If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
If I have told you earthly things, [ ta (G3588 ) epigeia (G1919 )], and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? х ta (G3588) epourania (G2032)] - rather simply, 'tell you heavenly things.' By the "earthly things" which Christ had just told Nicodemus of is certainly meant regeneration, the one subject of His teaching to him up to this point; and it is so called, it would seem-in contrast with the "heavenly things" - as being a truth even of that more earthly economy to which Nicodemus belonged, and as the gate of entrance to the kingdom of God upon earth. The "heavenly things" are the things of the new and more heavenly evangelical economy, especially that great truth of salvation by faith in the atoning death of the Son of God, which He was now about to "tell" Nicodemus; though He forewarns him of the probability of people stumbling much more at that than he had done at the former truth-since it had been but dimly unfolded under the earthly economy, and was only to be fully understood after the effusion of the Spirit from heaven through the exalted Saviour.