John 3:12

Ver. 12. “ If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? ”

When a teacher says to his pupil: “If you do not understand me on this point, how will you understand me on that?” we must suppose that the disciple expects to be instructed respecting this latter point. We must, therefore, conclude from this word of Jesus, that the heavenly things are to Jesus' view those which preoccupy Nicodemus, and with reference to which he had come to interrogate Him: the person of the Messiah, the nature of His kingdom, the way in which He will lay the foundation of, and complete this great work, both in Israel and in the Gentile world. And, indeed, these are precisely the questions which Jesus answers in the second part of the conversation, which is to follow.

The contrast between the past, “if I have told you” and the present “if I tell you” proves that Jesus had not yet set forth publicly what He calls the heavenly things. This conversation was the first communication of Jesus concerning the nature of the Messianic kingdom and the mode of salvation, outside of the innermost circle of His own friends. The public teaching of Jesus had, therefore, up to that time related to what He calls the earthly things. This expression cannot denote things which appertain to earthly interests: for Jesus did not occupy Himself with these things before this, any more than He did afterwards. If by the heavenly things we must of course understand the designs of God, inaccessible to the human mind, for the establishment of His kingdom, we must include in the domain of earthly things all that which appertains to the moral nature of man; outside of the region of redemption and regeneration; thus, everything which Jesus comes to declare respecting the carnal state of the natural man and the necessity of a radical transformation. Jesus is thinking, no doubt, of the contents of His first preachings, analogous to those of John the Baptist, and which Mark sums up (John 1:15) in these words: “ Repent ye, and believe the Gospel: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand; ” those preachings of which we possess the most remarkable example in the Sermon on the Mount. What a difference as compared with the revelations which Jesus makes to Nicodemus! The conversation with him is the first step in a region infinitely elevated above that elementary preaching. We understand now why it has been preserved to us by John; it had been of marked importance in the development of his own faith.

According to Lucke and Reuss the earthly things are the things easy to be understood, and the heavenly “the most elevated ideas of the Gospel, less accessible to an intelligence which was not yet enlightened by it.” This sense is true from the standpoint of consequences, but not from that of explanation strictly so-called. There is no example to prove that heavenly can signify difficult, and earthly, easy. Ewald makes of εἶπον a third person plural: “ If they (the prophets) have spoken to you of earthly things and you have not believed (the reading: ἐπιστεύσατε).”

But a subject of this sort could not be understood, and an ἐγώ could not be omitted in the following clause (Meyer, Baumlein). In this remarkable saying, Jesus contrasts the facts which pertain to the domain of the human consciousness, and which man can verify by observation of himself, with the divine decrees which cannot be known except by means of a revelation. This is the reasoning: “If, when I have declared to you the things whose reality you can, by consulting your own consciousness, discover, you have not believed, how will you believe when I shall reveal to you the secrets of heaven, which must be received solely on the foundation of a word?” There, the testimony of the inner sense facilitates faith; here, on the contrary, everything rests upon confidence in the testimony of the revealer. This testimony being rejected, the ladder, on which man may raise himself to the knowledge of heavenly things, is broken, and the access to the divine secrets remain, closed.

This saying of Jesus should teach apologetics to place the supporting point of faith in the declarations of the Gospel which are most immediately connected with the facts of consciousness and the moral needs of the soul. Its truth being once recognized in this domain where it can be verified by every one, it is already half-demonstrated in relation to those declarations which are connected with the purely divine domain. It will be completely so, as soon as it shall be established that these two parts, divine and human, of the Gospel, are adapted to one another as the two parts of one whole; that the moral needs of man which are proved by the one find their full satisfaction in the divine plans revealed in the other. The moral truth of the Gospel is the first guarantee of its religious truth.