This pericope explains why Jesus must become greater. It also unites several themes that appear through chapter 3. John the Apostle or John the Baptist may be the speaker. This is not entirely clear.
3:31-32 The incarnate Son of God has come to earth from above (cf. v. 13). John sought to fulfill his purpose of proving that Jesus is the Christ (20:31) partially by stressing that Jesus' origin was "from above."Birth from above (v. 3), the new birth, can only come by faith in Him who is from above. His place of origin illustrates His superiority over all earthly people that humanity binds to the "earth"(Gr. ge, this planet) including John the Baptist. Finite humans can only reveal things that they experience on the earth, but Jesus could reveal things about heaven. John could call people to repentance, but he could not reveal divine counsels, as Jesus could, nor could he provide new life from above. Jesus had previously said that people do not typically receive His witness (v. 11), and the writer repeated that fact here.162
3:33-34 However some people do receive His witness. Those who do thereby assert their belief that the Father, not just the Son, is truthful. Seals indicated a personal guarantee as well as denoting ownership. Jesus so exactly revealed God's words that to believe Jesus is to believe God and to disbelieve Jesus is to disbelieve God (cf. 1 John 5:10).
All of God's former messengers received a limited measure of God's Spirit. The Spirit came on the Old Testament prophets only for limited times and purposes. However, God gave His Spirit to Jesus without limit. This guaranteed the truth of Jesus' words. The Spirit descended on Jesus at His baptism and remained on Him (1:32-33; cf. Isa. 11:2; 42:1; 61:1). God gave His Spirit without measure only to Jesus (cf. 1 Cor. 12:4-11).
"Thirty-nine times the Gospel of John refers to Jesus being sent from God (vv. 17, 34; 4:34; 5:23-24, 30, 36-38; 6:29, 38-39, 44, 57; 7:16, 28-29; 8:16, 18, 26, 29, 42; 9:4; 10:36; 11:42; 12:44-45, 49; 13:16, 20; 14:24; 15:21; 16:5; 17:3, 18, 21, 23, 25; 20:21). This affirms Jesus' deity and heavenly origin, as well as God's sovereignty and love in initiating the Son's Incarnation (cf. Gal. 4:4; 1 John 4:9-10, 14)."163
3:35 God not only gave Jesus His Spirit without measure, but He has placed everything in His hands. The Father has been gracious to the Son because He loves Him even as He has been gracious to human beings in providing salvation because He loves us. Everything that the Father has done, revelation and redemption, flows from His love for people through the Son. This statement also points out the dependence of the human Jesus on the Father, one of John's major themes.
3:36 In conclusion, John placed the alternatives side by side. Belief in the Son of God results in eternal life (1:12; 3:3, 5, 15, 16), life fitted for eternity with God and enjoyed to a limited extent now. Unbelief results in God's wrath remaining on the unbeliever and his or her not obtaining eternal life. John spoke of unbelief as disobedience (rejection, NIV) because when God offers salvation unbelief becomes disobedience.164
God's wrath is His personal response to unbelief, not some impersonal principle of retribution.
"It is the divine allergy to moral evil, the reaction of righteousness to unrighteousness. God is neither easily angered nor vindictive. But by his very nature he is unalterably committed to opposing and judging all disobedience."165
Unbelievers will experience God's wrath primarily in the future (cf. 5:28-29). This is the only reference to God's wrath in John's Gospel or his epistles, though it appears six times in the Book of Revelation (cf. Rom. 1:18-3:26).
"The wrath of God' is a concept that is uncongenial to many modern students, and various devices are adopted to soften the expression or explain it away. This cannot be done, however, without doing great violence to many passages of Scripture and without detracting from God's moral character. Concerning the first of these points, . . . there are literally hundreds of passages in the Bible referring to God's wrath, and the rejection of them all leaves us with a badly mutilated Bible. And with reference to the second, if we abandon the idea of the wrath of God we are left with a God who is not ready to act against moral evil. . . . We should not expect it [God's wrath] to fade away with the passage of time. Anyone who continues in unbelief and disobedience can look for nothing other than the persisting wrath of God. That is basic to our understanding of the gospel. Unless we are saved from real peril there is no meaning in salvation"166
This verse brings the whole third chapter to a climax.
In this pericope the Apostle John explained that Jesus came from heaven with greater authority than any former prophet. What He revealed came from His own observations in heaven. His words accurately and fully represented God. Moreover He came because the Father fully endowed Him with divine authority and assistance out of love. Furthermore He is to be the object of people's faith. Therefore He was superior to John the Baptist as well as every other divine representative.
The events in John's narrative of Jesus' first visit to Jerusalem (2:13-3:36) set the tone for Jesus' ministry, particularly His later occasions of ministry in Jerusalem (ch. 5; 7:10-10:42; 12:12-50). The conflict between belief and unbelief begins to surface here.
