Only Son (part 13)

Later on in the third chapter of Gospel of John, we hear John the Baptist speaking about Jesus. Some of John’s disciples were concerned that people that had previously come out to follow John were now going to Jesus. John’s initial response to this was “No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven” (3:27a). John, who has previously recognized Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), and who well understands the role to which he was appointed, sees the crowds gathering to Jesus as right and proper. John recognizes that the time has come for Jesus to enter into His ministry, and that this ministry has been ordained by Israel’s God. To this he responds by saying “He must become more important while I become less important” (3:30).

Going further, we hear John echoing the words that were previously spoken to Nicodemus by Jesus, as he says, “The Father loves the Son and has placed all things under His authority” (3:35). By this, John demonstrates his understanding of the son of God tradition within Israel, as this is the very thing that had been true of Adam, of Israel, and of Solomon. Adam had been given complete authority over the whole of creation, Israel had been given authority over the promised land, and Solomon had been given authority over God’s people, and perhaps more importantly, authority to build the Temple of God. All of these things had been an outworking of the love of God, which had been directed towards these sons of God. John goes on to speak in a very similar fashion to Jesus, in the context of the long history of sonship, and says, “The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. The one who rejects the Son will not see life, but God’s wrath remains on him” (3:36). Once again, we read of eternal life versus condemnation. Believing in the Son, or believing “in the name of the one and only Son of God” (3:18b), which is a way of saying “believing in the faithful, covenant God because of the Son,” is what allows one to participate in the kingdom of God, which is eternal life.

So if we have understood all of this properly, contextually, and historically, what does all of this mean for us? Well, it should definitely change the way we approach John 3:16, never allowing us to look at it the same way again. In particular, it should crystallize our thinking concerning what it is that God has purposed for those that confess an allegiance to Jesus, calling Him the Son of God, and appropriately vesting that title with divine attributes in conjunction with understanding Jesus as the Messiah for Israel. We are best able to do so if we think in terms of the Temple of God, and if we think of the Temple of God as that place where God dwells.

As was previously said, Adam was charged to steward the creation and to be the out-raying of God’s glory in and to the creation in which God walked with man. The whole of the creation was God’s temple. By Adam’s sin (not being the out-raying of God’s glory through dis-trust and self-idolatry), this was lost and the world fell into a terrible state of disrepair, being far from the “very good” condition in which it had been ordered by God. As the outworking of the covenantal promises to Abraham, Israel was then charged with stewardship over a portion of that now-fallen creation, with God promising to dwell with them in the land (God’s temple) that He had promised to them through Abraham. From that land, they were to show forth God’s glory so that all nations would stream to the land of Israel in search of the reasons for their blessings, which would ultimately mean that all men were searching for Israel’s God. Their record in this is mostly one of failure.

Solomon was then specifically charged with building a temple within the land, that would then be the specific place of God’s dwelling with His people. It would then be to the Temple itself to which nations would be drawn, as the Temple itself was filled with God’s glory, as well as being a magnificent structure that visually testified to the glory of the God for Whom it was made to represent. Solomon, however, did not show forth His wholehearted trust in God, falling prey to idolatry as had Adam and Israel before him. As a result, the Temple itself would come to be defiled and destroyed, just as the land of promise had been defiled by idolatry, as had the whole of God’s creation. All of God’s temples had been brought to desolation.