John 3

Jesus and a scholar (Cameo 3)

Introduction
Teaching overview
Nicodemus Conversation
The endorsement by John the Baptist
Personal response – surrender or pride-control

Introduction

John Chapter 3 is the third cameo John uses to unfold the identity of Jesus he was discovering. It relates an encounter of Jesus with a high status academic and religious leader, not someone with whom John would have regularly rubbed shoulders. No doubt, what Jesus had to say to this elite member of Jewish society would have fascinated John. The highlights of John’s record of their interaction is possibly one of the most referenced chapters of the Bible. Its popularity comes from creating life-changing impacts in the lives of millions, who previously were confused or had lost all hope for their life until they read and grasped the comments on the life Jesus offered to Nicodemus. Through it, many have entered into a relationship with God that has brought new hope and freedom from a dreary and aimless life of controlling moods and habits. By taking this advice given by Jesus in his encounter with a scholar seeking truth, many have discovered a new world of spiritual understanding and experienced the progressive freedom from negative aspects of oneself becoming supplanted by the joys of a growing focus on loving others. By taking your time to ponder this very personal teaching, may you experience the same result.

Jesus lived among the superstitions and religious rituals of the ancient world. The Greeks groped for the unknown god and an understanding of life after death through their schools of philosophy and the creation of a pantheon of gods, which they sought to appease to gain protection and favours. Every civilisation before them had done the same. Superstition had reigned. The Jews sought out their one God by combing through their scriptures for understanding, rehearsing their history on sacred days, adhering to their laws and religiously offering up ritual blood sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. In addition, they tried diligently to obey an accumulating stack of added ritual requirements placed on their daily routine by a religious caste that needed to justify its existence and increase its control. Yet none of this activity brought their spirits alive and set them free. Every Jew was trapped in the maxim of their laws, "if you are guilty of one, you are guilty of all".

Jesus came into these two confused and burdened worlds of Gentiles and Jews with his message of freedom available to all. In this chapter and the next, Jesus speaks to the Jewish and Gentile mind-sets controlling two individuals who could not have been more starkly different. In Chapter 3, he interacts with a Jewish male at the pinnacle of his nation’s government and scholarship, esteemed by his society for both achievements. In Chapter 4, he interacts with a Samaritan female at the bottom rung of her society – a despised outcast to both her society and the Jews, who were banned from interacting with any Samaritan, particularly a woman. John does not even address her by name in his account of her meeting Jesus. She remains as an incognito Samaritan woman throughout his account. Her race practiced a syncretistic religion worshipping Yahweh the God of Moses, the God who broke their ancestors free from slavery in Egypt, plus a mixture of pagan gods adopted by their forefathers when Assyria transplanted other races among the northern regions of Israel to replace the Israelites he had taken into captivity in 721 B.C. (2 Kings 17:24-33). Consequently, the Jews classified Samaritans as Gentiles rather than accepting them as half-brothers with a commonality in inheritance. Jesus ignored the entrenched cultural and religious animosity between Jews and the Samaritans and engaged the woman in conversation.

Both the Jewish ruler and this Gentile outcast were deeply impacted for life by their one encounter with Jesus. Every person since, who has embraced his teaching in these two chapters, has likewise been impacted for the rest of their life. The Jewish ruler later came out of from hiding within his socially esteemed ruling council and guardians of Jewish law to take the criminal Jesus down from his cross, whom they had put to death by their law. He associated himself fully with Jesus upon whom they had applied the highest penalty of their law. In so doing, he put at jeopardy all the prestige that he had attained in his life. He had clearly become a follower of the Teacher he originally sought out by this encounter at night.

By comparison, the Samaritan woman had no fame to put at jeopardy. The only fame she carried was the fame of her shame. Nevertheless, she made a life changing decision to step into the glare of her society’s condemnation to tell how Jesus miraculously knew all about her disgraced life and claimed to be the Messiah, to whom both the Jews and Samaritans looked for their national restoration. She brought an entire people group to Jesus by her simple testimony and so became the first evangelist of Jesus to the Gentile world. Because of her, many Samaritans believed in him and gained eternal life. John learned much watching how Jesus on his journey related to these two very different individuals with very different journeys in their past and very different potential journeys in their future. Carefully observing and recording these two interactions enriched John’s journey.

When taken together, these two encounters with Jesus show his intention from the outset to make the good news of his kingdom open to all peoples – both Jew and Gentile at any strata in their society, from the highest and honoured to the lowest and despised. He intends for his kingdom to be open to all people. The continued global relevance of these two encounters is that they show that none of us is excluded from God’s love and salvation regardless of our race, gender, position in society, personal history, religious belief (personally constructed or institutionalised) and the degree of our adherence to it. The profile of our pedigree is irrelevant to Jesus. He leaves the choice to us whether or not we want to be part of his kingdom and journey with him under his rule or avoid him.

The personal questions that confront each reader in chapters 3 and 4 are: To what extent do I trust in my pedigree of birth and achievements, religious or otherwise, to believe that they give me a right to receive eternal life? Conversely, to what extent have my failures brought me to believe I will never gain entrance to heaven and am destined to be an eternal castaway in hell? These are personal questions not to be brushed aside but considered carefully on your journey through life. We need to do ourselves the favour of asking them and not avoiding or burying them. Our personal value to Jesus warrants it.

Teaching overview

John chapter 3 contains two clear teachings by Jesus for Nicodemus that were completely new in all ancient religious thought in its various attempts to know God. They were also revolutionary. They remain so today among the multitudinous variety of quests to find God made in every civilisation on earth. These teachings abolish all religious and moral practices as valid methods to gain eternal life. They set people free from the laws and expectations of their religion, and if necessary, their culture. These are momentous, life destiny claims worth your testing. The revolutionary teachings are:

"Unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom of God!" (v. 3). Jesus then expanded this into, "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit." (v. 5)
"God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." (v. 16, 18)

Spiritual birth

The first teaching is about birth. The second is about belief with Jesus making himself the central identity for every person to face with belief or disbelief, i.e., trust or distrust ^[1]. When taken together, these two teachings of Jesus summarise how we enter the kingdom of God and gain eternal life, i.e., by means of: 1) birth by the Spirit of God, and 2) placing our trust in Jesus. They teach that we cannot sidestep the need for a spiritual birth, and we cannot by-pass placing our trust in Jesus to gain any certainty of having eternal life. This assumes of course that we have tested and accepted his historical validity as presented to us in ancient history and by his followers.

My understanding of the first teaching has grown throughout my journey with Jesus over the years. I have come to learn by reflecting on my inner self that without this second birth initiating spirit life and growth within me, I see nothing of spiritual reality, know nothing of it, hear nothing and have nothing of eternal worth. It remains true for me every day. That may sound dramatic, but Jesus throughout his teaching claimed it is true for life in the kingdom of God. I may see, know, hear, and have plenty in this world yet be bereft of everything that gives me the sight, knowledge, hearing and possessions needed for eternal life. Said another way, I am blind, ignorant, deaf and bankrupt of the spiritual essentials which I need to gain eternal life. In short, I am a spiritual fool though I may consider myself worldly wise. I remain stuck in the kingdom of this physical world unable to see and have any experiential knowledge of the kingdom of God. I cannot even analyse it, nor do I have any basis from which to criticise it. No amount of success, education, good works or money can change that fact, whether or not this suits my current beliefs and the image my pride seeks to portray to others. This is what I am discovering on my journey through my life as John did journeying with Jesus.

Only God, reaching out in grace, regardless of my profile, can change my condition by the second birth. I have discovered that the duration of extending this grace to me is under His control, not mine. This teaching by Jesus on the need for new birth is revolutionary. It departs from hopes we can have of a pleasant existence now and in the hereafter as determined by how we choose to measure our performance against religious laws, shifting social trends, or personal goals and our moral code.

Spiritual belief

Concerning the second teaching about belief, I have progressively come to understand how critical it is to grasp and trust these words of Jesus to be certain about my eternal destiny and face every situation with that confidence. A corollary of his teaching is: deny the identity of the Son of God as the Creator of all spiritual existence, then the beliefs developed for one’s eternal destiny evaporate, no matter how broadly one has searched other philosophies or religions. Peter saw this and stayed,

"Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life".

(John 6:68)

The challenge by Jesus in his second teaching is to trust him. Jesus gives this teaching in the second half of his explanation to Nicodemus about what a person can do to be born again. The person owns the control of whether to choose and to trust. When any person chooses to trust the promise of Jesus to give eternal life based on trusting in his claimed identity, the guaranteed promise of eternal life begins to take effect. Eternal life is not future but immediate when connected to the Life. The promise of his love is we will never be disconnected from Life again. Our fear-driven behaviours diminish as trust grows and God’s love is experienced in a growing number of tangible ways.

We need to take note that these two teachings of birth and belief fit together and cannot be separated. God enacts the first by a super-natural act – birth of our spirit by the Holy Spirit. The individual enacts the second by a natural act – the decision to trust. Both are operative in any person living in the eternal kingdom of God on earth now and in heaven. I pray that those with whom I converse will discover these truths revealed by Jesus with powerful immediate and eternal effect. There are millions of testimonies given by people from multiple cultures across the world and multiple situations in life, which each have accounts of specific miracles of love implemented by God in their lives, many of which are verifiable by authentic witnesses. Their only explanation is that each miracle they experience is an act of God’s love reaching out in response to faith reaching out to God.

Teaching 1 –You must be born again

The first teaching by Jesus places personal entrance into the realm of God beyond the capability of any and all religious practice and personal efforts to do "good", no matter one’s religion or its rigorous practices. It switches the hope of gaining eternal life from our self-assessed moral, religious or other achievements to an essential sight-giving second birth.

"Unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom of God!" (v. 3)

Efforts are action. Birth is a state. When a person is born physically, they gain entrance into the state of life on earth without personal effort. We are all delivered powerlessly into it this life by a medical practitioner. Then we begin to see and live in a whole new environment. Without the birth, we will never enter or see the physical world. It is likewise true of Life in the kingdom of God. We can never enter or see it without being delivered powerlessly into it by God himself. The difference between the two births is that the second must be spiritual in order to deliver us into the spiritual environment where God, who is Spirit, exists and imparts his Life, love, wisdom and righteousness. This birth, therefore, has nothing to do with my physical efforts or achievements. It cannot. It is a spiritual birth, which only the Spirit of God can initiate and deliver. He brings into Life our spirit previously disengaged from the Source of all Life. Then we see what we have never seen before. We suddenly begin to see the kingdom of God operating in situations where previously we would have been oblivious of them. The most intelligent sociologists cannot see these operations. They can only measure, see and analyse physical trends, such as a surging drug epidemic, increased family violence and so on. They devise plans hoping to reverse these trends while knowing these plans will never eliminate the societal ills completely. It is the best the kingdom of this world can do. They miss entirely the kingdom of God that is operating unrecognised within society rescuing many from the same cultural and personal behaviour trends by empowering them with new spiritual life from within, which is God’s Life, which is Life that existed eternally before any physical entities were created.

In his second directive on this birth into the kingdom of God, Jesus switches his term from "seeing" to "entering" the kingdom of God.

…"unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (v. 5)

All who have been born physically of water need to be born spiritually by the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. Without the Spirit giving spiritual birth to us we cannot see, and we cannot enter. To enter the kingdom of God is to see it. That is how we become aware that we have entered it. We now possess the faculty of spiritual sight given by the Holy Spirit. Our spiritual sight is given by continuous revelations from our spiritual Teacher within showing us multiple aspects of the Rule of God operating within us and the world. Jesus foretold of this coming internal Teacher of the kingdom of God in his parting meeting with his disciples:

"I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you". (John 14:16-17)

"… the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,will teach you all things…" (14:26)

So the Spirit of truth teaches us truth, which cannot be intellectually reasoned or debated. Firstly, our internal Teacher points out truths about our sins we had not seen before. Then with our clearer eyes, he gives insights about life we had never known before, no matter how smart or simple we thought we were. We are now walking in Truth. He exposes how much of our thinking has been upside down when we thought it was right side up. We see how much Satan, The Master of Deception and the Father of Lies, has deceived our minds to shift our thoughts from what is true. We see this displacement of absolute truths by our selfish, subjective and shifting beliefs. With clearer perception of ourselves stemming from the new birth of our spirit, we can then see the operations of the kingdom of God all around us bringing to spiritual life those who are dead and establishing its rule in their hearts.They belong to no religion, race or socio-economic class. They become our newly recognised companions of second birth. We recognise them immediately, not by a label but by the Spirit within them, which our spirit recognises because we now know Him.

The destiny-critical question this raises then is: how is one born by the Spirit? Jesus uses the rest of his interaction with Nicodemus to explain. After talking about the how the Spirit operates, he spells out in clear terms in his second major teaching how we operate in order to gain eternal life.

Teaching 2 – You must believe in the Son of God

This teaching of Jesus offers anabsolute guarantee of entrance into the eternal kingdom of God to the person who believes in him according to how he identifies himself, viz., as the Son of God and the way to eternal life:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life".

Be careful to note that Jesus teaches here that receiving the promised gift of everlasting life requires that we believe in his identity according to his claim to be the only begotten Son of God. Any religion or person that seeks to discredit Jesus as the Son of God has nothing to offer except a dead end to this life without any validated certainty for the hereafter. They are labelled "false" teachers.

It is important to note that believing in this identity of Jesus is not solely the result of an intellectual search, although a person does need to pursue a responsible assessment of the life of Jesus until satisfied to their requirements that he is who he said he is authenticated by his character, knowledge and actions. Otherwise their belief is fabricated or merely mystical. Beyond that exercise, intelligence has no part to play in choosing whether or not to trust one’s life to Jesus. Willingness to trust him fully with our life is what completes our understanding. The Greek word used for trust and belief is the same. There can be no belief in a person without trust, or trust in a person without belief in their character. Jesus cannot be known without belief and trust just as a prospective spouse cannot shift from knowing about their partner to knowing them intimately without choosing to believe in their character and placing relationship trust in them fully.

Jesus later asserted that, "unless you turn around and become like little children you certainly will not enter the kingdom of heaven". (Matt 18:3) A little child who puts their life trust in Jesus sees and enters the kingdom of God easily when a person trusting in self cannot. Pride in self must ultimately give way to complete trust in Jesus. Consequently, the constant appeal of Jesus is for us to bank our entire life on his claim to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. Our response to his claim becomes the central turning point of our history. We can choose whether or not to bank on him for guaranteed eternal life and his support in every situation we face during every day, or we can ignore his claim and invitation to us to begin a relationship with him.

In summary, these two teachings of ‘birth’ and ‘belief’ when taken together shift the hope of eternal life from personal philosophies to trust in a person, from religious practices to his promises, from our determined efforts to resting in his gift of Divine love, and from wistful hope to certainty.

Nicodemus Conversation

The setting that Jesus chose to announce his two explosive teachings to the world was a night conversation with Nicodemus, who sought him out because of powers of God he had observed being displayed by this Galilean carpenter. The miracles of Jesus earned the respect of Nicodemus sufficiently to address him with the title, "Teacher", which was used in his culture for, "One who walks with God". The miracles also raised significant questions Nicodemus wanted Jesus to satisfy.

The opening gambit

Flattery or recognition

Nicodemus opened the conversation he wanted with Jesus with the leading statement,

"We know you are a teacher come from God because no one can do these signs you do unless God is with him." (v.2)

This was either flattery, hoping to lead into a list of questions to test Jesus, or an honest recognition of Jesus’ identity as a man anointed by the Spirit of God, which was something his colleagues chose to ignore and resist. Academics often begin their debates with flattery as they circle each other readying for an intellectual contest that seeks to expose points of superior knowledge or weakness. It is most likely, however, that Nicodemus came as a genuine enquirer for two reasons: 1) if he had wanted to trap Jesus in questioning, he would have chosen to lay his trap in the full glare of onlookers as other professionals had done, and 2) the fact that he sought out Jesus in the undercover of darkness gives hint of his desire to push beyond the adversarial stance taken to Jesus by his colleagues, and to find out more about the way in which Jesus was related to God’s wisdom and power. Nicodemus sought out Jesus to resolve the unavoidable question: How did this carpenter from rural Nazareth come to possess the revolutionary wisdom of his teachings and the countless miracles that have demonstrated his control over the natural world?

To resolve this question, Nicodemus was not yet ready to risk his reputation and status among his colleagues in the ruling council by being seen in the company of the itinerant preacher, who they wanted to remove from Israeli society to stop the erosion of their power.

Direct response – to the heart

Whatever the intention of Nicodemus’ opening greeting, Jesus ignored it. He by-passed the analytical brain of Nicodemus and immediately responded with a direct challenge to his heart.

"Truly, truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again". (v.3)

Or paraphrasing, we can expand his direct challenge to:

"Pay very careful attention to what I am about to say. No one, including you, can see anything about the kingdom of God unless they are brought to life by a second birth."

By implication, Jesus was teaching that a person is blind to the kingdom of God before this second birth. They cannot see it no matter what religious, mystical or academic ways they are using to try to find it.

The immediate response by Jesus was the crux of what needed to be discussed with Nicodemus, who would have been hit by it as a sudden jab beneath his intellectual defences. Leading statements made by Jesus to catch our initial attention are always the crux of what we need to confront in our thinking and attitude about truth. God already knows our every thought, attitudes and past actions. He knows the composite profile we have built over the years progressively losing our innocence and building our pride. We don’t. I have no idea of the myriad of sensory inputs that forged who I am today. He knows our blockages to seeing truth and coming to know him. He knows how to break through these blockages to gain our attention. So we need to listen to him carefully. Each time we read his Word, the Spirit of God goes straight to what we need to hear like a sword thrusting through our defences and shining light on our blindness. All genuine seekers of God receive the sudden jab of God’s word like Nicodemus. If we heed that word, we see more of his kingdom. If not, we remain blind to it.

Jesus knew that the occupation of Nicodemus was to study, teach and fulfil the whole Jewish Law meticulously, in order to be sure that he would enter into the kingdom (rule) of God on earth, which he believed would one day be established by the rule of the coming Messiah and the return of the currently absent Spirit. Accordingly, Nicodemus had no significant intellectual or knowledge deficit, but he possessed the major spiritual deficit of having no connection of his spirit with the Spirit of God. That is the starting point of all humans. It is for you.

There had been no direct impartation of supernatural revelation and life to Nicodemus from the God of his scriptures. He did not expect to receive any as a scholar. Why? Only the prophets, priests, judges, and kings of Israel historically had a spiritual connection with their God Yahweh through the Holy Spirit coming upon them, i.e., anointing them. These anointed offices provided the God-directed functions used to keep Israel on track to fulfil its Divine purpose of one day producing the One anointed by the Spirit to rule and redeem mankind. With these Holy Spirit anointed offices operating, the people only had to focus on obeying the Law given to Moses by God. Nevertheless they didn’t.

As a consequence, the Holy Spirit departed from the nation (Ezekiel 10:17-18). Supernatural power was stripped from kings, judges, prophets and priests and the military power of other nations imposed on them instead. For 400 years before Jesus, there had been no prophet, priest or king anointed by the Holy Spirit. So a teaching class of rabbis arose to teach in synagogues the application of the Law to personal life. Israelites sought to relate to God solely by obedience to the Law, and the accretion of laws added by the rabbis, as the measure of their love for God, by which they would be judged. The feasts and holy days they continued to keep degenerated into ineffectual ritual with the Spirit of God absent.

Nevertheless, the teachers and people of Israel continued to cling with expectation to the words of the prophets that in the latter days the Messiah would usher in the earthly Messianic rule of God and the new Era of the Spirit as prophesied (e.g., Joel Chapter 2). As part of this new Era, they looked forward to the day when God would establish a New Covenant with them, and when he would internalise their Law within their being so that each person, regardless of their status in society, would know him intimately, as prophesied by Jeremiah 600 years beforehand:

"I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts…they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more", declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

The Law written in their minds and on their hearts would be the embodiment of God himself in a way that they would know him within. Nicodemus knew this prophecy and had studied it. The Anointing of the Spirit that had once been upon chosen offices would be replaced with the dwelling of the Spirit within any who chose to live in this New Covenant and receive its blessings. This indwelling of the Spirit would be the new spiritual birth accompanied by the full forgiveness of the Nation. All that Nicodemus had to do was to connect the new state described in this prophecy with the new birth proclaimed by Jesus. The missing sign he needed was tangible evidence that the Messiah had come.

Missing it

The way Nicodemus responded to the challenge of Jesus shows that he had missed entirely the reality of needing a spiritual birth in order to know God intimately in his mind and on his heart as prophesied by Jeremiah. Nicodemus instead gave a sceptical response:

"How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born again!" (v.4)

The mind of lawyer Nicodemus remained fixed on physical birth, which blocked him from recognising that Jesus was talking of a whole new kind of birth. His interpretation that Jesus was asserting the incredulous necessity of entering his mother’s womb again showed that Nicodemus was still thinking from his physical framework of understanding. This was as far as his brain could take him. "How can a man like me enter a second time into my mother’s womb? Your claim is not only impossible, it is ridiculous and delusional!" (Any person operating from a physical framework of reference, while remaining spiritually blind, would give a similar response.)

Consequently, Nicodemus was blind to the spiritual drama playing out in front of his eyes in the lives of John the Baptist as the forerunner of the coming Messiah and Jesus as the Messiah. He and his colleagues had already witnessed and listened to John the Baptist in the wilderness, but they had not associated him with Isaiah’s prophecy,

"A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God… Say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!" See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm’" (Isa 40:3, 9, 10).

Because Nicodemus had made no connection between the ministry of John and Isaiah’s prophecy, he was not aware that the kingdom of the Messiah was right at his doorstep, as heralded by the forerunner, "Here is your God!"

Failed connections

Nicodemus had not only failed to make the connection of John the Baptist with the prophecy, neither had he at this stage in the conversation appear to have connected the miracles of Jesus with the identity of the Anointed One. He only attributed to him the title, Teacher, or one who walked with God. He certainly was sufficiently impressed by the miracles of Jesus to cause him to search him out under the cover of darkness. If he had understood who John was, his mind would have been alerted to the fact that the Messiah’s appearing must be near at hand. Nevertheless, he had failed to see the Messiah in Jesus even though he continued to witness his dramatic miracles of love, his demonstrated grace and teachings of love that removed all ability of the Jews to use their law to condemn the weak in the name of preserving the purity of their religion. In other words, Nicodemus had missed the full expression of God revealed in human flesh as described by the prophets, i.e., the God of justice and love. The prophets heralded a Messiah who demonstrated great love and compassion carrying his people close to his heart just as much as a Messiah, who imposes his visible global rule on all nations.For example:

"He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young" (Isa 40:11)

Nicodemus had also made no connection between the compassionate works of Jesus and the Messianic prophecy of compassion, which Jesus chose to apply to himself at the beginning of his ministry given in his first synagogue reading in his home town (Isa 61:1).

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind… Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing". (Luke 4:18, 21)

Jesus could not have made his claim clearer. He fulfilled the prophecy of the anticipated Messiah. He pointed out the connection. His hometown people and Nicodemus missed it as many still do.

Looking in wrong directions

Why did Nicodemus miss the connections? He was searching for physical power as evidence for the Messiah and not the power of love directed at the poor, the prisoners and the blind. In his elite role, he was not journeying on the road of humble, all-embracing love. His missed that the greatest and enduring liberation of Israel would be in the power of love and not in the power of the Messiah’s sword. He was caught up in the political expectation of the Jews of his time that the Messiah would begin his rule from Jerusalem by breaking and casting off the shackles of Rome. He first needed to see this physical power of the Messiah as evidence of his identity. Then he could believe that the New Covenant was now operating and intimacy with God’s Spirit within one’s being was possible.

Accordingly, Nicodemus was a classic example of the Jewish leaders, who Jesus later rebuked as having a will and heart problem rather than a brain problem.

"You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me,yet you refuse to come to me to have life" (John 5:39)

Jesus pointedly highlights to Nicodemus this refusal by his colleagues to accept him (v.11) because their one aim was to retain their power over the people using the multitude of daily ritual requirements that they had added to the Law of Moses. Jesus was seen as their adversary, who was diverting the attention of the masses from their laws of control to himself. They refused to accept his teachings and miracles blinded by their hunger for power. They were unable to see that the coming Messiah and the New Covenant were right at their doorstep about to be launched as God’s new way of relating to his beloved creation. 2,000 years later, personal pride can block us from seeing Jesus at the doorstep of our life wanting to enter and journey with us.

Although Nicodemus missed the connection between being born again by the Spirit of God and Jeremiah’s prophecy about the New Covenant of knowing God within one’s heart, he did recognise that Jesus was the first person after 400 years to demonstrate the power of God. This may have raised questions in his mind, "Could this Teacher be our long awaited Anointed One? Has the Spirit returned?" If so, he would have wanted to stay in the conversation to examine Jesus closer.

Human incapacity

Nicodemus nevertheless demonstrated that had no ability within himself to understand new birth from a spiritual framework in order to have his questions answered. How could he? His spirit was dead. It remained unborn and unable to see, while his brain remained stuck in the physical dimensions of religious history, rituals, rites and practices of religion that operate from unborn hearts. Nicodemus had never stepped beyond the rituals of his religion into dimensions of the Spirit where a whole different reality of life operates. Likewise, your personal belief system can be your blindfold keeping your pride stuck on a fruitless journey trying to live up to the image it wants.

Nicodemus was typical of every individual whose spirit is dead. There are many like him today practicing their institutional, or personally constructed, religions that are incapable of seeing the kingdom of God. Our brain can be very competent and active, while our spirit is dead, but it has no spiritual insight or wisdom. In the realm of constructing spiritual reality, the most it can achieve is foolishness. Our emotions may seek to experience the ethereal, but they too have no spiritual insight. They can never open the kingdom of God to our sight.

As indicated previously,Nicodemus was an expert in religious knowledge and practice. He ardently pursued his Jewish path of scholarship and practice believing that this would lead to eternal life. It didn’t. He was intellectually and religiously fine-tuned but spiritually dead and blind to the kingdom of God that he sought. Prostitutes saw this kingdom before he did, even though he had been admitted to the ruling council of the Jews, because of his brilliance. Likewise today, there are many engaged in erudite academic debates attempting to show their brilliance in understanding the meanings of life and death. These are as blind as Nicodemus. Yet even today, broken-hearted prostitutes, who have lost all purpose for living, and who cry out to God to deliver them from the life they have become, are welcomed by the God of compassion, enter and see the kingdom of God.

Personal implications

For our own life, then, it is imperative that we observe how the teaching of Jesus, "You must be born anew", applies to us at this moment.If our instant reaction is to be offended or recoil in any way, it is almost certain that we have not been born anew and have no idea what that means in experience. The one option available to us is to seek to be brought to life by the Spirit of God, in order to gain a whole new framework of understanding. We cannot sidestep this truth and believe that we can make our own way to heaven by our own self-defined system of beliefs and our performance against its moral code. Without the character of God as our benchmark, our personal assessment of our level of morality is flawed and relatively delusional. Without acceptance that our spirit is dead until the Spirit who created life gives it life, it remains dead. Consequently, the truth Nicodemus had to face was that no amount of personal discipline, goal setting, studies or religious practices in the physical realm could ever bring him into the spiritual realm of the kingdom of God, where God, who is Spirit, exists in unlimited dimensions. He remained as a spiritually dead educated mind.

Nevertheless, we must not dismiss that Nicodemus did seek out Jesus with good intentions, because his mind was searching for answers. In his heart of hearts, he wanted to live in the kingdom of God for eternity. Otherwise he would not have spent his life searching the Scriptures as Jesus later said was his motive and that of his colleagues. The heart’s desire of most religious people is the same. We must come, however, to recognise and admit that spiritual desire translated into religious activity does not create spiritual life and sight of the kingdom of God. Nicodemus was, therefore, as dead as the state of any religious person, who is fastidiously keeping the practices of their religion as their means of justifying a right to eternal life while rejecting the terms of the One who gives it.

The one thing Nicodemus did have going for him was that his desire to meet with Jesus was driven by a heart which yearned for the coming of the Messiah and the return of the Spirit to usher in a whole new world order. Possibly Nicodemus sought out Jesus with the thought, "Maybe this Teacher knows something that could shed more light on the coming new order, because he could not do the miracles he is doing without the workings of the Spirit of God".

Critical life questions

We need to take time out at this point from the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus to ask ourselves this fundamental question that demands answers from our own life:

How can one who is spiritually dead suddenly expect to have spiritual life after death without being brought alive spiritually by the Spirit of God in this life?

We have to be very honest and clear about our answers because our eternal future depends on them. We should not ignore them. This question is worthy of the time and thought it warrants. We need to arrive at the place of accepting that: only the state of our spirit in this life determines its state after death. Nothing else does – not the state of our intelligence, or emotions, or morals or body or self-satisfaction with our personal religion and diligence in keeping its requirements.

The imperative second birth

The state of our spirit is either dead or alive. There is no middle ground. Our spirit does not slowly come alive with every good work we define as "good", because we cannot give it life. Only God can.

To make this clear, Jesus reiterated the essential importance of the second birth for Nicodemus with a more emphatic tone. In this case, he changed his choice of words from "unless" to "must" and using a plural form of "you" to make his statement apply to all.

"Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’" (v.5-7)

In order to catch the tone of this step in this teaching, we can paraphrase and elaborate:

"Nicodemus, you should know from studying your scriptures intricately that clearly flesh can only give birth to flesh and Spirit to spirit. That is, flesh cannot give birth to spirit. No amount of flesh activity, such as your studies and religious practices, can give birth to your spirit.

You should not at all be surprised, therefore, that I am claiming that you and your colleagues, in fact everybody, must be born anew by the Spirit. Take careful note that I am saying ‘must’. It is imperative for you to be born anew by the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. There are no alternatives and no one is exempt." (v.6 -7)

Thus, Jesus made it clear. We cannot confuse physical birth with spiritual. A physical process and a physical person give birth to a physical identity. Flesh births flesh. Only a spiritual process guided by the Spirit of God can birth a new spiritual identity, which we need in order to enter the spiritual kingdom of God. Spirit births spirit.

The Wind

So the question arising on the table for Nicodemus now became: if being born anew by the Spirit is so crucial to my eternal destiny, how does it happen?

Nicodemus would have been itching to know the answer to the new phenomenon of this second birth that Jesus introduced to unsettle him and grab his attention. Jesus, however, did not immediately give Nicodemus a clear and simple formula for how he can be born a second time without entering his mother’s womb. Nicodemus was used to slicing and dicing theology. Had Jesus immediately made his identity as the Son of God to be the crux of being born spiritually, Nicodemus would have launched into debate using his knowledge of his monotheistic theology to dismiss any possibility that this Teacher was Divine. Islamic scholars will quickly do the same today to protect their monotheistic belief in their god Allah promoted by Mohammed. Nicodemus was not ready yet to receive the second teaching of Jesus that the kingdom of God was where the Messiah ruled as the Son of God, even though scriptures he had studied pointed to that fact, such as:

"’I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain’. He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have become your father… Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession… Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him."

(Psalm 2:6-8, 12)

Another scripture, which the Pharisees considered to be a Messianic prophecy inspired by the Spirit, was used by Jesus towards the end of his public life to challenge their understanding of the Messiah’s identity:

"The Yahweh says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’…If then, David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?"

(Matt 22:45)

In other words, if God had promised David an eternal kingdom that would be ruled by one of his descendants, why would David call him his Lord? They were left speechless. "No one could say a word in reply".

Even though Nicodemus would have read these scriptures on the identity of the Messiah, he had missed his deity. For Jesus to introduce at this stage of the conversation the need for Nicodemus to believe he was the Son of God in order to receive the second birth, he would have scrambled the mind of his listener and killed off any mental engagement with the discussion. Instead, Jesus took Nicodemus on a religiously less threatening journey to keep him engaged in the conversation before giving Nicodemus a reason to dismiss him. Jesus knew Nicodemus would have had to make an impossible mental and religious jump to place him on par with Yahweh, the Holy One, the Creator and Redeemer of Israel. His brain saturated in monotheism presented an immovable barrier. Therefore, Jesus turned the attention of Nicodemus to the role of the Spirit in bringing spiritual birth rather than focusing on himself as the gateway to entering the eternal kingdom of God. That came later. For now, the indefinable Spirit would do. People are happy to talk about spirit. Therefore Jesus began there with Nicodemus.

Talking about spirit is easy because we cannot define it. Consequently, discussions on spirit are a "large tent" where all are accommodated, whether they follow a world religion or practice their own New Age means of inner peace to arrive at some higher spiritual level. It is popular today to claim to be "spiritual" in stark contrast to being "religious". It is perceived as being superior. "Christianity" and "Islam", for example, have become terms that carry disdain for the secular critic. Switch from a nebulous "spiritual" discussion to talk about Jesus as the Son of God and Saviour and the arguments quickly line up in the listener’s mind to reject the historical identity of Jesus as claimed. The discussion switches from learning to an ego warfare that puts forward poorly researched reasons to justify one’s position relative to God. For this reason, Jesus illustrated how the Spirit works by using the metaphor of wind. This metaphor is most appropriate because the word "spirit" in the language of the Jews and the Greeks is "wind" or "breath". So here is how the Spirit, i.e. the "Breath/Wind" of God, works:

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (v. 5)

What does this explain about being born anew of water and the Spirit? Anything? On first hearing, it seems to say nothing tangible and does nothing except leave an ethereal impression in our mind. It sounds too nebulous for me to grasp with the hands of my brain for me to do anything about being born anew. That was probably true for Nicodemus also. What a frustrating answer! It forces a second look to see what aspect of the wind Jesus was raising here that he wanted Nicodemus to grasp in order to understand the process of being born anew.

Jesus highlighted one main characteristic of the wind to teach about the Spirit of God, who brings spiritual birth. It blows wherever it pleases. So what? That is self-evident about the wind. Jesus taught that being born anew by the Spirit is just like that. "So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." Apparently, that too should be self-evident. Who can tell the Spirit what to do, how to do it and when for a person to receive a spiritual new birth? What could Nicodemus conclude from this one characteristic of the wind Jesus pointed out to him? We can think a little about the wind to understand this characteristic a little more and why Jesus used it.

Lesson 1: We cannot formularise our engagement with the variegated Wind of God.

"It blows wherever it pleases". There is nothing more elusive than the wind, nothing so varied and unpredictable in creation with its endless currents, its swiftness, its starts and stops, caressing and whippings. Man can never view the wind as a static object nor create a simple formula to determine where and what it will be at any moment. Likewise, Nicodemus could not consider the Spirit – the initiator of him being born spiritually – to be a static theological construct that he could package in a precise description using his finely tuned theological language. This is why it is ironical, and perhaps blasphemous, for churches to run courses like, "10 steps to being filled with the Holy Spirit".

Lesson 2: We can’t capture, control or use the Wind of God for our own ends.

Man does not know where to go to find the wind, and if he finds it he cannot locate its source. We can find almost everything else – objects man has made and all the creation that God has made, even the water in the rivers, lakes and oceans. But ask us to find the wind and we are stumped. We can go to where it is blowing or stand still and know that sooner or later that the wind will blow on us. Either way, when we yell out "I’ve got it!" it will have changed. And in the end we won’t have it at all. We can scoop up some water and know that we can keep it in our container, but not the wind. Scoop it up, slam on the lid, and it is gone. So it is with the Wind of God. We cannot slam a lid on the Spirit and put him on display to use for our ends.God chooses to breathe his life on individuals when and how he pleases. That is a key lesson which Jesus is making to Nicodemus. It might be possible to go to where someone says the Spirit is blowing. Some people catch international flights to do that hoping to be caught up in the Wind operating with power in a particular gathering, but when they arrive there they are not able to capture, nor control, nor bottle up the Spirit in their lives to take him home and put him on display by giving testimonies of their experience gilded with the promotion of self.

Lesson 3: We can never describe or predict the Spirit

What more can we say about the Spirit? Can we describe him, what he looks like? Of course we can’t. Can we chart his every movement, where and in what manner he is moving now, and three minutes from now? We cannot even determine where the Spirit will blow in the next second, and exactly how. Will he be gentle or forceful? Will he bring laughter? Will he bring a vision, or wisdom or crashing conviction? We never know. That is what makes opening ourselves to the Wind of God a forever changing adventure. I sit in my back yard and feel the wind caressing my body. I hear its rustle in the crowns of the large gum trees. Its sound drops to a lull. I wait. Then I hear the first sign of what becomes a loud roar as it tears through the top of the trees pulling the crowns and branches like some stretched out elastic. Yet it swirls around my sheltered courtyard with a gentler stroking, and at my feet a leaf or two suddenly join in a waltz with the wind on the patio tiles. This is the wind: so full of different expressions within such a short distance from the tree-tops to my courtyard. Who could ever predict its multitudinous currents?

Lesson 4: We need to sit still and confidently wait for the Spirit to bring us alive

Those who sit still long enough observe that the Spirit of God is also like this as Jesus taught. No one person or Christian group can claim to have described and experienced all his sovereign variations. He comes as the Divine Wind – the Breath of God – and whenever he breathes on us our inner spirit comes to life. We do not know how he will breathe on us with his life. All we can know is that he will certainly blow in his way and time to fulfil his purpose at that time. He may come at first as a faint breath which, when recognised and welcomed, begins to blow with stronger and stronger stirrings of our spirit until our whole inner being dances with the joy of his presence. He may suddenly come stirring conviction about a sin we have committed or releasing exhilaration from intimate connection with him. Regardless of how his presence manifests, he will come to the one who waits and invites.

Although we cannot command the natural wind when, where and how it should blow, we can observe and work with it once it is blowing. We can trim the sails of our vessels, set course to our desired destination and the wind takes us there. Even then the wind remains in full control. It could disappear in an instant to leave us stranded in the millpond of the ocean or destroy all trace of our vessel through its fury. Remember that man is purely a recipient of the wind, not its producer. So it is with the Wind of God,who always retains His sovereign position as the producer of spiritual life in us. We can only bow to him, be open to His breathings and allow his life-giving wind to propel us.

Lesson 5: God prepares us to want and receive his Spirit

Everyone who asks receives from the Father, who delights to give us the good gifts of his life far more than our earthly fathers desire to please us with their gifts. Paul and John had this confidence,

"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Rom 8:32)

"… this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess what we have asked of Him". (1 John 5:14-15)

Therefore he will come when we ask, sent by the Father and in his timing. So we wait with patience. We wait with expectation. We wait in trustthat God has already heard our prayer and is readying us to receive a new manifestation of his Wind. All the experiences which we have from the day of our prayer of invitation are readying us to receive. Some may appear harsh. Some may be painful. Some may test us to our limit to the point that we will wonder if God has forgotten us. No. He is readying us to receive new life. He is breaking down the walls of our resistance. He is softening our heart for obedience. He is building our trust in him. He is answering our prayer.

The certainty that the Spirit will blow on us is not determined by how well we try to create our spirit’s activity or his. We cannot whip up a feverish current of religious group excitement to provoke his coming. That is the noise of a simulated wind that has no power. All that we can do is ask and make sure that our sails are hoisted and waiting, that our spirit of repentance continues, not striving but trusting. Then we will set sail when He blows. We will be ready to receive and be caught up by His breath. Then we will enter and traverse the kingdom of God. Then we will see new realms, news seas, new islands and new lands of the Spirit. That is what Nicodemus needed and for which he hungered, whether or not he had allowed his consciousness to receive it as truth.

When the Body of Christ allows the variations of the Wind of the Spirit to be, when any local expression of it sits still to listen and resists the temptation to take control using its organisation skills, then the Wind of God swirls through its various parts accomplishing what he wills. The power of different gifts comes alive with all the creativity of God. Dead religion becomes Pentecost.

Clarifying question

Jesus had told Nicodemus that he should not be surprised that he said he must be born again, but by using the metaphor of the wind he had still not made it clear to Nicodemus how that happens. Nicodemus was left with a knowledge gap that he wanted satisfied never having experienced the Spirit/Wind/Breath of God that he read about in Israel’s history. Therefore it was important to him to question further to clarify how the Breath of God brought about the new birth, if he was to gain an answer that he could understand to apply to himself. Now he was at the place where he needed to ask a genuine searching question for his own sake and not for the sake of a debate:

How can this be?" (v.9)

The tone of his question differed significantly from the scoffing tone of his first. Its genuine, enquiring nature was not followed by a critical comment as was the first.

"How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born again!" (v.4)

His open question showed that he was now ready to consider openly the next teaching of Jesus. He was ready in his mind and heart. Accordingly, he was now ready to be pointed by Jesus to a tangible answer in his physical world that he could understand just as Jesus his Teacher was also now ready to answer more precisely, "How this can be?" The role of a teacher is to prepare the learner’s background knowledge and attitude to receive the main thrust of his teaching; otherwise explanations are a waste of words. When he judges that has been accomplished, he too is ready to open up the answer that will change his pupil’s understanding. Nicodemus was now on the cusp of that happening.

Jesus chose a tangible event from the history of Israel about which Nicodemus had studied and could grasp – the lifting up of a serpent on a pole in the wilderness as the physical object chosen by God to re-focus the faith of each individual on his method to avert death from deadly snake bites brought upon the Israelites as God’s judgement on their persistent disobedience.

"The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.’ And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if any man was bitten, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived". (Numbers 21:8-9)

The event contained the need for a spiritual act of faith to restore physical life within the context of a physical crisis. Jesus was about to use it to show Nicodemus that to restore spiritual life an individual likewise had to look to the specific physical object chosen by God to re-focus faith on God’s method of averting eternal death and away from self or any other spiritual guru.

Qualifying statement

Before answering the genuine question of Nicodemus using the crisis of the Israelites in the desert, Jesus needed to made it clear to him: 1) how their knowledge and their sources compared, and 2) the fact that the cause for his lack of knowledge of spiritual things was due to not believing what Jesus said and what the source of his clearly seen spiritual knowledge was. Jesus needed to do this to open up the mind of Nicodemus to the heavenly component of his identity. To do so, Jesus exposed the deficiency of Nicodemus’ knowledge with a rhetorical question that would dismantle any scholar’s academic pride:

"You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?" (v.10)

Nicodemus could give only one admission in his own mind, to that question, in order to maintain his integrity, "No. I don’t understand." Jesus did not expect an answer to his rhetorical question. It was simply to destabilise the confidence that Nicodemus had in his knowledge, and to open his mind to the basis of Jesus’ knowledge. We could surmise that the tone behind his rhetorical question to Nicodemus could go something like this:

"What I am implying by my question Nicodemus is that you ought to understand these things, if you want to carry the title, ‘Teacher’ in Israel. Before I give you the answer to your question, however, let me make it clear to you why I understand these things".

So Jesus answered,

"Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" (v. 11-12)

Now Jesus stated that his knowledge of how the kingdom of God works came directly from what he had seen. His knowledge was not merely intellectually based like the knowledge Nicodemus possessed. His knowledge was from spiritual sight with its source being heaven itself. He could speak of heavenly things having seen them. This is an astounding inference for any person to make. The implication Nicodemus would not have missed was that Jesus was claiming to have been in heaven to see these things. He was, therefore, indirectly claiming to be a heavenly descended man. This could not but raise the question in the mind of Nicodemus, "Was Jesus the descended Son of Man of the prophet Daniel? To anticipate his question, Jesus stated unequivocally,

"No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven — the Son of Man". (v. 13)

There it is! This was an explosive claim made by Jesus. He was virtually inferring that he was the Son of Man of Daniel’s prophecy (Daniel 7:13), who could speak of heavenly things because he had ascended into heaven, seen and heard heavenly things firsthand and descended to earth to relate his knowledge. The difference in their knowledge was stark. Jesus was inferring that he was the descended Son of Man, who could speak of heavenly things that were beyond the earth-bound sight and scholastic knowledge of Nicodemus. Therefore Nicodemus could not dodge giving serious consideration to what Jesus was about to explain on how a person could receive their second birth from the Spirit. His answer would carry first hand heavenly authority compared to the restricted earth-bound knowledge of Nicodemus and his colleagues. More than that, it would confront Nicodemus, the monotheist, with the need to grapple with the heavenly component of the identity of Jesus. If he could speak heavenly things, which he claimed to know from seeing them, was he more than a Teacher and none other than the Son of Man to come, who had now descended?

With these thoughts sewn into the mind of Nicodemus, Jesus tackled head-on the core reason why Nicodemus had not accepted his testimony. He made clear to Nicodemus that the problem blocking his understanding of the spiritual new birth was that he did not believe in his claims. Unbelief was a shocking response for anyone to give to Jesus, if he was the Son of Man demonstrating the knowledge of the Kingdom of God in his teaching and its power in his miracles. Then it was serial unbelief in the identity of Jesus as the Son of Man that barred Nicodemus from seeing and entering the kingdom of God and not his thorough study of his scripture. In short, Jesus challenged the absence of belief in Nicodemus before giving him the heavenly answer on how he could be born anew.

We could paraphrase,

"If you have not believed what you have heard and seen of me on earth, how could you ever believe that I have the heavenly answer to your question?"

So it is with anyone. If we are unclear about how to receive spiritual birth in order to enter the spiritual realm of God, we need to focus honestly on whom we think Jesus is and investigate him more closely until we can say with integrity that we have searched the question of his identity as much as warranted.

The answer

The Son of man

Now with the question of the identity of the Teacher stirring in the mind of Nicodemus, and having been confronted with his unbelief, Jesus pointed him directly to the heart of God’s plan for him to be born anew. He swung the conversation from a discussion about the indefinable Spirit of God to direct engagement with the specific identity of the Son of Man in prophecy. The Jewish scholars considered this heavenly man to be as close to Deity as possible without being Deity. He was man yet heavenly. He was given authority to rule all the nations. He accepted their worship as a global ruler. The Jews had to recognise this made him almost divine, but they did not know how in relationship to Yahweh, who alone was worthy of worship as their one God. To worship another was blasphemy. And the rule of this Son of Man would be eternal.

"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed".

(Daniel 7:13)

Nicodemus no doubt had studied previously this Son of Man and equated him with the Messiah prophesied in his scriptures. There is a strong possibility that Nicodemus had also heard Jesus taking the title Son of Man upon himself again and again. That would have been disturbing to this scholar. Son of Man was the term Jesus used predominantly for himself throughout his ministry. He avoided the politically charged and distorted title of Messiah at that time. There had been many messiahs in his day, who had raised expectations then come to naught. To claim to be the Messiah, as he later did with the Samaritan woman, would have distracted this political ruler of the Jews.

Jesus therefore restricted his answer to Nicodemus’ question, "How can these things be?" to the role of the Son of Man as the one who can bring about his spiritual birth into the kingdom of God.

"Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: so that whoever believes in him (trusts wholly in him) should not perish, but have eternal life". (v. 14-15)

Using this statement, Jesus expanded on the revelation of the Heavenly Man. He was more than a global ruler to come. He was to be lifted up as the focus for the faith of Nicodemus and all people to gain eternal life. Could Nicodemus stay with the conversation and accept this expansion by Jesus of all that he had studied?

Nicodemus was well schooled on Moses. He most likely could quote his full writings by heart. He knew of the incident Jesus referenced of Moses being commanded by God to lift up a brass serpent on a pole in the midst of the tribes of Israel who had been smitten with the deadly poison of snakes sent by God into their midst because of their rebellion. Simply obeying God’s command to look at the serpent was all that was needed to be healed and saved from death. That’s all it took to be forgiven and saved – trust in God’s promise. The claims of Jesus now could not be clearer. To paraphrase:

Nicodemus, if you believed that I am the Son of Man, as I have called myself in public over and over again, then you need to trust in my heavenly identity in order to be born anew and receive eternal life.

Jesus presented a new purpose of the Son of Man – not just as the Messiah to come and exercise global physical rule but as the One who gives spiritual life, viz.,

"…whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life". (v. 14-15)

Could Nicodemus accept this interpretation of how the Messiah would rule as the Son of Man? Was he ready for Jesus to link this tangible event in Israel’s redemptive history to some future lifting up of the Son of Man chosen by God to be the focus of the faith needed to bring spiritual healing and life? Could he now see that his own spiritual birth was directly linked to how he personally responded to the heavenly Son of Man being lifted up as the object of the faith he needed to exercise to bring about his spiritual salvation? The lifting up of the Son of Man provided for Nicodemus the intersection of the heavenly with the physical – a heavenly act of God on earth requiring his earthly response. Could he now see and accept that belief in Jesus as the Son of Man was the key that released the Wind of God needed to bring about the new spiritual birth? His beliefs were being stretched and his knowledge of his scriptures stretched.

The Son of God

Making the Son of Man the object of the faith that is needed to receive the new birth stretched Nicodemus’ past understanding of the Son of Man. But that did not challenge the monotheistic beliefs of Nicodemus. Therefore at this point, building on the role of the Son of Man in receiving eternal life, Jesus now pushed Nicodemus all the way to grasping his full identity. Now he stretched Nicodemus’ understanding of monotheism. At this crescendo of his teaching, Jesus equated the Son of Man, who descended from heaven, with the fully divine Son of God. Both were one offering the same free gift of salvation by the same means of faith. By deduction, they were one and the same identity.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes (trust wholly) in him (and his identity) shall not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world to save the world through him. He that believes on him is not condemned: but whoever does not believe in him is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son". (v. 16)

There it is Nicodemus. This Son of Man is the Son of God sent from eternity. He was not just a son of man born to an earthly mother but the only begotten Son of God who came from above to reveal heavenly things about the kingdom of God and to be mankind’s sole God-sent Saviour from the eternal condemnation of God. That is the only deduction Nicodemus could draw from Jesus’ statements.

The understanding of Nicodemus had now been pushed all the way from believing that the Son of Man was almost divine to having to believe that he was fully Divine and critical to him gaining new birth and the certainty of eternal life. How could Nicodemus, as a devout Pharisees and ruler of Israel, who worshipped only one God, Yahweh, come close to embracing these linked statements of Jesus? Worshipping, trusting and obeying the one God Yahweh was the very reason behind his life and nation. How could Nicodemus reconcile the scriptures he had made his life’s work with these explosive claims of Jesus being the Son of Man and Son of God, whom he had to trust? Memorised scriptures on God being the one and only god would have shot through his mind, such as these:

"Before me no god was formed,
    nor will there be one after me.
I, even I, am the Yahweh,
    and apart from me there is no saviour". (Isa 43:11)

"This is what the Yahweh says —
    Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;apart from me there is no God…

You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
    No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." (Isa 44:6,8)

To summarise:

"There is no other God besides me. No other saviour apart from me".

We can imagine the turmoil this generated in the mind of Nicodemus:

"Who then is this Son of God when there is no other God? Who is this saviour when there is no saviour apart from Yahweh? Who is this god and saviour that this Teacher, who claims to have seen and to speak heavenly things, is saying I must trust fully in order to receive my spiritual birth by the Spirit into everlasting life? Who is this saviour of the world that condemns me, if I will not place my trust in him? Are his claims the greatest of blasphemies, or have I missed seeing a Son of God in my studies of the scriptures? If I have, how do I reconcile a Son of God with Yahweh the first and the last and the only God?

With such questions whirling in Nicodemus’ mind, could he stay with the culmination of the mind-expanding journey on which Jesus had taken him? Could he marry up what he saw in Jesus with how Jesus interpreted the scriptures? Was Jesus, as he presented himself, present in all the scriptures? Did his observed life flawlessly match the astronomical claims he was making. If not, he deserved execution in haste. If it did, he deserved the life commitment of Nicodemus against all the attacks he might face from his monotheistic compatriots, who were hungry for the blood of Jesus. Jesus left Nicodemus with no alternative but to come to an authentic decision about his identity as the Son of God.

At this point of challenging all the past intellectual efforts of Nicodemus’ search for eternal life, and with Nicodemus reeling from trying to grasp the validity of an identity called, "Son of God", Jesus turned the mind of Nicodemus from his mind back to his heart, from his intellectual concepts to the true issue blocking his search for finding eternal life:

¹⁹ "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God".

To paraphrase:

"So this is the verdict we arrive at, Nicodemus. Light has now come into the world exposing the hearts of those who love their sins and those who genuinely seek to live by truth. The response of each person’s heart to the Light makes public their true motivation towards God – hate or acceptance; preference to live a lie or to seek truth; love of self over God, or love of God over self. The Light exposes the actual moral state of the heart hidden under self-righteous facades. The Light highlights that trust in God’s love, and in the gift of his one and only Son, is the path to spiritual birth".

The evil doer still knows what is wrong. He still knows that he commits evil. The evidence of this is that he lives daily with the fear of exposure. He hides what he does. He hides from his family. He even tries to hide from himself using habits to distract and elaborate rationalisations to justify his behaviour. And thus he sinks even further into a cesspool of deception. He becomes lies through and through. Shine the light of truth into whatever space is left in his heart and he recoils with intense pain. There is horror in having an entire web of deception exposed all at once. But God has mercy to the one who comes to the light.

Again, Jesus had made a claim that linked directly into a Messianic prophecy with which Nicodemus would have been familiar:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. (Isa 9:1, 6-7)

Now Nicodemus was confronted with the linkage of the Light Jesus claimed had come into the world with the light prophesied over 700 years previously that was a child who would rule forever and have titles only worthy of Yahweh. This was a huge and apparently blasphemous leap for Nicodemus to embrace. Yet the claim of Jesus was that the genuine seeker of the truth about spiritual birth and eternal life, in this case Nicodemus, could not avoid accepting his words and coming to the light in full trust of him.

In a short interview, Jesus had taken Nicodemus from the mandatory requirement to be born anew to enter the kingdom of God, to the role of the Spirit/Wind in creating spiritual birth, to the identity and role of the Son of Man, and the identity and role of the Son of God to give spiritual birth, who is the Son of Man, the Light and the Messiah. His mind must have been reeling. How could he, and when could he, resolve these new and apparently contradicting claims of a Teacher, whose power and endorsement by God he could not deny because of his miracles?

The subsequent actions of Nicodemus show how he resolved these questions. He stood up among his hostile colleagues in defence of Jesus receiving a fair trial (John 7:50-2). With Joseph of Arimathea, he took the body of Jesus down from the cross, prepared it for burial and placed it in Joseph’s tomb. (John 19: 39-40) Nicodemus, therefore, became a prominent example in early Christian history of a leading scholar and ruler, who weighed the evidence about Jesus against his life and the prophecies about the coming Messiah and concluded that he was the Son of God and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 redeeming mankind from their sins. We cannot dismiss his example when considering our own position relative to Jesus 2,000 years later. Nicodemus had firsthand experience with Jesus observing him on many occasions, whereas we do not. Moreover, his knowledge of the historical events and prophecies that Jesus fulfilled was much more thorough than our own. What convinced Nicodemus to place his full trust in Jesus? What in addition to reviewing the encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus do we need to convince us? How do you plan to journey?

Comments on the answer

Uniqueness

Were the claims of Jesus to Nicodemus about his identity unique in history?

They certainly were. Do they have any validation? They certainly do. The fulfilments by Jesus of the many prophecies about the coming Messiah testify to his authenticity. His widely witnessed miracles and sinless character further validate his authenticity. Then, his witnessed resurrection and living presence teaching his disciples his identity for the following one and a half months validate his claim to be the sole avenue to eternal life provided by God. The quality of his apostles writings add to this certainty along with the power and testimony of their own subsequent lives, which were marked by miracles, courage, and joy to be considered worthy to suffer with Jesus and to die for his name. Did they die for a lie against this unparalleled weight of evidence? What is your honest assessment?

Exclusiveness

Is the claim of Jesus exclusive?

Yes, it is exclusive of other philosophies and religious claims of ways to gain eternal life. No other historical figure has demonstrated any validity to be able to promise eternal life. Hence, this claim of Jesus is exclusive of other philosophical and religious claims, but it is not exclusive of any person. The claim is exclusive but its offer is universal. The offer in his claim is that whoever chooses to believe in his identity receives the guarantee of eternal life as promised. This offer is the cause of powerful transformations in the lives of prisoners around the world and those trapped in their own prison.

Those who object to Jesus making a claim that is exclusively focused on him as the Son of God make no rational sense and base their objections on other factors. It is only common sense that the Son of God, who is fully God, is the way to God. What other way to God is there but God? In other words, the way to God is God. That should not be surprising. This should not been seen solely as a matter of exclusivity but also as a matter of identity. He has to invite us to him (no one else can). He has to provide the way (no one else can), and he has to take us to himself (no one else can). The only way back to God for the human race that has broken trust in God is the restoration of trust in him. Jesus came to show us God so that we could trust him. To trust in the Son of God is to trust in God the Spirit, who initiates the miraculous gift of the second birth when he comes to dwell within our hearts, as prophesied by Jeremiah and Jesus. This is Spirit giving birth to spirit just as flesh gives birth to flesh. To know God spiritually is to know the Spirit and the Son. To trust God is to trust the Son and the Spirit. We should not be surprised that the way to enter the eternal presence of God is by trusting all who the Son is. What other option is there? Seriously, is it to trust in someone who has no identity other than being a man?

Evidence

Every day someone in the world comes back from the dead and comes to life by embracing these emphatic teachings ofJesus to Nicodemus. Are you crazy?" you say. "No resurrections have hit the daily media cycle to my knowledge. Where is the evidence?" I simply reply, "You are sounding like Nicodemus. You can only think in physical terms".

1. Evidence from the life of Jesus

Firstly, much evidence is found in the words of Jesus backed up by his life, death, resurrection and exaltation – all being witnessed by many. The evidence confirms his power to bring our spirit to life forever. To take just one example, Jesus elevated the trust in him by grief stricken Martha with the clear statement,

"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes (trusts) in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.Do you believe this?"

This was the critical issue for Martha – could she trust in Jesus as the Giver of Life when her brother had died, because Jesus had not turned up in time to heal him? Jesus then confirmed this claim to her by bringing her brother back from the dead. So it is today. Those who believe are spiritually resurrected. Then Jesus confirms to each trusting person his identity as their Resurrection and Life by a succession of miracles in their lives, for which there are no words except praise and gratitude. Spiritually born people will tell of these miracles, and there are some who have been physically resurrected in our era.^[2]

2. Evidence all around us

Secondly, we see resurrection evidence all around us in people with whom we interact. Have you ever seen or talked with someone whose whole persona, values and interests have changed dramatically from a look of death to the look of one brought alive from the dead? Have you ever asked them what changed in their life? Have you seen a stark difference between this newly alive person and the blank-eyed faces of the walking dead in our city streets, in our workplaces, in our clubs and in our homes?" We interact with the walking dead every day – people stuck in some achievement of the past upon which they hang their whole identity trying to gain some sense of value; those who live by a belief system that is propped up by handed down prejudices and has never thoroughly been examined; others who live by superstition of their own making or found in their religion. These are the walking dead.

It does not take us long to become aware of the walking dead, if over time we take care to observe body language and listen to the quality of life that comes out of a person’s mouth and actions of love. Observe the person trying to suck meaning out of a bottle of alcohol day after day, because no meaning comes from within. Notice the one trying to establish some meaning out of an endless pursuit of sexual encounters, sporting achievements and boasting in the pub. Listen to the person rehashing, in a dreary monotone, experiences long gone as they try to convince others, and perhaps even themselves, that some life still remains in their deadened existence.

3. Evidence within

Thirdly, we can observe the death of our own spirit when we experience the sensation of just going through the motions wondering, "What is the purpose of it all?" It is then that we need to be brought back from the dead through a new birth of our spirit.

The one who has lost all hope in life is dead already. We can easily detect this in ourselves. It is a symptom of death. It is a heavy weight that is forever with a person as they plod out each day unable to extract any meaning or life from it. As a result, they display a dead, self-centred cavalier attitude to people and events around them. Ceaseless gossipers are dead, already bound by their habitual addiction of needing to tear down the reputations of others to camouflage their own vacuous centre. Ever been there? Surprisingly, the great achiever basking in fame can be dead already, just as much as the person who lives in daily drudgery. They indulge in their dreams of applause, in order to avoid confronting themselves, yet fearful all the time that they will be found out for how empty they really are. Hence, they hide in the glitz of a constant social whirl projecting a superficial physical image for an applause that has no life in itself. The dead applauding the dead can never bring life.

So we need to test ourselves. Has our life come to the place of sensing it has no meaning? Then don’t miss the fact that a dead spirit creates a meaningless and plodding existence and not the reverse. Meaningless, boredom and never-ending routine do not kill the spirit. They are symptoms of a spirit that is already dead. We need to face the fact that we must start looking for the causes of our symptoms from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. This deadness is not done to us. We choose to perpetuate it and live in it when eternal Life is on offer.

The decision to escape this death rests solely with each of us. Our choice is between existence with a dead spirit, or our spirit brought alive by the One who resurrects dead spirits by dwelling within with his resurrected life. It is only common sense to choose our Creator’s life that lasts forever. Insecure pride will block it. That is the sustained choice of the fool. The humility of personal honesty with God about oneself will release it. The wise choose to trust and invite everlasting Divine Life to live within as the living Spirit of Jesus. Wise or a fool as assessed by the statements of Jesus?

The endorsement by John the Baptist

Having recorded the lengthy encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus, John follows up with a public endorsement of Jesus by John the Baptist as the prophesied forerunner to the coming Messiah (Isaiah 40:3). His endorsement of Jesus concludes,

³⁶ Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

This endorsement closely echoes the claim Jesus made to Nicodemus,

"…he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life… : but whoever does not believe in him is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son". (3:16-18)

Both statements are about the Son of God, both about possessing eternal/everlasting life through belief/trust in him, and both about the condemnation and wrath of God sitting on the person who is rejecting the Son.

The circumstantial setting

The precise time of the endorsement of Jesus by John the Baptist is not clear other than John giving a general sequencing of time,

²² After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized.

John indicates that Jesus split his time between his disciples and baptising. While giving personalised time in building the relationship between himself and his disciples, Jesus continued his ministry to the masses.

John precedes the endorsement of Jesus by with an account of the disciples of John the Baptist becoming protective of his unique ministry and concerned that Jesus was siphoning off people seeking baptism from John the Baptist making his popularity grow greater.

²³ Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming and being baptized. ²⁴ (This was before John was put in prison.) ²⁵ An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. ²⁶ They came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan — the one you testified about — look, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him."

John the Baptist used their concern of dwindling popularity to explain the different roles he and Jesus had relative to each other. Then he reinforced the unique role of Jesus in determining each person’s eternal salvation or judgement.

The role of John the Baptist

²⁷ To this John replied, "A person can receive only what is given them from heaven. ²⁸ You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’ ²⁹ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. ³⁰ He must become greater; I must become less."

John the Baptist could not have been clearer. He knew the identity of Jesus as soon as he encountered him. In particular, he knew his role relative to Jesus that God had given to him in his plan of salvation for the human race. He clearly knew that he was not the bridegroom. Consequently, he knew that he did not own any person who responded to his preaching on the need for repentance and baptism. Therefore, he was free to focus his joy on the coming of Jesus and immediately point his followers away from himself to Jesus. He had already identified Jesus to his disciples as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (1:29), and God’s Chosen One, who will baptize seekers with the long-awaited Holy Spirit (1:33). Now with the coming of Jesus, John the Baptist knew that his God-ordained service was completed. He knew clearly that from now on Jesus would become greater, and he would become less. He knew that his role now was to point away from himself and point to Jesus the Divine source of all salvation.

So should it be with every church leader, who believes they have been chosen to teach their followers how to relate to Jesus in their daily lives. False teachers are quickly seen. They seek to become greater by using the unique appeal of Jesus to shift the focus artfully from Jesus to point to themselves. Their control increases, often accompanied by wealth, and teaching becomes marketing. They show no comparison with John the Baptist, who instantly pointed away from himself to Jesus, lived in the desert with no permanent dwelling, ate locusts and wild honey, and was clothed in a garment made of camel’s hair strapped on with a leather belt.

The identity and role of Jesus

Having clarified his God-given role relative to Jesus, John the Baptist proceeded to explain further the divine identity and role of Jesus. With his followers eyes directed away from him, he could now focus them on the unique aspects of the identity of Jesus.

1. His origin and status is unrivalled

³¹ The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.

The heavenly origin of Jesus automatically places him above all humanity and therefore above all other leaders and teachers in any religion, who all speak from learning experiences, which are limited in time and place to earth. There are no exceptions. The claim of John the Baptist is that Jesus is above all humans.

2. His witness is first-hand

³² He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony.

A first-hand witness must be in sufficient proximity to see an event or hear a person clearly, in order for their witness to be valid and not distorted. Otherwise, it cannot be accepted as valid and undistorted. In addition, if the listener distrusts the impartiality of the witness, they cannot accept unreservedly their testimony as authentic and accurate.

Even if the authenticity and accuracy of a witness’ account is proven, this still do not guarantee acceptance of it by the listener. This has always been the case, because every listener filters all new information through their own created reality. Hence, the intellectual, emotional and spiritual composition of reality developed by many over their lifetime causes them to reject aspects of Jesus that do not suit, even though the historical accuracy of the biographies of him by his disciples have been proven. That is why Jesus warned that only a few will enter the narrow door that leads to eternal life.

If we do not take time to conduct an open review of the life of Jesus until we discover the authenticity of his claims about himself, we will reject him and his offer of eternal life. We will continue to hold tightly onto our view of reality that has been forged by sensory inputs bound to our physical realm on earth, while rejecting the teachings of Jesus that originate in heaven. We will not trust him with the control of our life. Our pride will not let go.

John the Baptist considered the witness of Jesus to be authentic, because it was first hand, i.e. what he had seen and heard. He claimed that the words of Jesus originate from the direct witness of a heavenly reality above, which no human has seen or heard. Accordingly, this witness of Jesus was accurate and unable to be matched by any human.

It is not surprising that John the Baptist claimed from his perspective that no one accepted the authentic testimony of Jesus. It was early days. The entrenched religious status quo still stood and held the nation captive.

3. His words are Divine truth

³³ Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. ³⁴ For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.

John the Baptist then claims that the person who accepts the testimony of Jesus has certified that God is truth. How so? The reason is that the words of Jesus spoken on earth are the direct words of God accurately describing the reality he has created in heaven, and heard undistorted first hand by Jesus in heaven. Jesus continues to speak the words of God accurately today, because he has been given the Spirit of God as a limitless gift. He only speaks truth. On that basis Jesus could later claim to be the Truth (all truth) and the Life (all spiritual and creative life). (John 14:6)

Since this claim of John the Baptist, every earnest seeker of truth has discovered that Jesus is the Truth needed to understand life, make meaning of their own life, and be guided in living out its unique purpose. They also receive the Spirit without limit.

4. He has authority over all creation

John the Baptist now affirms the kingship of Jesus over all God’s creative work including each human. He explains that this comprehensive authority has been, and continues to be, an act of Divine Love.

The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.

Each of us have been placed before our birth in the domain of this Divine love and judgement exercised by Jesus. Paul says it this way,

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:3-4)

Note that the choice has a purpose, i.e., to be holy (set apart) and blameless in his sight. That is the desired destiny of each person. Our task is to align ourself continually with this purpose.

5. Our eternal destiny hinges on him

³⁶ Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

It only takes a moment for each person to test if they are surrendering their daily life to Jesus in full trust and seeking to build their relationship with him, or if they are holding onto the control of their life refusing to open themselves to his control. John the Baptist made it clear that such a person lives under the wrath of God. They will never see life.

Personal response – surrender or pride-control

How have you assessed your own relationship with Jesus?

Jesus made it clear that he offered no middle ground option to his control of our life versus ours. Either we trust in him with our whole life, or our pride holds onto the decision-making role in our life. Trust in his demonstrated divine identity is what activates full surrender of our life to him. Then a relationship starts by him in response choosing to give his life to us. We now enter the super natural realm from our natural realm with his life in us. We now live by his life, which shines light upon the source of our emotions at any moment and the thoughts and choices they are producing. Now we see more clearly the division between our self-interest set against the need of another. Now our trust in Jesus opens us up to the choice of God’s Spirit in the moment and to let go of the competing desire of our pride’s self-preservation. Without his light shining within us we remain the ignorant pawn of our pride using our mind and will to justify any desire. We live in darkness creating convincing explanations and excuses for our behaviours and plans. We take self-glory in our spiritually dead accomplishments and insights instead of giving glory to the one who created us.

Each person knows if they are seeking to build their life according to their wishes, or if they trust Jesus enough to build their life according to his wishes. Those wishes are an expression of Infinite love that seeks out the highest good for the one loved. His wishes for each person are higher than our capability to imagine. They are inaccessible, however, to a pride that will not let go of control.

Therefore, assessing your relationship with Jesus begins and ends with elevating to self-awareness where your pride has placed its trust. Look at that honestly. As seen above, Nicodemus had much about which his pride could boast, yet he decided to risk it by going public before his ruling colleagues to defend Jesus in their forum and later assist in taking him down from his cross and placing him in a tomb. He let go of his pride to do so. He had chosen to trust Jesus, in order to receive spiritual life and live by his spirit united with the Spirit of God rather than by his academic knowledge. He heard and grasped what Jesus said to him,

"Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’

Nicodemus is an example of our need to look closely at whose desires are controlling us: our own or those of the Spirit of Jesus? It is critical for each person to look honestly at who controls who. Our eternal destiny is at stake in this assessment. Blatant and stupid pride will laugh this need away and never seriously approach understanding the identity of Jesus with an open mind. Fools do so.

How have you assessed your relationship with Jesus?

The Greek word, πιςτέω (pisteo), used by John for ‘believe’, is more than intellectual assent of a person’s identity. It can also be translated, ‘trust’. It is a relationship term of engagement with trust in the person being believed. Each couple facing marriage is faced with this meaning of belief. Can I trust what I believe I can see? Attempts to love based on flawed trust lead to breakdown. Trust without love cannot create a marriage. ↩︎
For example see, A glimpse of eternity: One man’s story of life beyond death, as told by Jenny Sharkey (Sjöbergs Förlag AB, 2008) – the story of New Zealander Ian McCormick’s return from death after swimming into a school of box jelly fish in Mauritius. ↩︎

¹ On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, ² and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

On the third day… John continues recording his journey with Jesus using Day 0 as his reference point for time. On that day, John the Baptist pointed out to him, and his fisherman mate Andrew, that Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. What an incredible claim on Day 0 of any journey with Jesus!

The wedding event captured by John was 3 days later. Jesus had gathered a small following by then. Things had moved rapidly for him since Day 0.

Day 1 was the second time John the Baptist pointed out to John and his friend Andrew that Jesus is the Lamb of God. This time they followed Jesus to check him out more and ended up spending time with him at his temporary residence upon his invitation. Home meetings have dramatically changed the lives of many for good or evil. There is an intimacy of relationship in them that by-passes the head and goes to heart and its deepest motivations. It is understandable that John considered that day to be the first day of the rest of his life. He became convinced through intimate interaction with Jesus that he had found the long awaited Messiah prophesied in Jewish scriptures. This was the most astounding day of his life up until then. It was Day 1 of the rest of his life.

Just like John, people who discover the true identity of Jesus and begin a relationship with him consider it to be Day 1 of the rest of their life, Why? It is then that they receive the powerful life of the Creator and a clearer understanding of their own life. It is then that incredibly they begin living with the life of the Creator within them empowering, teaching, directing, protecting and shaping them with his Divine qualities of truth, goodness, and love. No other pursuit for meaning to our life can better that! All other pursuits are inferior.

On Day 2, Jesus left Galilee to call Philip to follow him, and later challenged Nathanael’s scepticism and conclusion that Jesus could not be the Son of God and king of Israel, because no king could possibly come out of Jesus’ insignificant hometown of Nazareth. Jesus displayed his supernatural qualities to Nathanael, who immediately became a passionate believer that Jesus was the Messiah. Nathanael had the proof he needed that dismissed all scepticism.

On Day 3 Jesus returned to Galilee to attend a wedding with his mother and his disciples, By that time they were not a large group, viz., Nathanael, Peter and his brother Andrew, John and his brother James. They had possibly received an invitation to the celebration through Nathanael^[1].

This is the first of six cameos John records of Jesus interacting with Jewish society that culminate with the religious power structure wanting to kill him (John 5:18).

It did not take long. Jesus was not palatable to people wanting to increase and protect their status in their social network. The reaction of our egos to Jesus is swift, you will notice that, and we quickly justify our rejection of him, if that is our position. Hence, you will find after reading the six cameos of Jesus stepping into the culture of his day that you also will either reject him quickly, and have what you think are sound reasons, or you will want to find out more about him. Be conscious of your reaction and honest with yourself about it, because, if his claim to be the ultimate Judge of every life is true, the stakes are high. We owe it to ourselves to know our answer to this question: How do I position myself with Jesus? We have plenty of evidence in these 6 cameos to arrive at a conclusion.

Jesus does not hide his identity in these cameos. Instead, he ultimately expands it to making himself equal with God (5:18). The reaction of those whose egos were invested in ruling the nation was predictable:

For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God, (John 5:18)

After reading these cameos, we can never use the excuse that we did not know that Jesus claimed to be the eternal God, who created all existence and consequently has every right to be the Master of our choices now, and the sole judge of where we spend eternity. This creates a dilemma for our pride, which is used to controlling our choices. We naturally resist surrendering our authority over our life. The decisive question we each face is: Will, or will I not, surrender my pride and its control of my decisions to the Jesus recorded in these snapshots by John?

John has recorded these six cameos to enable each of us to make our assessment of this Jesus and decide the degree to which we may want to journey with him or dismiss him:

Jesus at a wedding (Chapter 2)
Jesus at the Temple (Chapter 2)
Jesus teaching a Jewish ruler and scholar (Chapter 3)
Jesus giving hope to a female foreigner and social outcast (Chapter 4)
Jesus testing the faith of royal official (Chapter 4)
Jesus healing an invalid at a pool on the Sabbath (Chapter 5)

Jesus at a wedding (Cameo 1)

In this first cameo, John records an interesting interaction between Jesus and his mother when they are guests at a wedding.

³ When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, "They have no more wine."

⁴ "Woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied. "My hour had not yet come."

⁵ His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

Mary informs her son that the wine for the wedding celebration has run out – a huge embarrassment for the organiser of the wedding and the parents of the bride. It was a significant dampener on the celebration. I doubt this would have been the first case of the wine running out at a wedding. The question is, ‘Why did Mary tell Jesus?’ Was it more than passing on a simple observation, or was there more in Mary’s mind? We will never know for certain. The pressing question is, ‘Did she have an expectation that Jesus would miraculously solve the situation?’

Mary was used to miracles accompanying her son Jesus. She had an angel forewarn her that she would fall pregnant as a virgin and give birth to a divine ruler. She had then experienced a miraculous pregnancy and birth with no male intercourse. She had raised her son Jesus as an infant, a young boy, teenager and man. She carried in her memory and heart the statements that angels and prophets had made about him, viz., he would be the Son of God (Luke 1:35), the Messiah and Lord (Luke 2:11), a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Israel (Luke 2:32). No mother could ever erase such pronouncements from her mind. With them impressed in her mind, Mary keenly raised Jesus and observed her son’s growth in wisdom and strength and heard him claim as a lad that the Temple was his Father’s house (Luke 2:49). Young Jesus was not referring to his dad Joseph, a small town carpenter. At that young age, he was conscious of his identity as the Son of his Father God.

Mary had stored all these observations in her thoughts and affections. Jesus was no ordinary son, and she knew that she was no ordinary mother. She knew she had become so by a miraculous, sovereign act of God. Mary had grasped that her son was capable of addressing any physical need as the Lord, Son of God and Messiah. It is likely that Mary told Jesus about the wine running out with the expectation that he could miraculously solve the problem. It is unlikely that she was passing on this observation as a flippant comment about poor planning by the host.

The response of Jesus is interesting. He did not instantly respond to replenish the wine. Rather, he corrected his mother with the clear instruction that any release of God’s power has timing to it.

⁴ "Woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied. "My hour had not yet come."

The same applies to us when we end up in a fix, from which we want immediate release. We want to set the hour for Jesus to act, and our hour is now! We focus on the physical problem we are facing, and want relief immediately. When nothing happens, we often comment that God is not listening, or that he is not interested in me, or he has left me when once I experienced him being with me. How often have you heard that complaint or made it yourself? All such responses miss the point of how God works to bring spiritual insight and change. When we don’t see any spiritual purpose for the trial, our comments become a perpetuation of Satan’s previous temptations of Jesus to act physically with his divine power for the wrong reasons at the wrong time, e.g., "If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread"(Matthew 4:3); "If you are the Son of God, come down from your Cross" (Matthew 27:4). Jesus ignored Satan’s focus and timing. He was carrying out a divine purpose with its timing.

Jesus is not a magician to be used to demonstrate his power at our will and timing. He is the healer of our spirit. Only God knows what faith lessons he is trying to teach an individual in their trial and the others observing it. His work is multi-faceted and always focuses the person in the trial, plus all observing it, to learn to trust him more and honour him as the rightful and sole Sovereign of all life. His hour had not yet come. But it did come right on time.

Mary did not argue timing with Jesus. Nor did she seek to give him reasons why he should use his power to fix an embarrassing situation facing the hosts of the celebration. She retreated from trying to bring the power of Jesus out into the open for all to see. She put its use and timing back into his hands to control, which is where it belongs, and addressed the servants,

⁵ "Do whatever he tells you."

Then Jesus swung into action. When we take our agenda off the table and ask God to do his will in and through us whenever he wants, and however he wants, he swings into action. We may not see his initial moves, but in time they will manifest as certain as night follows day. Of that we can be certain.

⁶ Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

⁷ Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim.

Jesus did not instruct the servants to knock on doors to find wine among households in Cana, or find a wine merchant. I would have urgently and keenly followed that command. Instead Jesus pointed to six empty jars used for washing hands before and after a meal and commanded for them to be filled with water. At that point, thoughts would have been rushing through my head of the abuse I could face if I served water to the guests at this stage in the celebrations. At worse, I could be fired for offending a guest and lose the income support I need to feed my family. Stop a while and imagine yourself in this situation.

Jesus gave no explanation of what he was about to do. He gave a command, then he followed it with even more challenging command. The first was a command for the recipients to be positioned ready for the miracle. God often does the same for us when we are looking for a personal miracle. Many people bail out of the positioning command given to them. Their view of Jesus is not clear enough to obey what may seem ridiculous. Fill the jars with water? Forget that. Wine not water is needed and desperately! I can hear myself saying that. We can fail to get into position and so miss out on the miracle that could have come. This is when we need to look closer at Jesus again by reading the John’s accounts about him and those by John’s comrades.

Who is this Jesus? Can I trust him? Will I do what he asks of me in the Bible, even if it seems ridiculous, or consequently reject the position of full trust in him that he is asking me to take? Our answer determines whether or not we will position our faith correctly to experience the miraculous life God has waiting for us, or whether we will continue to clutch onto our position on "struggle street" empowered by the fears in our insecure heart.

Jesus followed his positioning command with a second. This command launched the miracle.

⁸ "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so…

The first command positioned them to receive the miracle, the second launched it. The second command requires us to put our faith into action to launch the miracle. It brings the blessing of answered prayer that we desire right on time – never too early and never too late.

⁹ and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.

John does not provide any detail of the moment the water turned into wine. Imagine drawing some water from the water jar with the usual sized table container and taking it to the person in authority. Did it become wine at the moment of drawing it out or later pouring it out? What kind of challenge was this to the faith of the servants? Either way, the main point to focus on is that God will stretch the faith of each of us to receive our miracles from him in a way that causes our faith to grow. He is not a magician seeking the applause of an audience that is focussed on, "How did he do that?" No. God’s focus is on our faith because his focus is on building an intimate relationship of love with us based on trust: us growing in our trust of him and him growing in his trust of us.

We all know that there can be no intimate relationship of love with anyone without trust. God’s focus is on our trust so that we can grow in the joys of intimate relationship with him. That is his desire for everyone. Will we trust him enough to obey the second command for action after we have positioned ourself ready to trust? He stretches us to the growth point he is developing in us at that specific time. The stretch is perfectly tailored for each of us, and its timing is perfect, God will not test our faith in him beyond our current capability. So act on what you believe God is telling you. Do not fear and give yourself excuses. Go now, draw out the water of life from your life and serve it to others. It will be a refined wine full of life fermented by your trials and the best wine available to soothe a recipient’s spirit. The Master of the Banquet will call upon you to serve it many times.

It will be God’s best wine for them! Each of us can become this miracle again and again for others.

Then he called the bridegroom aside ¹⁰ and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."

John calls this astounding miracle a sign. It was the first of many, and John makes its purpose clear.

¹¹ What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

When we drive into a new city, we are very dependent on signs to find our way around and discover its highlights. God uses signs to reveal highlights of his glory, which we would otherwise miss. He does not use signs to entertain us but to show us aspects of himself that we can trust. The person who stubbornly refuses to allow God to be God in his life misses seeing the signs altogether. Make sure that God’s signs are not wasted on you. Many miss seeing the glory of God in Jesus. Have you?

¹² After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

Jesus had been busy since John the Baptist heralded him as the Lamb of God. His time had been spent choosing his first disciples. Now was time for a break with his family before engaging again in what would always be demanding times.

Jesus at the Temple (Cameo 2)

¹³ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Jesus now leaves his embryonic ministry with individuals, including the selection of his few first disciples. He heads straight to the centre of the Jewish religious power structure who monitored national life through an accretion of more than 300 laws added over the years for the functioning of family and society since the original Law was given by YAHWEH to Moses.

John does not make it clear in his previous account whether or not the religious caste, sent by the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem to interrogate John the Baptist, were present when he identified Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (1: 19 – 27). We can assume they were, because he gave that title to Jesus the very next day after his interrogation by them that sought to establish whether or not John was one of the identities prophesied to precede the coming of their Messiah. They certainly heard John the Baptist identify himself as the forerunner preparing the way for the coming of the Lord (John 1:23). He was claiming to be the ‘voice of one calling’ the peoples to prepare a highway for God to come and reveal his glory (Isaiah 40:3-5). John the Baptist then doubled up on this reference by giving them notice of a person standing incognito among the crowd whose sandals he was unworthy to reach down and untie (1:27). Their report back to the Sanhedrin power structure in Jerusalem would have raised a red flag but not given precise identification of the Messiah moving incognito in their midst.

It was now time for Jesus to unveil his identity unmistakably to the religious rulers of Israel. Significantly, the time the Saviour of the world chose was the most important day of national salvation in the Jewish calendar. Passover was their highest holy day of the year. It celebrated the night when God broke their 400 years of brutal slavery in Egypt. On that night, the angel of death killed the first born of all humans and animals in Egypt, but passed over the ‘blood identified’ houses of Israelite families, who were feasting under the protection of blood from a sacrificed lamb, or other animal, smeared on the top and both sides of the doorframe of the front entrance to their home. Animal sacrifice was needed for each family. Blood was always needed for the forgiveness of sins and protection by God.

For this high event each year, merchants did a roaring trade selling animals to be slaughtered for the festival and money changers were on the spot to take their cut. Jesus knew where this revenue bonanza was taking place. He went straight there.

¹⁴ In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.

Instead of this activity occurring in the marketplace where it belonged, the financial greed of the merchants and money changers had overridden any sense of the holiness of their God as their national Saviour. To maximise their earnings, they made it as easy as possible for the worshippers to buy their products closest to place of their ritual sacrifice. To do so, they turned God’s holy dwelling place into their market place^[2]. Imagine the mess all those animals left behind in those sacred courts. Was that of any concern of those participating in the sacrilege?

Jesus saw red, not the red of the blood of animals sacrificed for the cleansing of sin, but the red of holy rage.

¹⁵ So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!"

By calling the Temple, that King David wanted to build as a house for his God, ‘my Father’s house’, Jesus unmistakably identified who he was claiming to be. He was the Son of the Father prophesied in their prophetic scriptures^[3]. Jesus was vehemently attacking the religious practices conducted under the auspices of the priestly caste, who God had instituted to mediate sacrifices made by the people to him to ensure those sacrifices met his holy requirements. They were complicit in possibly the greatest affront that could be made against the holiness of God. They were guilty of the greatest sin. Having been instituted by God to ensure reverence for his holiness, they were supporting the greatest violation of it. Their response to the righteous anger of Jesus unleashed against these practices was instant. Both their authority in administering sacrifices and their guilt in defiling them were visibly and dramatically challenged for all to see. Authority when challenged always seeks to denigrate its challenger. Consequently, their response was entirely predictable.

¹⁸ The Jews then responded to him, " What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"

They set up an authority confrontation, Any ruler, or established authority group, who consider themselves the rightful authority over the actions of every person in their society that come under their sphere of accountability, will immediately react when their authority is challenged. In this case, Jesus specifically confronted the religious practices being carried out in the Temple under the aegis of the priestly caste. Their religious authority was never to be questioned and challenged. Rome had left the Great Sanhedrin, supported by the priestly caste, as puppet rulers of the Jews under Roman occupation. They had authority to exercise control over the daily affairs and harmony of the populace. That included their religion. The priestly caste of Israel had always carried authority over religious and social practices. The Roman conquerors pragmatically left that intact. No wonder their reaction to Jesus publicly challenging their religious practices with such authority was instant.

"Give us a sign to prove your authority to challenge our practices!"

In words, the attitude of their reaction could be expanded as,

"Make no mistake, without a miraculous sign we will never bow to your authority and your rationale given for it. Instead, we will insist that you bow to our authority and its practices, even forcibly, if necessary".

They asked for a sign of authority, Jesus gave it.

Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."

To this they gave a mocking reply, which they took all the way to their execution of him as their ultimate act of authority,

²⁰ "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?"

Their unbending pride was blind to the prophetic claim by Jesus, which demonstrated his authority over all life. No human could ever match that claim. Only the Creator of life can enact such a miracle, which Jesus did two years later, and his disciples witnessed. Therefore, John inserts his corrective interpretation of the sign given by Jesus,

²¹ But the temple he had spoken of was his body, ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

The aggressive actions of Jesus against the commerce in the Temple immediately set up the authority confrontation that would build and culminate with the religious caste finally putting him to death to remove his challenge to their authority over the Jews. They would not stop their hostility to him bursting forth for all to see as they mocked his apparent powerlessness to resist their plan to have him strung up on a cross. The blind stupidity of their authority is etched into historical record,

"You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" (Matthew 27:40)

They had no idea that the true power at the Cross was being established to bring salvation to millions by Jesus choosing to stay on it until full payment was made for the sins of all peoples of all time. The proof of the authority of Jesus was his staying on the Cross, not him coming down from it.

John’s unique contribution to the historical account by journeying with Jesus is to record the details of the progressive development of this authority confrontation, Jesus maintained the confrontation, in order to expose the hidden motives behind the religious display of each practicing Jew of his day. John’s contribution is both unique and also current, because it continues to expose the resistance to Jesus’ authority hidden in every person today building their self-righteous image using an adopted religion or sitting as king or queen of their self-constructed belief system, whatever it is.

Cana was Nathanael’s hometown (John 21:2). He most likely knew the wedding couple and was accordingly invited to the wedding. ↩︎
Does the commercialisation of religious products in the church sanctuaries cause the same holy rage in God today? When does money exchanged from tables at the back of a sanctuary turn the Father’s house into a market? When does the preacher’s promotion from the pulpit of his latest book move into the realm of capitalist corruption of a worship service established for the honour of God the Father and the Son? ↩︎
Psalm 2:7, Isaiah 9:6, Daniel 7:13, Zechariah 12:10 ↩︎

John 1

Introduction
1. Incomprehensible past
2. Incomprehensible God
The beginning
The Logos
The Creator
The Life and Light
The Logos was present, missed and rejected
The Logos gives new rights and new life
The Logos embodied grace and truth within time
The Logos is the Son of God
Law grace vs Logos grace
1. The most accurate image of God
The religious interrogation of John the Baptist
Jesus missed
Jesus identified by John the Baptist
1. John the Baptist passes the baton
2. Jesus takes up the baton
Reflection

Introduction

¹ In the beginning was the Word^[1], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

These opening statements at the beginning of John’s description of the life of Jesus, the son of a small town carpenter, make astounding claims about him. They could be taken as an application of Jewish and Greek philosophy of the day by John to describe the Jesus he had come to know from joining with him on his journey from country Galilee to the centre of Jewish religious and governmental power in their capital city Jerusalem. The exposure of John to Jesus hourly over three years makes it more likely that his introduction of Jesus is actually a practical conclusion to a journey rather than a theoretical, philosophical overview of a life. As you read on, you will discover how the journey of Jesus continuously observed by John led to such conclusions expressed in the Greek terminology of his day.

John and Jesus had become best friends. Over the three years they journeyed together, John somehow had to come to grips with the astounding miracles he saw Jesus do again and again as actions of love for people of all ages struggling with a wide variety of physical and social burdens. John had the benefit of having his perception of the meaning of life, and therefore of his own reality, challenged one experience after another while he chose to remain on the journey of Jesus through his life. We don’t have that benefit of John’s gradual assimilation of previously unseen and unexperienced miraculous dimensions of life he saw enacted by Jesus. Therefore, these opening statements by John can confront us as wild philosophical ideas about a god that may be debated on a university campus, when they are actually a summary of what John experienced with Jesus over three years and beyond journeying with him.

To grasp how immense John’s introductory claims are about his friend, pour yourself a relaxing drink and ponder them for a while before reading the following comments about them. Try to wrap your brain around his claims. They are worthy of your relaxed consideration. You will find that they are beyond human comprehension. God is certainly beyond mine. As you read through John’s journey with Jesus keep to the forefront of your mind the extent to which John’s observations would have been accurate and his conclusions taken as truth you can depend upon. Or was he delusional about Jesus? Many are today, having created their own containable ‘Jesus’ that ignores the history recorded by John and the three other authentic and corroborating witnesses of this supernatural life, i.e., Matthew the tax collector for the Roman government, Mark a fisherman and Luke a medico.

Each of these biographers of the life of Jesus had chosen him to be central in their pilgrimage through life to reach what they considered to be its destination. They joined a large cohort with the common feature of the source of strength they had chosen for their pilgrimage. The Sons of Korah identify that source of strength,

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

(Psalm 84:5)

When Jesus called John to follow him, and to learn how to fish for humans instead of fish, John chose to set his heart on that pilgrimage. His gospel contains cameos of Jesus interacting with people on his unique pilgrimage to the Cross. John learned how to fish for individuals by watching Jesus live out his journey. His journey kept in lock step with the journey of Jesus as did the journeys of the other apostles, who were all martyred for doing so.

Only John was left as a primary source to tell the world about Jesus. His biography of Jesus is written to enable each reader to see the character and divine love of God for each person, who chooses to begin a trusting relationship of love with him. My desire is that you join with John journeying with Jesus. It will be a new journey of new insights that leads to certain eternal life as promised by Jesus.

Incomprehensible past

¹ In the beginning was the Word… ² He was with God in the beginning.

This claim by John reaches into eternity past, before the creation of all physical existence, including our universe. We have no ability to imagine such a state, just as John could not. Hence, it is not an overstatement to say that John’s introductory claims about the man Jesus, born at a specific time and place on earth, if true, go way beyond all the biographies ever written in all ages and all cultures, because John claims this man Jesus also existed at some beginning before time on earth began with its familiar physical characteristics of measurable years, seasons, days and seconds. Thus it is highly important for the open-minded reader to test how John could make such a claim.

Ponder his introduction for a moment, and you will find it makes further claims that extend beyond what we know from all the writings in ancient history back to some unwitnessed beginning.

Am I exaggerating? If not, this biography of Jesus’ life journey, and John’s journey with him as a witness, deserves careful consideration more than we have given to any other writing. It calls out to be challenged, and then dismissed, or embraced as authentic by each person who reads it. What is your most likely response? What is clear is that we cannot skirt over this introduction to John’s biography of his close friend like reading a fictional novel. Why? It addresses more than our level of literary interest. It contains personal destiny issues for us captured from John’s daily, close-up, well-tested journey with Jesus in a variety of social interactions. Thus, a flippant response lacks integrity and discounts ourself rather than Jesus.

Furthermore, we cannot limit our reading of John’s account of journeying with Jesus to a philosophical work to be equated with the philosophies that formed world religions and personal religions. Philosophies are a mind exercise that can be debated and refined to suit one’s own life sense and comfort. We all do it. John’s introduction might sound like the introduction to a philosophical work, which would place it among millions of philosophies humans create to bring some framework of understanding and sense of stability to life as they have experienced it. Among them are the philosophies propagated by world religions in the East and West, and tribal religions of primitive societies. This introduction of the Jesus that John had come to know, however, is based on hundreds of miraculous actions, seen by many, as well as words, John was in the company of Jesus each day witnessing his miracles and listening to his explanations of their meaning. In fact, the words of Jesus were given largely for spiritual insight to be drawn from the miracles by those present and not as lessons in philosophy. Some of those words were claims by Jesus about his divine identity.

Sadly, a vast number of readers give only cursory attention to the witnessed claims made by John in this introduction and keep them at arm’s length from their life. Test if this the case for yourself or someone you know. The onus is on every reader, who gives a flippant or closed response, to face the honest reason why this is the case. Why is this is personally critical to do so? Because John records claims made by Jesus that our eternal destiny is being determined by how we are relating to him with our life now, Jesus claimed in earshot of John that he will determine, when we stand before him to be judged, how we have treated him in this life. That is a momentous claim by Jesus if true, or infinite madness personified if delusional or devious. It is up to each reader to draw their conclusion. It is clear, that if we have not built a relationship of love and trust with Jesus in this life, we will have no grounds to expect him to offer such a relationship with him in the next. It would be blind arrogance to expect so, and an attempt to elevate ourself above the Word, who is God himself.

Comment:

I have noticed that an arm’s length dismissive response to a philosophical claim often happens when the subject of ‘God’ is mentioned. The emotions shut down and the brain flips the topic away. This is the response of a majority. The topic is too hard and potentially divisive. John introduces ‘God’ in his second sentence. That doesn’t give us much room to move with John. If it causes you to shut down and dismiss reading the rest of his biography, Jesus will remain a distorted or mystical stranger. You may gain vague ideas about him, but never the viable understanding of his love and his high desires for you, from which to grow a practical, functioning relationship with him that enriches your life now and eternally. The best you will gain is vague and burdensome religion instead of vital new life and understanding of truth.

Incomprehensible God

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning.

At an incomprehensible beginning, John describes the existence of an incomprehensible God. Who can ever imagine God when we have not seen him? Who can ever imagine a Creator when even the immensity of the created universe is beyond our intellectual grasp? I cannot even imagine the distance of one light year, which is the 9.46 trillion kilometres travelled by light in one year. I can imagine distances I have travelled in a car, but not this distance travelled by light in one year. Neither can I ever hope to imagine the Coma Cluster of over 1,000 galaxies spanning more than 20 million light years across located 330 million light years from our galaxy. In the opposite extreme, how can we imagine the pinpoint zero dimensional intricacy of a photon that is neither time nor location defined yet is the smallest particle of energy of which we are constituted. The existence of matter in the Coma Cluster and photons in a light beam are beyond the operational capability of the plasma cells in my cranium. Who then am I, and who are we to try to hold to account a Creator of all this for any negatives in our current life?

Job tried. Note the conclusion of his lengthy challenge to God about all existence.

Then Job replied to the Lord:

² "I know that you can do all things;
     no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
     Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
     things too wonderful for me to know.

⁴ "You said,’Listen now, and I will speak;
     I will question you,
     and you shall answer me.’ ⁵ My ears had heard of you
     but now my eyes have seen you. ⁶ Therefore I despise myself
     and repent in dust and ashes."

(Job 42:1-6)

Job’s response confronts us to make a further check of our attitude. How can we imagine neutron stars, the dead cores of stars like the sun, exerting gravitational forces 100 trillion times that which we experience on earth? At the other extreme, how can we comprehend zero-dimensional elementary particles, such as electrons, being surrounded by a cloud of other virtual particles constantly winking in and out of existence but acting as if they are essentially a part of the electron itself? How can we comprehend an electron being both a waveform of energy and a particle of negative energy constantly switching between both forms with changing speed, so that we can never determine its nature and position at a point in time. How can we comprehend how entanglement of quanta works unconstrained by time or location? Even the best mathematicians reach their limits of understanding.

We need to stop our criticisms and objections about God and the bad cards we consider we have been dealt, and instead reflect on what the Creator has made, who we are relative to him, who John claims has revealed himself in Jesus, and who offers eternal promises of love and forgiveness to us. John’s journey with Jesus brought him to discover how his love was marked by serving the least.

The honest seeker of truth is forced to conclude after years of study that no one can comprehend a ‘God‘ who made all this. Neither can we comprehend the ‘Word‘ having made all things, as John is using the term for Jesus the man, who lived among us. Unbelievable! The combined effect of these two words (‘Word’ and ‘God’) in the first sentence of this biography would cause many to tune out and not make the effort to read further. This is particularly true because John claims that the Word was with God, yet was God, How can this be? This is as impossible to explain just as the current mysteries of the universe are beyond the grasp and explanation of the most brilliant astrophysicists. God has created fundamental forms of physical existence beyond our grasp as is his own existence.

The God, who talked with Moses, and who passed by him in the cleft of a rock on Mount Sinai, gave Moses a unique pluralistic understanding of himself. This was in his choice of the plural form of the word used for ‘god’ in ancient semitic civilisations. Instead of using the singular El for God, in his opening statement, In the beginning God, Moses broke from the common use of the singular El in its various cognate forms used of to mean ‘deity’ or ‘god’ throughout the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia and the Levant with their many gods. Instead, he distinctly used the Hebrew plural form of the noun El, i.e., Elohim.

In the beginning God ((אֱלֹהִ֑ים = Elohim) created the heaven and the earth.

(Genesis 1:1)

Therefore the worship of the one God of the Hebrews as plurality was not foreign to John as a Jew. He could easily write the following without any inner mental conflict.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Elohim, and the Word was Elohim.

When faced with these mysteries of God’s identity many typically conclude that it is better to trust their own ability to get on with their life rather than waste time placing their hope in some indefinable, unseen entity being proposed to improve their lot. They consider that the practical approach to adopt towards the subject of the existence of God and Jesus is to dispense with the topic without investigating it any further. Has this been your choice also, or do you have a persistent inner urge to understand our origins, the nature of creation and how your destiny is linked to the Creator of it all ? Do you feel there is something missing in your life based on your current beliefs, and that maybe Jesus has the answers you need to satisfy your ever-present urge to understand who you are and gain meaning in this vast scheme of creation?

It is important to recognise that John was not writing an ethereal philosophy about some unseen god as some religions do, or a fictional biography about a person he knew little about that he was proposing to be some unseen god. He was writing about a person who he had come to know intimately – Jesus from Nazareth, son of the town carpenter. When John the young fisherman encountered Jesus, something drew him to leave his trade and follow the stranger to find out more about him. As a result, we have this biography of Jesus written by him to enlighten us about the person he discovered and journeyed with for three years.

That makes this biography even more incredulous. It forces us to ask the question, "After three years of relationship exposure to Jesus, was John totally deluded about his friend and carpenter’s son being the eternal Creator, or was he so convinced about this that he could not avoid the imperative to present undiluted the Jesus he had come to know to as many readers as possible?" Which do you think it was? Whatever our conclusion, we have not completed our research until we look into biographies of Jesus written by John’s close companions, who also lived with Jesus over those three years and came to the same conclusion as John about the identity of Jesus. We have to look at their backgrounds also to seek to understand their motivations and authenticity. We need to find a plausible reason why each of them would accept death when threatened with execution for holding and promoting their conviction that Jesus was the divine Son of God on a mission to present the love of God to his lost creation and take the judgement for each person’s sins. What would make them choose to die for promoting Jesus? A spiritual scam promoted by a charismatic person?

The hostile pushback by the power elite of their society to reject the notion that Jesus was their long awaited eternal king was, for his disciples, more than denying the plausibility of a convenient philosophy of life. It was a denial of the identity of the person each disciple over 3 years of observation had come to believe was the Creator and Giver of eternal life. Therefore, how we handle accepting or denying the identity of Jesus presented in their biographies of him presents a challenge to our own integrity. Will we give the time to investigate with an open mind and heart the identity of the man in their biographies, who claimed to be the eternal God, Creator of all and only Saviour from the righteous judgement on our sins? Surely, there is no greater claim worthy of our full assessment. What do you think?

The challenge confronting each open-minded person reading the biography of Jesus by John is to test the authenticity of each account of Jesus as captured by him, arrive at a conclusion about the Jesus he presents, and then respond to this Jesus accordingly. This method of reading John’s biography exposes any current, popular, untested, second-hand myths or vague information we hold about Jesus without knowing it. Test how open you are to John’s biography of Jesus challenging your current views of life and whether or not you are open to trusting Jesus each day into your future.

You will find as you read the various personal challenges by Jesus recounted in this biography that he gave his listeners only two options for relating to him. He left no middle ground. Either we embrace him fully or reject him out of sight. The choice is simple and confronting. We choose one or the other. Jesus would claim that our everlasting destiny depends on which action we choose towards him. He left no third option, yet many try to slide away from needing to make a conscious choice between embracing fully who he claimed to be, or rejecting him. He gave no third option. To ignore him is to reject him.

You will discover as you read this biography that Jesus made it clear that his response to us mirrors ours to him : full embrace or total rejection. That is how relationship functions. Our embrace leads to his embrace. Our rejection likewise leads to his rejection, because he will not force us to accept him. Of course, with such personal high stakes, if Jesus is our Creator, utmost honesty with ourselves is crucial in how we arrive at our conclusion about how to relate to the Jesus presented by John in this biography. Each reader deserves to give such honesty to themselves when considering the identity of Jesus as their Creator. Furthermore, we need to place sufficient value on ourselves to examine properly the high value that Jesus placed on us as presented in this biography.

As mentioned in my introductory notes, John had plenty of time to reflect on the life of his close friend Jesus, who he had experienced continuously and closely over 3 years of living with him. Married couples come to know each other well after three years of living together. They come to know the subtleties of their moods and responses to others in numerous situations. They develop a stronger understanding of the inner natures that form the characters of each other. They come to know each other intimately and not just know facts about each other. They come to know the character depths, values, hopes, dreams and motivations of their partner.

John and his eleven companions came to know Jesus this way. They saw into his character in multitudinous situations. Then, after his resurrection appearances, Jesus authenticated to them over a period of 40 days, all that John and his companions had come to perceive about him by taking them through every specific reference to him in their scriptures comprised of 39 different books written over 1200 years by 33 different authors. Using this comprehensive teaching method, the resurrected Jesus gave them irrefutable evidence of his identity, which they later promoted, and for which they were prepared to die. Then in the decades immediately following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, which they witnessed, John had time to note the expanding impact of Jesus on different societies in the ancient world as the message of salvation through his life, death and resurrection as the Son of God spread rapidly.

As you give John’s biography of Jesus your careful consideration, you will notice that his introduction quoted above presents concepts that exist beyond our natural reasoning, e.g., the beginning, the eternal Word being with God, yet being God, the Word creating everything and enlightening all mankind. We need to step through these claims of John about his friend one at a time to appreciate their full import, because if they are true, each of us ultimately will have to face this Jesus as recorded by John to account for our treatment of him as our Creator. Then Jesus will not be debating a philosophy of life with us, or why our pride was more important than him, or how a teacher led us astray, or why a deep hurt embedded in us blocked us coming close to him, or why the attractions of our world were too enticing and time-demanding to give him a look in, etc. etc. Instead of listening to our victim stories and excuses, the Jesus, who John came to know, claims that he will confront us about our sinful life seen by him that requires the wrath of his righteous judgement and eternal separation from him. Furthermore, if John’s claims about Jesus are proven true, it is foolishness bordering on insanity to ignore Jesus in our current life and not seek each day to build an enduring relationship with him.

Thus, in lieu of John’s introduction, we need to ask for our own sake, "Are John’s claims about Jesus madness?" "How have I treated this Jesus so far?" "Have I avoided him or come to a properly assessed conclusion about him?" "What would be needed to motivate me to do so?" These are high value personal questions for each of us to examine and answer. They are high value to us, if we place any value on ourselves. It is worth giving high priority on considering them, because they carry everlasting implications. We need to place the high value on ourselves that Jesus has and still does.

If our experiences in life have caused us to place little to no value on ourself, it will be important not to rush over statements Jesus makes in this biography about your worth to him. They are high value because each of us is of high value to him – much higher than the value we place on ourselves. As John’s companion Peter said.

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

The ‘everyone’ includes all of us. Take that to heart and believe it. Peter arrived at that awareness through 3 years of living intimately with Jesus just like John. God’s gracious patience is still being extended to you.

Now let us look at John’s introduction in more detail.

The beginning

John starts his biography of Jesus at a time he labels, "the beginning".

¹ In the beginning was the Word …

You can’t start a biography any earlier than that! You can start a biography at the beginning of a person’s life, or at the beginning of their ancestral tree, or their nation, or at the beginning of a new social cause, and so on. What beginning was this when the Word was, and why is it the beginning of John’s biography of Jesus? Does it help us understand who Jesus was and what drove him?

To appreciate the value of these questions, consider how far back you would want a biographer to go in your life so readers can understand the values and hopes that drive you now, how they have formed your identity, and the situations they have placed you in, i.e., where is the beginning of your story? Would you want your biographer to go back before your birth and interview whoever they wished to understand the beginning influences on how your life has turned out? Or would you want the biographer to start at some crisis moment in your development that you consider has had a more powerful influence on the beliefs you now hold, the behaviours you exhibit and the underlying hurts driving them. In other words, when do you see your life beginning – not just your physical life? Similarly, how far back do we need to go to understand what motivated Jesus the son of Joseph the carpenter in Nazareth and formed his character and purpose?

Like John, Mark chose to begin his biography of Jesus with the words, "The beginning", and Luke began his account of Jesus by stating that he had carefully researched the life of Jesus "from the beginning". What did they consider to be "the beginning" for a biography of Jesus, and where have they positioned the beginning in time relative to the beginning chosen by John?

Mark left no doubt from the outset about whom he was writing, and what he considered to be the beginning for a biography of this person. His first sentence is clear and to the point:

"The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, Son of God"

(Mark 1:1)

Mark declares from the start of his biography that the identity of Jesus is the Messiah (anointed king) and Son of God, and he is starting at the beginning^[2]. He pinpoints the beginning of the good news to be in a prophecy spoken by the prophet Isaiah in the 8th century BC. Isaiah prophesied about a voice in the wilderness preparing a pathway for ‘the Lord’, also called ‘our God’, as follows:

A voice of one calling:
" In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God".

(Isaiah 40:3)

Isaiah’s prophecy is about a messenger to come, who living in the wilderness would be a voice announcing the coming of ‘the Lord’, ‘our God’, to those who came to listen. Mark interprets Isaiah’s prophecy this way:

⁴ And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

(Mark 1:4)

He identifies the "voice of one calling" in the wilderness to be that of John the Baptist making a repentance highway to God by means of commitment to a visible baptism enabling sins to be forgiven.

Luke’s biography of Jesus, on the other hand, places the beginning of his investigation of Jesus one generation before John the Baptist (Luke 1:3). He focuses on the aged, childless couple who would one day miraculously become the parents of John the Baptist. He records their devout life that enabled them to raise the future messenger of the Messiah with the moral capability and strength needed to turn around the decayed moral attitudes in Jewish society. Luke then records the angel’s announcement to Zechariah, the father "to-be" of John the Baptist, that he would have a son who would be conceived miraculously by his aged and barren wife Elizabeth for the following unique purpose:

¹⁶ He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. ¹⁷ And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord".

(Luke 1:16-17)

Four centuries earlier God spoke through Malachi, the prophet, the last recorded statement in the Old Testament. In this prophecy, God states specifically that the prophet Elijah will come before his final judgement of the human race.

⁵ "See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. ⁶ He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction."

(Malachi 4:5)^[3]

Their son would turn hearts. Such preparation of moral attitudes is the critical pre-requisite for any person being able to recognise the presence of Deity. It was critical for each of us recognising the divine identity of Jesus and remains so today.

God chose John the Baptist "to turn the hearts" not minds, because our heart is the seat of our evil and uses our mind to justify what it wants. A quick examination of our life will show how that has proven true on many occasions. An immoral lifestyle that originates in the heart and is justified by our mind blocks us seeing the divine no matter how educated we may be. The agenda chosen by our heart will solidly block and reject any threat to its behavioural agenda – even if the threat is truth.

If we can’t understand John’s biography of Jesus, or consider it irrelevant, it is important to know where the cause lies. Is it in the information John provides that references Jesus, or is it our brain’s inability to collate the evidence, or is it our soul not wanting to be challenged. Take special note that the educated scholars of the day, with their thoroughly trained and finely tuned religious minds, bayed like a pack of dogs for the crucifixion of Jesus, which their prophets had foreseen centuries before and wrote about, but they missed entirely, even though they spent hundreds of hours studying and discussing their scriptures intricately. Pride in their accumulated knowledge, and the religious power it had gained for them, left them spiritually blind about Jesus. That is why Jesus cried out nailed to his cross.

"Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing!"

These religious professionals were oblivious to their immense affront to the Creator they hypocritically claimed to worship. They made no connection between their actions and those prophesied many hundred years before to be carried out against the Servant sacrificed for the sins of the world (Isaiah 53, Psalm 22). Their hearts were blind to Jesus, because they did not want him, period! Their embedded pride refused to submit to a relationship with Jesus. They chose religion instead, where their pride could hide while seeking to control any attempts to dislodge it.

The same can be true for us today. Jesus can be just a name to us and nothing more than that. He remains that way, because we have chosen not to expose ourselves to multiple evidences for him provided by the writers of the Jewish scriptures spanning 1, 200 years. Our non-choice is our choice, It is critical to be honest about self on this matter. Where does my will sit? Has it chosen to block any spiritual approach of God to me, and most particularly any approach of Jesus to me, who John records claimed to be God and is God? Has it?

How then do you see Jesus? If your pride has blocked your heart to God, what you see about Jesus will not be who he is. You may be able to observe the physical aspects of Jesus in this biography by John, such as his recorded interactions with many in various social situations, but you will totally miss comprehending his spiritual identity, Without gaining spiritual sight, we cannot see the divine identity of Jesus. Our denials of his deity will be based on pride, our assembled belief system that protects our pride, and perceived threats to it

Note that Jesus included in his sermon on the mountain, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." Purity of heart spawned by repentance of our sins and a turning to God as our Creator and Owner is what creates spiritual sight. Our brain does not. Hence, the role of John the Baptist going before Jesus was essential to lay down a pathway of repentant hearts capable of recognising Jesus as the long awaited Messiah and Son of God from heaven, when he appeared on the scene. That is why Luke began his biography of Jesus with the parents who raised John the Baptist for his role. They had lived an obedient devout life that could raise a strong, God-fearing son.

In comparison to the biographies of Jesus by Mark and Luke, which placed John the Baptist and his parents as their beginning, what is the "beginning" referred to by John at the start of his biography of Jesus? Well, John reaches way further back in time than Isaiah’s prophecy in the 8th century BC used by Mark and Luke for the beginning of their biographies of Jesus. By comparison, John focuses on "the Word", whatever that is, and he places his biography’s beginning at the time that the Word existed, whenever that was. ("Word" = "Logos" in Greek)

¹ In the beginning was the Word (the Logos)…

The Logos

So what is this Logos and when did this Logos exist? We have to explore the identity of the Logos and the time he existed, because John chooses "Logos-time" for beginning his biography of Jesus.

Greek use

Logos was a familiar term in Greek philosophy. In what sense was John as a Jew using it for the beginning of his biography of Jesus a Jew?

A first option is that John was simply using Logos to achieve the maximum communication of his biography of Jesus throughout the Hellenistic world where Greek language had become the lingua franca. Jesus had commissioned his disciples to go into the entire world to tell about him. Although John’s spoken language was Aramaic, it made sense for him to write in Greek to achieve the maximum spread of his biography of Jesus throughout the world where Greek philosophy was forging the thinking of the masses. How then would Greek-influenced readers comprehend this Logos and its beginning?

Greek thought was dualistic., i.e., divine is spiritual and perfect transcendence, whereas the world is material, fleshy and corruptible. From this framework of thought, God cannot be involved in the creation of the physical world. Genesis 1 written by Moses would be an impossibility. The imperfect material world cannot be created by God. He therefore had to create intermediaries (Logos singular, Logoi plural, later called Demiurges.) This intermediary in creation is the divine reason, the very base element or foundation and order of all created things. With this postulated means of a flawless God being able to create a flawed physical order, Logos held the most elevated position next to the supreme God yet distinct from God. Philo of Alexandria (Egypt), a first century Jewish writer and philosopher, reasoned that God is the most universal of all things and in the second place is the Logos (Word) of God.^[4] He further elaborates this thought claiming that the shadow of God is His Word (Logos) when refuting the translation of Bezal-el^[5]

Greek philosophy used "Logos" for the divine reason that gave the universe its form and meaning. The idea of Logos entered Greek philosophy in the sixth century BC through Heraclitus. He saw two principles operating in the universe. The first is that everything is in a state of change, Life is change. We are all part of change. The second principle is that the same cause or action in our physical world will produce the same result always, e.g., the same seed will always produce the same kind of flower. Heraclitus saw that Nature operates with order and progression.That is how it changes and not chaotically. He used the term Logos for the dependable law that produced predictable results. This was divine reason. Our scientific progress today depends on it. The Scientific Method assumes order and progression to propose its theories and test them. For Heraclitus, Logos was the divine reason on which the whole order of the universe depends. His was a philosophical statement that stayed in the realm of ideas drawn from observations of Nature’s operations. His Logos was not personified in any person. John did that.^[6]

It would have been easy for John to personify the meaning of Logos and apply it to Jesus, because Logos as the divine reason matched how John had experienced again and again the reasoning power of Jesus, and his control over created order. From his daily up-close observations of Jesus over three years, he and his companions had become convinced of the reasoning power of Jesus and his control over the laws of nature they saw in his hundreds of miracles. They could only conclude his origin was divine. It took them over 1,000 days of observations in close relationship with Jesus to arrive at their conclusion. In their final meal with him before he surrendered himself to his executors, they declared confidently.

"Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God"

(John 16:30)

Finally, his disciples had grasped that the knowledge of Jesus extended to everything and came from God. This was more than a mental understanding for them. No one can grasp the Creator of all existence with the mind. Theirs was a journey of observation in close relationship that caused them to grapple with seeing spiritual power in action, They came to the place of seeing that Jesus was a man whose life and love convinced them that he was divine, as he claimed to be, and could be trusted with their lives.

They finally saw that his knowledge was divine reason both in its origins and unlimited scope, His observed knowledge, however, differed vastly from the two principles of change and order in Nature perceived by Heraclitus. The disciples witnessed hundreds of times Jesus for the sake of exercising love overriding at will the principles of order and progression observed by Heraclitus. The divine reason of Heraclitus could not accommodate such situations. Each occurrence raised the question of the identity of Jesus and not just his knowledge. The disciples’ questioning of his identity began when Jesus instantly stopped a violent storm with a verbal command when they were fearing for their lives. His love for them intervened. All they could say then was, "What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him?" This was a statement of their minds not being able to grasp the boundaries of his human identity. The laws of Creation were under his control. Attributing Deity to him was not in their minds. It took three years of watching Jesus override the principles of change and order in Nature, and answer with authority all questions put to him, for them to recognise and affirm confidently that their human friend had divine origins and was in fact Deity.

It is important to recognise that understanding the full identity of Jesus is a journey – short for some, long for others, just as it varied for his first disciples. Nevertheless, it is a journey that yields results. That is why I urge you to take it. It is why I challenge you to look first at yourself to understand any existing prejudice that may dismiss Jesus before you are able to embark on the spiritual journey to see him. Look for any hurts that may have cemented that prejudice in place. Then allow yourself the privilege of reading John’s biography with the simple question, " Can I trust my life and future to Jesus as presented by his close friend John?" Once we grasp what Jesus came to do for us, and what he offers us in life, we are finally able to put our full trust in him to gain the eternal life that he offers.

How can humans limiting their search for truth within the boundaries of physical laws conceive of what they want to label as "divine", or god, or one of the many other multiplicity of titles given? Our attempts can only go as far as unverifiable mystical mush that may stir our emotions and give us some sense of being connected ethereally with what may be "out there". So we put things "out to" the physical Universe as possessing some magical personification of Intelligence that may look kindly on us and bring to us what we need at the time. So we call these responses Karma. A personified Intelligence at some vague distance ‘out there’ presents far less of a threat to our control over our life than a god who wants control to set people free from slavery to sin. As we look further at the Logos presented by John, we will find that he describes something far greater and certain for our life than ‘Mother’ nature, karma or fate.

Now back to John’s readers with a Greek mindset. John was claiming in the first sentence that Jesus is the divine reason his Greek readers called the Logos. His readers would need his biography to provide substantial evidence to validate this claim. Does it? As you read John’s account of Jesus, decide if you arrive at the same conclusion as John, i.e., Jesus is, and eternally was, the Logos and God the Creator of all. If that is so, you will need to give him your concerted attention without delay.

Jewish use

John lived at a time when Greek thought had infiltrated Israel. Nevertheless, he was a Jew primarily forged by Jewish teachings and practices. He lived at the intersection of two cultures. How much of his Jewish mind-set had become Hellenistic? Which culture had the greatest influence on his thinking? In addition to looking at the Greek use of Logos, we also need to consider if John was using concepts about the Word from his Jewish scriptures taught in his local synagogue in order to appeal to his Jewish readers, who lived at the intersection of the Greek and Hebrew cultures. Or was John using Logos differently to the Greek and Jewish cultures? The beginning of John’s account of the life of Jesus has similarity to the beginning of Moses account of the revelations of God in history. He began by presenting the God he had encountered miraculously on many occasions as the eternal Creator of all existence.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

(Genesis 1:1)

Moses then proceeded to describe each phase of creation starting with the phrase, "And God said" (Genesis 1:2, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26). Accordingly, from the outset the Jew associated the word spoken by God in the creation story with God’s creative power.

The beginning of John’s biography of Jesus sounds similar to Moses.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God …

(John 1:1)

To the Jew the words spoken by God were more than the sounds of his voice. They were dynamic creative power in action forming all animate and inanimate existence. We know that words have power even when spoken by us. They can hurt, harm or heal others. Jeremiah likened God’s words to a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces. (Jeremiah 23:29) The power in God’s words is purposeful and always accomplishes the purpose for which they are spoken, as stated in Isaiah 55:10-11.

¹⁰ As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Consequently, Jews took the words of the prophets seriously. They heard their words as the words of God that would always accomplish what they foretold. They were the hope of the Jews in John’s day. Through his prophets God spoke of the coming Messiah of Israel who would restore the scattered Jews to their land and rule the world from Jerusalem. (e.g., Isaiah 11:1, 10; Jeremiah 23:5, Ezekiel 37:24, Micah 5:2-5, Zechariah 12:8).

In John’s day, the Jews maintained hope in the power and certainty of God’s words spoken through such prophets. John grew up at a time when the dream of the Messiah ruling the world from Jerusalem was strong and intensifying in the hearts of many Jews. Even John as a fisherman was likely effected by this intensifying dream being fuelled by the brutal oppression of the Roman occupiers. The readings of in his local synagogue sought to keep the dream of the coming Messiah alive using Jewish writings that filled the gap between the end of the prophets up to John’s time^[7].

The teachings in his synagogue may also have been influenced by the Jewish scholar Philo’s understanding of the Greek term Logos. Philo was a scholar of the Hebrew Torah living in Alexandria. He tried to syncretise the teachings of Moses with those of Plato, who was the philosopher dominating Greek thought at the time. The thinking of many of John’s readers in the Hellenistic world would have been influenced by Plato. He proposed that our physical world is not as real as the existence of timeless, absolute, and unchangeable ‘Forms’ or ‘Ideas’. These timeless absolutes are characteristics, or concepts, such as colour, shape, texture, identity etc. They exist independently of the physical objects that manifest them, because they occur in a myriad of situations. For example, many objects have the common ‘Form’ of ‘circularity’, e.g., three different drinking vessels can all exhibit this ‘Form’. It can be seen as a property of an endless number of different objects. Plato therefore reasoned that ‘Circularity’ as a ‘Form’ or ‘Idea’ exists independently from the physical objects themselves. He proposed that objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations of these independently existing universal ‘Forms’ or ‘Ideas’, which he claimed comprised the real world where knowledge exists.

Philo took up Plato’s concept of ‘Ideas’ and equated them with the Creator’s thoughts, He proposed that these thoughts, or ‘Ideas’ of the Creator, collectively made the contents of Logos. These are the divine reason that governs all existence. They are the Word, the Logos. In Philo the Jew’s books, Logos is spoken of more than 1, 200 times. If John a Jewish fisherman was influenced by Philo the Jew’s concept that the Logos is the Creator’s collective thoughts, he could write, "In the beginning was the Logos" because those ‘Ideas’ or ‘Forms’ have always formed the essence of God’s mind from eternity past. If John considered that God’s collective thoughts formed his essence, he could expand his view of the Logos by stating that.

^1b …and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God" … i.e., in full essence.

His Greek or Jewish readers, influenced by Plato’s philosophy of ‘Forms’ and ‘Ideas’, would have immediately accepted this claim.

This application of Plato’s philosophy of ‘collective thoughts’ to God, however, has a limitation.

God is more than a thinking being. Philosophers working from the mind influenced by their personal experiences are limited by their mind in their attempts to define divine and human existence as thoughts that produce our actions. Jesus taught that God, however, is more than mind determining our perceptions of reality and subsequent choices and actions. He is first and foremost a spiritual being. Jesus declared, "God is Spirit" (John 4:24). He is eternal spirit who directs his mind. He is much more than a mind producing ideas, although the mind that fashioned all the intricacies and interdependencies of creation is ‘mind-blowing’ itself for us to comprehend. Accordingly, John uses the Greek continuous past tense, i.e., the imperfect tense, to describe the past existence of God and the Logos^[8].

…and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.

John is claiming that the Logos ‘was’ in the continuous past and ‘was’ God in the continuous past, His beginning had no beginning at a point in time. "In the beginning was the Logos" whose beginning had no beginning, only a continuous past. This is the Jesus that John came to know.

John’s use

John moves beyond using Logos as divine reason contained in all existence, or the collective thoughts of God in Philo’s terms. He describes the Logos as a unique divine identity distinguished from God in the continuous past, To do so, he uses the personal pronoun, "he" and the preposition "with".

² He was with God in the beginning.

The Logos is a "he". Who then is this "he" with God continuously in the beginning, yet who John claims was God continuously in the beginning? How can our minds contain and comprehend these two claims simultaneously? Is this a deluded and unverifiable claim made by John? Certainly his claim makes no sense within the physical boundaries of human experience and thought. In that framework of reference, how can 1+1=1? How can the Logos (1) being with God (+1) be God (=1)?

Shortly after this claim (verse 2), John identifies the personal pronoun "he" to be Jesus (verses 14 and 18). In other words, John’s filled out claim is.

¹ In the beginning was (continuously) Jesus (the Logos), and Jesus was (continuously) with God, and Jesus was (continuously) God. ² He was (continuously) with God in the beginning.

This is a momentous claim. If true, it is critical for every person to sit up and take notice of Jesus. How could John make such a claim? Only a mentally unbalanced person out of touch with reality would. Is that John? It is for you to test. How was John seen by many who came to know him well? Was he delusional? If John was completely sane claiming that Jesus was God from the continuous past, rejecting Jesus is not a minor matter. An eternal being will not go away simply because we gird ourselves up to reject him. Once God – life’s Creator and Source – is rejected, where else to I go for life? Peter clearly confronted that reality when Jesus asked if he would desert him like many others. Peter stated his obvious dilemma, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life"

What did John experience about Jesus over 3 years that enabled him confidently to state that the Logos (Jesus) was God (in the continuous past)? When we assess John’s life before and after his time with Jesus, we realise that we cannot dismiss and flippantly brand John as deluded, because he risked his life repeatedly for believing that Jesus was God along with eleven of his companions who had already been executed for refusing to deny it.This strongly points to our need to give John’s claim of the deity of Jesus our full, unbiased consideration unless we have concluded from some viable source of evidence that the sanity of John and his eleven companions is highly questionable.

Jesus was executed prior to his followers for claiming that he was God. What about the sanity of Jesus? Did he face death as a deluded and tragic person? Did his followers, therefore, die for a madman, or did they face death convinced that Jesus was God? To arrive at our conclusion we have to test, "Was John’s conclusion about Jesus based on sound first-hand observation and investigation?" We cannot ignore this step in how we treat Jesus. To dismiss an entertainer or politician is very different to dismissing a historical being claiming to be God, affirmed by hundreds of miracles seen by the many who came to know him, and by his resurrection witnessed by hundreds, as noted specifically by the scholar and zealot Saul. He was on a mission to destroy the new movement of followers of Jesus, called the Way, until he too was confronted in person by the resurrected Jesus.

If John was correct, that the Logos (Jesus) was God, to reject Jesus as the Logos is to reject God. We have no alternative but to consider the life of Jesus very differently to any person in recorded history who sought to build a following. Philo as a monotheistic Jewish scholar would not have gone as far as John equating Jesus as the Logos with God. That would be an act of blasphemy. To the Jew of the day, their God is one Spirit. There are no other gods – no other creators of life. There is no two. Today Jewish scholars continue to interpret passages in their scriptures that point to a human as God in ways that discredit such explanations (e.g., Isaiah 9:6) To Philo, Jesus would merely have been a man from the village of Nazareth, who might have done spectacular miracles with God’s creative power but could not claim deity without uttering blasphemy against the one God.

Nevertheless, John identifies the Logos to be a second divine identity existing in the beginning with God, who was also the agent of the creation of all physical existence as we know it^[9].

The Creator

³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

This is both a universal and an exclusive statement. John claims that all created identities were determined by the Logos, and that nothing exists that has not been created by him on earth and to the farthermost boundaries of the universe. This includes every one of us with no one excluded, both you and me. John’s claim means that we owe our very existence from its beginning to the Logos as our Creator. We do not owe our existence to any other human invented god, such as a myriad of ancient tribal gods, earth gods, Hindu gods, religious leaders such as Buddha or Mohammed, or any cult leader. It seems madness, therefore, to preference any other human above Jesus as our Creator, or to personify the creation as possessing itself the creative powers that brought it into existence from nowhere. Putting things out to a mystical ‘Universe’ goes nowhere! Worshipping what has been created instead of the Creator merely highlights a resistant created being refusing to trust the One who made it.

Note that the claim by John that Jesus created everything as the Logos extends beyond his 33 years life span on earth. He places Jesus as the Logos at the beginning of his creation of everything.

"Through him all things were made (Greek aorist tense)".

Through the Logos, who John has claimed existed in the continuous past, all things were made at a distinctive period in time. John uses the Greek aorist tense for creation as action at a time in the past with a beginning and end. Therefore, John states that the Logos (Word) is the central cause of all creation when all matter as we know it came into being. Hence it follows that we existed in the mind of the eternal Logos as one of his thoughts before we were born at a point in time into this world, just as every detail of creation existed in his thoughts before he brought them into physical reality at a point in time. We seek to plumb how he brought them into reality, and describe what we have observed as a scientific law. Nevertheless, we are only describing an extremely limited aspect of the creative mind of the Logos.

Try as we might to disassociate our current existence in time from the thoughts and creative actions of the Logos, we can’t. John would have considered it impossible to dismiss the Jesus he had come to know intimately by any attempts to disassociate from him. John was directly associated with Jesus in his thoughts before he created all physical life and certainly before Jesus crossed his path.

The same goes for every one of us. We were directly associated with Jesus in his thoughts in the continuous past before creation and now are dependent upon him for our very life as the Creator and Sustainer of all life in the present. Jesus had you and me as a thought, a thought of love and high worth. No one can escape this universal reality of all life. Atheists might jump up and down with objections about God, but can never escape the reality that has been already written into their history by their Creator. Their association with the Logos was fixed by him before he brought all physical existence into being as its Creator. Nothing can change that fact. We might wish to reject this association in our mind, but we can never reject the created reality we have been born into. It began in eternity past in the mind of the Creator and continues there today. Pride that paints itself into the intellectual corner of rejecting the existence of the Creator finds this statement offensive. Self-exalted pride is foolishness.

The Apostle Paul expressed the same reality about God’s relationship with his creation to the Greek Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, who were searching for an Unknown god. About this unknown God, Paul proclaimed.

"…he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else…, he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’" (Acts 17:25, 27-28)

According to Paul, we live in him. Therefore we cannot dissociate from him, He is the ever-present Sustainer of all life. Paul then linked this reality directly with the resurrection of Jesus by concluding,

"For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead." (v.31)

The proof of the resurrection of Jesus witnessed by his disciples and many over 40 days makes it certain that no one can disassociate their current existence from beginning in the mind of Jesus as the Word in eternity past. I can’t. You can’t. Any attempt to dissociate ourselves from him, therefore, has to deny the historical evidence for his resurrection. History records that his loud vocal opponents, who stood mocking him at the foot of his cross, fell silent about his resurrection. Their voices could not stand against the more than 500 who witnessed him alive at one event.

Consequently, any attempt to dissociate from the risen Jesus is a violent act against ourselves as much as it is against him, no matter how nonchalant or hidden to our daily self-consciousness we might want that dismissal of him from our life to be. The attempted silencing is not nonchalant. It is a violent act against ourselves, because any choice now of a repeated disassociation from Jesus and the creative power of his love will lead to an ever-lasting disassociation from him. The certain result is our self-destruction in an everlasting, love-absent, isolation from any relationship with him, and an everlasting trust-absent isolation from all others who similarly have rejected him. Where love is absent, there is no trust but only isolation, fear, and defensive abuse of any threat. Hence we are faced with the conclusion that any attempt to step out of the reality of our beginning in the mind of Jesus as the Creator in eternity past is an act of sustained delusion and self-abuse. Can it be any other? Madness won’t face this question.

How then do we choose to relate now to the life we have been given by the One who initiates and controls life? John provides the answer by linking our spiritual understanding of life directly to the life of the Logos. He calls this understanding "Light". It is spiritual light.

The Life and Light

⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

John now advances the claim he previously made that nothing physical exists that the Logos did not make (v. 3). He claims that beyond physical life being created by the Logos, life itself has continuously existed in the Logos. What is this life that was continuously in the Logos, i.e., in Jesus? Was it solely the creative power and capability to create the universe and all physical existence in it? Certainly when anything physical is created it begins as a thought in the mind of its creator. The artist conceives in his mind the design he wants to bring into reality in order to bless its viewers. Thus we could say that the physical creation, of which we are a small part, has resulted from designs moulded in the Creator’s thought life to bless us. John, however, does not place any adjectival restrictions on the noun ‘life’, such as ‘creative thought’ life. He goes beyond thought life. Rather he states that life existed in the Logos. John puts no further definitions on this life at this point All life without any limitations was in him. Such life extends its energy to enlighten all mankind about the nature of the life that was in Jesus. It had done that progressively for John over three years.

Consequently, John speaks from personal experience when he says that the life in the Logos Jesus is available for seeing spiritual truth. It enlightens.

…and that life was the light of all mankind.

It had enlightened John about the meaning and purpose of his life in the context of all life. This light goes beyond our intellect and enlightens our spirit to see spiritual realities. It is spiritual life. It is the life of God’s Spirit in Jesus that has existed from eternity past. Without this life we see no spiritual life – emphatically none! That is not bigotry. It is reality as real as the resurrection of Jesus. Without receiving the life that is in Jesus and is Jesus, we are blinded by deceptions of life that seduce our mind and keep us from finding the true light. These deceptions and imitations will let us down at death, because they have no life of God in them. They have no eternal or everlasting life. They are time limited. They began in one person’s mind at a point in time. They are mankind’s attempts to define life while rejecting God as life. They possess no everlasting life and cannot take us there. Only in Jesus is found the light of all mankind emanating from his life, which is eternal – past, present and future.

Accordingly, the life in Jesus is the light that enables us to comprehend progressively our created identity, If you don’t know who you are and what your purpose is on earth, spend time reading what Jesus says about you and the relationship he desires with you. Ponder on his words. It is only in Jesus that we see our purpose and true nature that is more than the physical existence of our minds, emotions, body and environment. Looking into Jesus, we begin to see our spiritual self that extends beyond our body and soul when united with the spiritual life in Jesus, which is him from eternity past, is now, and will be in future eternity. His living spirit within us gives us sight of our spiritual life and enables us to see how it is developing here. His Spirit is our light. He is our light.

It is not theology, or a cluster of beliefs that we have constructed in our journey that give us sight. It is the life of Jesus that is the spiritual energy source given to us that progressively enlightens our spirit to see him, our inner self, the spiritual or non-spiritual activities of others, and the eternal life which we have now as our continuing hope for the future. His light shows us our sin as it occurs. For example, his light challenges us not to judge another, because it shows us that we do not even see ourselves fully. It progressively exposes us to our spiritual self, according to the degree we can handle at the time. His light shines on our thoughts. It shows us where they are driven by untruths. It shows how truth is in Jesus. It shows us our dependence on his love. It reminds us to love others and moulds our responses. How critical it is for us to become united with him as both life and light!

Our state without him is darkness, which Jesus later explains (John 3:19-21). Our greatest intellectual theories of existence and purpose may seem logical to our mind but fail to address that our spirit is in darkness without life and needing God’s life. We need him as Spirit and the originator of all life to energise our spirit with his life. Only the creating power in God’s Spirit can bring spiritual life and light to our dead and darkened spirit. No philosophy, psychology or man-made religion can. These can only influence the mind and emotions of the soul and divert us from finding the Creator’s life and light essential for the sight of our spirit and eternal life.

John’s claim that Jesus is our light is not original to him. He is merely repeating how he had heard Jesus define himself to his listeners. On that occasion, Jesus made clear how the state of their existence depended on their response to him. John had heard Jesus make this claim and promise.

"I am the light of the world (the claim). Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (the promise)"

(John 8:12)

Here Jesus defined our spiritual state as either living in darkness or possessing the light of life, which is him as the light of the world. We exist in one or the other state. In this claim, Jesus presented our spiritual state as an " either/or "dependent on how we relate to him, i.e., we either join with him or dismiss him. We can easily identify which way we have chosen to relate to Jesus. It is simple and clear to each of us, and what we have chosen creates our eternal outcome as certain as night follows day.

"Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

No matter how eagerly we seek spiritual experiences and understanding from sources other than Jesus, no matter how appealing they are to our mind, we will never have the light energy of all spiritual life, because that only exists in the Creator of all life and our association with him. No matter how spiritual we may think ourselves or our teacher to be, we will never possess the light of life while choosing to be dissociated from Jesus as the Creator of our life. We can only conclude that we remain in darkness no matter how spiritual and mystical we may consider our experiences to be.

Our analytical physical brain may be finely tuned, but it is only of use in our physical world. It is blind to the spiritual world and easily deceived by our emotions and reasoning that can lead us to thinking that we are having spiritual experiences and insights. There are many books sold making claims of spiritual truth that have no understanding of Jesus and contain advice from teachers who are dismissive of his divine identity. Check if you have chosen to make one of these teachers your authority about spiritual life rather than accepting your Creator as your authority. When we commit to follow Jesus as our Creator, we are given and possess "the light of life", i.e., the light of his Life.

Light power over darkness

John continues his description of the light as follows,

⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The darkness of sin did not overcome the light of Jesus shining throughout his life and at his crucifixion. His light was not extinguished on the Cross by my darkness even though he took it into himself. It was not extinguished by your darkness either. His life overcame it in resurrection and can now shine light into your spirit so that you can live with a newness of life and draw on its power and truth. This is the privileged gift of God for all who choose to put their whole life into the trust of Jesus. They enjoy his life shining within every day they trust him with their whole life. He increases their spiritual understanding of their life source and purpose, their inner person and current situation. Nothing can ever overcome the power of his life within enlightening them. Until then, each of us stays in spiritual darkness regardless of how accurate we think our understanding of reality is, particularly the reality about ourself. This state of continued darkness is more certain than gravity and its ability to deceive relentless and all encompassing. We can be totally deluded about the meaning of our life without even knowing it.

The Witness of the light

Thus far, John has begun his biography of Jesus with lofty statements set in eternity equating his friend from Nazareth with God himself to the point of claiming that Jesus is our Creator and Light of life. John needed to mention at this stage some authentic back-up from at least one other reliable source. He introduced John the Baptist for this purpose at this point in his biography.

John had arrived at his own conclusions about Jesus after three uninterrupted years of living with him, experiencing his flawless life, listening to his teachings and claims of divine identity, watching his healing power that supported those claims, being a recipient of his unwavering love, watching it give new hope and life to the sick and disenfranchised, listening to his final prayer with other close friends that summed up his purpose and identity, then engaging with his resurrected person for forty days when Jesus explained all the past scriptures that talked about him, and finally witnessing his miraculous ascension. Only a few had this privilege. The accumulative result of these experiences with Jesus was that John, along with his eleven compatriots, became fully convinced that Jesus was God on a mission of salvation. Would I be convinced, if given the same privileges as John?

That is the question for each of us to test as we read through his biography of Jesus. It is important to be clear about any belief or prejudice that can block all the evidence John presents about the divine identity of Jesus and cause us to turn away from an open consideration of him. A close-minded rejection of sacrificial love can only result in an eternal existence devoid of love.

At this point, John makes a quick detour to introduce a witness sent by God to endorse the identity of Jesus he has presented as the light.

⁶ There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. ⁸ He himself was not the light;

John later expands more on John the Baptist as a witness. His main point at this stage is that John the Baptist was divinely sent, Specifically, he is the divinely authenticated witness chosen to announce Jesus as the light of mankind for the singular reason that the listeners might recognise and believe in Jesus when he came. Their belief was the ultimate purpose for the miraculous birth of John the Baptist, his preaching and baptising. He was, as John claims.

…a witness to testify concerning that light…

With this singular role, John the Baptist had to resist presenting himself in any other way so that his listeners could see clearly that Jesus was the light shining in the darkness, in whom they must believe. Jesus had to be seen in order to be believed for salvation. John the Baptist could not get in the way.

Without the spiritual seeing there is no believing and no salvation, because we cannot save ourselves from the righteous judgement on our sins. Hence, the clear presentation of the identity of Jesus as the light to the world is as critical today as it was in the day of John the Baptist. How authentically have you examined the identity of Jesus? Is he the light for all mankind including you? What will happen when his light is shone on you from his judgement seat?

Having introduced John the Baptist as a God-sent witness, whose presentation of Jesus confirmed his own presentation thus far, John returns to expand on the nature and activity of the Logos shining in the darkness and how the people of his day responded to his light. The new information he shares proves to be critical to understanding how to relate to the Logos in our own life. Review it carefully.

⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Logos is authentic light

⁹ The TRUE light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

The Greek adjective (ἀληθινός, al-ay-thee-nos) John uses for "true" conveys the thought of this light being true right down to the inner core and makeup, true inside and out, true through and through. This is authentic light! By adding this adjective to "light", John sets the Logos (Jesus) apart from all other presentations of light in his day that came from different gods or philosophies, which were followed by people looking for meaning and direction to their life. None of these contemporary views were the TRUE light of life for they had no power to create life. Only the Creator could do that. At best, they were mere shadows and distortions. John wants his readers to know that only the Logos, as the Creator of all life and light, is the sole, authentic light for all.

This is as true today as it was then. The Logos is the only TRUE light among the hundreds of voices seeking to bend and capture our minds to build their following and finances via pervasive media, the internet, mobile aps and the growing metaverse. Where do you look among this global flood of words swamping your mind for TRUE authentic light upon which you can confidently bank your current life and its eternal destiny? Is it among the myriad voices, opinions, popularised philosophies and protests that promote the individual and their rights? None of these ‘lights’ can be trusted totally to have our best interest at heart. They have their own motives for presenting themselves as true light. Yet, they are not true to the core, just as any flawed member of the fallen human race is not. Hence, they are not authentic light. All the paths they promote have flaws, because they are promoted and implemented by flawed individuals. Consequently, have you begun to look away from this din of flawed evidence to somewhere in mankind’s history for a Creator of all who has demonstrated consistently a vested interest in you and your destiny, i.e., for a Creator who has demonstrated sacrificial love for all? As you read John’s biography, may you find Him in Jesus.

This need is so crucial to each of us, it is worth stating it again. From John’s claim that the Logos is the TRUE light, it follows that if we want the Logos to enlighten our life and ensure that our eternal destiny is full of true light, we must turn from our embrace of other grossly deficient imitations of light created by man-made philosophies to create a following and evoke our worship. These nature gods, idols, gurus, cult leaders, teachers, authors, motivational speakers, entertainers, thought leaders etc. may give some solace in a darkened world to darkened souls, but they are not the TRUE light who enlightens and gives spiritual life to any who come to him^[10]. In fact, they are distractions and barriers to finding life, because they have not created it and can’t offer it. They all have a beginning they did not determine and time-limited end they cannot avoid. Only the Creator of life can give his life as the authentic light. We each have to ask, "Where am I searching to be enlightened?" It is easy to be sidetracked and proud of your philosophical tribe who reinforces your own pride and makes you blind to Jesus when he is close by. John next spells out that reality. You can miss Jesus while clutching you comfortable set of beliefs that leave your pride in control.

The Logos was present, missed and rejected

¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him.

John presents a supreme tragedy. The Logos, who was eternally God and the TRUE light, comes to his created world, resides within it in full view, yet remains unseen because he is not recognised.

How can that be? How could anyone not recognise who it was among them doing countless public miracles, unexpected acts of restorative love that challenged the rules of society to give new dignity and hope to its outcasts and oppressed, teaching unlike the current religious leaders, suffering a brutal death on the Roman cross followed by his resurrection witnessed by many and his exaltation into heaven in full view of his followers. How can anyone in the face of all this still fail to recognise him as the Saviour of the world? Incredulous! What more would you want Jesus to do to convince you of your need to go to him? As you encounter the Jesus revealed in this biography, give him your sober consideration so you do not miss him and pass him by.

John is clear, the world did not recognize him. It has to be asked, "Why did that happen in the face of such evidence?" Why is this enigma still true today for the majority of mankind in the face of such evidence? Is this blindness caused by a deficient mind, or is it caused by some kind of prejudice that dismisses Jesus before he can be recognised because he is not wanted? We each have to pose ourself the question, "Who is Jesus to me?" and give ourselves an honest answer. The question only has value when followed by, "What does my answer reveal about me to myself?" What more is needed for me to see him as my Creator and my source of spiritual truth?

John’s next statement answers this question. He shows the reason for a person’s incapability to recognise the identity of Jesus as the TRUE light.

¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Incapability to recognise is a perception problem. We all have it about various people in various situations. We judge others quickly based on our instant perception of them. Not to receive, however, is a will problem^[11]. It is a choice to keep our distance from an individual based on our instant perception and reject them instead of showing strong personal initiative to receive them. We see this happening repetitively in our circle of acquaintances at work, in our club and in our neighbourhood. John claims that ‘his own’ did not receive him. His Jewish fellow-countrymen chose to reject Jesus in response to their leaders, who could not perceive the divine identity of Jesus with their mind, because he was a threat to their own identity and the power they had constructed around it. They did not want him to interfere. They resolutely would not receive him!

How about you? Does Jesus as presented by John give you a will problem? If so, do you know why? Are you depriving yourself of what he offers you because of a locked up will? What he offers is explained by John in his next sentence.

The Logos gives new rights and new life

John now explains that the rejection of Jesus was not universal. Some did receive him. Who is it that received him and what did they receive from Jesus in response?

¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed (trusted) in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Those who received the Logos as the TRUE light are those who, having perceived his identity believed in his name. They perceived and received because they believed in his name, Specifically, they trusted his name^[12]. What does that mean?

Our name develops content of character as we grow through life. When your name is mentioned in discussion, immediately the hearer has an image that goes beyond what you look like. It sums up your character that cannot be hidden by the latest fashion or sporting achievement. Hence, the name of Jesus is his character that distinguishes him from all other voices as little gods that seek to capture our attention desiring to influence our lives with their agenda. The first year student enrolment day at university is a case in point. The new student experiences all the enthusiastic little gods seeking to sign them up to their cause and join their club to be one of them. They sense power and importance in their numbers of followers – the more the better. Likewise, early in our employment in a new job, eyes can be on us to see if we suit their agenda in office politics. They soon make their move. The wise fresh university student and new recruit need to take time to observe who they can trust and choose wisely. We need to take time to look carefully at the character of Jesus to decide if we want to trust in his name. John’s biography is invaluable to do that.

John focuses on the two gifts given by God to those who choose to put their trust in the TRUE light. They cannot be acquired any other way. The first gift is they are given the right to become children of God.

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed (trusted) in his name, he gave the right to become children of God

They are given a divine right they did not have before. They may have had societal rights given by their government or club, but no divine rights. Only the Divine can give divine rights. Only the Logos as God can give the right to become a child of God with divine rights. This supreme gift infinitely surpasses all other rights humans clamber after. It is priceless. No one can bargain for it or fake it.

We live in a society marked by people of all ages demanding individual rights of various kinds. It is the era of the exaltation of human rights. The evening news on most days will feature a protest, strike, or debate on rights. A right when legislated by the government or company gives the individual power to be receive what they believe is their due. People become passionate about these rights, sometimes to the point of violence. Most have dollar signs of personal benefits attached even when presented passionately as an intrinsic right that stands alone.

In the end, there is only one right that matters – the right to become a child of God. It does not disappear when the dollars disappear or the law changes or you die. It is an eternal right, I may gain all the rights that the world has to offer me, yet in the end I will possess none of those rights in my funeral casket, if I do not have the right to become a child of God and inherit eternal life. Have you been given this lasting right ? It is the greatest of all rights to gain. It is eternal and cannot be taken from you. It is the delegated power of God that enables us to act with his authority in the spiritual realm to impact our life in this physical realm, or that of someone else. The only pathway to be given this divine right is by entrusting one’s whole life to the person of Jesus based on his demonstrated character and divine identity, i.e., to believe in his name. All other rights that I try to clutch to my chest will disappear in hell, where there are no rights, no love, no trust or light, thus leaving only isolation, guilt and shame unresolved, sins unforgiven and the mental torture of opportunities lost.

The second gift to the person who trusts in Jesus is divine birth initiated by God’s decision.

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

I receive the right to become a child of God when he chooses to give birth to me – the birth of my spirit. John contrasts this birth with human birth by elaborating that our physical birth is the result of someone’s decision, e.g., an IVF procedure or a husband’s choice to impregnate his wife. Either way, the resulting embryo manifests the natural genetic patterns of the parents in its DNA. By contrast, birth by God is the choice of his Spirit to give new life to our dead spirit. We then begin to manifest the divine spiritual DNA patterns of the Spirit of God. We begin to manifest divine nature.

When Adam and Eve broke their unity with God by distrusting him, their spirits were disassociated from the life and power of God’s Spirit. Every child born since has been born into that separated state of their spirit. Our disassociated spirit is disempowered and lifeless in the spiritual world. It is dead. The person, however, that chooses to place the trust of their whole life in the Logos of God, who is God, is accepted again to become one with God’s Spirit. They become spiritually alive again united with the life of his Spirit just as Adam was. Said in John’s words, they are ‘born of God’. They begin to manifest his divine genetics as his Spirit transforms them into the image of Jesus. This is far more than a religious label used to boast about or classify people. It is a life process orchestrated by God. Those who trust Jesus with their life embark on the journey of progressive holiness created by the Holy Spirit residing within them indivisibly joined with their spirit. The creative life of God flows to them. There is no other way to be restored to the being we were created to be, No philosophy and no amount of self-effort can restore our spirit back to life. Only God can. That life only comes from the Spirit of God when he chooses to become one with our spirit in response to our choice to trust in Jesus and receive him into our innermost being to be our saviour and authority in all our life.

The sad drama of all history is that only a minority of individuals choose to receive the two inexpressibly valuable divine gifts of: 1) the divine right to become one of God’s spiritual family, and 2) a divine new birth for our dead and powerless spirit to come alive and forged by the Spirit’s DNA. Tragically, the majority reject these gifts that cost God the sacrifice of his Son Jesus in their place. He has given all he can to make these two gifts possible. As Jesus forewarned, only a few receive these free gifts from the heart of God. Therefore Jesus urged individuals to.

¹³ Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ¹⁴ But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

(Matthew 7:13-14)

The only explanations I can find for the widespread madness of individuals rejecting these free gifts that can secure their eternal destiny are: 1) an unbending pride that will not give control over to anyone, even the Creator and God of infinite love, which he has demonstrated again and again throughout history; 2) a distorted view of God that either diminishes him to being irrelevant or one that creates fear rather than attraction; 3) a deep inner wounding to one’s identity that projects our identity confusion onto God himself. Whether it is pride or distorted views or deep wounding controlling us, the unfortunate result can be rejection of the love of God and his desire to give us new divine life with new divine rights. What is the case for you? What road have you chosen?

The Logos embodied grace and truth within time

Unlike his previous statement that Jesus came to his own but his own did not receive him, John now comments on those among who he made his dwelling. They welcomed him. They came to know what his was like.

¹⁴ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

To counteract distorted views of God, John expands more on what he had come to experience when Jesus dwelt with him and his companions over three years. What was he like?

John presents a unique and attractive personality that no other human since Adam has come close to achieving:

¹⁴ The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The man who dwelt with John and his companions day in and day out over three years was the Logos full of grace and truth, They experienced his grace and truth firsthand. These character qualities were so strong, unique and consistently expressed in Jesus that John calls them "his glory". His grace and truth were glorious with no flaws. John witnessed this glory, He could no longer limit Jesus to less than that in his mind and affections.

Repeatedly, John and his companions were shown grace by Jesus forgiving their impulsive selfish actions and teaching them a better way. He showed them new ways of living by a love that considered other people as worthy as self. We are supplied with many of these interactions with Jesus in the biographies written by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Jesus left multiple examples to imitate. Look carefully at Jesus to be inspired by these examples.

Then, before going to the Cross, Jesus set John and his friends a new benchmark for love, He commanded them to love each other just like he had loved them. He loved them to the end. He submitted to the physical and spiritual horror of the Cross taking the full judgement for their sins. He was the substitute for them so that they could escape that righteous judgement. This was an act of underserved love. He was full of a grace that loved to the end. This is the benchmark of love he set for every person who wants to follow and imitate him. We are to forget about self and love like him.

Furthermore, the mental frameworks, which John and his companions had developed from childhood to understand truth, were continually challenged and redirected by the truth spoken and lived by Jesus. They heard it and saw it. His spoken and consistently lived truth exposed the distortions they had come to believe as truth. He was full of grace and truth clearly seen to imitate.

What historian writing a biography of any other historical figure could authentically make the claim that their subject was full of grace and truth and support it with abundant, consistently reliable evidence? Can you name one?

John could. In a letter about Jesus written a couple of decades later, John makes this claim.

¹ That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of life…, ³ We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.

(1 John 1:1, 3)

John’s claim that Jesus was full of grace and truth arose from the physical proximity to Jesus described here. His was not some attempt to propagate a new mystical philosophy exalting a charismatic leader. His claim is an evidence-based conclusion made from the up-close and continuous observation of a life in a myriad of situations over time. John specifically identifies that It resulted from evidence received through the auditory, visual and tactile senses of John and his companions, i.e., what they heard, what they saw again and again, and how they physically interacted with Jesus. I can picture them jostling in fun with Jesus. They touched and maybe bumped him. They questioned him and heard his answers. The watched him at their meal table and hemmed in by pressing crowds clamouring for a miraculous healing for themselves or their sick loved ones. All of this was real, shared, sensory experience in a physical world and not subjective imaginations in the mind of an aspiring thought leader. Through all these situations, they experienced Jesus as a man full of grace seen and truth heard. This evidence-based identification of Jesus sits in stark contrast to all other religions and philosophies that begin as ideas in one person’s mind and are then propagated as a philosophy of life to create a following of devotees worshipping imagined gods.

What other figure can be found in all of history to be validated authentically as being full of grace and truth? Gracious people can be found, yet they carry their imperfections of character with them. Nor can they portray unadulterated truth. In stark contrast, no imperfections were seen in Jesus. Nor could his accusers find any lies to expose. The best they could do was invent trumped up charges at his trial. We may have been taught to speak the truth at all times, but we all are guilty of lies and exaggerations.

Truth, as well as grace, issued from Jesus continuously. He was both clear light and constant love. Why then should he be feared and avoided? Jesus gave the reason:

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

(John 3:20)

Self-centredness creates sin and pride prevents it being exposed. We all know that. Guilt resides in every soul, including the atheist and agnostic who have the moral law of God created in them. Guilt creates fear of exposure in every person. Pride resists, and it objects to being exposed. It is the handbrake on every will. It blocks experiencing the fullness of grace and truth from Jesus. So check if you have your brake on. We all have to unearth any guilt that we keep on trying to repress but cannot eliminate. It is better to expose ourself honestly to Jesus now than when standing before his judgement throne when all our hidden secrets are revealed to the multitude of witnesses gathered around his throne.

The Logos is the Son of God

John not only presents his experience of the character of Jesus being full of grace and truth, he gives Jesus a title that can be found in his Jewish scriptures but which the mind cannot comprehend, just as we cannot comprehend the Logos being an identity in the continuous past who was with God yet was God. John calls Jesus the Son of God.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father

From where did John derive his evidence to call Jesus the Son of God and claim that he was the only son? From where did he get the evidence that God is both Father and Son? How did he come from the Father?

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah speaks of a child being God and Father (Isaiah 9:6)

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Here is the prophecy about a son of human birth with titles "God" and everlasting "Father". How would the religious scholars who crucified Jesus have viewed this?

What is very clear is how Satan viewed Jesus. He knew he was the Son of God whose position he coveted. He constantly sought to usurp the position the Son had been given by the Father and destroy the unity of relationship between them. He tempted Jesus to step outside of the bounds of the Father’s will, even if only for a moment, to break that unity of being one, which is the image of God that Jesus came to display. Consequently, Satan attacked the identity of Jesus as the Son of God for his entire life.

He began his attack tempting Jesus at the beginning of his mission to satisfy his hunger after 40 days of fasting.

"If you are the Son of God …then tell these stones to become bread…"

(Matthew 4:3)

His attack failed. Jesus was not going to respond to Satan’s timeframes or methods of demonstrating his identity as the Son of God. He later revealed that he only did what the Father had shown him and commanded. The Son of God always acted within the timeframes of his Father.

Satan continued, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down…" (Matthew 4:6)

Again, Jesus was not going to surrender his obedience to his Father to an angel of his creation.

Throughout the ministry of Jesus, Satan’s attack on his identity as the Son of God continued through the mouths of impure spirits confronted by Jesus.

"… they fell down before him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God …." What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!"

Satan’s attack on the identity of Jesus continued at the Cross through the mouths of the religious leaders who had sold their souls to the power and prestige of their position.

"Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"

(Matthew 27:40)

Satan’s attempts to gain control over Jesus through a mistimed and misused exercise of his divine power all failed. Jesus resisted everyone. They reached their height at the Cross. This was Satan’s last opportunity to trap and defeat Jesus. If he had, Jesus would no longer have been a perfect sacrifice to take our sin into his very being. Thank God for our sake Satan failed. Instead of succumbing to Satan’s temptation to demonstrate his power as the Son of God in a spectacular fashion, Jesus chose the path of intense suffering. He chose to stay on the Cross for us and take the full brunt of the wrath of his Father on our sins, so that we may be set free from any future judgement. Jesus was the victor at the cross and not Satan.

It was clear to John: the Logos is the Son of God.

¹⁴ We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father.

The centurion at the foot of the Cross also saw it. He exclaimed, "Surely he was the Son of God!"

Prophesied by the sons of Korah

The deity full of grace and truth that John had experienced in Jesus was also seen by the sons of Korah centuries before. They wrote In a wedding song for King David of a coming Divine King characterised by grace and truth whose throne will last forever. The kingly subject is called God and yet is set above all by God.

² You are the most excellent of men and your lips have been anointed with grace,
since God has blessed you forever.
⁴ In your majesty ride forth victoriously in the cause of truth, humility and justice;
let your right hand achieve awesome deeds.
⁵ Let your sharp arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s enemies;
     let the nations fall beneath your feet.
⁶ Your throne, O God will last for ever and ever;
     a sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of your kingdom.
⁷ You love righteousness and hate wickedness;
     therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions
     by anointing you with the oil of joy. (Psalm 45:2, 4-7)

Prophesied by Zechariah

The other passage of grace is a prophecy of the grievous recognition of Jesus by the nation of Israel.

¹⁰ "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. (Zechariah 12:10)

Confirmed by John the Baptist

Before John continues to expand on the grace and truth that came through Jesus, he parenthetically draws upon John the Baptist to endorse his claim that the Logos became flesh:

¹⁵ (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, "This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’")

Jesus was born 6 months after John the Baptist as his cousin. John the Baptist, therefore, cannot be talking in physical terms of reference when stating that Jesus surpassed him because he was before him. How was Jesus before him? John the Baptist is declaring that Jesus existed before he was born. How? He later clearly explains what he meant by this claim.

John now parks to one side this endorsement of Jesus by John the Baptist and returns to expand on his observations that Jesus was full of grace and truth.

Law grace vs Logos grace

Probably for the sake of his Jewish readers, John now contrasts God’s grace that came through the law of Moses with God’s grace given through Jesus.

¹⁶ Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Follow the life of Moses from its inception (Exodus 2) to its conclusion on Mount Nebo (Exodus 34) and you will discover countless acts of the grace of God to Moses and to the Israelites in their journey to Palestine. God led them by his Presence and miraculous interventions in nature to form a nation out of an assortment of oppressed slaves. This constant grace materialised in the giving of the Law by which Israelites, who put their trust in God, could receive instruction on living. It also materialised in the forgiveness of sins they received by placing faith in God’s acceptance of the shed blood of animal sacrifices he specified them to make. No other nation in ancient history received these privileges. These were a direct result of God having chosen Abraham centuries before to be his entry point back into his fallen creation to restore his relationship with individuals based on trust. Abraham was his entry point for renewed trust because of Abraham’s ability to trust and obey what God asked of him, no matter how difficult. Adam had broken unity with God by breaking trust in God’s words. The only way to renew intimacy with his creation made in his image was by renewed trust.

Although the Law was a gracious gift to establish and protect the Israelites as a nation, it was also a yoke around the individual heart, because its effectiveness was based on full obedience. No one could achieve the perfect obedience needed to fulfill all the words of the Law. Its purpose was to hold its followers in custody until new grace based on trust would come from the fullness of life and perfect trust residing in Jesus. The grace of God through Jesus fulfilled the yoke of obedience to law by the perfect obedience of Jesus. He fully satisfied all the law requirements for us through his life and by his death, and can therefore now freely offer to us full forgiveness.

Significantly, references to God’s grace in the Old Testament are sparse. The two passages quoted above are the only references to describe God’s activity as grace while references to the Law abound. By contrast, there are 114 references to God’s operative grace in the New Testament.

The Jews of John’s day would have vehemently argued that they were custodians of the truth given through Moses and the prophets. There was no other truth they should follow. They followed the sacred Word of God, and his Word is eternal. Yet John as a Jew now claims that the grace received from Jesus displaced the grace already given to God’s followers under the Law.

¹⁶ Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.

Why did the grace received from Jesus displace the grace given through the Law? It was given with truth that differed greatly in its dimensions than truth contained in the Law. The full set of laws could be counted in number. They were not infinite but could be contained in the minds of those who sought to live by them. The truth that came through Jesus as the Messiah, for whom they hoped, went beyond the mind. This truth resides by grace in our spirit, It is the eternal Creator himself residing with undiminished fulness in the hearts of those who receive him. Jesus displaces a list of laws with his Presence within, His living Spirit within us is his wholeness of being which we can now receive purely by his grace.

The most accurate image of God

How is that? As we have already seen, the intimacy of Jesus the Son with God his Father is a continuous unity with no beginning or end. There is no closer relationship with the Father than that of the Son. It is eternally indivisible. The Son is himself God and always has been. To be indwelt by the Son is to be indwelt by the Father wholly. Therefore, John could state,

¹⁸ No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

There is no more accurate representation of God than that seen in Jesus the Son. John states from his experience of interacting with Jesus, and teaching by him, that Jesus has made God the Father known to us. He has made him known more than a theology. He has made him known as his Being.

The Greek word used by John for "known" is ἐξηγοῦμαι (exēgéomai from which we derive the word exegesis to describe the discipline of unfolding the meanings of a passage). The Greeks used this word for the unfolding, interpretation and declaring of things relating to God that are sacred and divine, such as oracles and dreams etc. John is essentially saying, therefore, that Jesus unfolds for us the very divine nature of God, He did not do that by setting up theology courses or lead his followers in mystical experiences. He did it by establishing an intimate relationship with his chosen apostles, moving daily in public places, being surrounded by large crowds wanting to hear his teaching, receive physical healing and be set free from demonic control. In doing this, Jesus unfolded the visible and tangible heart of God. No sin was seen in him. He was full of grace and truth consistently. He made God known as the consistent presence in time of eternal love.

This is the nature of the God who created us and wants to have a relationship with us. He is not to be found in various religions created by men. He can only be found by choosing to receive him fully as his Son into our innermost being with no restrictions. Then we come to know him intimately as he progressively unfolds the nature of God beyond the limitations of our intelligence or the vagaries of our rapidly changing emotions. As our intimacy and trust of Jesus grows through time, he unfolds to us more and more spiritual understanding of the gracious nature of God and of him as truth. Accordingly, John asserts,

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

We each ask the question of ourselves, "Has God the Father made Jesus his Son known by me in me?" Our answer to that question points to where we will spend eternity – heaven or hell.

The religious interrogation of John the Baptist

¹⁹ Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was.

The religious leaders in Jerusalem became nervous about the prophet in the desert baptising the common people for repentance from sin. This was spiritual work seen by the leaders to venture into the spiritual domain they were used to controlling over the masses. Now the crowds were going to John the Baptist to receive spiritual instruction. It unnerved the Jerusalem religious power structure to the extent that they sent a delegation of religious professionals to quiz him about his identity. This reaction of the priests and Levites was recorded by John as a foretaste of what was to come in their treatment of Jesus.

John records the bold, clear, and constant response of John the Baptist to his interrogation by the representatives of the ruling Great Sanhedrin. He definitively declared to them that he was not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet. Each one of these was a distinct identity in Jewish scriptures who was prophesied to appear immediately before the defeat of Israel’s enemies and the beginning rule of the nations by God’s anointed king (Messiah) enthroned in Jerusalem. They were signposts of his imminent coming. The religious leaders of the day were looking with heightened expectation for the arrival of each signpost as their pathway to the political liberation from the severe yoke of Roman conquest. John left them in no doubt that he was not any of these signposts who they were looking for. He was not here for politics. He was here for the transformation of personal life brought by repentance.

Not the Messiah

²⁰ He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, "I am not the Messiah."

The response of the delegation of religious professionals immediately was.

²¹ Then who are you? Are you Elijah?

Not Elijah

Associated with a heightened anticipation of the return of the Messiah at the time was an expectation that Elijah would come as a third "forerunner" to the Messiah to settle disputes and reconcile all discrepancies in Israel’s holy books. This was supported by the record that Elijah did not die but was taken up into heaven directly (2 Kings 2:9-12). It was also supported by the prophecy.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."

(Malachi 4:5-6)

As an extension of these prophesies, Jewish tradition associated Elijah with the resurrection of the dead to occur at the end of time (Mishnah, Sotah 9:15). Accordingly, at every family Passover meal an entire place setting with a special cup of wine was created for Elijah and the door left open for him to enter. The hope was that if Elijah entered, the Messiah could not be far behind. When John the Baptist denied emphatically that he was not the Messiah, the logical next contender for his identity was Elijah. His response to this second proposition about his identity was equally emphatic.

He said, "I am not."^[13]

The only remaining end time possibility they had left was.

Are you the Prophet?

Not the Prophet

To this John the Baptist gave another answer that was impossible to blur.

He answered, "No".

What did they mean by "the Prophet"?

There was an expectation in the time of John the Baptist that the "Prophet", with capital "P", was soon coming. The origin of this expectation of a unique prophet like Moses was when the Israelites were filled with the fear of death when the voice of God spoke from the top of Mount Horeb shortly after they had escaped the Egyptian army by God’s miraculous intervention. They requested not hear God’s voice directly again. God’s response to Moses was that he would raise up a prophet after him, in whose mouth God would put his words so that they would not have to hear his voice directly again.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.

(Deuteronomy 18:15,18)

What does a prophet "like me" look like? We need to examine how Moses received his messages from God and use that to test anyone claiming to be The Prophet?

God gives the answer to this question when disciplining Aaron and Moses for challenging the role of Moses as a prophet:

"When there is a prophet among you,
     I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions,
     I speak to them in dreams.
⁷ But this is not true of my servant Moses;
     he is faithful in all my house.
⁸ With him I speak face to face,
     clearly and not in riddles;
he sees the form of the Lord.
Why then were you not afraid
     to speak against my servant Moses?"

(Numbers 12: 6-8)

The religious inquisitors of John the Baptist would have been waiting for a Prophet who spoke face to face with God on their behalf. The Prophet would break the silence of God that had existed since his left Solomon’s the Temple never to return to dwell in its two subsequent rebuilds (the first under the reigns of Cyrus and Darius 50 years after its destruction by the Babylonians and the second by Herod the Great from 20 BC to 26 AD). The shekinah glory of God did not exist in the current temple built by Herod where the priestly cast religiously carried out their duties of animal sacrifices. There was no voice from God and therefore no prophets, only teachers. Hence, the Jews interrogating John the Baptist believed that the Spirit upon the Prophet like Moses would precede the coming of the Messiah. He would speak face to face with God and relay God’s words to his people to make the people ready to welcome the Messiah when he came. John the Baptist shut down any attempt from them to attach this expectation to him. He emphatically denied not being the Prophet.

Jesus missed

Ironically, the religious investigators would soon encounter Jesus but totally miss that he was the Prophet who speaks face to face with God, and, in particular, that he was the Messiah destined to rule the world. They would miss what John later discovered living with Jesus for 3 years. He discovered that Jesus did more than speak face to face with God. He was God. John came to know that Jesus was in fact the eternal Son of God speaking his Father’s words and not his own. John came to understand through living close to Jesus daily that he was the Word speaking God’s words as God.

John the Baptist, however, was simply the herald readying the masses to hear and receive the repentance and public baptism needed for the forgiveness of sins. His role was nothing more, and he was careful to make that clear in response to their next question as they prodded to understand his identity.

²² Finally they said, "Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?"

²³ John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, "I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’"

John the Baptist identified himself using the prophecy from Isaiah that would have been well-known by them. Mark also used it to pinpoint the beginning of the good news about Jesus. The religious leaders and scholars ignored the critical message of this prophecy, viz., that the way had to be made straight in their hearts for the coming of the Lord among them by repenting of their sins. They were listening to John the Baptist repeatedly urging his listeners to repent of their sins and immediately be baptised in water to enact their repentance. His critical message, however, went straight over the heads of the professional religious class, because it could not enter their closed hearts and minds. Instead, they remained distracted by needing to provide an answer to the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem who had power over them, even though the Messiah had arrived and was standing among them.

John the Baptist continued to make clear to them the presence of the Messiah among them as distinct from his own role.

²⁶ "I baptize with water, " John replied, "but among you stands one you do not know. ²⁷ He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie."

Jesus stood incognito among them but had not yet announced himself and his mission. That would come later.

In John’s next account of John the Baptist, Jesus is unmistakeably identified. He does not stand incognito among us today like he did then, because we have the benefit of John’s biography of Jesus to reflect upon.Nevertheless, we can still miss Jesus as they did, because our mind and heart are closed to him. So close and yet so far. Without a willingness to come clean about our life with specific confession of sin to God, and then to repent of our sins, we will never see the Messiah. He will remain incognito to us. The onus of responsibility is on us. We cannot pass it to another or seek to hide under some excuse. When we come before him as the Judge of our life we will have no excuses for missing him moving among us or across our path. Jesus as Judge will reveal those times.

How does this sit with you? How do you see him? Is it possible that he has been present in your circumstances, but you have missed him entirely, while you cling to rigid beliefs for self-control or the preservation of your pride?

Jesus identified by John the Baptist

John now records that on the next day, Jesus returned to where John the Baptist was baptising to give him the opportunity to identify Jesus even more clearly to those gathered.

²⁹ The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, " Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰ This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’

John the Baptist recognised Jesus coming towards him. Was it because they were related by their mothers? We have no information about their young childhoods and whether or not they played with each other as children and therefore instantly recognised each other as adults. It seems that was not the case, because John the Baptist makes it clear to the crowd, "I myself did not know him". (Later he explains how he recognised him by a revelation from God.) He had left his parents at an early age and lived in the wilderness until he began preaching repentance and baptising people in the river Jordan. While John the Baptist was living in the harsh wilderness, Jesus was growing as a teenager in his parents’ home and working in his father’s carpentry business until he began his ministry as a 30 year old. Therefore, it is likely that they had little to no contact as they grew into manhood.

When John the Baptist became aware that his younger cousin was the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world is not that relevant. What is relevant is to understand why John the Baptist gave Jesus that title. He understood from his upbringing where the whole Jewish sacrificial system of his day originated. He had been taught well by his devout father as a priest of Israel who offered blood sacrifices continuously for the sins of the people. He would have been taught about the historic night some 1, 400 years before when God planned to break 2 million descendants of Abraham out of their brutal slavery under the slave masters of Egypt. Each Jewish household was commanded to sacrifice a lamb, place its blood on the doorposts and mantel at the entrance to their home, and eat it as a sacred meal while the destroying angel of God passed by. They were saved from death and the next day were led by Moses out of their land of slavery to possess the land promised centuries before to Abraham as the father of their nation.

This national salvation became the Bible’s metaphorical precursor of personal salvation for those who place their faith in the blood of Jesus being applied to the entrance of their own hearts. John the Baptist understood that the physical slavery of the Israelite slaves was a metaphor of every person’s slavery to sin imposed by brutal taskmasters in the spiritual world. He preached repentance from sins and called his listeners to be immersed fully in water as their act of faith to demonstrate the total alignment of their heart with the heart of God. The apostles of Jesus continued this practice from the outset of their preaching three years later preaching that Jesus was more than the Lamb of God. He was both LORD and Messiah who gave his Holy Spirit to all who declared their choice to repent and submit to him by enacting their decision in water baptism (Acts 2:36, 38; 8:36-39; 10: 47-48).

What we do know is that the parents of both cousins received unexpectedly separate visitations by the angel Gabriel announcing the miraculous birth of a son with the divine destiny to bring Israel back to the Lord their God. First, Gabriel announced to the aged priest Zechariah that his barren elderly wife, Elizabeth, would have a son destined to fulfill the critical role of preparing Israel for the anticipated coming of the Messiah. Six months later Gabriel appeared to Mary, the young cousin of the pregnant Elizabeth, that she would miraculously conceive a son while still a virgin, who would be the Son of the Most High and anticipated Messiah destined to rule forever upon the throne David. The destinies of both sons related by the angel Gabriel were interlocked in bringing salvation to Israel and later to the world. (Luke 1:11-17; 1: 26-38).

John the Baptist as a young man became keenly aware of his role, because he proceeds to claim that the sole reason he moved to the desert and began baptising people for the remission of their sins was for Jesus to be seen as their Saviour, their coming Lamb to be slain for their sins and the whole world.

³¹ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel."

It would take great spiritual conviction and clarity of sight to pack up one’s belongings and move to a harsh desert. John the Baptist had the reason without yet having the identity of the Messiah revealed. Only now does he see his obedience come to fruition in God’s revelation of the identity of Jesus.

³² Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. ³³ And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴ I have seen, and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One."

When John the Baptist saw his cousin’s identity linked to the sign of the Spirit descending as a dove, the exalted purpose for his life was confirmed and became crystal clear. He had moved to the desert in order to follow this purpose. Now he had visible divine confirmation that his move was the working of God. The descending dove made it clear that role he had fulfilled was his divinely chosen role. He was the herald chosen to prepare hearts of his generation for the coming Saviour. Now the Saviour was here. John knew it and later professed that he now must decrease while the role of Jesus increased.

Jesus later passed the role of herald to all of his followers. They had to see him also. He has to be revealed likewise to any who follow him today. Have you seen Jesus yet and followed him to become his herald? Our choice is accept or reject his sacrifice as the Lamb of God taking away our sins as heralded by John the Baptist. When we accept his sacrifice, we are never the same again. We begin to see that our purpose is the same as John the Baptist. Our purpose for living is equally exalted. We are to be heralds of Jesus. We continue the purpose of John the Baptist to prepare hearts that cross our path to enable them to see their Saviour when he approaches. The apostles were the first to take up and continue this role of herald. They too had the Holy Spirit descend on their heads, this time as flames of fire. They too immediately heralded the arrival of the long anticipated Messiah, as Peter did at the celebration of Pentecost, coupled with proclaiming the need to repent and be baptised.

"Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah."

"Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. " (Acts 2:36, 38)

We follow as heralds in their footsteps.

John the Baptist passes the baton

³⁵ The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. ³⁶ When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!"

³⁷ When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.

This was the telling moment for John as a test of his own relationship with Jesus. Was he going to place Jesus before himself?

The challenge

Until then this moment, John the Baptist had committed himself to a mission: to prepare hearts ready for the coming Messiah. He had no competition, and he faithfully remained committed to his mission of preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now the Messiah had come. The Lamb of God, who would be sacrificed to enable the forgiveness of sins, was here. Hearts had been prepared by his clear preaching of repentance coupled with baptising to turn the hearts of parents to children and children to their parents. Many were now able to recognise Jesus from the clear sight of their repentant hearts. The disciples of John the Baptist were among those many.

His response

The disciples of John the Baptist were almost automatically attracted to follow Jesus. John the Baptist had lived true to his calling before them and trained them to see, He did not stand in their way. In fact, he drew their attention to Jesus passing by on this occasion recorded by John. They followed. John the Baptist had fulfilled his mission. Now he passed the baton to Jesus to be the forerunner.

His continuing example

John the Baptist is a great example of a sacrificial servant, These servants do not carry any vested interest held by their pride and attach it to their mission. They do not seek, for their own ego’s sake, to maintain control of those they teach. They set their disciples free to follow Jesus the moment they first see him. These servants of Jesus have learned to take the place of the lesser, in order to serve the greater. They have learned to surrender to the greater in obedience and trust, in order to lift up the lesser to the greater. They don’t get in the way and blur spiritual sight. They keep focus on the Lamb of God and off themselves. Their disciples see.

The success of John the Baptist’s sacrificial life in keeping his focus on Jesus was similarly seen in the lives of the apostles. They later perpetuate his sacrifice as a herald of the divine and represented Jesus under great opposition to the point of their own death. They promoted Jesus as the Saviour of the world and did not put their self-image in the way. They held him high. Because of this, their biographies of Jesus present him clearly to us today. Read them with an open heart, not just an open mind, and you will see the deity of Jesus on his mission to save the world one person at a time, including you.

Jesus later spelled out the choice of any future ‘would be’ heralds of him. It is easy to be caught up in the moment to aspire to be a herald of Jesus. Many did in his day but turned away when the choice became unpalatable to them. Why? It is a choice of self-denial to the point of death to self when facing great opposition or adulation, Jesus could not have made his requirements of a herald clearer.

… Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me". (Matthew 16:24)

The herald must take up their cross and follow Jesus through any trial. They will be buffeted by the attacks of his opposition just as he was. They will deny themselves the extent to which Jesus denied himself.

Jesus used the strongest word for deny available in Greek, ἀπαρνέομαι (aparneomai), in this statement specifying the core requirement of any would be herald. He prefixed ἀρνέομαι (arneomai), which already means ‘deny’, with apo (ἀπo) meaning ‘away from’ to form ἀπαρνέομαι (ap-arnéomai). This intensifies ‘deny’ to mean ‘deny away from self’, which conveys the stronger ideas of utterly refuse, ignore, disown or repudiate oneself. Therefore, what Jesus requires of any aspiring herald of him is to utterly refuse, ignore, disown or repudiate any attention towards self but instead for all attention to be directed away from self and onto him, This is the continual choice that must be made when wanting to follow Jesus. It is more than a choice of the will. It requires a choice of the heart in full submission to the indwelling Spirit of Jesus to sustain it. It is the choice many church leaders fail to make when their popularity rises among worshippers aspiring to follow Jesus. At that point of failing to deny away from themselves, they cease making disciples of Jesus. The Spirit ceases empowering them and giving them sight.

Jesus takes up the baton

John the Baptist points his disciples to Jesus. He had prepared them well. They immediately go after him.

³⁸ Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want?"

Jesus put them on the spot with a question implying that they were not simply walking along nonchalantly behind him. He used the Greek word ζητέω (zéteó), which means to investigate, to search in order to ‘get to the bottom of a matter.’ He confronted them.

"What do you want to investigate about me?" "What are you searching out about me?"

John the Baptist had identified Jesus to them as the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. That is a huge claim. This would have been the core matter about Jesus dominating their thoughts, which they needed to authenticate to their total satisfaction. Yet, they broached the topic obtusely rather than head on.

They said, "Rabbi" (which means "Teacher"), "where are you staying?"

To begin a chat, we often ask comparable questions of people we meet incidentally hoping to find a common interest for discussion. "Are you a visitor, or do you live in town?" "How long have you lived there?" "What motivated you to live there?" etc, etc.

Jesus did not reject their tentative approach.

Jesus becomes available

Rather than merely giving a street address, he invited them into his life to see his abode firsthand.

³⁹ "Come, " he replied, "and you will see."

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

Jesus did more than let them see his physical dwelling. He made himself available in a homely setting. He let them begin a relationship with him in a relaxed manner, and they remained comfortable and engaged with him as the day wore on.

Jesus does the same for any person wanting to investigate him up close. He makes our approach to him easy and non-judgemental. He is eager for us to know him and resolve unanswered questions. He gives us the time we need to discover who he is in a way that satisfies our mind and stirs our heart. The more we learn about him with an open heart, as well as an exploring mind, the more we are attracted to learn more. We find grace and truth to an extent never found before and thirst for it more. So make your investigation of the Lamb of God that has taken away your sins a high priority for understanding the potential of your own life when you step into the freedom of a purified relationship with him. You will discover the pulling power of the love of Jesus drawing you to spend more time wanting to know his truth and plan for you in the new world he is creating to last forever.

Notice the result of the relaxed meeting of the two disciples with Jesus.

⁴⁰ Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.

Andrew became convinced by the end of the day that Jesus was in fact the Global King (Messiah) prophesied throughout his nation’s scriptures. No doubt, the power of his presence and knowledge of life that Jesus unfolded in the living room chat had convinced Andrew in that one meeting who Jesus was. We have the added benefit of examining the biography of the life Jesus lived over the next three years, how he described his purpose, what determined his every action, his crucifixion that demonstrated his sacrifice as the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world, and his resurrection and ascension. This added knowledge of Jesus gained from his biographies does not result, however, in any connection with him until we are prepared to open up with him about our life, our past, present situation and dreams for the future. We need to invite him into the relaxed living room of our heart and not keep him shut out. When we then become so convinced of who Jesus is, and blessed by his presence, that we cannot keep his identity hidden from our family and friends. Like Andrew, we attempt to show them how to find him, and we long for them to share in his fullness of life also. We want them to discover the Lamb of God who takes away their sins to guide and protect them with his love as the Messiah. That is what Andrew experienced. Therefore,

⁴¹ The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We have found the Messiah" (that is, the Christ). ⁴² And he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus creates new identities

Simon

Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas" (which, when translated, is Peter).

Jesus immediately defined the role of Simon for the future by using a word of Aramaic origin meaning, ‘a rock’. He would later become a rock among the followers of Jesus. He was a gifted a natural leader. When he tried to be a rock for Jesus, however, he became an obstacle to God’s plan for his Son to be captured and taken to trial for crucifixion. Simon resisted the capture with his sword. Then he followed Jesus as close as he could into his mock trial but fell apart at the words of a servant girl of the High Priest while the temple guards were brutally beating Jesus. Simon had tried hard to be a rock for Jesus and failed.

Later, after being filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter became a rock for Jesus standing up before a potentially hostile crowd of devote Jews, who had made the trip for the Passover season to Jerusalem from all the nations of their Diaspora, where they had remained scattered after the Babylonian Exile in 597 BC. Now, instead of crumbling before a slave girl, Peter stood up boldly, and proved the identity of Jesus from the scriptures the resurrected Jesus had shown him. He was the Lord and Messiah. Then Peter, a rock empowered by the Spirit within, loaded the responsibility for the crime of the fake trial and crucifixion of Jesus squarely onto the shoulders of the ruling Sanhedrin.

"Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah." (Acts 2:36)

We can imagine the power of his voice and strength of his body language when he did so. Peter never ceased doing so. He became an immovable rock for Jesus. His confrontation of the enemies of Jesus in the religious power structure persisted:

¹⁴ You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. ¹⁵ You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. (Acts 3:14-15)

⁸ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: "Rulers and elders of the people! ⁹ If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, ¹⁰ then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. (Acts 4:10)

³⁰ The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead — whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. (Acts 5:30)

Simon grasped the role that Jesus had foreseen and planned for him. He naturally became a rock of leadership for the survival and growth of the earliest followers of Jesus within his circles of influence. He also became a rock for Jesus empowered by the Holy Spirit within him. He lived out his new name given by Jesus by that power. Simon became Peter.

A new name can be given to you by Jesus. Throughout life we can be called many names – some upbuilding and some destructive. These names can enhance or hinder our growth, how we see ourself and where we position ourself wilfully and emotionally in any setting. Think of how you do that in various settings. We see the power of names being played out in any social setting. Many of these names are false and are the name-giver’s attempt to control us and the distance between them and us. Think of the names that have controlled you. How have they limited or enhanced you? In stark contrast look at the name Jesus gave Simon.

Likewise, you can be given a new name by Jesus. Notice what he has promised to a specific group of people:

¹⁷ He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it. (Revelation 2:17)

This specific group receiving a new name from Jesus meet two requirements: 1) they listen to the Spirit, and 2) they overcome the enemies of Jesus who are under Satan’s control.

Jesus has not promised a new name to religious people. He has promised it to those who live each day seeking to walk with his Spirit and listen continually to his Spirit for their next action in the face of Satan’s continual attempts to defeat them. Many religious people are not aware of this war. They have never entered it, because they have never started a spirit-to-Spirit relationship with the living Jesus. Those who have chosen to deny themselves, in order for the living Spirit of Jesus to become the Master and power of their life, clearly know, and continually experience, that they are in a spiritual warfare with Satan and his fallen angels. The Apostle Paul experienced this and wrote about it giving clear instruction how to equip ourselves to win, in the strength of God’s power, this spiritual battle we face every day. (Ephesians 6:10-17) The promise of a new name given in heaven is to those who overcome in this battle. The decision we face is whether or not we want to chose to be a follower of Jesus and enter that battle.

This new name will be an honoured and private gift. When we are honoured with a citation for an impressive achievement resulting from sustained effort over a period of time, the name of the citation is announced, and we proudly show what is written on it. Our name is on it and so is the name of the award. Both are known by all at the award ceremony. By contrast, the achiever in the war against the forces of evil has their name written on a glistening white stone that glistens like the glistening white robes of Jesus in his transfiguration on the mountain. The name written on that stone, however, is never known by others also receiving their white stones but only by the one receiving it. The new name is special. It will displace the limitations and imperfections attached to our old earthly name that have dented our identity and disempowered us. This new name will forge the new identity chosen by Jesus and given by him to the overcomer.This new name will have divine creative power. The name will be carry the unique blessing given by the Father and released by the Spirit.

Do you desire to have this new name, discard the tainted associations of your current name and carry forward only what God’s Spirit wants to create in you to make you more like him? Then choose to put yourself in the place where the life of Jesus continuously creates new life.

Jesus opens up new opportunities

Jesus had now begun the phase of building a core base for his ministry. He was in the phase of choosing specific individuals who would make their unique contribution to the functioning whole. in The image of that core base of relationships was to become an example of what would later be called his Body.

Philip

Jesus initiated his contact with Philip.

⁴³ The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, "Follow me."

Just as Andrew had quickly brought his brother to meet Jesus, Philip then found Nathanael and enthusiastically announced his discovery of the Messiah prophesied by Moses and subsequent prophets to come and free his people from their captivity and usher in the kingdom of God on earth.

⁴⁴ Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. ⁴⁵ Philip found Nathanael^[14] and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."

⁴⁶ "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked.

"Come and see," said Philip.

Nathanael expressed contempt for this insignificant village^[15] and could not reconcile its status with that of the prophesied and highly anticipated Jewish ruler of the world, who would rule in the line of king David and liberate the Jews from their Roman oppressors. Phillip did not debate with Nathanael. He simply invited him to ‘come and see’ just as Jesus had invited Andrew and the other disciple to come and see. This remains the most effective method of all to introduce anyone to Jesus, particularly an ‘intellectual’ like Nathanael. The way to read John’s biography of Jesus is to ‘come and see’ him. Theological debates are merely the wrestling of egos using our mind. Only the person who is open to ‘come and see’ Jesus as he related to individuals and crowds can arrive at a personal decision of whether or not to trust their whole life to him and follow. Then this biography written by John will fulfill its purpose for that reader. So, choose a ‘come and see’ stance as you continue to explore John’s biography of Jesus.

Nathanael

John has not provided details of the daylong meeting between Jesus and the two disciples of John the Baptist, Andrew and his companion. He has provided, however, some detail of the interaction between Nathanael and Jesus to show how Jesus handled Nathanael’s intellectual, and possibly bigoted, dismissal of him.

⁴⁷ When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit."

Jesus did not debate. Instead, he caught Nathanael off-guard with a demonstration of divine knowledge that immediately and unarguably identified to Nathanael who he was. Then he instantly exposed the character of Nathanael as honest and righteous. He had no deceit. Jesus knew his inner being. The clear sighted character of Nathanael meant that he was capable of registering instantly that Jesus knew more than his name or reputation. Jesus knew him before any conversation which we need to begin to come to know a person. Confronted with this reality, Nathanael wanted to discover how Jesus could know him even though they were strangers to each other.

⁴⁸ "How do you know me?" Nathanael asked.

Jesus did not provide Nathanael with an intellectual answer but gave a further demonstration of divine knowledge that reinforced his already demonstrated ability to know nature of a stranger to core. He could also see miraculously beyond the capability of human eyesight.

Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you."

Nathanael needed no more evidence for the identity of Jesus. He responded with scholarly understanding that the anticipated Messiah would also be the Son of God.

⁴⁹ Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel."

The prophesied Messiah would be deity ruling in the flesh as the enthroned king of Israel. This was more than a scholarly conclusion for Nathanael. It was a major faith statement, Jesus responded with a further demonstration of his divine knowledge of Nathanael’s thought processes and how they had brought him to faith.

⁵⁰ Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that."

Then Jesus opened up the future for Nathanael and Phillip as he had for Simon.

⁵¹ He then added, "Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man^[16]"

Jesus sums up the certain future for more than Nathanael. He emphasizes this certainty using the Aramaic construction, "Truly, truly". This double emphasis can be translated, "I tell you for certain". Jesus expands his interaction with Nathanael to include Phillip and any other follower such as Andrew if present. He uses ὑμῖν, the plural form of the personal pronoun ‘you’. Therefore, a more accurate representation of his statement is.

"I tell all of you that for certain you will see…"

Jesus is painting the future of Nathanael and his colleagues. They would all see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

There are various opinions about what Jesus was referring to in this statement. The strongest connection is found in Genesis 28, which records the dream Jacob had on his way to Paddan Aram, when directed by his father Isaac not to marry a Canaanite but find a daughter of his relative to be his wife. On his way to Harran, Jacob fell asleep and.

¹² He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. ¹³ There above it stood the Lord^[17], and he said: "I am the Lord, the God^[18] of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. (Genesis 28:12-13)

The image in the dream is one of continuous communication between heaven and earth. The angels of God are the messengers between both spheres of reality. Yahweh, the eternal ‘I am’ and God of Abraham and Isaac (Elohim) stands over this continual communication of messages from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven. He is directing the messages and receiving them.

The God expanded this promise to Jacob that all people on earth will be blessed through his progeny.

¹⁴ Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. (v.14)

Nathanael and any Hebrew listening would have known full well that the twelve tribes of Israel had been spread throughout the earth and brought blessing to the nations that had become their home. Their prophets, who spoke to them in their Diaspora, prophesied of a time when they would return to their Promised Land and a son of David would become their king and also rule the world as God’s chosen Messiah. He would bring global order and peace on earth. In this manner, through Jacob’s offspring all the peoples on earth would be blessed. Jesus changes the vision of Jacob in one sense. He adds the Son of Man into the vision receiving on earth the messages of the Father sent from heaven and communicating with the Father from earth. The angels are the messengers descending and ascending on him.

Jesus the Messiah was now standing before Nathanael and his companions confirming to them the ancient promise of God given to Jacob, which was still current after many generations. No promise of God can be broken, and they were beginning to witness in Jesus the fulfilment of Yahweh’s promise to Jacob. They were linked with their ancestor Jacob across the ages by Jesus of Nazareth standing in front of them. They would join the angels as chosen messengers of God’s love. They too were now engaged in God’s eternal plan of salvation offered to all humanity. They would never be the same again.

Through a relationship with Jesus, we too can become linked to that eternal plan. John wrote his biography of Jesus for readers with open hearts to become involved in salvation by placing their trust in Jesus. This becomes clearer as the biography unfolds the life of Jesus to the open hearted reader.

Reflection

After reading the first chapter of John’s biography of Jesus we need to pause to consider if we will let its content enlighten our inner being and current aspirations. Would we also like to join in his journey designed for us to become his messenger like John and his friends or have nothing to do with him as we journey on in our life?

We have learned from John that Jesus came from the eternal past as the Creator of all, the one and only Son of God, who became a man to reveal the grace and truth of God to us, and to be the perfect sacrificial lamb for our sins, so that we can be forgiven and receive freely God’s life, and be given the divine right to and become his child. We have had initial glimpses of the love of Jesus in action with his first disciples and the demonstration of his divine knowledge of man’s thoughts and heart desires. John has placed sufficient information in this introduction for any person with an open heart to consider seriously beginning a journey of trust with Jesus, thus receiving the divine right to be called a child of God.

The conclusion of this chapter provides an important reflection check point to examine ourselves and assess if we already have sufficient information from this biography to trust Jesus with all of our life. If not, it is a good opportunity to make a note of what more you need to know about Jesus in order to begin a journey of trust with him. Then read on. Alternatively, record at this check point why you would never trust him. Note why your reasons can still stand after having read Chapter 1.

Let’s journey on to the second chapter of John’s biography of Jesus. It contains John’s first record of an early miracle of Jesus that defies all physical law as we know it.

Then in The Wisdom of Solomon (100 BC), Wisdom is depicted as the breath of the power of God flowing from the Glory of the Almighty, the brightness of everlasting light, the image of His goodness, the unspotted mirror of the power of God and the Maker of all things.

John later identifies "the Word" [Logos in Greek] as an appropriate title for presenting Jesus to his Hellenistic world. Greek philosophy used "Logos" for the divine reason that gave the universe its form and meaning. The idea of Logos entered Greek philosophy in the sixth century BC through Heraclitus. Later we will examine the use of this term by John under the section on "Logos", p.13 ↩︎
Early evidence indicates that Mark acted as the scribe of Peter writing accurately what Peter related to him about the sayings and deeds of Jesus. This biography was most likely completed in the 50s before the execution of Peter and later referenced extensively by Matthew and Luke to write their biographies of Jesus. ↩︎
When John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah, Jesus told them that John was Elijah who was to come to prepare the way for the Messiah, which initiated an upsurge of violence against the kingdom of heaven. ↩︎
Philo, Allegorical Interpretation, II, 86 ↩︎
Bezalel translated means, "God is his shadow". ↩︎
The concept of Logos was a very developed idea in Greek philosophy at the time of John. Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, all contributed to the concept of Logos. ↩︎
In the Psalms of Solomon, which date up to the first century BC, the dream of the Messiah is vividly detailed (17:23-51). In the Book of Enoch, written in the first century BC, the coming son of David is given four titles: 1) Son of Man, who was depicted as a divine, super-human, pre-existent being waiting behind the throne of God to be despatched in irresistible might and power to administer judgement on the world; 2) Christ, meaning The Anointed One, a title previously attached to kings, but used by Enoch as a technical title for the Messiah; 3) The Righteous One who will vindicate the righteous and exercise destructive might on creation; 4) The Elect who stands before the Lord of Spirits. ↩︎
John uses the Greek imperfect tense for continuous past to describe existence of the Word and God but switches to the aorist Greek tense to denote a past event or action at a specific time when describing creation. ↩︎
Rather than drawing from Philo, John may have been influenced by being taught ample examples in Jewish writings of personal appearances of the Word of God. For example, in Genesis, the Angel of the Lord appearances to the Patriarchs brought audible words of God (15:1) yet was occasionally distinguished from God (16:11). The Psalms assign the creative activity of Yahweh to the Word. (Psalm 33:6-9). Wisdom is personified in Proverbs 8:22-31. John may have been influenced by other Jewish Wisdom literature, such as in The Wisdom of Sirach (2nd century BC). This book represents Wisdom existing beside the Lord and with Him forever, before all things, proceeding from the mouth of the Highest, and fashioned before the world from the beginning. Daniel’s prophecy of the end times depicts the Son of Man as a separate identity in heaven but not deity. He is a heavenly man who descends to earth. The Book of Enoch, written in the first century BC, depicted the Son of Man as a separate divine, super-human, pre-existent being waiting behind the throne of God to be despatched in irresistible might and power to administer judgement on the world in the end times. John heard Jesus frequently applying the title Son of Man to himself. ↩︎
Unfortunately it is necessary to note here that the most insidious of these voices blocking people from finding the TRUE light use the name of Jesus for their own ends and exaltation while proclaiming a distorted image of him. They are driven by deceiving spirits promoting a distorted image of Jesus that blocks the listeners from seeing the authentic light of Jesus and living by his life. They have done so since the time of John who warned early seekers to test these proclaimers of Jesus to see if their source is God, i.e., authentic light. (1 John 1:4) Global communication channels expand their reach today and increase their wealth. ↩︎
John uses the word παραλαμβάνω (para-lambano) for "receive". Para means, "from close alongside" and lambano means to take aggressively, i.e., to take by showing strong personal initiative. (Strong’s Concordance). ↩︎
The Greek word πιστεύω (pist-yoo’-o) is more than intellectual belief, it means to believe, have faith in, trust in. It is a word of relationship not mere intellectual assent. ↩︎
The denial by John the Baptist appears to conflict with Jesus describing him as Elijah who has already come and has suffered at the hands of the Jewish leaders just as the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands. Jesus reveals this to Peter, James and John as they descended from the mountain having seen Jesus transfigured and conversing with the prophets Elijah and Moses. (Mark 9: 4–13) The ecstatic disciples were commanded not to speak of this until Jesus had risen from the dead, which is why John the Baptist himself was unaware of being associated with Elijah. Peter finally spoke of their experience after the resurrection as evidence that he was presenting concrete evidence for the deity of Jesus and not some fabricated story (2 Peter 1: 16-18) ↩︎
Nathanael is constructed from ‘Nathan’, the Hebrew perfect tense of the verb to give meaning he has given and ‘El’ for God. Hence the meaning of Nathanael’s name is God/El has given, or the variant, Gift of God. ↩︎
Nazareth was a small Jewish village when Jesus grew up as a boy and then worked in his father’s carpentry shop. Nathanael’s contempt was therefore not misplaced. It is now the largest Arabian town in Palestine. The Ottoman Turks expelled all Christians from Nazareth in the early 16th century. They were allowed to return in the following century by the emir of Lebanon. Christian Arabs now form about one third of its population. As a result, Nazareth’s current chief tourist attractions are its many churches. ↩︎
Nathanael had identified Jesus as the Son of God. Here Jesus uses the more human term he used most to identify himself. He presented himself constantly as Son of Man, the perfect Man. The term is used 88 times in the New Testament. It links back to the term used in Daniel’s prophecy of the Son of Man coming in glory from heaven to receive power and dominion over the entire earth. Although Jesus was the Son of God, he presented himself as the perfect Man, who was the prophesied Heavenly Man in Daniel 7:13-14, who did not come to the earth from heaven to be served, but to serve and give his perfect life a ransom for many. ↩︎
Yahweh, the proper name of the God of Israel, later used by Jesus and for which he was crucified. ↩︎
Elohim, masculine plural name derived from El meaning god. Hence Beth-el means house of God. ↩︎