Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to John · About this commentary
As Moses Lifted Up the Serpent
John 3:9-15
9 Nicodemus answered him, “How can these things be?” · WEB
The teacher of Israel is out of his depth, and the answer sends him to a bronze snake on a pole.
Nicodemus answered him, "How can these things be?" John 3:9.
His third question and his shortest. The first was a compliment, the second an objection; this is simple bewilderment, and it is the last thing he says in the conversation. From here he listens.
"Are you the teacher of Israel, and don't understand these things?" John 3:10.
The definite article is in the Greek — the teacher, a recognized position rather than one instructor among many. And the rebuke is not for ignorance of something obscure. What he has failed to recognize is the prophets' own promise of a heart replaced and a spirit given Ezekiel 36:26 Jeremiah 31:33, which is his own text and his own subject.
"We speak that which we know and testify of that which we have seen, and you don't receive our witness" John 3:11.
The plurals answer his opening we know John 3:2 in the same voice. He had spoken for a body of assessors; the reply speaks for those who have actually seen the thing being assessed.
"If I told you earthly things and you don't believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" John 3:12. Birth and wind are the earthly things — homely pictures anyone can check. If the illustrations do not land, the substance behind them will not.
"No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man" John 3:13.
The claim underneath the whole exchange is finally stated. Religion in every age has been the attempt to get up; this says the traffic has run the other way, and that the only one who can report on heaven is the one who came from it. It is the prologue again — the only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him John 1:18.
"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" John 3:14.
The episode he reaches for is one of the strangest in the older books Numbers 21:4–9. A people bitten by snakes for complaining; a bronze snake made and set on a pole; and the instruction that anyone who looked at it would live. Nothing was asked of them but a look — no sacrifice, no journey, no worthiness — and what they had to look at was an image of the very thing that was killing them.
Every part of that is being claimed. The remedy is lifted up in public where the dying can see it. It takes the form of the curse itself. And the response required is not achievement but attention.
Lifted up is this Gospel's own term for the crucifixion, and it is chosen because it means two things at once — hoisted on a stake, and exalted. The book will use it twice more, and the second time it explains itself: this he said, signifying by what kind of death he should die John 12:32–33.
"That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life" John 3:15.
The first of this Gospel's many uses of eternal life, and the terms are already set: whoever, so the offer is unrestricted; believes, so the response is a look rather than a labor; and the alternative is perish, which is the word the book will keep using for what is avoided.
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