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John 3 Commentary

Please choose a passage:

John 3:1-8

Nicodemus, a Jewish ruler, visits Jesus because he sees that Jesus is a teacher and miracle worker sent from God.

John 3:9-13

Nicodemus does not understand why someone must be born again in the Spirit to enter God’s kingdom. Jesus points out that he should understand these things since he is a teacher of the Scriptures.

Jesus explains why He, God’s Messiah, has come to earth: He must die so that the world can receive eternal life. He compares himself to the bronze serpent in the wilderness which Moses raised up for snakebit Israelites to look upon.

John 3:17-21

Jesus has not come into the world to judge or rule it just yet; He has come to die the death of a suffering servant for the world’s sins.

John 3:22-30

Jesus and his disciples go south into Judea. His disciples baptize repentant Jews. Nearby, John the Baptist’s disciples are inspired to jealousy by seeing that Jesus attracts larger crowds than John.

John 3:31-36

John the Baptist tells his disciples that Jesus has come from Heaven and will teach of the things of Heaven, because He has firsthand knowledge of Heaven and of God.

Additional Resources

Chapter Context

This chapter provides a succinct summary of the basic proposition of John’s gospel. In John 20:19, John states a specific reason why he chose to write what he included in his gospel, among the myriad of things he could have written.

He chose to write things in order to lead people to believe that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”
1. Christ means “anointed one.” This means one of John’s specific goals was to show that Jesus was the One anointed by God to fulfill the Messianic prophecies to redeem the world from sin and become its righteous king.
2. This Messiah however was also the “Son of God.” He was fully God and fully man.
He chose to write things in order to lead people to live life by “believing” with the result that they would have “life in His name.”

Accordingly, John will demonstrate throughout his gospel the starting place for the gospel, to believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, as well as the application of the gospel, to believe in the commands of Jesus, so that we experience the great benefit of the gospel: to experience “life in His name.”

In Chapter 3, John does both. First, he tells us of an interview Jesus had with Nicodemus, and provides a powerful witness for us to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Then he describes an interview between John the Baptist and one of his apparently disgruntled disciples, and provides us with a clear message that those who believe can choose between living in active belief, resting in obedience to Jesus, and experience life, or we can choose the adverse consequences that come from sin. It is a binary choice: life or death.

John makes clear that there is a gift of eternal life to be received by faith, and a great prize of experiencing “life in His name” through the obedience of faith. John gives us this through Jesus’ testimony to a ruler of the Jews, and John the Baptist’s explanation to his apparently disgruntled disciple.