The Savior’s Superiority John 3:31-36
One the first things people seem to ask when they meet someone for the first time is: Where do you come from? We don’t mean which hospital or heritage (not thinking of your family tree) or which planet or universe did you come from because we are ALL from the earth. Today’s verses in John 3:31-36 testify to five reasons for the Superiority of Lord Jesus Christ over ALL THINGS, and why His testimony can be trusted and experienced by His Creation.
31 "He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. 32 What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. 33 He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. 34 For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. 35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. 36 "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
1.Christ alone has His origin in the infinite providence of Heaven. (vs. 31,32a)
“He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. 32 What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies.” Christ alone has His origin in the infinite providence of Heaven. He alone is infinitely superior to any created thing and superior to ALL mankind. John the Baptist was of the earth as was John the disciple. All mankind is earthly, limited and finite and Jesus is absolutely preeminent, and infinite; what makes Him above all is that He originates in an unlimited sphere of existence, and the NEW BIRTH from God originates from where? FROM ABOVE- A birth that originates in God’s existence, not an earthly existence.
2. Christ alone knew Truth by His OWN experience. (32)
Secondly, 32 “What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony.” If you want to learn something and learn it well, it’s best if you do so by firsthand experience. Christ alone knew Truth by His OWN experience. He did not have to learn about the truth because He IS the truth. Jesus does not present a hypothesis as a basis for us to discuss whether we agree with Him or if what He teaches is plausible; Jesus teaches what He knows to be true because He has heard it and experienced it in the Heavenly Sphere from whence He came. Everything He says is supremely reliable and trustworthy and yet most of humanity will not receive the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ! “He brings the reality of the heavenly sphere of existence, of His intimate fellowship with Father God to earth-bound humanity.” (G. Boesenecker, Exegetical notes on John.)
Most of humanity will not truly believe the message of the Lord Jesus, because they CANNOT; Natural man cannot accept Christ’s witness because the natural man, without a birth from above, without God’s Spirit of enlightenment, will not accept or understand the deep things that belong to God. The new birth from above must precede the reception of Christ’s witness of the Word, because men in and of themselves will never receive and believe the witness of Jesus.
3. Christ’s Testimony ALWAYS agrees with the Father’s.
Continuing to verse 33: “He (the one) who has received (having received-a decisive act) His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. (the very essence and character of God Himself: reliable, faithful, full of grace and truth.) 34a For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God.” Receiving the testimony of the Lord Jesus is a decisive act whereby a person accepts the entirety of Jesus’ Witness, recognizing His Heavenly origin, His Divine Nature, and the Truth of God as revealed in His Word and in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. In the Eastern tradition, when you placed your seal on a document, you attested to the truth of that document. If it was your last will and testament, you were surrendering everything that belonged to you to someone else. So it is when you receive God’s testimony and you set your seal to it. You surrender all to God, body, soul, and spirit and possessions to Him for His use, believing Him alone to be the one and only True God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that He alone is able to save. The man that does not do this - that is not willing to pledge this kind of faith and belief, that God is entirely true, says that God is a liar and unworthy of his confidence.
God is THE God of Truth. Jesus is THE TRUTH. Truth is rooted in the very character of God Himself. We cannot be faithful to God and stray from the Truth of God. All that Jesus’ spoke are the Words from God and so all of Christ’s Testimony is ALWAYS in Perfect agreement with the Father’s testimony. Faith solely and confidently rests on the promises and work of God in Christ!
To believe the Gospel is nothing else than to assent to the truths which God has revealed. Faith relies on God and confirms to his words; for there can be no assent, unless God has, first of all, come forward and spoken by His Word and Spirit to regenerate a sin-dead heart, and so faith is distinguished from all human inventions. Faith corresponds to the truth of God, and is free from doubt since faith knows that God cannot lie. Whatever Satan may throw at us to disturb and shake us, we will always remain victorious in Christ alone.
4. Christ alone experienced the Holy Spirit in UNLIMITED Measure.
34 “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.” Christ alone experienced the Holy Spirit in UNLIMITED Measure and Manner. The Spirit was not given to Christ by limited measure, as if the power of grace which he possesses were in any way unable or powerless to save; as Paul teaches in Ephesians 4:7: “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.” The Father has poured out upon Christ an unlimited abundance of his Spirit; No other creature has the unlimited Spirit as Jesus does. It is proper that the Spirit should dwell without measure in Him, so that He might give to us a NEW BIRTH by the Spirit and the Word and so that we may all draw from His Divine fullness.
We saw in John 1:12-14: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The end of John the Baptist’s ministry marks the changing from the Old Testament prophecy to the New Testament fulfillment in our Lord Jesus Christ; John baptized with water but Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, in unlimited manner; He would change hearts from the INSIDE out by the power of God. Lord willing, we will see this in John 4:23-24: “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
5. Christ alone is Supreme: The Father sovereignly granted Christ His Status.
35 “The Father loves the Son (the tense denotes CONTINUALLY LOVES-the Father has loved the Son from all eternity!) and has given all things into His hand.” “The eternal mutual love and unity within the Godhead guarantees the completion of the Son’s work and the continuance of the Son’s power to give life in the Spirit to all who will believe.”(G.B) The perfect love of the Father for the Son guarantees that all that the Father has also belongs to the Son. John 17:10 says: All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.” I thought too of the parable of the extravagant love of the Father when He says to His Son in Luke 15:31: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”
Christ alone is Supreme: The Father sovereignly granted Christ His Status since the Father has given all things into Jesus’ hands; On this account, poor wretched sinners can come to Jesus for forgiveness and NEW LIFE in the Spirit and the Son can give life with the full authority of the Father. The Son can grant forgiveness and eternal life, and give the Spirit bountifully to all who come to Him in faith. The words also show the dependence and submission of Jesus in His human nature upon the Father. John is certain of the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ as well as His dependence upon God the Father as He came to earth as the Word of God in the Flesh.
6. Christ alone is the way to escape the wrath of God.(36)
Verse 36 again states the results of believing Christ or refusing Him: "He who believes (present tense) in the Son has eternal life;(present tense) but he who does not obey the Son (present tense) will not see life, (future tense) but the wrath of God abides on him." (present tense: The present tense in the Greek denotes continual, ongoing, linear action in present time.)
He who continually believes in the Son continually dwells in a state of eternal life with God, of which time is not a measure; That person makes obedience to the will of God, particularly in receiving the Son, a lifestyle, living, trusting, walking, obeying the Savior. On the other hand, he who continually remains in a perpetual state of unbelief will continually reject the Son and makes this rebellion his lifestyle. The unbeliever will never realize life in the Son and so the wrath of God will continually remain on him on an ongoing, eternal basis. The ongoing state of unbelief is accompanied by an ongoing state of the abiding wrath of God.” (G.B.)
The wrath of God is God’s fixed and necessary hostility against sin, disobedience and rebellion as a function of His Divine HOLY Nature and character. (The idea in the Greek word for “abides” (meno) is that of permanence, wrath that will remain unchanged.) Because God is HOLY, He is rigidly opposed to every single thing that is evil and His eternal wrath will remain on unrepentant sinners. The Bible teaches there is the One and Only true God who has revealed Himself as Creator God in the beginning, as Savior God through the Lord Jesus alone, and that He is reigning and returning God as Judge. God in His infinite mercy and love has provided His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ alone to be the only way to escape the eternal wrath of God.
King David knew what it was like to be saved from the wrath of God, to be IN CHRIST: in Psalm 16:6-11 he wrote: “6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. 7 I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. 8 I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, 10 because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. 11 You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
Peter also expressed this reality in 1 Peter 1:8: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” The Righteous Holy God has saved me through His Supreme Superior Son giving me an inexpressible joy as well as the Message of the Gospel to Share. Praise His Holy Name!
Outline: The Savior’s Superiority
1. Christ alone has His origin in the infinite providence of Heaven. (vs. 31)
2. Christ alone knew Truth by His OWN experience. (32)
3. Christ’s Testimony alone ALWAYS agrees with the Father’s. (33-34a)
4. Christ alone experienced the Holy Spirit in UNLIMITED Measure and Manner. (34b)
5. Christ alone is Supreme because the Father sovereignly granted Christ His Status. (35)
6. Christ alone is the way to escape the wrath of God. (36)
