John 3:1-21
Advent Series: One of the emphases of John’s gospel–in fact, the emphasis with which he begins his gospel–is that Jesus existed before the incarnation. Though that’s commonly understood among us as Christians, consider the strangeness and the offense this idea presented to John’s first readers: a man who spoke of existing before he was conceived. To enhance our sense of wonder at the birth of Christ, we’ll examine a few of these places in John where he and/or Jesus himself make reference to the fact that Jesus’ life did not begin here on earth. Rather he was sent to earth from the glory of heaven itself with a very specific mission.
Synopsis: Nicodemus begins with an acknowledgment that Jesus has “come from God” (v.2), and surely he means that in the same way that men like the prophets were “from God.” But Jesus peels back the curtain of eternity for Nicodemus and notes that he’s ‘come from God’ in a much more literal way…having come to earth from the glories of heaven itself (vv.11-13). Jesus raises for Nicodemus an issue that he would have thought was already settled; namely, his admittance to the Kingdom of God. As a leading figure in Judaism, Nicodemus would have had little doubt that he was already included on the basis of his ethnicity and moral credentials. Jesus here reveals that eternal destinies are decided on the basis of faith in him alone. He ‘came from God’ precisely because the world and everyone in it was utterly hopeless without the death of Christ…including the morally and religiously upright like Nicodemus.