At the end of the chapter, John the Baptist goes to great pains to emphatically state he is not the messiah.  Likely this indicates that even though this gospel was written as much as 70 to 75 years after the time of John the Baptist there were still followers of John the Baptist who thought he was the messiah.  It can be really hard for us to let go of the messiahs we want and to accept the messiah that is.  In the first story Jesus and Nicodemus have a clandestine debate.  Verse 19 says, “and this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”  I want us to keep this verse in mind when we get to the Resurrection stories at the end of the book.  What is the sentencing as a result of God’s judgement going to be?

Thanks to Simon Birkoff for reading.