually baptizing anyone, but is simply told, as if by hearsay and from a distance, that it occurred. The narrative will center instead on John and his disciples.

23 John, whom we have not heard from since 1:37, now makes his reappearance. The notice that John “too” was “baptizing” confirms the assumption that Jesus and John were baptizing in much the same way and for much the same reason.* John’s earlier claim that “the reason I came baptizing in water was so that [Jesus] might be revealed to Israel” (1:31) must now be qualified, for by now Jesus has been “revealed to Israel” (see 1:29, 36; 2:11) and yet John continues to baptize. What then was the common reason why both John and Jesus were baptizing? It would be easy to supply an answer from the synoptic tradition, where John’s was “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4), but this is never made explicit in our Gospel. All we know is that baptism had to do with “purification” (v. 25) and that it involved people “coming” to the baptizer (compare v. 26), who by baptizing them made them his “disciples” (4:1). As in 1:28 (“Bethany, beyond the Jordan”), John’s baptizing ministry is given a quite specific location: “in Aenon near the Salim,” and for John as for Jesus place is important: “there were many springs* there.” While this location may have been known to the readers of the Gospel, it cannot now be identified with absolute certainty. The very name “Aenon” means a spring or well, and Arabic names beginning with ʿAin are common to this day. Although the site may not have been far from the Jordan River, the notice makes clear that John did not depend solely on the Jordan for his water supply. “Salim” means peace,* but because the names of villages do not normally have the definite article, it has been suggested that “the Salim” was the name of a plain south of Beth Shan where Aenon was located (compare “the region near the desert,” 11:54).* Eusebius’s fourth-century gazetteer, the Onomasticon, places Aenon about eight miles south of Beth Shan, and just to the northeast of Samaria, where there are in fact a number of springs.* Two Aenons are shown on the sixth-century Madeba map. One, east of the Jordan just across from “Bethabara,” is labeled “Aenon, where Sapsaphas is now”; the other, west of the Jordan and further north, is labeled “Aenon near the Salim.” The second corresponds to the Onomasticon, but whether the designation is dependent on John’s Gospel itself, or whether the Gospel (or one of its sources) added the words “near the Salim” to specify which Aenon was meant is uncertain. In any event, “Aenon” in John’s Gospel is obviously west of the Jordan, for the previous site of John’s activities is clearly said to be “beyond the Jordan” (v. 26), to the east. Still, it is not exactly “in the Judean land” (v. 22). Jesus and John, though engaged in the same activity, are not together nor even particularly near each other. As we will see, John learns of Jesus’ activities only indirectly.

24 As a parenthetical aside, the writer now supplies the information that “John was not yet put in prison.”* Like the Gospel’s first narrative asides (1:24, 28), it comes belatedly, as an afterthought. Logically, it should have preceded verse 23, as an explanation of how John can be in the story at all. While the notice sounds redundant in its present position, it sends a signal to the reader that the author knows the story of John’s imprisonment, but that it is not the story he is going to tell.* Instead of having John forcibly removed from the scene by Herod’s soldiers, he will allow him to make his own exit voluntarily and say his own eloquent farewell (vv. 27–30). Jesus’ continuing journey from Judea back to Galilee again (4:3) will be triggered not by John’s imprisonment (as in Mk 1:14 and Mt 4:12), but by a perception that Jesus was “making and baptizing more disciples” than the still active John (4:1).*

25–26 At this point we learn that John still had disciples of his own (as in Mk 2:18; 6:29; Lk 5:33; 11:1; Mt 11:2), even though at least two of them had gone off to follow Jesus (1:35–40). Here John’s disciples, having raised an “issue”* with an unidentified “Judean” or “Jew”* about “purification”* come to John with the report, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore testimony, look, he is baptizing, and everyone is coming to him!” (v. 26).* The term “Jew” (or Ioudaios) can, as we have seen, refer either to a “Judean” in particular or a “Jew” more generally. The reference to “purification” recalls “the purification rituals of the Jews” (2:6), yet at the same time Ioudaios also reminds us that Jesus’ current activities were geographically in “the Judean land” (v. 22). Just how the issue of “purification” brought Jesus and his activities to their attention is uncertain.* Quite possibly an anonymous “Jew” or “Judean” had come from Judea with news of Jesus’ success there, perhaps even with an account of his own “purification” by Jesus through baptism. While there is no way to be sure of this, it would help explain the conclusion (probably exaggerated) that “they are all coming to him” (v. 26).*

The words of John’s disciples take us back to the world of chapter 1, when Jesus and John had been together “beyond the Jordan” (1:28), and John repeatedly “bore testimony” to Jesus (1:19, 34; see also 1:7–8, 15). They phrase their comment in such a way as to challenge John and even distance themselves from him. Jesus, they say, was “with you,” not “with us,”* and was someone “to whom you [sy] bore testimony.”* When they add, “Look, he* is baptizing, and they are all coming to him!” their words seem to carry the implied question: “What are you going to do about it?”*

27–28 John’s direct reply to his disciples’ challenge comes in verse 28, where his own emphatic pronouns, “You yourselves” (autoi hymeis) and “for me,”* together mimic their emphatic repetition of the singular “you.” But first he responds with a more general observation: “A person cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven” (v. 27). What “person” is John referring to here, himself or Jesus, or the believer?* Probably all of the above, but Jesus first of all because the focus of the disciples’ question was on Jesus and his activities. The striking universalism of the news that “they are all coming to him” (v. 26) demands a response, and the form of John’s response echoes that of Jesus to Nicodemus.* In the earlier instance it was a matter of being born “from above,” here of being given something “from heaven.” John’s point is that even if “they are all coming” to Jesus (which is doubtful; see v. 32), it is because God has given them, and if not so many are coming to John, it is because God has given him less. Jesus himself later makes a similar point in almost the same words: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (6:44), and “No one can come to me unless it is given him by the Father” (6:65, italics added).* Chapter 6 will remind us that John’s words are applicable in a variety of ways. The one who “receives” can be the believer, receiving salvation (as in 6:44 and 65), or it can be John or Jesus, receiving those who come (see 6:37, 39; see also 10:29; 17:2, 6, 24).*

Having stated a very general principle, John now goes on to answer his disciples directly. Picking up their own verb “bore testimony” (v. 26), he insists that they too were present with Jesus “beyond the Jordan,” and that “You yourselves can testify for me,” that is, they know very well what John had said there about himself and about Jesus. Again we are in the world of chapter 1, yet not necessarily in scenes where John’s disciples were actually said to be present. When he told the delegation from Jerusalem, “I am not the Christ” (1:20), his disciples had not yet made their appearance, and he never said to anyone in so many words, “I am sent ahead of him.”* The latter is a composite of John’s message based partly on the introductory notice that he was “sent from God” (1:6), and partly on his repeated references to Jesus as coming “after me” (opisō mou, 1:15, 27, 30). If Jesus was “after” John, then John was “ahead of” (emprosthen) Jesus—in historical time, though clearly not in status or rank! *

John’s disciples had been privy to none of these pronouncements, certainly not to the introduction of John as “a man sent from God” (1:6). Therefore, John’s words here are directed not so much to them in a concrete historical situation as to us, the readers of the Gospel, in a literary framework. We have read the Gospel’s opening verses and know that John was “sent from God.” We have heard him speak three times of “the One coming after me” (1:15, 27, 30), and have been told repeatedly that John was not “the Light” (1:8), not the Christ, not Elias, not the Prophet (1:20–21), but that Jesus is the Light (1:4–5, 9; 3:19–21), the One and Only Son (1:14, 18, 34; 3:16, 18), the Lamb of God (1:29, 36), and the Son of man (1:51; 3:13, 14). While John’s disciples remembered in a general way that he had “borne testimony” to Jesus (v. 26), they seem not to have heard his actual testimony, for if they had they would not have been surprised that Jesus’ ministry was flourishing. John, therefore, will testify again, to them and to us (vv. 29–30).

29–30 John’s final testimony introduces the metaphor of the bridegroom. Jesus in the synoptic tradition uses the bridegroom as a metaphor under similar circumstances when challenged about the behavior of his disciples in comparison to both John’s disciples and the Pharisees over the question of fasting: “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the day will come when the bridegroom is taken from them, and then they will fast on that day” (Mk 2:19–20; compare Mt 9:15; Lk 5:34–35). Already in the Gospel of John we have met a literal bridegroom who was congratulated for having “kept the good wine until now” (2:10), and who by his silence took credit for having done so. Now John points to another bridegroom, one who the reader knows was the real provider of the “good wine.” He expands the metaphor into a brief parable with three characters: the bridegroom, the bride, and “the friend [philos] of the bridegroom.”* The context clearly shows that the bridegroom is “he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore testimony” (v. 26), that is, “the Christ” (v. 28). The bride is a shadowy figure, barely in the story at all, mentioned only to help us identify the bridegroom and distinguish him from the bridegroom’s friend: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” This is consistent with wedding parables generally in the New Testament, where the bride is conspicuous by her absence.* As for “the friend of the bridegroom who stands by and hears him,” and “rejoices with joy at the bridegroom’s voice,”* John himself takes on that role by adding explicitly, “So this, my joy, is fulfilled.”

So much for the cast of characters. What is John’s point? There is, as Bultmann noticed, “a certain humour” in the pronouncement, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom,”* yet it also comes as a serious illustration of the principle that “A person cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven” (v. 27). The bride is God’s gift to the bridegroom (compare 6:37, 39; 10:29; 17:2, 6, 24), not to the bridegroom’s friend, so that if “they are all coming” to the bridegroom for baptism (v. 26), it is none of the friend’s business! Implicit in all this is the notion that “the bride” in some way represents Jesus’ disciples. Later we will learn not only that the disciples are those whom the Father has given Jesus, but that they are his “sheep” who “hear his voice” (10:3–5, 16, 27; compare 5:25, 28, 37; 18:37; 20:16), and that their “joy” will one day be “fulfilled” (15:11; 16:24; 17:13; compare 1 Jn 1:4; 2 Jn 12). They too are Jesus’ “friends” (philoi, 15:13–15; compare 21:15–17; 3 Jn 15). In short, their experience matches that of John, his first “friend.” Whatever else he may be in this Gospel, John is, as we have seen, a confessing Christian (compare 1:15–16, 20, 29, 34). The “friend of the bridegroom” becomes almost indistinguishable from the bride, for at any wedding she, just as surely as the bridegroom’s friend, “rejoices with joy at the bridegroom’s voice.” But because neither John nor any individual disciple, male or female, could ever be appropriately identified as Jesus’ “bride,” all he can be is “friend of the bridegroom.”* Consequently, the metaphor is stretched to the breaking point.* All that differentiates John from other disciples (aside from the fact that he came first) is that he pointed his own disciples to Jesus (1:35–37), yet even in this respect Andrew was like him in that he brought his brother Simon Peter to Jesus (1:41–42), even as Philip brought Nathanael (1:45). They too, in their own way, were “friends of the bridegroom,” bringing others to the Messiah they had found.

The description of the bridegroom’s friend as one who “stands by” recalls our first glimpse of John with his disciples, when he “was [standing] there” (1:35) with two of them, and, “looking right at Jesus,” said, “Look, the Lamb of God” (1:36). Now he can no longer see Jesus, but in his mind he “hears him” and rejoices at the sound of his voice. John’s experience anticipates that of the Gospel’s readers, who are thereby encouraged to echo his final words and make them their own. This involves again the recognition of a divine necessity: “He must grow, but I must diminish.” Just as surely as God requires that a person “must” be reborn (3:7), and that the Son of man “must” be lifted up (3:14), so God requires that Jesus “must” (dei) come first and the believing disciple (whether John or anyone else) second. The pronouncement confirms John’s earlier acknowledgment that “The One coming after me has gotten ahead of me” (1:15, 30), adding that this is how it “must” continue to be. John draws a sharp contrast between “growing” and “diminishing.”* Jesus is now moving center stage in the Gospel, while John’s role, significant as it has been, is coming to an end. Readers familiar with the rest of the New Testament will notice that in Luke, John and Jesus both “grew” in parallel fashion (Lk 1:80; 2:40), as Augustine recognized,* but here the two are moving in opposite directions. Jesus’ “growth” is measured in the context by the impression that “they are all coming to him” (v. 25), and that he was “making and baptizing more disciples than John” (4:1), just as in the book of Acts “the word of God grew” when the Christian movement spread and the number of disciples increased (Acts 6:7; 12:24; compare 19:20). In this Gospel, Jesus is “the Word,” and he will “grow,” at least to begin with, in much the same way.* As for John, the verbal acknowledgment that “I must diminish” takes the place of any explicit notice of John’s imprisonment. We know that John will soon be “put in prison” (v. 24), but we are spared the details. Instead, he exits the narrative in his own way and on his own terms.* To misquote a later pronouncement of Jesus, “No one takes my freedom or my stature from me; I lay it aside for myself” (see 10:18).* John, like Jesus, knows that “A person cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven” (v. 27), and consequently he does not cling to freedom or to life as if he were entitled to them. He retains control over his destiny precisely by yielding control to Jesus, and to the God who “sent” them both (see 1:6; 3:17, 28, 34).*

31 Most recent commentators have noticed the similarity between 3:13–21 and 3:31–36, some even to the point of rearranging the text so that the one comes right after the other.* There is no textual evidence for such a move, and the present order of the text must be respected. Still, the similarity of the two passages suggests that Jesus and John both speak as reliable narrators in this Gospel, and with much the same voice. While John’s acknowledgment that “he must grow, but I must diminish” (v. 30) could signal that John now falls silent and Jesus begins to speak, it is perhaps more likely that John has a few more words to say.

“The Coming One” (ho erchomenos) refers consistently to Jesus in this Gospel (compare 6:14; 11:27; 12:13), as in the others. To John he had been “the One coming after me” (1:15, 27), but now he is “the One coming from above” (anōthen, as in vv. 3, 7) or “the One coming from heaven.” The whole verse forms a chiasm in three parts (a, b, and a′):

a. The One coming from above is above all.

b. He who is from the earth is from the earth, and speaks from the earth.

a′. The One coming from heaven is above all.

Each of the three clauses is redundant in itself, and the first and last clauses (a and a′) are redundant in relation to each other, for to come “from above” and to come “from heaven” are the same thing. These two clauses refer to Jesus, recalling 3:13: “And no one has gone up to heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of man.” Their common conclusion that he “is above all” tends to support the appropriateness (if not the originality) of the disputed ending of verse 13, “who is in heaven.” “From above” takes us back to Jesus’ opening words to Nicodemus: “unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Now we learn that such a birth is possible because of Jesus himself, “the One coming from above,” or “from heaven,” the One who has spoken of “heavenly things” (ta epourania, v. 12). The preposition “from” (ek), repeated four times in this one verse, speaks both of someone’s origin and nature. Jesus is “from” heaven, and therefore a heavenly being. Because he is “above all,” it is not surprising that “they are all coming to him” (v. 26).

The second clause (b) is also redundant, and the compounded redundancy has a powerful rhetorical effect. “He who is from the earth” can only be John himself, who has insisted all along on his own subordinate status (1:15, 20–22, 26–27, 30; compare 1:8), and continues to do so here.* John is “from” this earth, and therefore “of” the earth, a mere human.* His testimony is “from the earth,” for he speaks from a human perspective and not “from heaven.”* Yet on the principle that “A person cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven” (v. 27), God speaks even through John. His “earthly” testimony is reliable, but the greater testimony “from above” belongs to Jesus.

32 We immediately hear more of Jesus’ “testimony,” as John echoes what Jesus had said earlier to Nicodemus (“we speak what we know, and we testify to what we have seen,” 3:11). Referring to “the One coming from heaven,” John claims that “What he has seen and heard, to this he testifies.” Later Jesus will use the emphatic “I” to make the same point about himself: “And what I heard from him, these things I speak in the world” (8:26; see also 5:30; 8:40; 15:15), and “The things I have seen in the Father’s presence I speak” (8:38). Like John or any other witness (see 1:32–34), Jesus can testify only to what he has seen or heard,* but because he was “with God in the beginning” (1:1–2), his testimony is unique and final. All other Christian testimony (for example, 1 Jn 1:1–3) is secondary to his, and depends on his. Yet Jesus’ testimony is not accepted by the world—this despite the impression that “they are all coming to him” (v. 26). John’s disciples could not have been more mistaken, for Jesus himself had told Nicodemus, “You people do not receive our testimony” (3:11), and John now generalizes from this that “no one receives his testimony.” Both pronouncements confirm the grim verdict that “his own did not receive him” (1:11), and that “human beings loved the dark and not the Light, because their works were evil” (3:19).

33 None of these generalized declarations of unbelief, however, are absolute. There are always exceptions, and the story line of John’s Gospel thrives on the exceptions. As soon as we heard that “his own did not receive him” (1:11), we learned of those “did receive him” (1:12). As soon as we were told that “human beings loved the dark and not the Light” (3:19), we learned that this was true of some but not of others (3:20–21). Here, right on the heels of a notice that “no one receives his testimony” (v. 32), comes a reminder that someone in fact “did receive his testimony” (v. 33). But who was this someone? Most interpreters conclude that it refers to anyone, anywhere, who ever “received” Jesus or “believed in his name” (as in 1:12), and that it functions as a kind of invitation to the reader to do exactly that. Yet the aorist participle with the definite article (ho labōn) suggests a more specific reference, possibly to John himself, who has just acknowledged “receiving” only what heaven had to give (v. 27), and who “received” from Jesus “fullness” and “grace upon grace” (1:16).* The two options are not mutually exclusive, for John is, as we have seen (1:15–16, 20, 34), the first among many believers in Jesus in a Gospel that has come (whether by chance or design) to bear his name.

Whether the reference is to John or to those who followed his example is in the end irrelevant, for the point of the verse is not the identity of the one who “received,” but the assertion that in receiving Jesus’ testimony a person has “confirmed thereby that God is true.” “Confirmed” (esphragisen) is literally “certified,” or “marked with a seal,” attesting to the validity of a document to which the seal is attached.* But the metaphor is weakened here to refer more generally to confirming or attesting the truthfulness of something or someone.* The accent is not on the process of “sealing” or “certification,” but on “God.” Those who “receive” Jesus’ testimony confirm not that Jesus is true (alēthēs) but that God is true (compare 8:26).* The point is much the same as in 1 John 5:10, where we read, “The person who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the person who does not believe God has made him a liar, for he has not believed in the testimony which God has testified about his Son.” After hearing about “the person who believes in the Son of God,” we would have expected “the person who does not believe in the Son of God,” but instead the text speaks of “the person who does not believe God.”* To not “believe in the Son of God” is to deny God himself and make God a liar. In both passages, God entrusts his own credibility to the Son.

34 This interpretation is borne out in the next verse, where “God” is mentioned twice in quick succession: “for the one God sent speaks the words of God” (italics added).* John, himself “sent from God” (1:6; 3:28), nonetheless acknowledges Jesus as God’s supreme agent, uniquely qualified to speak for God as John could never do. With this he confirms Jesus’ own claim that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him” (3:17). Yet for a moment John withholds the actual title “Son,” as he pauses to remind us of how he came to know Jesus as “Son of God” (compare 1:34). The reminder comes as a cryptic comment, “for he gives the Spirit without measure”—cryptic, because it is not at once clear who is giving what to whom. Is it God giving the Spirit to Jesus, or to believers, or both? Or is it Jesus giving the Spirit to believers? Or the Spirit giving spiritual gifts to believers?* The preceding clause implies rather clearly “God” as the Giver, and “the one God sent” as the recipient. If so, then “the Spirit” is the gift, and John is simply expanding on his earlier testimony that “I have watched the Spirit coming down as a dove out of the sky, and it remained on him” (1:32). “Without measure” (ou gar ek metrou) is simply another way of saying that the Spirit “remained” on Jesus (1:32, 33). The point is not that God “gave” the Spirit to Jesus “once upon a time” at Bethany beyond the Jordan (1:28), but that God “gives” the Spirit to Jesus always and everywhere in the course of his mission to the world.* That is why this Gospel never specifies Jesus’ baptism as the moment of the Spirit’s descent. Just as Jesus’ glory is revealed not in a particular incident, such as the transfiguration, but throughout his ministry (see 1:14), so the Spirit comes and remains on Jesus not on one specific occasion, such as the baptism, but all the time, as his constant companion and possession. To say that the Spirit is his “without measure” is to recognize Jesus as a man “full of grace and truth” (1:14), of whose “fullness we have all received” (1:16). The phrase is probably intended to distinguish Jesus from the prophets, who (it is implied) received the Spirit “by measure” (ek metrou) in order to prophesy,* and so to identify Jesus uniquely as God’s Son, or “One and Only.”* It confirms John’s earlier testimony, “This is the Son of God” (1:34), and is itself confirmed in the next verse, where John goes on to speak explicitly of “the Father” and “the Son” in much the same way in which Jesus himself will speak later in the Gospel (see 5:19–23, 26; 14:13).

35 John now draws a further conclusion from the revelatory scene to which he had testified earlier (see 1:32–34): “The Father loves the Son and has given all things in his hand.” With these words, he defines the earlier scene very much along the lines of the synoptic accounts of Jesus’ baptism (“You are my beloved Son, in whom I take pleasure,” Mk 1:11). The measureless gift of the Spirit (v. 34) is proof of the Father’s love, and along with the Spirit, the Father “has given” the Son “all things.”* The Son therefore “speaks the words of God” (v. 34), and to his voice one must listen (compare v. 29).

At first glance, the notion that “The Father loves the Son” stands in a kind of tension with Jesus’ pronouncement that “God so loved the world that he gave the One and Only Son.” If “love” has the connotation of choice or preference), it is natural to ask, “Whom does the Father love more, and whose welfare does the Father put first, his Son’s or the world’s?” But this is the wrong question, for the reader has known from the start that God’s gift of his Son in death was not irrevocable. From the beginning a resurrection or vindication of some kind was presupposed (see 1:5, 51; 2:19–22). Despite (or perhaps because of) being “lifted up,” the Son is “right beside the Father” (1:18), and “above all” (v. 31). Now it becomes explicit that in his exaltation “all things” (panta) are his. The effect of the notice that “The Father loves the Son” is not to subvert the message of John 3:16, but to further define the term “One and Only Son,” and thus to heighten the reader’s wonder at the breadth and depth of God’s love. If the Father gave up even the Son whom he loved above all to death on a cross, how great must be his love for us and for our world! Just as the Spirit was God’s immeasurable gift to his Son, so the Son is God’s immeasurable gift to the world.

36 The echo of 3:16 continues, as John puts before his disciples the same stark alternatives Jesus had offered Nicodemus and his companions: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” Jesus’ positive intention “that everyone who believes in him might not be lost but have eternal life” (v. 16) comes to realization in the first clause, yet the dualism of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus is maintained. As the reader has known from the start (see 1:11), not everyone will believe and not everyone will have eternal life. Verse 36 echoes verse 18, except that the common Johannine expression, “whoever does not believe” (v. 18b), gives way to “whoever disobeys the Son” (v. 36b), a phrase found nowhere else in John’s Gospel. While the contrast with “whoever believes in the Son” (v. 36a) makes clear that the meaning is the same, the change of verb helps define “believing” as obedience, or “coming to the Light” (compare vv. 20–21), rather than mere intellectual assent.*

The contrast between the two clauses also assumes that having “eternal life” (echei, “has”) and “seeing life” mean the same thing, just as “seeing” and “entering” the kingdom of God meant the same thing in Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus (vv. 3, 5).* But the tenses of the verbs are different. “Has” is present tense: the one who believes “has” eternal life now, as a present possession. Jesus’ intention that those who believe “might have” (vv. 15, 16) eternal life has become reality.* “Will not see,” by contrast, is future: the person who “disobeys the Son” not only does not have eternal life now, but will never “see life” in the future. As in verse 18, the point is not that the disobedient are now suddenly condemned by a vengeful God, but, on the contrary, that their spiritual condition and their relation to God remains unchanged. In verse 18, the unbeliever was said to be “already condemned,” while here “the wrath of God remains on him.” This last echo of John’s testimony of the Spirit’s descent on Jesus (1:32–34) is ironic: just as the Spirit came down and “remained on him” (1:32–33), so God’s wrath “remains on” the unbeliever. “The wrath of God,” mentioned only here in John’s Gospel, recalls one notable saying attributed to John in the synoptic Gospels (“Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” Mt 3:7//Lk 3:7). Here, however, the use of menein, “to remain,” implies that divine wrath is not simply a future threat but a present reality as well. Human beings are already under “the wrath of God,” just as they are already in “darkness” (compare 1:5; 3:19). Those who remain unchanged by the coming of the Light “remain in darkness” (compare 12:46), and the wrath of God “remains” on them. The grim verdict of this verse is that for some hearers and readers nothing has changed. As Jesus will put it later to some of the Pharisees, “Your sin remains” (9:41). The joint testimony of Jesus and John is that a person gains eternal life only by “coming to the Light” (vv. 20–21), or “believing in the Son” (v. 36). With these words, John’s testimony is finished, and he disappears from the story.*