John 3

1,2. THERE was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. 7, 8 10 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him, is not condemned: but he that believeth not, is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is to come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

THE gift of a world were no sacrifice to him who has but to speak, and worlds of rarer beauty and glory fall from his open hand. In creation and providence, there is never conveyed to the mind any impression of expense or sacrifice on the part of the Infinite Creator. But it is different when we turn to the sacrifice of Christ. The great Father had but one Son, one gentle, holy, loving-hearted child, and him for us he surrendered to ruffian and murderous hands. But in Jesus we behold more than a gift of Deity to man—in him we see Deity giving itself for man. In the sacrifice of Christ there is that of which we are permitted to conceive as the sacrifice of one who was himself divine, as the self-devotion of God for the salvation of his creatures. There was here, as we are permitted to think of this most wondrous event in the history of the universe, the abandoning of power by Omnipotence, the renunciation of authority by him who rules the world, the stooping of the Author and Sustainer of life to weakness, pain, and death. Surely, if only by infinite sacrifice can infinite love be expressed, the dying Jesus is to us the sublime manifestation of the invisible God! C.

STANDING in time the first, this discourse stands in character alone. You search in vain through all the subsequent discourses of our Lord for any such clear, compendious, comprehensive development of the Christian salvation: of its source in the love of the Father; its channel in the death of his only-begotten Son; and of the great Agent by whom it is appropriated and applied. You search in vain for any other instance in which the three persons of the Trinity were spoken of by our Lord consecutively and conjointly; to each being assigned his proper part in the economy of our redemption. It may even be doubted whether, in the whole range of the apostolic epistles, there be a passage of equal length in which the manner of our salvation through Christ is as fully and distinctly described. Let those who delight to dwell on the simple and pure morality of the Sermon on the Mount, and to contrast it with the doctrinal theology of the apostles, declaring their preference for the teachings of the Master above that of his disciples, but ponder well this first of all our Lord’s discourses, and they will see that instead of any conflict there is a perfect harmony. H.

At the very outset of his ministry, our Saviour foretells his death, reveals his own character as “the only-begotten Son of God,” and as “the Son of man;” unfolds the design of his mission, not to condemn even the guiltiest, but “that the world through him may be saved;” sets forth the means of the accomplishment of this design—his exaltation on the cross, his sacrificial death, and the way in which an interest in the blessings he secured may be obtained—a living faith; traces the origin of this economy to the mercy and love of God, and warns men of the punishment to be inflicted on all who neglect his message. The condition of the world as perishing, the need of an inward, holy change on man’s part, the adjustment of the claims of justice, with the exercise of mercy on God’s; the mighty agent by whose influence this inward change is wrought, and the cost of this adjustment, with the end of the whole dispensation, that all things may be given into the hands of the Son, are fully disclosed. The first scenes, therefore, of the public ministry of our Lord, shadow forth the truths which were embodied, with terrible reality, in the last.

1. Nicodemus was a member of the sect of the Pharisees, and a ruler of the Jews; a councillor, or member of the Sanhedrim, the highest Jewish judicial court, and an expositor of the Jewish law. He probably, like the rest of his countrymen, looked for a temporal deliverer; but seems to have been a man of a candid and thoughtful mind. J. A.—We may presuppose that he shared in the ordinary Jewish conceptions of the Messianic kingdom, and expected it soon to be founded in visible and earthly glory; although he may have had, at the same time, some more worthy and spiritual ideas in regard to it. He considered himself sure, as a rigidly pious Jew and Pharisee, of a share in that kingdom; and was only anxious to be informed as to the approaching manifestation of Messiah. N.

2. John discloses to us the cause of this night visit, when at length the shy faith of this distinguished night-disciple breaks forth into the open day, in the history of Jesus’ burial; “There came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night,” as second to Joseph of Arimathea, who also formerly had been “secretly a disciple of Jesus, for fear of the Jews.” This fear Nicodemus had now not yet overcome. R. B.—It would have been a manlier, more heroic thing for him to have braved all danger, and risen above all fear of man. But whatever blame we may attach to Nicodemus, let it not obscure our perception of his obvious honesty and earnestness, his intense desire for further enlightenment, his willingness to receive instruction. He came by night, but he was the only one of his order who came at all. He came by night, but it was not to gratify an idle curiosity, but in the disquiet of a half-awakened conscience to seek for peace. He shows at once his respect, his candor, his intelligence, and his faith. H.

3. Instead of showing himself flattered by the recognition of his divine mission by a man of such rank and influence, Jesus in effect states that his visitor was entirely mistaken on the subject about which he came to converse: and that, without a complete change, both of feeling and of thought, he could never see (that is, he could neither understand nor enter) the kingdom of which he deemed himself a member. J. A.

Born again. The Greek word anothen has a twofold signification: from above, and over again, or anew. Either sense suits here. It is true that John frequently mentions being born of God, and being born from above; but yet, the connection plainly shows that the Lord had said, born anew. R. B.—He uses the figure of birth and speaks of being born for this kingdom because, in the mind of Nicodemus, his birth from the stock of Abraham gave him his credentials of membership in the kingdom of God. H. C.

4. A Gentile who embraced the Jewish faith was admitted into the Jewish commonwealth by baptism, and was said to be born again. But for themselves, the school of doctors to which Nicodemus belonged had so far lost the spiritual essence and life of their religion as to have taken up the conceit that “it was enough to have been of the seed of Abraham, or the stock of Israel, to make them fit subjects for the kingdom of heaven.” Nicodemus, a proud master in that kingdom, could understand how a poor, ignorant, unholy Gentile could require to be made over before he could aspire to the privileges of the Messiah’s kingdom; but for himself this seemed as incredible, almost as impossible, as for an old man to be born a second time. J. P. T.—This popular delusion John had already, by his baptism and his teaching, done something to rectify. The full truth it was reserved for Jesus to proclaim, and he does it now to Nicodemus. This master in Israel has come to Jesus to be taught; let him know then that it is not a new doctrine, but a new life, which Jesus has come to proclaim and to impart. The kingdom of God is not an outward or a national one, not the kingdom of a creed, or of an external organized community. It is a kingdom exclusively of the new-born—of those who have been begotten of the Spirit. H.

5. Born of water. In Ezekiel 36: 25-27, we have in one group all the leading ideas found in these words of Christ to Nicodemus: first, “water”—clean, cleansing water, sprinkled and cleansing from all moral filthiness; next, “the new heart and the new spirit” given—which is precisely regeneration; last, the recognition of “the Spirit of God” as the Supreme Agent whose work is set forth by the symbol of cleansing water, but which really gives the new heart and insures the new moral life: “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.” The word “water” would naturally suggest to Nicodemus this very passage in Ezekiel—not to say also, numerous other Old Testament passages in which water symbolizes the Spirit’s agency in the hearts of men. This explains sufficiently why Jesus puts “water” first in order; also why he names it once, and once only—i. e., not as being itself one of the agents in regeneration, but as suggesting the Old Testament passages which speak of the Spirit under the symbol of water. Thus it seems to admit really of no question that Jesus, following Old Testament usage, speaks of water as a symbol of the Holy Spirit’s renewing, heart-cleansing agency in regeneration. H. C.

6. Born of the flesh. In this flesh is included every part of that which is born after the ordinary method of generation: even the spirit of man, which, receptive as it is of the Spirit of God, is yet in the natural birth dead, sunk in trespasses and sins, and in a state of wrath. Such “flesh and blood” cannot inherit the kingdom of God. A.—Born of the Spirit. In respect of that spiritual life, that life of obedience, faith, and love, which is the inner experience of the kingdom of God, one must become altogether a new man. J. P. T.—The change is not of new faculties for old, but of new objects of affection. In mind and heart he is the same man; only with all his heart and with all his mind he serves Christ. Every thought remains, and his faculty of thought; but all brought into captivity to the obedience of faith. In motive, in character, in aim, in the objects of his love, but in these, and such as these only, “old things are past away, and behold all things are become new.” It is only where this change is undergone that the kingdom of God is begun, and it is from the seat of this inward change that this kingdom spreads—first through the whole man, and then through our race. J. A.—A change of heart is not an unnatural change. It is never miraculous. It is not necessarily convulsive. It is not necessarily even destructive of self-possession. God employs in it an instrument exquisitely adjusted to the mind of man as an intelligent and free being. Truth may act in it with an equipoise of force as tranquil as that of gravitation in the orbits of the stars. Phelps.

8. As this “birth of the Spirit” was still strange to Nicodemus, Christ made use of a sensible image to bring it more vividly before him. “As none can set bounds or limits to the wind, as one hears and feels its blast, but cannot track it to its source or to its aim; so it is with the breath of God’s Spirit in those who have experienced the new birth. There is something in the interior life not to be explained or comprehended, which reveals itself only in its operations, and can be known only by experience; it is a life which no one can trace backward to its origin, or forward to its end.” N.—The new birth is a stupendous mystery of life, which can be known only by being experienced. It is a mystery in advance of its accomplishment, demanding of us the docility of children in submitting to the process divinely ordained for us. It is a mystery even after its accomplishment. Always will it be a matter of grateful wonder to the Christian, how the Spirit of all grace ever forced, and yet so gently, the fastenings of his bosom, and wrought there so efficiently, and yet so sweetly, his saving work. Verily, the Lord was within us, though we were but half awake to his glory. While all along, at every point, there presses ever the old perplexity, how it is that God can work within us both to will and to do, and we all the while be working out our own salvation. On the one hand, it is plain that no new faculty is called into being. It is equally plain that there has been something more than moral suasion. But precisely what it is that has befallen us we cannot say. We can only say that, whereas once we were blind, now we see; and we praise, not the means of grace, but Jesus of Nazareth, who appointed them. R. D. H.—The whence and whither of the holy wind which lays hold of us by the effectual working of his mighty power, is a mystery, the full revelation of which will be part of the delights of eternity. For there we shall know the mind of the Lord, in which the purpose of our deliverance is rooted, and in that light we shall see, and adoringly celebrate, the wonderful ways in which he has continually from time to time followed us, in order to draw us to himself. R. B.

10. Knowest thou not?** A religious teacher, he professed to know the Old Testament Scriptures. The doctrine of the necessity of a new birth ought not to have appeared strange to him. “A clean heart—circumcision of the heart—a new heart,” were expressions he must have read in the prophets, and which pointed toward the new birth. J. C. R.

12. If I have told you thus of what is matter of experience, and runs its course in the human heart during this earthly life, and you think it incomprehensible, how will you believe if I tell you the higher truths of the kingdom—those heavenly mysteries which concern the plan of God for the salvation of man? G.—Among the “heavenly things” of which he would speak, the Lord especially means the atonement, that act determined in the heavenly bosom of eternal love, and accomplished—though in earth, yet not in us, but for us who are earthly—by the abased and exalted Son of man, who is in heaven. If Nicodemus did not believe in the necessity of his regeneration, i. e., if he did not believe that he was a sinner and needed justification to life, how would he be able to believe in that necessity of which the Saviour speaks, that the Son of man must be lifted up, in order that the righteousness may be obtained with which the sinner in regeneration is clothed (13–16)? The Lord’s discourse ascends up from the Spirit, who works the new birth, to the Son, who, by his atonement, meritoriously procures it, and from both to the Father, from whom the life, applied by the Spirit and mediated by the Son, comes as the original giver. R. B.—If the renewed heart be such a marvel to us, much more that great sacrifice which has paved its way. If Jesus was, as the Scriptures assure us, God manifest in the flesh, then have we a heavenly mystery answering to the earthly. Not that we can enter into the hidden depths of his august person, running the line of boundary between his natures, daring to say in which of the natures he suffered for our sins; and yet the mighty work accomplished within us compels us to an exalted faith in the mighty work accomplished for us in that tasting death for every man. R. D. H.

13. The sense manifestly is this: “The perfect knowledge of God is not obtained by any man’s going up from earth to heaven to receive it—no man hath so ascended—but he whose proper habitation, in his essential and eternal nature, is heaven, hath, by taking human flesh, descended as ’the Son of man’ to disclose the Father, whom he knows by immediate gaze alike in the flesh as before he assumed it, being essentially and unchangeably ‘in the bosom of the Father.’” B.—The Son of man, the Lord Jesus, the Word made flesh, was in, came down from, heaven, and was in heaven while here, and ascended up into heaven when he left this earth; and by all these proofs, speaking in the prophetic language of accomplished redemption, does the Lord establish, that he alone can speak of heavenly things to men, or convey the blessing of the new birth to them. A.

The Son of man. In the texture of the gospels, it is obviously his manhood which is emphatically insisted on as being truly the miracle, and not his superior nature, which is continually assumed indirectly, or referred to by the Divine Teacher with that calm and lofty familiarity which makes it an inherent dignity. In truth, the constant careful ascriptions of manhood—the very phrase, “Son of man,” chosen as an exclusive title—are themselves the most unequivocal proof that he who bore them was more than man; for otherwise where were the force or pertinency of a designation equally applicable to every child of Adam? He must have been more than ever man was or could be, by whom “the Son of man” was selected as a special, appropriate, and distinctive title. Mightier than man, he has become man; by voluntary assumption he is one with us in nature; as such he suffered for all, as such he can sympathize with all, and as such he will judge all. W. A. B.

14. Of the heavenly nature of the Son of man, Jesus had just spoken. He now passes from his nature to his work—that work of redemption which forms the basis to that of regeneration, with the necessity of which the conference had begun. C. B.—As Moses lifted up the serpent, so the Son of man. In both cases the remedy is conspicuously displayed: in the one case on a pole, in the other on the cross, to “draw all men unto him.” In both cases, it is by directing the eye to the uplifted Remedy that the cure is effected; in the one case the bodily eye, in the other the gaze of the soul by “believing in him,” as in that glorious ancient proclamation, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Both methods are stumbling to human reason. What, to any thinking Israelite, could seem more unlikely than that a deadly poison should be dried up in his body by simply looking on a reptile of brass? Such a stumbling-block to the Jews and to the Greeks foolishness was faith in the crucified Nazarene, as a way of deliverance from eternal perdition. Yet was the warrant in both cases to expect a cure equally rational and well grounded. As the serpent was God’s ordinance for the cure of every bitten Israelite, so is Christ for the salvation of every perishing sinner—the one, however, a purely arbitrary ordinance, the other divinely adapted to man’s complicated maladies. In both cases the efficacy is the same. As one simple look at the serpent, however distant and however weak, brought an instantaneous cure, even so, real faith in the Lord Jesus, however tremulous, however distant—be it but real faith—brings certain and instant healing to the perishing soul. In a word, the consequences of disobedience are the same in both. B.—Nothing could have been more startling to Jewish modes of thought, or even to the mind of Nicodemus, who was still in bondage to the outward letter, than an intimation that Messiah was not to appear in earthly splendor, but was to found the salvation of mankind upon the basis of his own sufferings. This was indeed, and ever, the stumbling-block of the Jews. N.

16. Moving forward in his discourse logically, his next point naturally is to trace this scheme of salvation for lost men to its source in the deep, eternal, absolutely infinite love of God for this lost world. H. C.—Thus the Three Persons of the Trinity are all revealed in their working for man’s redemption: the Father loving the world so as even to give his Son to die for man; the Son coming down from heaven to be lifted up on the cross, and ascending to heaven again; and the Spirit renewing the hearts of those who should enter the kingdom of heaven. S.—The doctrine of the Trinity is omnipresent in revelation, like the God it declares! Wherever it is not asserted, it is assumed: it is not one thread in the web, but the ground of the whole texture. Everywhere the gospel points our aspirations to God: we rush forward, and it is Christ that meets us! Everywhere it bids us pray to feel and know an inward God; we pray, we gain our prayer, and the Spirit becomes ours! . . . And what but love brought the eternal Trinity to glorify our earth, to tell us of themselves and give themselves to us? Love, the one grace which is mutual between God and man, which made God human and makes man divine! W. A. B.

This is one of those best and most glorious gospels which were well worthy to be written in letters of gold, if it could be, in the heart; justly would it be the daily lesson and meditation of every Christian, that so it might visit his thoughts in his prayers, strengthening his faith and quickening his heart to call upon God; for it is a word which has power to make mourners joyful, to make dead men alive, if the heart only steadfastly believes in it. Here thou seest what faith is and means, viz., that it is not a mere bare thought concerning Christ, that he was born of the Virgin, that he suffered, was crucified, that he rose again, ascended into heaven; but it is such a heart as infolds and lays hold on the Son of God, according to the meaning of these words; a heart that holds it for a certainty that God gave his only-begotten Son for us, and has thus loved us that we, for his sake, might not perish, but have eternal life. And because thou thus believest, thou shalt surely be saved, for this word is a power and a might stronger than any terror of sin or damnation, and this gift is so large that it swallows up sin, death, and hell. Luther.

That God should love such a world and not hate it—that he should love it so as to provide salvation—that in order to provide salvation he should give, not an angel, nor any created being, but such a priceless gift as his only-begotten Son—that this salvation should be freely offered to every one that believeth—all, all this was indeed a “heavenly thing.”

—17. Condemn. The same word elsewhere rendered “judge.” Our Lord would have us know that judgment and the condemnation of the ungodly are not the work of the first advent, but of the second.—18. The only-begotten Son of God. In the 14th verse he called himself “the Son of man.” Both the names were used to impress upon the mind of Nicodemus the two natures of Messiah. He was not only the Son of man but the Son of God. The same words are used in both places about faith in Christ. If we would be saved, we must believe in him both as the Son of man and the Son of God. It is not said, that the believer shall not be condemned at the last day, but that “he is not condemned.” The very moment a sinner believes on Christ, his iniquities are taken away, and he is counted righteous. [On the other hand] the man who refuses to believe on Christ [“is condemned already”] is in a state of condemnation before God, even while he lives. J. C. R.—He that believeth on him—he who believeth that the only-begotten Son of God was for him given up to the judgment of death and condemnation—is not condemned, for what in him is liable to condemnation, viz., sin, has been already condemned and put to death on the cross of the surety. R. B.—All other sins can be forgiven. But the sin of unbelief in God’s offered Son puts the soul beyond the pale of mercy; practically nullifies, as to the man who will not believe in Jesus, all that God in his great mercy has provided for human salvation. H. C.—In the last judgment there will be no need of any long inquisition, but the sentence will simply be: Because thou believedst not thou art already condemned. Chemnitz.

19-21. It is the perpetual annoyance of sinners that God has made them with a moral sense which condemns sin—which insists upon witnessing against sin as wrong, base, unworthy of a moral being. This witnessing testimony of his own conscience the sinner must in some way withstand. How shall he do it? In the words before us, the Great Teacher treats the case with beautiful yet rich simplicity. Truth is light—truth being to the mind what light is to the body. This light of moral sort God has brought into the world. In his power of moral choices man has his option to come or not to come to this light. If he loves light, he comes; if he loves darkness rather, he hates the light and will not come. Of course he will love darkness if his deeds are deeds of darkness, such as can not bear the light. As long as a man proposes to continue in sin, he will vindicate his former sinning self so far as he can, and will labor to make his sins appear trivial, i. e., he will shut off the light, will dread its revelations; will hate it and will not come up to it lest it make his life and his soul unendurably odious. On the other hand, if a man live up to his moral convictions—in the words of Jesus, if he “doeth truth,” then he will come to the light, and you may at once see that his doings are manifestly “wrought in God"—the deeds of a soul new-born to God with that birth which is by the Spirit. The ultimate doctrine reached by this philosophy of gospel faith and unbelief is that both have their roots rather in the heart than in the head, since gospel faith wells up spontaneously in the heart that loves purity and truth; while gospel unbelief has its roots and impulses in cherished sin and in the darkness which brings the only comfort to a persistent sinner. H. C.

There are two wonders: God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son—and the world so loved darkness, that it rejected the only-begotten Son of God who was given for it. This is Israel’s history, and that of all the lost, as the Lord contemplates plates it in its completeness. R. B.—In these memorable words about the light and the darkness with which the interview was closed, Jesus gently rebuked the fear of man which led this great rabbi to seek the shelter of midnight for a deed which was not a deed of darkness needing to be concealed, but which was indeed a coming to the true and only Light. F.—He speaks of himself, even now, when obscure and alone, as a king, and shows a serene composure in extending his royalty over even the souls of men. In the presence of a famous rabbi, he claims to be the light to which all men, without exception, must come, who love the truth. His first utterance anticipates the highest claims of his last. An humble Galilean, easy of access, sympathetic, obscure, he calmly announces himself as the Son of man, whose home is heaven: as knowing the counsels of God from eternity: as the only-begotten Son of the Eternal, and the arbiter of eternal life or death to the world. It is idle to speak of any merely human utterances, even of the greatest and best of our race, in the presence of such thoughts and words as these: they are the voice of a higher sphere, though falling from the lips of one who walked as a man among men. G.

The seed then sown was long to be dormant. For three years there was no token of its germination. At last the words that three years before had sounded in the ruler’s listening ear, and which had since been frequently recalled, are verified and explained. The cross is raised; Jesus is lifted up. The darkened heavens, the reeling earth, the prayer for his crucifers, the promise to the penitent who dies beside him, the voice of triumph at the close, proclaim the death of that only-begotten Son of God whom he had given to be the Saviour of the world. The scales drop off from the eyes they so long had covered. Fear goes out, and faith comes into Nicodemus’s breast, a faith that plants him by Joseph’s side in the garden, and unites their hands in the rendering of the last services to the body, which they buried in the new sepulchre. What a flood of light fell then on the hitherto mysterious words of the Crucified; what a rich treasure of comfort would the meditation of them unfold to Nicodemus; and what an honor that to him were first addressed those words which have comforted so many millions since, and are destined to comfort so many millions more in the years that are to come: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that who-soever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” H.

Section 21.—The Baptist’s Last Testimony. Imprisoned by Herod.