{"id":1835,"date":"2016-01-12T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T14:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielgoepfrich.com\/?p=1835"},"modified":"2022-08-29T22:26:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T02:26:40","slug":"john-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/john-3\/","title":{"rendered":"John 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Chapter three<\/strong> contains the first, and possibly the most famous, of several personal conversations Jesus had that were recorded by John. Many people have speculated that Nicodemus approached Jesus at night because he was afraid of the other Pharisees or other people, but the text does not offer that picture. In fact, Nicodemus himself admitted, <em>\u201cWe know that you are a teacher who has come from God\u201d<\/em> (John 3:2). His position as <em>\u201cthe teacher of Israel\u201d<\/em> (John 3:10) possibly required that he \u201cvet\u201d up-and-coming rabbis who did not come through the official channels, in order to verify their teachings. Since every rabbi had a particular \u201cyoke\u201d or set of teachings that he placed on his followers so they could enter <em>\u201cthe kingdom of God\u201d<\/em> (John 3:3; see Matthew 11:28-30), it would have been natural for Nicodemus to try to determine what Jesus was teaching.<\/p><p>Jesus, of course, had a spiritual message rather than a religious, works-based one. <em>\u201cBorn again\u201d<\/em> can legitimately be translated \u201cborn from above,\u201d making it a play on words. Nicodemus heard <em>\u201cborn again\u201d<\/em> and thought biology, whereas Jesus meant \u201cborn from above\u201d by the Spirit (John 3:4-8). Because the Hebrew Scriptures had already taught this truth (Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:26-27), this should not have been news to Nicodemus, and Jesus chided him for not understanding it. He followed it with a reference to Moses and the bronze serpent which prophesied the method of salvation&nbsp;(Numbers 21:4-9).<\/p><p>There is a debate over&nbsp;whether Jesus\u2019 words stop at verse 15 or whether they continue through verse 21. It seems that the dialogue ends with John 3:15, at which point John wrote an explanation of Jesus\u2019 meaning in John 3:13-15. There are at least three reasons to take this approach. <em>First<\/em>, the <em>\u201cfor\u201d<\/em> at the beginning of John 3:16 is explanatory and does not require that it continues the&nbsp;dialogue. <em>Second<\/em>, it would be uncharacteristic for Jesus to switch from <em>\u201cSon of Man\u201d<\/em> (twice in John 3:13-14) to <em>\u201cSon of God\u201d<\/em> (three times in John 3:16-21), without some kind of transition. However, since the purpose of the book was to present Jesus as the Son of God, and John has already done so multiple times, it is a fitting follow-up to Jesus\u2019 own words. <em>Third<\/em>, the topic changes rapidly between verses 15 and 16, and there is no other example of this in Jesus\u2019 interactions in John. Rather, John explained that Jesus was indeed <em>\u201clifted up\u201d<\/em> for the purpose of making salvation available to the whole world but effective only for those who believe. This will be the sole determining factor in a person\u2019s eternal judgment and the basis for how a person lives in this life.<\/p><p>The chapter concludes with a \u201cterritorial dispute\u201d between Jesus\u2019 disciples and those of John the Baptizer (John 3:22-30). John\u2019s disciples had become incensed that Jesus\u2019 disciples were baptizing more people than they were. John quickly and carefully reminded them that his whole mission was to point people to Jesus, as he had often told them, humbly stating, <em>\u201cHe must become more important while I become less important\u201d<\/em> (John 3:30). The writer, then, summarized again the practical doctrine leading to the Baptizer\u2019s conclusion that all believers should embrace (John 3:31-36).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chapter three contains the first, and possibly the most famous, of several personal conversations Jesus had that were recorded by John. Many people have speculated that Nicodemus approached Jesus at night because he was afraid of the other Pharisees or other people, but the text does not offer that picture. In fact, Nicodemus himself admitted, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[84,37,40,122],"class_list":["post-1835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-studies","tag-ezekiel","tag-john","tag-matthew","tag-numbers"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"widget-thumbnail":false,"rpwe-thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_single":false,"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Daniel Goepfrich","author_link":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/author\/dgoepfrich\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Chapter three contains the first, and possibly the most famous, of several personal conversations Jesus had that were recorded by John. Many people have speculated that Nicodemus approached Jesus at night because he was afraid of the other Pharisees or other people, but the text does not offer that picture. In fact, Nicodemus himself admitted,&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}