There is indeed a gulf which they cannot pass, but it is not that between souls in Abraham’s bosom and souls in Hades. It is the gulf between heaven and earth. This He brings out in two pairs of antithetic clauses. (Comp. Note on John 1:3.) These clauses interpret each other, and no deeper meaning is to be given to the first pair than is borne by the second. We may arrange them in a pair of affirmatives and a pair of negatives —
“Ye are from beneath;” “ye are of this world.”
“I am from above” (not from beneath); “I am not of this world.”
We have thus the full Hebrew expression of one thought, and this is the thought which John the Baptist, from another point of view, taught his disciples in John 3:31. They are by origin and nature of the earth. He was by origin and nature from heaven. Of the earth, their feelings and thoughts and life were of the earth, and, by devotion to things of the earth, they are destroying the spirit made in the image of God, which is within them, and the link between them and heaven. He is from heaven in origin, and is divine in nature. He has come to reveal the heavenly and the divine to the earthly and the human. In Him, and in Him only, can their spirits find deliverance from sin, and find the true life; for in Him, and in Him only, the divine and the human meet.