Thoughts from John 2:1 - 3:21

John 2 easily divides into two sections: Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine, and the cleansing of the temple. Events concerning the temple cleansing spill over into the third chapter with Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus.

The sense of an eyewitness report finds relief in the detail brought into the account. (1) His mother insists that Jesus take care of the awkward situation in which wine for the marriage feast fails. Jesus distances himself respectfully from his mother. His time henceforth is scheduled by the Father, and by no one else, not even by his beloved mother. She, nonetheless, hears no rebuff and sets him up to resolve the matter. (2) Under Jesus’ direction, the servants fill six unwieldy stone jars with water, and under Jesus’ control, these jars yield some 120 to 180 gallons of wine for the party. (3) The questioning dialogue between the chief steward and the bridegroom tells of memory hearing their puzzlement all over again: “The best wine comes last.”

You can almost feel John smiling as he tells this story: Out of a potentially socially embarrassing situation, through motherly insistence, to the amazement of the master of ceremonies, we find sweet ironies, and an impossible solution. Jesus’ ministry opens in the festivities and commonness of life: a wedding party. When Jesus is there, the everyday changes into the extraordinary. The result yields his disciples’ belief in him, though hardly developed fully as it will be after Pentecost.

The banquet readily symbolizes the coming of the new age, the age of Christ, the coming Holy Spirit. New wine is for new wineskins (Mk. 2:22). It further hints toward a yet coming festivity that believers have to experience (Rev. 19:9), the wedding banquet of the lamb. The best is yet to come. When Jesus reigns in your life, your cheap soul becomes invaluable.

From an idyllic account of life in rural Galilee, the gospel account plunges us into the noise and din of urban Jerusalem: It is the yearly feast of Passover pointing the celebrants to God’s deliverance of their forebears from Egyptian slavery; as a backdrop to the biblical narrative the immense temple in Jerusalem, one of the wonders of the ancient world, rises atop Mount Moriah. By the tens of thousands from all over the world, pilgrims gather for the great festivity. As Jesus joins them, he sees within the temple grounds the banal merchandizing of animals for the required sacrifices and the currency exchange. Though the merchandizing may have benefited the travelers, though corrupt priests in charge may have benefited unduly by the exchange, Jesus’ anger does not concern conveniency or corruption. Rather, he finds fault in the very notion of using the house of God as a mercantile emporium at all.

He makes a whip of cords then drives them all out including the oxen, the sheep, he scatters the coins, and upends the money changers’ tables. He commands the sellers of doves to get their wares out of there “from now on.” He commands them all, “You shall not make the house of God a house of marketing.” When the authorities confront Jesus demanding evidence for his credentials in the matter, Jesus answers maddeningly, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

His opposers then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he spoke of the temple of his body. (2:20-21)

The sign, or evidence, for his credentials must follow their action; before he will give them the sign, they first must destroy the temple. The irony remains that he spoke of the temple of his body, while they thought he spoke of the sanctuary on the hill.

Jesus did other signs not told in the Gospel of John which brought many to believe in him (2:23); but such remains an unenlightened belief. Jesus would not believe in those persons! (2:24) He knows what is in man, he needs no pollster to give him information about men’s thoughts. And he will not entrust himself to a man. (2:25)

If ever Jesus will entrust men with himself, their faith must rest on something more than mere miracles and wonders; theirs must be a faith enlightened by his very person: Men must believe both the Scripture and the word which Jesus himself has spoken, not just his ability to change water into wine.

Thus John has now readied us for the dialogue with the best of the best of religious teaching. The discussion results from no mild curiosity, but summarizes a tense dialogue between a fading order and a dawning new age of the Spirit. The interchange stands as the crossroad of gospel teaching.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus ... This man ... said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him." (3:1-2)

As we have it, the gospel events John narrates point us to a dialogue between Jesus and a Pharisee (3:1), a ruler (3:1; likely a member of the Sanhedrin, 7:50), a teacher (3:10) of the Hebrew people. If miracles stand as pointers to Jesus’ identity, his discussions give the substance and meaning of it.

Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old?" (3:3)

Over and again John brings to the foreground a profound misunderstanding between Jesus and his contemporaries, between the reality of spiritual life and the generally accepted view of it. Jesus jumps readily into the fray with Nicodemus to indicate that before seeing God’s kingdom one must be born anew, that is, be born from above. That is, to be born into it. Indeed, unless one is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Nicodemus demonstrates the poverty of his perception, but not only his poverty – it is the poverty of the best of the human mind, and not just any human mind but the human mind seeking the things of God. Nicodemus represents the best religious mind we humans have to offer. He is a ruler-teacher of Israel, yet he does not “get it.” Nicodemus gives evidence of his lack (and, therefore, his need) of spiritual birth, since he does not understand what Jesus says.

One may feel the effect of the wind, but have no knowledge of the wind - where it came from, where it’s going. In the same manner people may feel the movement of the Spirit, but without birth from above, without birth of water and Spirit, without spiritual birth, there is no understanding of either of the Spirit’s provenance or direction. Jesus does not say here that what the Spirit does is always a mystery. What he says is that without spiritual birth there is no comprehension.

Nicodemus said to him, "How can this be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?" (3:9-10)

Jesus chides Nicodemus as a teacher ignorant of “earthly things,” the easy stuff, so to speak. Note that Jesus speaks of the new birth as “earthly things”; entrance into the kingdom of God is not itself the substance of the kingdom. Our personal, physical births into this physical, material world are not in themselves the physical world. Birth is the movement from one world to another, from the world of the womb to the world outside. Just so, spiritual birth is a necessary baby step from one world into the next, but is not itself the next world. Jesus chides Nicodemus inasmuch as Nicodemus does not recognize the need for a spiritual birth, never mind what living in the spiritual world is – Jesus has not yet begun to speak of the heavenly things themselves, of life in the kingdom of God!

When Jesus says “You have not received,” “I have told you earthy things,” and “you have not believed,” though he first addresses Nicodemus singularly, at those junctures he addresses the plural so as to say, “You all have not received/believed.” It is not only Nicodemus who does not understand or believe, but all people do not understand.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life ... But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God. (3:16, 21)

The good news is that there is salvation from the wrath of God, from judgment and its inevitable condemnation, there is heaven for ever in the presence of God for those who come to believe in the Christ of God. For these there is no further judgment, no crisis, no condemnation. For those, however, who remain unbelieving, judgment has already become them. By their unbelief they demonstrate their love for darkness, not for light, because they prefer doing what is evil.

We should not think that those who believe have lived godly lives beforehand. What it says, rather, is that the ones presently coming to the light are not afraid to let it be seen that God is presently working in their lives. “Doing what is true” is equivalent to “deeds wrought by God.”

The new birth is not possible by human agency unenlightened and unaided by God. It first requires God’s love demonstrated in giving his Son, Jesus Christ; in giving his son as a sin offering (Rom. 3:24-25; Gal. 3:13; 2 Cor. 5:21). It requires the triumph of God’s salvation rather than his condemnation. It requires believing in Jesus. It requires searing honesty about one’s own life in exposing oneself to the light of Christ. It requires doing what is true, namely, yielding one’s deeds to the work of God.

What is required? You must be born anew, born from above. And then comes real life.