After speaking about His body being destroyed, the Lord Jesus said, “In three days I will raise it up” (v. 19b). The words in three days signify in resurrection. After Satan destroyed the Lord’s physical body on the cross, His body was put into a tomb and rested there. The Lord Jesus then went into death and came out in resurrection. When He arose, He Himself raised up His dead and buried body. After His resurrection, His body, the temple, was reared up on a much larger scale. The body that the enemy destroyed by crucifixion was merely the body of Jesus. What was raised up by the Lord Jesus in resurrection was not only His physical body but also everyone who is joined to Him by faith (1 Pet. 1:3; Eph. 2:6). Since the day of His resurrection, the Lord Jesus has been enlarging His Body in resurrection life. What an immense Body Christ has today in His resurrection!
The Christian life consists of two matters: changing death into life and building up of the Body of Christ, the temple, in resurrection. We may summarize our Christian life by saying that the Christian life is the changing of death into life for the building up of the Body of Christ. This is the proper, genuine, and complete Christian life.
Chapter three of John reveals that we may experience and enjoy Christ as the bronze serpent, the light, the Bridegroom, and the immeasurable Son of God.
Verses 14 and 15 speak of Christ as the bronze serpent.
In verse 14 the Lord Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” In Genesis 3 Satan, the serpent, injected his nature into man’s flesh. When the children of Israel in the wilderness complained and were rebellious, speaking against God and against Moses, “Jehovah sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died” (Num. 21:6). Then the people came to Moses, confessed that they had sinned, and asked him to pray that the Lord would take away the serpents. When Moses prayed for the people, God told him to lift up a bronze serpent on their behalf for God’s judgment, that by looking upon that bronze serpent, all might live. That was a type. Here in John 3:14 the Lord Jesus applied that type to Himself, indicating that when He was in the flesh, He was in “the likeness of the flesh of sin” (Rom. 8:3), which likeness is equal to the form of the bronze serpent. The bronze serpent had the form of the serpent but was without the serpent’s poison. Christ was made in “the likeness of the flesh of sin,” but He did not participate in any way in the sin of the flesh (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15). When He was lifted up in the flesh on the cross, by His death Satan, the old serpent, the devil, the embodiment of sin and death, was destroyed (John 12:31-33; Rev. 12:9a; Heb. 2:14).
As the bronze serpent, Christ destroyed the devil that the believers may have the eternal life of God. Concerning this, John 3:15 goes on to say, “That every one who believes into Him may have eternal life.” This is the divine life, the uncreated life of God, which not only is everlasting with respect to time but also is eternal and divine in nature.
The eternal life received by the believers is for their regeneration (vv. 3, 5-8). Regeneration is accomplished in the human spirit by the Holy Spirit of God with God’s life, the uncreated, eternal life. Thus, to be regenerated is to have the divine life, the eternal life (in addition to the human, natural life) as the new source and new element of a new person.
Through regeneration the believers have the eternal life of God in addition to their natural life, that they may live by this life while denying their natural life (vv. 15-16; Matt. 16:24). It does not matter whether a person is gentle or rough, or whether his natural disposition is quick or slow; his salvation does not depend on improvement or refinement. According to the truth in the Bible concerning the union of the Spirit of God and the spirit of the believers, it is altogether wrong for the believers to improve their behavior. To increase gentleness is wrong; to improve roughness is also wrong. This is because the natural life, whether gentle or rough, must be completely denied. The regeneration revealed in the Bible is not a religion, nor is it a set of moral teachings for improving oneself. Regeneration is to have God as life in addition to our original human life. Hence, we should not live by our original life, our first life; rather, we must deny our first life, the natural life, and live by our second life, the eternal life.