John 3:11,12 - Heaven and earth

3:11

Here we get another of the “very truly”s. Jesus confirms beyond doubt that He is speaking the truth. In this sentence He uses the plural we. So who is this we? It could be Jesus and the disciples, but this seems unlikely as the disciples don’t seem to have been involved in much preaching at this stage. It seems best to take it as being Jesus and the Father. There is an emphasis throughout John that Jesus and the Father are one, and that He speaks on God’s behalf.

So let’s look a little more at what Jesus actually says here. We speak of what we know and what we have seen. Jesus speaks with knowledge. When men speak about religion, especially atheists, they are usually speaking out of ignorance. They are so wise on how the world was created, but they weren’t there. They are so wise on judgement and life after death, but they know nothing about these things.

The wisest thing we can do is to listen to the words of Jesus. Indeed this is what the Father told us to do (Matt 17:5).

3:12

Jesus had spoken about how things work on earth. This possibly includes what happened at the temple, and the need to be born again, and how the Spirit works here on earth. Jesus had spoken about these things and the Pharisees didn’t understand a word of it. So if Jesus spoke about how things work in heaven Nicodemus would have even less of a clue.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t actually say understand, but believe. Believe means to be persuaded of and place confidence in. So when Jesus speaks the goal is that we believe His words. A verse or two ago He tells us that the Spirit blows wherever He pleases. In our lives we want to work out what God is going to do, we want to know when He will do it, and how He will do it. But that is not the way that God works. We should live by trusting in Him. Being confident that He will “show up” at the right time and in the right way without having to know ahead of time when and how this will be.