“The One who comes from above is head and shoulders over other messengers from God. The earthborn is earthbound and speaks earth language; the heavenborn is in a league of his own. He sets out the evidence of what he saw and heard in heaven. No one wants to deal with these facts. But anyone who examines this evidence will come to stake his life on this: that God himself is the truth.

34-36 “The One that God sent speaks God’s words. And don’t think he rations out the Spirit in bits and pieces. The Father loves the Son extravagantly. He turned everything over to him so he could give it away—a lavish distribution of gifts. That is why whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything, life complete and forever! And that is also why the person who avoids and distrusts the Son is in the dark and doesn’t see life. All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that.” (The Message)

John continues with his theme of the greatness and superiority of Jesus. I believe every preacher – indeed, every believer – needs to be increasingly gripped with the wonder of this truth.

If I could, I would like to look every person in the world in the eye, and say to them (if they would give me a hearing), ‘Please will you take as open and honest and sincere a look at Jesus as you can, and then tell me what you think.’ As Michael Green observed in a great book about the resurrection of Christ, ‘Sherlock Holmes would never make up his mind about a case before thoroughly examining the evidence to see where it led.’

Another famous Christian author wrote that, in his experience, it was rare for an adult to take a serious look at Jesus and not be converted.

Eternal destiny is at stake in the acceptance or rejection of Jesus: ‘To reject the Son’s witness is to rebel against the highest authority in the universe…To reject Christ’s witness is to sin against love and light.’ Warren Wiersbe