Mis-prioritizing Jesus
John 3:14-21
Fourth Sunday in Lent
analysis by Ed Schroeder


The appointed pericope is only the latter half of the Nicodemus story. Best is to start at 3:1.

DIAGNOSIS: Nicodemus' problem: Missing out on the promise of life signaled in Moses' lifting up the serpent in the wilderness (vv.14 & 15).

STAGE 1: Mis-prioritizing Jesus. Though "Israel's teacher," Nicodemus "does not understand the things" Jesus is doing and saying, even though he knows Jesus to be a "teacher come from God."

STAGE 2: Lightless, lifeless. Nicodemus comes "at night." That's not just a reference to clock time. He too needs to be "born from above," or "born again." Otherwise even he is lifeless. Otherwise Jesus' grim words in vv. 19 & 20 will be true of him too. Note the "fear" assertion in v. 20.

STAGE 3: Disinherited. In this text v. 18b, "not believing Jesus" is "being condemned already" long before judgment day comes around.

GOOD NEWS: Not perishing, but having the life that lasts.

STAGE 4: God's glory in the flesh. That is presented in this text by vv. 14 & 15. (Note on Jn. 3:16. Verse 16 interprets the two previous verses. The "so" in "God so loved the world" does not mean "so much" as folk interpretation says. The Greek text says: "just so [in just this way] did God love the world, namely, God sacrificed his own son. It is not "muchness" that the text expresses, but the radical character of God's action. You and I would be arrested if we did the same with our children. Letting your own child be killed--for whatever worthy cause--is not only illegal, it is immoral. The radicality of Jesus on the Cross is that to regain us disinherited [bastard?] kids back into the divine family, God "lifts up," as Moses did with the serpent, his one and only non-renegade Son. God incurs the "illegality, the immorality" of son-sacrifice in order to regain sons and daughters who ought themselves perish in just that way. John 3:16 is John's statement of the genuine "scandal" of the Gospel.)

STAGE 5: Believing is having. See v. 15, 16b, 17b with 18a for Stage 5 as articulated in this text. V. 20 links "living by the truth" (of vv. 14-16) to "coming into the light," thus undoing the "lightless, lifeless" diagnosis of Stage 2. "Born again" is being "in light again."

STAGE 6: Witnessing. "Living by the truth" now publicly in the world, "so that it may be plainly seen [by the beloved worldlings] that what Jesus' witnesses are doing is being done through God."

info@crossings.org