Yohanes 3:7

3:7 Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all ¹  be born from above.’ ² 

Yohanes 3:14

3:14 Just as ³  Moses lifted up the serpent ⁴  in the wilderness, ⁵  so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ⁶ 

Yohanes 19:11

19:11 Jesus replied, “You would have no authority ⁷  over me at all, unless it was given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you ⁸  is guilty of greater sin.” ⁹ 

[3:7]  ¹ tn “All” has been supplied to indicate the plural pronoun in the Greek text.

[3:7]  ² tn Or “born again.” The same Greek word with the same double meaning occurs in v. 3.

[3:14]  ³ tn Grk “And just as.”

[3:14]  ⁴ sn Or the snake, referring to the bronze serpent mentioned in Num 21:9.

[3:14]  ⁵ sn An allusion to Num 21:5-9.

[3:14]  ⁶ sn So must the Son of Man be lifted up. This is ultimately a prediction of Jesus’ crucifixion. Nicodemus could not have understood this, but John’s readers, the audience to whom the Gospel is addressed, certainly could have (compare the wording of John 12:32). In John, being lifted up refers to one continuous action of ascent, beginning with the cross but ending at the right hand of the Father. Step 1 is Jesus’ death; step 2 is his resurrection; and step 3 is the ascension back to heaven. It is the upward swing of the “pendulum” which began with the incarnation, the descent of the Word become flesh from heaven to earth (cf. Paul in Phil 2:5-11). See also the note on the title Son of Man in 1:51.

[19:11]  ⁷ tn Or “power.”

[19:11]  ⁸ tn Or “who delivered me over to you.”

[19:11]  sn The one who handed me over to you appears to be a reference to Judas at first; yet Judas did not deliver Jesus up to Pilate, but to the Jewish authorities. The singular may be a reference to Caiaphas, who as high priest was representative of all the Jewish authorities, or it may be a generic singular referring to all the Jewish authorities directly. In either case the end result is more or less the same.

[19:11]  ⁹ tn Grk “has the greater sin” (an idiom).

[19:11]  sn Because Pilate had no authority over Jesus except what had been given to him from God, the one who handed Jesus over to Pilate was guilty of greater sin. This does not absolve Pilate of guilt; it simply means his guilt was less than those who handed Jesus over to him, because he was not acting against Jesus out of deliberate hatred or calculated malice, like the Jewish religious authorities. These were thereby guilty of greater sin.