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Transcript 214C — "No One Has Ascended to Heaven" [Jn 3:13]
CALLER: In John 3:13 it says, "No one ascended to Heaven." So I wondered what happened to Enoch, or how that's being worked out there in the Bible. And also verse 14.
HC: The question that's raised is concerned with John 3:13 and 14. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. And He's discussing with Nicodemus what it means to be born again, discussing with Nicodemus how it is possible for a person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
And then finally, in verse 12, Jesus said to him, "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you Heavenly things? No one has ascended into Heaven, but He who descended from Heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life."
Now if we isolate verse 13, "No one has ascended into Heaven, but He who descended from Heaven, the Son of Man," we might immediately point out that there is some kind of a contradiction, because in the Old Testament it says very clearly that Elijah ascended into Heaven in a whirlwind. And we read of Enoch that he was not, because God took him, implying that he went into Heaven. But at any rate, the Bible is very plain that Elijah ascended into Heaven in a whirlwind. And so, since that would be a contradiction, we know immediately that we've got to find some other kind of an answer. That is not what God is saying, that nobody physically has entered into Heaven.
But let's look at the context. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, and He says in verse 12, "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe," In other words, "You don't trust Me enough even when I talk about earthly things. How can you believe if I tell you Heavenly things?" And now He's saying, "I'm the only one qualified to talk to you about Heavenly things. No one has ascended into Heaven. That is, no one has ever been in Heaven and is here on earth to tell you about Heavenly things. Only I, because I have descended from Heaven, the Son of Man. I am qualified to tell you Heavenly things. I come from Heaven. I am the Lord God who has become the Son of Man."
And of course verse 14 is teaching another beautiful truth. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Now He's expanded and really gotten into another subject very quickly, that's relating back to what He had been talking about earlier, "Ye must be born again." You see, in the children of Israel murmured against God, and God sent snakes among them, so they bit these rebellious Israelites. And the Israelites began to die. And finally the people cried out. And God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, so that anyone at all who would look at that bronze serpent could be healed of his snake bite, and would live.
Now God is relating, in this verse, the Lord Jesus Christ to this bronze serpent. Now how can this be? How can there be a relationship here? What does the serpent represent in the Old Testament? Well, the serpent represents Satan, the dragon. "He is that old serpent, the devil," we read in another place. And sin and Satan are intimately inter-linked. Satan is the king of that which is sinful. And these serpents that were biting the Israelites were a figure of their sin. Their sin was causing them to perish. Their sin was causing them to be under God's judgment. They experienced physical death because of the bite of these serpents, but it was really a picture of the spiritual death that we are subject to because of our sins.
Well, now we have a real problem. The bronze serpent was put on a pole, and they looked at that, and then they became healed. Now how can that relate to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the very antithesis, on the very opposite side of Satan? Christ is not a serpent. Christ is the Lamb that was slain. Haven't we walked ourselves into a problem here?
Not really, if we consider this. The Bible says that Christ became sin for us. In another place it says that He nailed our sins to the cross. And we look to the cross in order to find salvation. It is there that we have to place our hope. And so the bronze serpent was a figure of Christ, who had become sin for us. He became as one who was condemned, who had become desperately wicked, because, of course, He became saddled with our sins. And yet it is at the cross that we have to look, in order that we might be saved from our sins.
And that's why verse 15 goes along and says that whoever believes in Him, that whosoever looks to the cross and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ may have eternal life.
Well, thank you for that question.