The one who comes from above is above all.
The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things.
Our modern world has done its best to insulate itself from heavenly things, willing only to accept and speak of earthly things. If our contemporaries accept any truth at all it is often in the form of scientism which would limit all truth claims to only those which can be verified by the scientific method. Though of course that this should be so cannot itself be thus verified. But the world doesn't want to acknowledge even the unseen realities described by philosophy, even when the world itself implicitly relies upon what are inherently philosophical claims. Yet when this insist on this they cannot provide a good account of morality, cannot say that we ought to choose evil rather than good, or of beauty, nor of truth. To them, anything that is not the result of experimentation is a matter of opinion, and ought to be treated as entirely relative and subjective to avoid conflict. They fear the hierarchy to which truth, goodness, and beauty point because that hierarchy does not find them at its peak, but rather another.
But the one who comes from heaven is above all.
He testifies to what he has seen and heard,
but no one accepts his testimony.
Jesus is the one from above, the one who is himself, together with Father and Spirit, the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. During his earthly life his opponents refused to open themselves to his spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures and of reality itself. They constrained themselves to the literal, and to that which they could control. Our own contemporaries are similarly concerned with what they can control, concerned with rejecting what to them seems to be mere fantasy. However, the experts in the time of Jesus were only experts in very specific ways, and so too the experts of our day. There is only one alone who has seen and heard beyond the limitations of creatures of this earth, one alone who can tell us the truth of the things of heaven.
Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy.
For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.
When we are forced to confront Jesus and to decide for or against him it is not merely a philosophical proposition or argument which we must consider. It is something much greater. Will we recognize that the one speaking is speaking the words of God? Or will we rather insist on continuing to play god ourselves? It is possible hear the truth and listen to the voice of Jesus, to concede to him the right to reveal the highest truths about reality. By our response to him we make a response to God himself, to his revelation, and to his plans for us. By believing in him we receive eternal life. But by persisting in earthly ways of thinking we not only don't receive eternal life but we remain under wrath. It is precisely this wrath from which Jesus desires to save us. But often we seem to insist on it for ourselves. We prefer this wrath to ceding our (imagined) authority to another. This is silly, of course, but we often fail to recognize just what it is we are doing, and what our choices actually mean.
Why is the Son so essential? Why not just a glowing indestructible book with answers and knockdown arguments? Because we are meant to be stewards of mysteries that are beyond our merely earthly ways of thinking, realities which we can approach intellectually, but which must ultimately rest on faith. But to navigate in this new world of sacred mystery we would be even more lost than those preoccupied with earthly things without the helper Jesus desired to provide.
He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.
Jesus is the one who pours out the Spirit. And he tells us that he does so without rationing, without limit. For those of us who have received some of this Spirit this means that there is always more for us to receive. This is good news for those of us who often fall back into earthly ways of thinking, ways which tend to see as absolute the temporary things of mortal life. Even dire circumstances need not shake our conviction that what Jesus came from above to reveal is the deeper truth. We see this Spirit-inspired conviction again and again in the Acts of the Apostles.
We must obey God rather than men.
The God of our ancestors raised Jesus,
though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree.
God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior
to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins.
We are witnesses of these things,
as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.
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