Only Son (part 12)

While we could certainly continue on from Solomon, wading into and through the inter-testamental literature that sets the stage for the second Temple Judaism into which Jesus came and spoke, in order to more fully develop the “son of God” theology and frame of reference, to do so would merely belabor the point. Based on our examination of the clear son of God traditions embodied in Adam, Israel, and Solomon, we are now in a far better position to understand the full import and impact of Jesus’ words, when He speaks of God’s love of the world and sending of His one and only Son for the purpose of belief and eternal life. The historical examples provided heretofore, stand in stark contrast to God’s expectations and intentions for the role that His son would play in and for the world.

Though, with reflection, we can see that Jesus is referring to Himself, as the author of the Gospel so desires, it is not necessarily the case that Jesus is demanding that Nicodemus come to this conclusion. Rather, we might be better served by considering that Nicodemus was to remember this conversation with Jesus, and upon His crucifixion, realize that Jesus was referring to Himself with His cryptic comments that “the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14b). It is this believing in Jesus, as the Son of Man (the Messiah-King and embodiment of Israel’s God), that then becomes equivalent to believing in God in the way that was expected of Adam and Israel and Solomon. It is through believing in the lifted-up-Son-of-Man, with the efficaciousness of such belief equivalent to the reversing of the exilic-oriented and death-bringing curse of the serpents in the wilderness, that the blessings that God intends for His people (renewal, restoration, reconciliation, re-creation, exodus, rescue, deliverance, liberation, resurrection---eternal life) are to be enjoyed.

If we accept that Jesus (at the time that He is speaking) intends Nicodemus to understand His words according to the historical-redemptive plans of God for His people and His creation, rather than as referring to Himself as the second person of the trinity, then we can also discover how Nicodemus is supposed to make sense of the words that followed. With his mental registration of the well-understood, oft-repeated, all-important, and self-defining story of Israel in mind, owing to Jesus’ use of the son of God terminology, Nicodemus can rightly grasp that “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through Him” (3:17). Quite unfortunately, as we have seen, condemnation for the world, with further and further condemnation for the world, has been the result of the best efforts of those sons (Adam, Israel, Solomon) that had been sent.

“Saved,” of course, is not to be restricted to a sense of an ethereal, after-death existence, nor is it to be restricted to the realm of humanity alone. The use of “saved” is exodus language, and it is implies an entrance and a maintenance following that entrance, into God’s purposes for both human beings and the whole of the physical, created world. Each of the sons of God that we have seen had a particular purpose, which was to fulfill a covenant and to cause the world to be deluged with God’s blessings (saved, eternal life), but the desired result never materialized. Rather, as has been noted, condemnation is what has materialized, with that condemnation (perishing) always rooted in idolatry, which represented a fundamental dis-belief in the promises of God. The belief, of course, was to start with the being made in God’s image, with the blessings associated with that belief flowing to the remainder of the groaning creation; but just as Adam dragged creation down with Him, so too did the failing sons continue to dam up God’s blessings, keeping themselves, humanity, and the whole of creation in bondage.

Following from this, Jesus goes on to say, “The one who believes in Him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the Name of the one and only Son of God” (3:18). Not believing in the Name of the one and only Son of God is the same as saying that one did not believe in God, as the idea of one person coming in the name of another person, as a representative of their power (here, we can think of the delegation of royal emissaries that speak for and represent a ruler), would have been, and still is, well understood. The root of the issue, when it comes to condemnation (exile, perishing), or the opposite of condemnation (exodus, eternal life), is belief in the God of creation. That belief is inseparable from His purposes for His divine image-bearers and the world that He had created, in accordance with His covenant promises, which fundamentally point to undoing and reversing the damage done by Adam.