John 3:31-36

12/28/08
John 3:31-36
Hudson UMC

Once again, we find ourselves in the Gospel of John, finishing up this chapter at the same time we finish up the year. This is a fairly significant passage, if for no other reason than because it contains the very last of all the words that we will ever hear from John the Baptist in this Gospel. This is his very last word on who Jesus is and why it is important that we listen to Him. When we think about famous last words, we often think about words of wisdom, triumphant aphorisms or other things of that nature. What we don’t usually expect is a somewhat lengthy statement about how important someone else is, but this is precisely what John gives his listeners. As someone who has spent his entire life preparing for Jesus, it cannot surprise us that his last public message in this book is pointing to the Son of God.

Our passage begins with John saying, “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things.” This is not just a poetic expression that is meant to be fundamentally mysterious. It summarizes what John has been saying all along. He is claiming that Jesus is indeed the one who has come from above, who has come from God and is the fullness of God in human flesh and, as such, is above all. He is subject to none, He has need of nothing, He is the one who, more than anyone else in the history of the world, needs to be listened to. However, just as much as this is a final declaration of the superiority of Christ, it is also a final declaration of John’s own self-perceived inferiority. He claims that, “The one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things.” John is a human being, just like you and me. Yes, he has heard the voice of God, but he does not have some intrinsic ability to know the will of the Lord that is somehow superior to what other people have. He is a messenger, nothing more. He shares what God has said, but there is much that he simply does not know. He is basically saying, “I can only do so much. I can point you in the right direction, but my teaching is still the teaching of a human being. Follow the one who comes from above, because His teaching is above mine and is the very teaching of God.” John the Baptist is humble to the very last.

“The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony.” He claims again that Jesus is the one who is above all, but particularly above him. This comment that “He testifies to what he has seen and heard” is incredibly important. John has not seen the very heart of God. He has communicated with God, he has prayed, he has received revelation about the Messiah that is somewhat more detailed than any of the Old Testament prophets, but all his information was second-hand. He was told a lot about who the Messiah was and he proclaimed it wherever he could, but it was not until he actually saw Jesus after he baptized Him that he realized that it was this man who God had spoken of. Even after he knew exactly who the Messiah was, his message was still second-hand. He still only had a message that was given to him, not a message of his own from his own experience. This is what was fundamentally different about Jesus.

We can say that Jesus was a prophet of God, but if we say that he was only a prophet or merely a prophet, we have missed the tremendous gravity of the Christian witness. Jesus, much like John and the prophets before him, proclaimed the message of God to the people of God, but the key difference was in that the message of God was also fundamentally His message as well. He was not merely the proclaimer of the message but the source and sender of that message. John testified to what he had received, but Jesus testified to what He had seen and heard. Though John could, in theory, draw wrong conclusions from what he had received from God, with Jesus, there was no hearsay. Jesus was not speculating; He was an eyewitness to the truth that He proclaimed. As the second person of the Trinity, He had observed and participated in the internal life of God since eternity past. He knew what He was talking about in a way that no mere prophet could ever hope to duplicate.

John’s claim that “No one receives” the “testimony” of the one who comes from heaven might sound unusual in our ears. Clearly someone has received Christ’s testimony, or else there would have never been a Christian church. John is using some poetic language to say that very few, out of those who have heard Christ’s testimony have received it. We know that he does not literally mean that no one receives it because his very next words are, “Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true.” And yet, though we want to be quick to explain how John’s words are an intentional exaggeration, he also has a quite literal meaning as well. The fact of the matter is that, while the church grew by leaps and bounds in the first generations after the death of Christ, almost nobody understood who He was and what the Gospel was saying during His life. Throughout the entire Gospel of John, the disciples understand bits and pieces of what is going on, but we can see that they really do not ever get it until after Jesus has been raised from the dead. Out of all the Gospels, John shows the disciples in the best light, but even here, they come off looking rather badly. It is at the end of this Gospel that we read that Peter and the other disciples, after Christ was crucified, return to fishing, announcing with their actions that they were no longer pursuing the ways of God. It took the resurrected Lord’s physical presence to bring them back to faith. The fact of the matter is that, especially for John, Jesus simply cannot be understood apart from a post-resurrection point of view. Until Christ was raised from the dead, John the Baptist’s claim that no one received His testimony is not entirely false.

A moment ago, I referred to Jesus by His identity as the second person of the Trinity. None of the other three Gospels are quite as explicitly Trinitarian as the Gospel according to John. There are numerous passages that give us glimpses into the way that God exists in God’s own life. This is one such passage. John continues by explaining, “He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands.” The one whom God has sent, that is, Jesus the Christ, speaks the very words of God. He does not speak words that have been filtered through a human who does not fully understand the nature of God, but by God Himself. And yet, though Jesus is able to speak the very words of God, He does not do so alone. Jesus is not somehow independently God who can say whatever He wants to. The man Jesus is only the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity because He has been sent by the other persons. He speaks the words of God, because God the Father has given God the Holy Spirit to God the Son, as a human being, without measure. The Trinity is made up of three distinct persons, but they are never entirely separated so as to work independently of one another.

I do not intend to embark on a comprehensive Trinitarian analysis of this passage, but I want to draw your attention of how we see the Persons of the Trinity interacting with one another. Because we use the same term, God, for both God the Father and the entire Trinity, we tend to think of the Trinity in hierarchical terms, with the Father at the top, somehow ruling over the Son and the Spirit. And yet, we read something very different in this passage. We read that, “The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands.” This is a kind of equality that we simply do not find between people. When we entrust things into the hands of others, it is usually little things, things that the other person has proven that they can handle and do as well as we can. Seldom does anyone place all things into anyone else’s hands. I have a professor who, when explaining the remarkable equality and non-hierarchical relationships between the Persons of the Trinity, explains that, in he and his wife’s will, they do not even allow their sons to have all of their inheritance, the things that are rightfully theirs, until they turn thirty. He says that he does not even really trust his sons, who are actually rather responsible, with money, let alone all things. And yet, we read that the Father considers the Son, even in human form, to be so much of an equal that He places all things into His hands. Imagine that; all the things that God does have been placed into the hands of a human being, with a nature just like ours. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the entire history of the world.

Brothers and sisters, what does it tell us about God that the Father is so radically unselfish, so self-giving, so other-centered, that He is willing to entrust all things into the hands of our elder brother, Jesus Christ? What does it tell us that God, the one who, unlike anyone else in the universe, is perfectly within His rights to claim complete lordship and authoritarian dominion over the earth and everyone in it, chooses to use that authority to give it to someone else, to relate to human beings on their own level, by becoming one of them and enduring their broken condition? What does it tell us about how we should live? What does it tell us about how we should use our authority? I think that, if we follow a God who is so other-centered, how can we live self-centered lives? If we follow a God who places all things into the hands of another, how can we insist on being in control of everything in our lives? If we follow a God who is eminently humble and not demanding, how can we puff ourselves up with pride? The Christian doctrine of the Trinity has been ignored for far too long because it has been taught as something that we have to believe without ever understanding what impact it really has on our lives and so it becomes irrelevant mush that we correctly regard as arbitrary and silly. However, when we observe that we see the character of God more clearly when look at the relationships between the Persons of the Trinity than we do by simply imagining what God is like, we begin to see that it really matters. How we see the Father, Son and Holy Spirit interact with one another in community shows us the powerful reality of what it means to be made in the image of God.

The last sentence that we will ever hear from John the Baptist in the Gospel of John is, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.” Strong words, but let us unpack what he is saying here. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” He does not say, “Whoever believes in the Son will have eternal life,” as if eternal life was some present that we will receive by and by when we die, but “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” Though it is true that we will only fully appreciate the eternal aspect of life when we have died and been raised again, if we believe in the Son, we are participating, even at this very moment, in the eternal life of Christ. We heard this earlier in this chapter when Jesus was speaking with Nicodemus, when He said, “He who does not believe has been judged already.” It is so tempting to think that our relationship with God only matters once we have died. The fact of the matter is that, if we are hoping to enjoy perfect fellowship with the Triune God in the age to come, we must become the kind of people who are enjoying that relationship, even brokenly, here and now.

When most people in America ask the question, “Are you saved,” they mean, “Are you going to be with Jesus when you die.” When John Wesley, among others, asked it, they meant, “Are you actively growing in grace and going on to perfection?” This is a somewhat different question. And yet, if what John says here is true, that those who believe in the Son have eternal life, does it not mean that salvation is not just something that we wait for, but something that we have now? Think about the good news that this is. We do not have to wait for God to rescue us at the point of death, nor do we need to wait to participate in eternal life until such and such a time has been completed, but can participate in it even now. We do not have to live our lives without hope and without love, because our God has saved us from the power of sin and death today. We do not have to continue in our addictions and destructive patterns because our salvation is not far off, but is near to every one of us. To participate in current salvation is a blessing beyond what we can even imagine. The eternal life of Christ Himself is offered to us, that we might live our lives supernaturally if we should so choose.

To receive the good news that we are invited to participate in the eternal life of God is very difficult. John is right; very few people have received it, but those who have done so bear witness to the fact that God is indeed true in His promises and blessings. The Father so loves us that He has placed all things, including our salvation, present and future into the hands of the Son, who will not leave it undone. If we have faith in the very Son of God, we are already rescued. Let us live as rescued people in this New Year. Let us pray. AMEN