And they pulled up stakes from Mount Hor by the way to the Sea of Reeds, to go around the land of Edom. And the soul of the people became impatient because of the way. And the people spoke against God, and against Moses, Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul hates this light bread. And Jehovah sent fiery serpents among the people; and they bit the people, and many people of Israel died. And the people came in to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against Jehovah, and against you. Pray to Jehovah, and He shall turn the serpent away from us. And Moses prayed on behalf of the people. And Jehovah spoke to Moses, Make yourself a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that when anyone is bitten, when he sees it, he shall live. And Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole; and it happened, if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:4-9)
If I tell you earthly things, and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? And no one has gone up into Heaven, except He having come down out of Heaven, the Son of Man who is in Heaven. And even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone believing into Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone believing into Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:12-16)
By the serpent is signified the ultimate of life in man, which is called the external Sensual, which is natural. To represent this ultimate, which in the Lord was Divine, among the sons of Israel, with whom all things were representative, a serpent of brass was made; and the signification was, that, if they looked to the Divine Human of the Lord, they would revive, that is, if they believed in Him, they should have eternal life, as the Lord himself also teaches. (Apocalypse Explained 70)
…the salvation of any one depends upon the recognition and acknowledgment of God, for it is a fact, as is said in the Preface, that ‘upon a just idea of God the entire heaven is founded, and on earth the entire Church, and in general every religion, since by means of that idea there is a conjunction, and through the conjunction light, wisdom and eternal happiness’. Now because the Lord is Himself the God of heaven and earth, therefore unless He Himself is acknowledged no one is admitted into heaven, for heaven is His body; but he stands below and is bitten by serpents, that is, by infernal spirits, from whose bites there is no healing except what the sons of Israel had, as they were looking towards the serpent of bronze (Num. xxi 1-9). That the Lord as to the Divine Human is understood by this is plain from these [words] in John:- As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life John iii 14, 15. (Apocalypse Revealed 469{2-3})
“the Son of man,” [signifies] the Lord in respect to the Divine Human, and in respect to Divine truth, since Divine truth proceeds from Him; it is also that from which comes the essential [aspect of] the church, namely, the opening of the internal or spiritual man, and its conjunction with the external, since everything of the church with man is from the Lord’s Divine Human. For everything of love and faith, these being the two things that make up the church, proceeds from the Lord’s Divine Human, and not immediately from the Divine Itself; for what proceeds immediately from His Divine Itself, does not fall into any thought and affection of man, nor consequently into faith and love, because it is far above them. (Apocalypse Explained 151)
To be reborn as to our spirit is to have a new mind. We must acquire truths belonging to faith so that we can be born into a new understanding and then we must look to live from this new understanding of truths for the purposes of inner reflection and self-examination. As we do this, our heart also is reborn into new affections that are orientated towards the heavenly things of love. There is nothing complicated or obscure here. To be born again simply means to look to the Lord as the Word for our life. This places us on the path of regeneration which is a continual process of being reborn as we commit ourselves to living the spiritual life.
In Jesus’s teaching in our reading today we have a reference to the idea of Jacob’s ladder again. If you remember, a few articles ago we heard Jesus say to Nathaniel that he would see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. Here we see this same idea only now the Lord says…
…no one has gone up into Heaven, except He having come down out of Heaven, that Son of Man who is in Heaven.
If Nicodemus was confused before, he must have been totally flummoxed by this statement. Remember in the literal sense Nicodemus had just confessed that he believed that Jesus was from God because of the signs he had done. For in making this confession, he was effectively saying that Jesus was a prophet, a teacher from God. So, when Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of Man, any Jew, particularly one who was a teacher of Israel, would immediately recognise in that title a reference to one being a prophet. Now Nicodemus himself, in the way he had addressed Jesus as Rabbi or teacher, had effectively made this connection, so wouldn’t have been too surprised to have heard Him affirm it. But he wouldn’t have realised the implications of what he was acknowledging with his lips. And in Jesus’s statement it is clear that He is calling on Nicodemus to think more deeply about what his loose declaration actually means.
This statement is also a challenge to us in terms of how we regard the Word. We can so easily say that the Word is from God, but have we ever really stopped to consider what such a statement means or thought through its implications? A prophet is God’s mouthpiece and is charged with delivering the Word of the Lord to the people of God. Without words from the Lord a prophet isn’t a prophet, therefore the title of prophet is only valid when the Lord’s words are spoken by the one holding the title. Today the Lord speaks to us by means of the Word itself. The Word is of course the Lord and so when the title the Son of Man is used by Jesus concerning Himself, it also refers to the Word or Divine truth as understood within the bounds of finite human consciousness. In effect, our understanding of Divine truth will always be limited so when we read the Word and truth enters our minds by means of it, we understand it in a very limited way. In this sense, our understanding of the Word is a product of, or the offspring of Divine truth interacting with our limited capacity to grasp it. This offspring, our finite limited understanding of truth, is what is called the Son of Man. This title refers to the formulation of spiritual teachings accommodated to the limits of our finiteness.
Nicodemus stood before Jesus – here was the Divine truth itself in its lowest or most concrete human form or manifestation. Yet to the naturally minded Nicodemus He was just another man, another teacher from God, even another prophet, another ‘son of man’, but a man, nonetheless. This speaks to how the Word appears to the natural mind. The Word in its literal sense doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. On its surface it is filled with contradictions, human frailties, and weaknesses. To the natural mind it’s merely the product of human authorship. It contains ideas about God that present Him with the full range of human emotions, both positive and negative. So while God is love, He is also capable of anger, envy and jealousy – of being able to send fiery serpents amidst His people as punishment. The natural mind may concede that the Word appears to be prophetic in character, just as Nicodemus recognised Jesus to be a prophet, but in its final evaluation of the Word the natural mind sees nothing in its literal sense that separates it from other forms of ancient literature.
On the surface, and when judged by the senses of man, the Word appears very human, it appears to be a product of the mind of man just like so many other sacred writings. To the physical senses of Nicodemus, the Word Himself appeared as any other man. Yet we are told that Jesus is the Divine Truth Itself and that the Word is the Lord. As such we see that the Son of Man is a term that refers to both Jesus and to the Word because both are a manifestation of the Divine Truth to human consciousness. Both appear ordinarily human as to their outer aspect but beneath this we find that it is not an ordinary human at all, but a Divine Human. This is particularly the case of the Word understood in the light of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity as they uncover for us the inner spiritual meaning beneath the veil of a natural humanity.
Therefore, the Text sits before the minds of people in the natural world, judged by the majority as nothing remarkable. Yet its own testimony is that of the Son of Man Himself who says to Nicodemus,
No one has gone up into Heaven, except He having come down out of Heaven, the Son of Man who is in Heaven.
That He who stood before him was the Son of Man who not only descends and ascends into heaven but is in heaven in the very moment of being perceived. What a remarkable statement! By means of the Word we have the potential to behold what is in heaven. The Divine truth appears before our natural consciousness as the letter of the Word but is simultaneously, as to its deeper spiritual meaning, in heaven. Therefore, it is the Word, and the Word alone, that serves to connect humanity with what is of heaven because it is the only thing available to the natural consciousness of human beings that is in heaven while on earth. Such is the nature of the Word or Divine truth, for heaven is nothing else but the Lord’s presence within those truths that we have taken from the Word into our life.
The Word stands before us, awaiting our response. And if we are willing, it teaches what must occur if we are to enter into the new birth and be regenerated, the Lord declares that…
… even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone believing into Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone believing into Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
The Son of Man is the Lord, the Word, Divine truth – understood within our finite mental limitations. And so here is our life task, to lift up the Son of Man as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. For it is in this act of lifting up the Son of Man that anyone can be led into a belief that leads to everlasting life. But our Nicodemus state of mind looks upon the Word with natural eyes and sees a natural man, a human being like itself, although one who is obviously called and blessed by God. It can’t see beyond what the natural senses convey to our mind and unless we are able to be moved beyond the fallacies of what these senses tell us, we will never come to know who the Man before us truly is.
And so, the Son of Man, the Word, must be lifted up in our consciousness and seen as Divine if we are to be saved. A belief that says the Word is Divine but doesn’t lead to action in applying its truths to examine our life, is not a true belief. A professed belief in the Divinity of the Word that doesn’t motivate us to seek the Lord within it, is a belief that hasn’t penetrated passed the external memory of the senses. When seen in clear light, such a belief has no substance – being nothing more than a vapour which in the final analysis doesn’t view the Word as Divine at all but as something merely human. And so it is able to be subjected to our own natural reasonings so that the delights of the loves of self and the world can be maintained at the centre of our life. In such cases, the natural man within us is allowed to rule over the spiritual and while there may be an acknowledgement of the lips that ascents to the value of the Word, it doesn’t penetrate into our life in the form of taking truths and practicing them. Without this, there is no spiritual activity within us and where there is no spiritual activity – there is very little, if any, spiritual life.
To have the Word and not use it is to judge it as not worthy of our attention. To have the Word and live in a state of thinking we need to do something in response to it, to engage with it more to build a stronger spiritual life, but never actually seeming to get around to doing so, leaves us vulnerable to states of guilt and self-condemnation because we then live with an underlying sense of not doing what we feel we should be doing. We may, like the children of Israel, complain because we imagine that the way of a spiritual life is too hard, particularly with everything else we have to deal with in our daily life. But if we fail to act on the truths that we are given, we open ourselves up to having lower lusts eat away at out our life. Small acts of selfishness that go unrecognised become the poison of the fiery serpents – of gossip, or resentment, or bitterness, or guilt, or judgemental attitudes that are opposed to the Word of the Lord.
And Jehovah sent fiery serpents among the people; and they bit the people, and many people of Israel died. And the people came in to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against Jehovah, and against you.
To lift up the Son of Man is to elevate the Word in our life by living from it. It is this alone that saves – this is the kind of believing into Him that is needed. For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, that is, He gave us the Word, Divine truth, in a form that we can grasp with our understanding so that we might use it and be transformed by it and through it. To acknowledge that the Word is Divine, that it is the Lord, opens up the mind for perceiving it in a new way. And it is this that can lead to the kingdom of heaven becoming present within us.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone believing into Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.