I remember the first time my parents explained to me that we were moving. My little five-year-old mind couldn’t grasp the idea of having a different home hundreds of miles away, and so whenever they talked about “moving” soon, I pictured simply moving our bodies—maybe doing a little dance or something. This was an adult matter that was too large for my little child mind to understand.
Just like a child can’t fully comprehend the things of the adult world, even we adults often fail to comprehend the things of God’s world. The infinite, eternal truths of God are on a completely different plane from the truths we would pick up from seeing and feeling this small physical world, and so whenever we try to understand the gospel in worldly terms, we misunderstand! This kind of misunderstanding is a consistent theme in John’s gospel; several times, Jesus speaks about something heavenly, and his listeners can’t help but think he means something worldly, and they grow confused. We really can’t understand the gospel with our minds trapped in the physical.
But every time this happens, Jesus wants to point their minds upward to the much bigger picture of the gospel. Destroying the literal temple was no concern of his; he was talking about the future destruction and resurrection of his own body, for the salvation of the many from sin. Notice that as John writes his gospel, he constantly snaps his fingers at you and makes sure you’re catching on to what’s going on. Don’t get caught in the misunderstanding, he says; look at the big picture!
And here’s the zinger of the big picture gospel: our salvation is accomplished entirely by Jesus and not at all by us. John inserts that last paragraph to remind us why Jesus was a one-man show. Mankind is sinful and in desperate need of the saving work that Jesus did alone. But our sin should also not be a reason for us to despair; rather it’s yet another reminder to look up to the big picture gospel that Jesus’ death, and only Jesus’ death, is the source of our hope and salvation!
Let’s search ourselves: where do our shortsighted minds misunderstand the gospel? In what ways are we blinded by the world and missing the bigger picture? All of us are invited to search the deeper wisdom of God, to know the gospel, and to see the rest of our world through gospel-colored lenses. Look up, understand the bigger picture, and believe in his name.
