John 3:13–15. No one ascends to heaven except He who has come down from heaven, namely the Son of Man, who is continually in heaven. And as Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man also be lifted up, so that all who believe in Him may not be lost, but have eternal life.
‘Look, no one ascends to heaven except He alone who has come down from heaven, namely the Son of Man, who is continually in heaven; and as Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man also be lifted up, so that all who believe in Him may not be lost, but have eternal life. Tell Me, do you grasp this?’
Nicodemus says, ‘Dear Master, how should I, how could I? There is a peculiar kind of wisdom in You. As I have already remarked to You, I could more easily read the ancient Egyptian bird writing than understand Your wisdom! I must now openly confess to You that, if Your mighty deeds did not bind me to You, I would have to take You for a fool and a prankster, for no reasonable person has ever spoken in Your manner! But Your deeds show that there must be a fullness of divine might and wisdom within You, without which no one could perform such deeds.
But where the one is purely divine, the second must be divine too. Your deeds, dear Master, are divine, and so Your teaching about the kingdom of God on earth must also be divine, whether I understand it or not. But if I consider even a little from a worldly standpoint the proposition, “No one ascends to heaven except he who has come down from heaven,” I am completely lost! Dear Master, since Enoch and Elijah surely no person on earth has had the good fortune to ascend visibly into the heavens. Perhaps You can become the third? And if You did perhaps become the third, would that be of any use to all the other people, who can never enter the heavens because they have not come down from them?
Moreover, You also said that He who came down from heaven is actually on earth only in appearance, while in truth He is still continually in the heavens! Accordingly, for the present only Enoch and Elijah would share in the coming kingdom of God, and perhaps You later, while all the other millions upon millions may lie down in the damp, dark grave for all eternities of eternities and, by God’s grace and mercy, become earth again and finally nothing!
Dear Master, the poor worms of the earth, ridiculously enough called human beings in every respect, thank You for such a kingdom of God on earth! Who does not know that this is how it is and has always been? One swallow, or even three, does not make a summer! What had Enoch and Elijah done that they were taken up from earth into heaven? At bottom, nothing but what was inherent in their heavenly nature. Thus they had no merit, and according to Your present explanation they were taken up from earth into the heavens purely because they had at the same time come down from the heavens to earth!
Look, there is terribly little hope in this and almost no comfort for poor humanity on this harsh earth! But as I told You earlier, I still hold Your teaching to be divine and supremely wise, although, as I demonstrated with one of Your propositions, viewed with natural understanding it is and must be sheer folly, as You will see just as well as I do?
But what You mean by the lifting up of the Son of Man, which is to be like that of Moses’ bronze serpent in the wilderness, and how and why all who believe in this Son of Man lifted up like a serpent are to have eternal life, already passes into the realm of parable, that is, into something that is sheer nonsense in itself! Who is this Son of Man? Where is he now? What is he doing? Does he too come from the heavens, like Enoch and Elijah? Is he yet to be born? What are people, who have surely never seen him any more than I have, to believe about this Son of Man? How can he come to this earth if he is continually in heaven? Where will he be lifted up, and when? Will he thereby become a most mighty, invincible king of the Jews?
Look, dear Master, this surely sounds very strange from the mouth of a man who shows by his deeds that he must be full of divine power and might! But, as I said, I will not let any of this lead me astray and continue to regard You as a great prophet raised up by God.
You see from this that I am not one of those who immediately reject a teaching when they do not understand it. I therefore ask You to add just a little explanation, for in this form I cannot possibly grasp and understand You. Look, a great deal depends on me in the land of the Jews, especially in Solomon’s city, where I am the ruler of all the Jews! If I introduce You and Your teaching, it will be accepted and established; but if I let it fall, it too will fall and find no acceptance. So be so good as to give me just a little light!’
I say, ‘You have now used many words and spoken like a person who has no inkling of heavenly things. But it cannot be otherwise, for you are in the night of the world and cannot behold the light that has come from the heavens to illuminate the darkness of this world’s night. You do have a glimmer of twilight, yet you still do not see what is, so to speak, sitting on your very nose!’