9 "How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
10 "You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? 11 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. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him."
First, a quick apology for the delay between posts. I took on a job that required I work 70 to 90 hours a week. There was scarce little time to attend to this or anything else. I'm back, and perhaps smarter since I've done a tremendous amount of reading and contemplation on spiritual matters. I'm always evolving towards greater Truth, I hope, and in many ways awakening to a completely new operating system---like MS Vista, along with the difficulties in adapting the old programs.
In this passage I am immediately struck by Jesus' somewhat callous tone towards Nicodemus. Our pal Nic is a Pharisee, the sect that consistently pissed Jesus off, and certainly participated in Jesus's death. Still Nic deserves some respect since he is here trying to understand what Jesus is teaching---giving Jesus the benefit of a doubt. The real issue I trust is Jesus's sadness that the religious leaders were so busy with their own agenda that they somehow missed God's.
We now have the rest of the New Testament to clue us in here, but to Nic it must have seemed Jesus was speaking in code. Poor Nic simply didn't get it. Jesus was speaking of "heavenly" things---things of God's simultaneous coming and present Kingdom. Jesus did not help matters by continuing to speak in third person---referring to One who had been to heaven rather than plainly saying He was The One, and talking prophetically about being lifted up without explaining what was to come. Of course the Truth was/is in the scriptures (the Old Testament), yet frankly even the disciples who were with Jesus day in and day out did not fully comprehend what was going to happen. It was not until Jesus explained things after the resurrection that the disciples finally connected the dots with the prophecies of scripture. This has a lot to do with presuppositions---the Jewish leadership of the time and even some of the disciples had such a different image of the Messiah built in their mind that they mostly missed Him when He came.
Verses 14 and 15 are really heavy. There's a story in the Old Testament where folks are dying of snake bites, and God has Moses erect a pole with a bronze snake on it. Whenever someone is snake bit they only had to look up at the pole, and they were "saved." This made no sense whatsoever in the Exodus story unless it is seen as a type and shadow of the holistic salvation to come through Jesus' death on the cross. It's also a beautiful image of the simplicity of "being saved:" one must only look the way of the cross, and all is well. These last two verses actually answer Nic's question about how it is possible to be born again---only through the sacrifice and resurrection of the Son of Man. After this Nic vanishes from the book of John, never to be heard from again. I'd love to know "the rest of the story." Did Jesus here tip his hand enough that Nic came into the truth? or was Nic so entrenched in misunderstanding that Jesus Himself could not break through?
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