Wahyu 21:3

21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Look! The residence ¹  of God is among human beings. ²  He ³  will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. ⁴ 

Zakharia 8:8

8:8 And I will bring them to settle within Jerusalem. They will be my people, and I will be their God, ⁵  in truth and righteousness.’

Roma 8:15-17

8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, ⁶  but you received the Spirit of adoption, ⁷  by whom ⁸  we cry, “Abba, Father.” 8:16 The Spirit himself bears witness to ⁹  our spirit that we are God’s children. 8:17 And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ) ¹⁰  – if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him.

Ibrani 8:10

8:10 “For this is the covenant that I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put ¹¹  my laws in their minds ¹²  and I will inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people. ¹³ 

Ibrani 8:1

The High Priest of a Better Covenant

8:1 Now the main point of what we are saying is this: ¹⁴  We have such a high priest, one who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, ¹⁵ 

Yohanes 3:1-3

Conversation with Nicodemus

3:1 Now a certain man, a Pharisee ¹⁶  named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, ¹⁷  3:2 came to Jesus ¹⁸  at night ¹⁹  and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs ²⁰  that you do unless God is with him.” 3:3 Jesus replied, ²¹  “I tell you the solemn truth, ²²  unless a person is born from above, ²³  he cannot see the kingdom of God.” ²⁴ 

[21:3]  ¹ tn Or “dwelling place”; traditionally, “tabernacle”; literally “tent.”

[21:3]  ² tn Or “people”; Grk “men” (ἀνθρώπων, anqrwpwn), a generic use of the term. In the translation “human beings” was used here because “people” occurs later in the verse and translates a different Greek word (λαοί, laoi).

[21:3]  ³ tn Grk “men, and he.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[21:3]  ⁴ tc ‡ Most mss (א Ï^K) do not add the words “[as] their God” (αὐτῶν θεός, autwn qeos) after “he will be with them.” The mss with these words include A 2030 2050 2329 al. The Andreas group (Ï^A) also has the words, but in a different arrangement with the preceding (ἔσται μετ᾿ αὐτῶν θεὸς αὐτῶν, estai met’ autwn qeo" autwn). Not only do the words float, but scribes may have been motivated to make a connection here more directly with Isa 7:14; 8:8; Jer 24:7; 31:33; Zech 8:8. In light of sufficient external evidence as well as the possibility that the longer reading is theologically motivated, the shorter reading is preferred. NA²⁷ places the words in brackets, indicating doubts as to their authenticity.

[8:8]  ⁵ sn The affirmation They will be my people, and I will be their God speaks of covenant renewal, a restoration of the unbroken fellowship the Lord desired to have with his people but which their disloyalty had shattered. In the eschaton God and Israel will be in covenant union once again (cf. Jer 31:33).

[8:15]  ⁶ tn Grk “slavery again to fear.”

[8:15]  ⁷ tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (Juioqesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e. in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).”

[8:15]  ⁸ tn Or “in that.”

[8:16]  ⁹ tn Or possibly “with.” ExSyn 160-61, however, notes the following: “At issue, grammatically, is whether the Spirit testifies alongside of our spirit (dat. of association), or whether he testifies to our spirit (indirect object) that we are God’s children. If the former, the one receiving this testimony is unstated (is it God? or believers?). If the latter, the believer receives the testimony and hence is assured of salvation via the inner witness of the Spirit. The first view has the advantage of a σύν- (sun-) prefixed verb, which might be expected to take an accompanying dat. of association (and is supported by NEB, JB, etc.). But there are three reasons why πνεύματι (pneumati) should not be taken as association: (1) Grammatically, a dat. with a σύν- prefixed verb does not necessarily indicate association. This, of course, does not preclude such here, but this fact at least opens up the alternatives in this text. (2) Lexically, though συμμαρτυρέω (summarturew) originally bore an associative idea, it developed in the direction of merely intensifying μαρτυρέω (marturew). This is surely the case in the only other NT text with a dat. (Rom 9:1). (3) Contextually, a dat. of association does not seem to support Paul’s argument: ‘What standing has our spirit in this matter? Of itself it surely has no right at all to testify to our being sons of God’ [C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans [ICC], 1:403]. In sum, Rom 8:16 seems to be secure as a text in which the believer’s assurance of salvation is based on the inner witness of the Spirit. The implications of this for one’s soteriology are profound: The objective data, as helpful as they are, cannot by themselves provide assurance of salvation; the believer also needs (and receives) an existential, ongoing encounter with God’s Spirit in order to gain that familial comfort.”

[8:17]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “on the one hand, heirs of God; on the other hand, fellow heirs with Christ.” Some prefer to render v. 17 as follows: “And if children, then heirs – that is, heirs of God. Also fellow heirs with Christ if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him.” Such a translation suggests two distinct inheritances, one coming to all of God’s children, the other coming only to those who suffer with Christ. The difficulty of this view, however, is that it ignores the correlative conjunctions μέν…δέ (men…de, “on the one hand…on the other hand”): The construction strongly suggests that the inheritances cannot be separated since both explain “then heirs.” For this reason, the preferred translation puts this explanation in parentheses.

[8:10]  ¹¹ tn Grk “putting…I will inscribe.”

[8:10]  ¹² tn Grk “mind.”

[8:10]  ¹³ tn Grk “I will be to them for a God and they will be to me for a people,” following the Hebrew constructions of Jer 31.

[8:1]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “the main point of the things being said.”

[8:1]  ¹⁵ sn An allusion to Ps 110:1; see Heb 1:3, 13.

[3:1]  ¹⁶ sn See the note on Pharisees in 1:24.

[3:1]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “a ruler of the Jews” (denoting a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest legal, legislative, and judicial body among the Jews).

[3:2]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:2]  ¹⁹ tn Or “during the night.”

[3:2]  sn Possibly Nicodemus came…at night because he was afraid of public association with Jesus, or he wanted a lengthy discussion without interruptions; no explanation for the timing of the interview is given by the author. But the timing is significant for John in terms of the light-darkness motif – compare John 9:4, 11:10, 13:30 (especially), 19:39, and 21:3. Out of the darkness of his life and religiosity Nicodemus came to the Light of the world. The author probably had multiple meanings or associations in mind here, as is often the case.

[3:2]  ²⁰ sn The reference to signs (σημεῖα, shmeia) forms a link with John 2:23-25. Those people in Jerusalem believed in Jesus because of the signs he had performed. Nicodemus had apparently seen them too. But for Nicodemus all the signs meant is that Jesus was a great teacher sent from God. His approach to Jesus was well-intentioned but theologically inadequate; he had failed to grasp the messianic implications of the miraculous signs.

[3:3]  ²¹ tn Grk “answered and said to him.”

[3:3]  ²² tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[3:3]  ²³ tn The word ἄνωθεν (anwqen) has a double meaning, either “again” (in which case it is synonymous with παλίν [palin]) or “from above” (BDAG 92 s.v. ἄνωθεν). This is a favorite technique of the author of the Fourth Gospel, and it is lost in almost all translations at this point. John uses the word 5 times, in 3:3, 7; 3:31; 19:11 and 23. In the latter 3 cases the context makes clear that it means “from above.” Here (3:3, 7) it could mean either, but the primary meaning intended by Jesus is “from above.” Nicodemus apparently understood it the other way, which explains his reply, “How can a man be born when he is old? He can’t enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?” The author uses the technique of the “misunderstood question” often to bring out a particularly important point: Jesus says something which is misunderstood by the disciples or (as here) someone else, which then gives Jesus the opportunity to explain more fully and in more detail what he really meant.

[3:3]  sn Or born again. The Greek word ἄνωθεν (anwqen) can mean both “again” and “from above,” giving rise to Nicodemus’ misunderstanding about a second physical birth (v. 4).

[3:3]  ²⁴ sn What does Jesus’ statement about not being able to see the kingdom of God mean within the framework of John’s Gospel? John uses the word kingdom (βασιλεία, basileia) only 5 times (3:3, 5; 18:36 [3x]). Only here is it qualified with the phrase of God. The fact that John does not stress the concept of the kingdom of God does not mean it is absent from his theology, however. Remember the messianic implications found in John 2, both the wedding and miracle at Cana and the cleansing of the temple. For Nicodemus, the term must surely have brought to mind the messianic kingdom which Messiah was supposed to bring. But Nicodemus had missed precisely this point about who Jesus was. It was the Messiah himself with whom Nicodemus was speaking. Whatever Nicodemus understood, it is clear that the point is this: He misunderstood Jesus’ words. He over-literalized them, and thought Jesus was talking about repeated physical birth, when he was in fact referring to new spiritual birth.