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Now I come to the passage I’m preaching on this Sunday, so I’ll just share the notes I’ve put together for myself. The result is that the writing is probably sketchier than my earlier posts. Lots of stuff to work with here, so my big challenge is reflecting on how this is to come together homiletically in a way that captures the essence of what is going on in the chapter.

Overall background

The man-meeting-woman-at-well theme is recurring in Scripture and is a marital motif. John has already had the wedding in Cana, but more directly the Baptizer has just finished calling Jesus the Bridegroom in 3.29. Jesus is Yahweh, calling Israel and Judah back from their harlotry, and refashioning them into one Bride, as promised by the prophets.

There is intended parallel and antithesis with the Nicodemus meeting in previous chapter. Both meetings are necessary and complementary, which is perhaps why it is now that Jesus “must go through Samaria” (4.4), whereas Jews would normally bypass it by going around, through Perea.  Nicodemus stands in for the Jews (Judah) as “the teacher of Israel” (3.10) and reflects a great deal more knowledge, as “salvation is of the Jews” (4.22); the woman stands in for Samaritans (northern kingdom of Israel). Explains the contrasts: Nicodemus is knowledgeable and respectable and meets Jesus in Jerusalem, while the woman is not privy to Judah’s faith, is not particularly respectable, and meets Jesus in an otherwise unknown location (although it is not very far away from Shechem): this is the present state of Judea and Samaria, respectively. In both cases, Jesus is alone with His conversation partner: Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, and Jesus speaks to the woman while the disciples are away buying food in the town. The times are diametrically opposite: night vs noon (sixth hour).

John 3 is the first encounter between Jesus and one of the Jewish leaders; and John 4 is the first and primary recorded encounter between Jesus and Samaritans. Thus the two passages together constitute the beginning of Jesus’ official/representative program to fulfill the reunion prophecies of e.g. Ezekiel 37 etc. He goes to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (cf Mt 10.6; 15.24), both of Judah and what is left of “Ephraim.”

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John 3 is arguably one of the most misused chapters in the Bible, partly because it is so temptingly quotable that the overall context gets ignored very easily. It is important that one keep in mind the earlier observations I made in connection with chapter 1: the salvation-historical themes are very much at the heart of what Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus is about, and yet most discussion of the chapter ignores them. Not good.

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Am going to be much more cursory here. The primary events in the chapter are the water-to-wine sign at Cana, and the temple cleansing sign in Jerusalem.

Wedding themes are going to recur in John, so we need to be ready for it. The wedding scene in chapter 2 is not merely coincidental; John the Baptizer will speak of Jesus as the Bridegroom in 3.29, and there are also marital themes in chapter 4 that shouldn’t be missed.

The event in Cana is not just a sign in the sense of “miracle” – the Bible doesn’t generally use “sign” terminology that way, and many other miracles occurred in e.g. Elisha’s ministry without getting that label. In fact, Jesus’ temple action is also a “sign,” and it involves no recorded miracle at all.

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I am departing from my usual custom and am actually planning to preach from the lectionary text this Sunday, which is the account of the woman at the well (John 4). In connection with that, I’ve been going through the Gospel of John again from the beginning and am sharing a few scattered thoughts.

One of the first things that we need to unlearn is the unfortunate assumption that what is going on in John is all about our systematic theological category of “regeneration.” Although the Gospel’s themes are related to that, that approach dehistoricizes the events of the Gospel and robs us of much of the richness of the biblical backdrop.

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I’m doing some exegetical work in John 15, and in translating the Greek I paid careful attention to verse 11 for the first time: “These things I have spoken to you, so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

I had always naturally assumed this verse was speaking of fullness of joy in a quantitative sense (full joy, lots of joy), but in considering the passage and its parallels, I’m led in a different direction.

The term full is the Greek plerow, frequently translated “fulfill.” Meanwhile, the context in John 15 is about the benefits of remaining in Christ, the vine, versus failing to remain in Him, and thus being unfruitful, and cast out as branches and burned.

There is a striking correspondence to all of this in the parable of the soils; in Matthew 13.20-21, Jesus says that when the Word falls on stony soil, the hearer responds with joy, but after enduring only for a while (proskairos, temporary – the opposite of remaining), he falls away in the face of tribulation or persecution.

I suggest therefore, that what Jesus is saying is that He has spoken this word of admonition, so that the disciples would indeed remain in Him, and that thus their joy would not merely be temporary, but that it would find its “full fulfillment” in bearing ultimate fruit that remains (Jn 15.16). In other words, the “fullness” of joy is not so much quantitative as telic: that is, that it reaches its proper goal of permanence.

[Originally posted on my Rabbisaul blog March 29 2006]

It is a commonplace that the “feed my lambs” scene in John 21 constitutes a restoration of Peter, corresponding to his denial. Peter, of course, denies three times, and analogously, Jesus asks him three times, “do you love me?” Thus Jesus prompts three affirmations over against the three denials.

Tonight’s closing Bible study in A House for My Name brought further parallels to light. Peter Leithart draws attention to the “fire of coals” that provides the setting for both scenes: Peter is warming himself by a fire of coals when he makes his denial of Jesus (Jn 18.18), and Jesus has prepared a fire of coals for the restoration meeting (Jn 21.9).

But one other correspondence struck me. Peter denied Jesus because he was afraid of death. If he admits to being Jesus’ disciple, will he too be tried and executed? So what is the first thing Jesus says to Peter upon his reconfirmation? He tells him that he will die for Him (21.18-19). Thus the cycle is complete. Despite Peter’s cowardice and denial, he will faithfully reach the martyrdom he so feared.

[Originally posted on my Rabbisaul blog March 22 2006]

I’ve talked about this before (albeit some time ago), but this week I have occasion to preach a sermon on part of this chapter (3.14-21 is the Gospel for the Lenten readings), so I’ll offer a few scattered reflections.

When Jesus announces rebirth/birth from above by the Spirit, He is – surprisingly enough – announcing what He calls “earthly things” (3.12). Yet these “earthly things” are themselves a mystery even to Nicodemus, who is (shall we say) sympathetic. Why? Because he is not yet born from above, and therefore cannot even see the kingdom of God (3.3).

I’ve waffled back and forth over whether “see” there is simply synonymous to “enter” in 3.5, but I think it is more basic than that. John, after all, frequently comments on the matters of sight and blindness; similarly, Jesus as “the Light” is a major theme, including in this very discourse (vv 19ff). Those not born from above cannot so much as recognize the kingdom (cf 1 Cor 2.14).

I’ve earlier commented on the fact that being “born by water and the Spirit” refers to water baptism (with a first referent to John) and Pentecost. It is by these means that the kingdom has come, and it seems unforeseen and unintelligible, even to Nicodemus.

But this is no surprise: that born from the flesh is flesh; that born from the Spirit is s/Spirit (3.6). This is a redemptive-historical, and not simply an individual, statement. The best of the saints living at Christ’s arrival were “flesh”; the opportunity had not yet come to be “born from above.”

It is my opinion that verse 8 is one of the most radically misunderstood verses in the passage. It is usually read along these lines: “The wind blows and you can’t see its origin or its destiny, and the Spirit is the same way.” But that is not what Jesus says. There is no comparative in the verse (“just as… even so”), and neither is it likely that the wind is referenced at all. At most, it is a resonance (something akin to Ezekiel 37, where Spirit, breath and wind are interchangeable. (In Greek, pneuma refers to all three: Spirit, breath, and wind.) Moreover, 8b is not strictly about the Spirit, but about the one born from the Spirit.

Again, Jesus has already just been talking about the Spirit (3.6: “That which has been born from the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born from the Spirit is spirit”). Verse 8 can be literally rendered, “The Spirit ‘spirits’/blows where He wills, and His sound you hear, but you do not know whence He comes and where He goes: thus is everyone who has been born from the Spirit.” Verse 8 is not a comparison, but an explanation: this is how the Spirit acts, and thus this is how those born from the Spirit have their existence.

The inexplicability of the birth into the kingdom stands in contrast to those born from the flesh. The members of the kingdom will not, as it turns out, simply be all the members of Israel head for head. The kingdom arrives and doesn’t simply incorporate the whole nation. Instead, the Spirit chooses whom He will, and brings them to baptism, and ultimately, to Pentecost.

Thus far, Jesus says He has been speaking of “earthly things” (3.12), as we noted. But now He speaks of heavenly: the Son of Man who ascends and descends with reference to heaven (3.13). Thus even more mysterious than the unpredictability of the Spirit’s kingdom work is Jesus’ own identity. But if this is a reference to the eternal existence of the Son of Man (as the language of descent would seem to imply), it also seems to be bound up with one strange form of ascent, as Jesus commences to speak of the Son of Man being “lifted up” (on the cross), with the result of giving eternal life to those who believe in Him (3.14-5).

3.16 is, of course, the most well-known verse in the Bible. God thus loved “the world,” that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that every one who believes in Him should not be destroyed but have eternal life. John has a very strong “world” (kosmos) theme, and it begins already in 1.9-10: “That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him” (there’s our “unseeing” theme again!).

Incidentally – is v 9 speaking of Jesus giving light to “every man who comes into the world,” or is it referring to the light coming into the world, giving light to every man? [The Greek nominative neuter participle - from "light" - is the same in form as the masculine accusative - which would correspond to "every man."] The latter, I suggest, is the point; since it is Jesus who is spoken of throughout John as “coming into the world.” This is cinched by our passage in 3.19: “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

John’s use of “world” seems self-contradictory to us. For example, the world is something that was made through the Word (1.10) and which is the object of God’s love (3.16), and Jesus gives His life for the life of the world (6.51) – and yet elsewhere it is the world that hates Jesus and His disciples (7.7; 15.18-9; 16.20), cannot receive the Spirit (14.17), and is about to be judged (12.31). Are these simply two radically different ways of using the same term?

I think the answer is yes and no. Keep in mind that kosmos is an order-word (I’ll explain a bit in a moment). We must hold together at least three things here: 1) the creation of the kosmos; 2) the fallenness of the kosmos as it now is; 3) the concept of two ages. In John’s usage, it seems to me that kosmos refers to the ordered reality of the first age, including its people. This ordered reality is thus corrupt and corruptible (i.e. subject to weakness and death), sinful – and also comprised of the very people Jesus came to save. Thus the negative and positive uses of the term are not entirely antithetical but complementary within a global concept of two ages, two orders.

(There is considerable overlap here with the term flesh in Paul – and to some degree, in John as well, as here in 3.6. Even Paul can use the flesh-terminology in a positive sense corresponding to John’s world-language: Christ is of the seed of David “according to the flesh,” for instance [Rom 1.3].)

Jesus comes simultaneously to judge and to save the world – and this is so, quite apart from the issue of condemnation. (Actually, Jesus says He does not come to “judge” the world in that sense – 3.17; 12.47 – although such condemnation is a by-product of His arrival: those who do not believe are indeed condemned: 3.18-19.) This is because Jesus is the bringer of the kingdom – that is, a new order of things, a new age. For “the world” to be saved, it needs to meet its “judgment” in the cross (12.31). As the same verse notes, this “judgment” upon the world involves the “casting out” of the “ruler of this world.” In other words, the Satan can only have power to rule in the kosmos, not the kingdom. So the judgment of the world in Christ’s flesh (and I use that term in its fullest sense) amounts to the defeat of Satan: “the world” that believes in Christ passes from being kosmos and thus out of Satan’s dominion.

Anyway, we have now wandered a bit astray from John 3. Returning there, with regard to the earlier concept of “not seeing”: the point is that those who have not yet been born of the Spirit remain fully within the kosmos. As such, because they are fully in the first age, they cannot “see” the kingdom.

(Jesus will later tell His disciples that they are “not of the world” [e.g. 15.19], even though He has not yet died, nor has the Spirit come. That may seem a bit of an anomaly, but not really, since Jesus is present, and He also distinguishes between how the Spirit is present with the disciples, but will be in them [14.17]. Perhaps we might say that those who believe upon Christ prior to His death, resurrection, and Pentecost, have been given authority to become the sons of God, but have not yet entered fully into that sonship; cf 1.12.)

With regard to 3.16, however, we see God’s love for the world. He sends His Son to judge the world in His own self-giving death, which will in fact be life for the world. The judgment upon the world will be a sort of destruction (in Christ), but that will be the necessary abolition which provides the possibility of resurrection. Thus the only-begotten Son finds the “destruction” that those who believe in Him may not. (In 3.16, we usually translate the word perish, but less arcane language, it means destruction. Sometimes, abandoning an archaic term will help us hear something afresh.)

So, as John the Baptizer preached, the coming of the Son of Man into the world is judgment (“the axe is laid to the root of the trees” etc). And yet that judgment will not entail destruction for those who believe in the Son of Man. That is the good news of the kingdom, a kingdom which is entered by water and by the Spirit.

Well, that is enough for tonight. Perhaps there will be more to come; we’ll see.