John 3:1-21
2000 years ago, a cold night in Jerusalem, Nicodemus – a teacher and leader of the Jews, is going for a meeting. A clandestine meeting with a persona non grata in the Jewish community of the day, Jerusalem was not the open centre for freedom of religion that it is today: the Romans had their religion, their temples and gods and the Jewish religion was tolerated.
It was tolerated under the condition that it could be controlled, and an upstart from the North was making things difficult for the religious order of the day – hence why our shadowy figure, dressed in the distinguishable robes of a Pharisee was having this secret meeting.
You must remember, his reputation was on the line – this man’s livelihood, his social standing, his very identity was tied up in his religious order… and he was putting it all on the line to talk to Jesus.
On one hand we laud Nicodemus, after all he is breaking ranks in going to see Jesus, he has heard what Jesus has been saying, he has heard about the miraculous acts, and now he wants to see this Holy Man face to face and see if He really is the Messiah?
Not everyone believed in Jesus as the Messiah, some even suggested that he was a witch! That He healed people through the power of demons. His very own cousin, John the Baptist, at the end asked “are you really the Messiah?” So it’s understandable why Nicodemus is reluctant to see Jesus in broad daylight. After all he belongs to the very group that would pay to put Jesus on a cross.
At the same time, the Evangelist draws our attention to the fact that despite all his biblical knowledge, Nicodemus could not comprehend what Jesus was asking of him. He did something bold in seeking Him out, but then failed to receive the message which he had put so much on the line to hear.
As part of our series on Relationship with God, I want you guys to ask yourselves two questions, firstly: do we come to Christ like Nicodemus? Second: When Jesus asks us the impossible, do we respond with disbelief?
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jn 3:2
Nick’s confession is true enough… he admits that the rabbis cannot deny that God is with Jesus. They may not like Him, they might talk bad about Him and try and disrepute Him in public – but the fact is that Jesus is preaching repentance, love for your neighbour and commitment to obeying God, not just His law.
We know that Jesus often challenged the Rabbis – or as they’re called in the Bible the Pharisees, on the premise of their assumptions on the Law of God. The Law or Torah was what defined sin, and the Pharisees were obsessed with it.
They read a lot of it quite literally, which as you can imagine can make life difficult – but worst of all, they used God’s Law as ammunition against others and extended the divide between the Jews and the non-Jews by making themselves feel and seem special that they kept the law… but can I tell you a secret, they really didn’t.
We know that in the world there are many pretenders! People who try to make themselves seem holyer than they really are, they publicly commit to altruistic acts, charity events, they adopt children from third world countries in order to give them greater opportunities. But when they do these things, notice who is in the spotlight… is it the third world kiddies? No, it’s the celebrity, or the New York business parting with his money, or the politician waving his fist in the air…
Jesus is not a pretender, he did not sit in a palace in Jerusalem while the people in the street starved and only stepped out so that 1st Century paparazzi could tell people about his exploits. That was part of a disciple’s job in the 1st Century, rabbis, teachers, philosophers who had disciples used them to publicise their good deeds or their philosophical ideas. Jesus wasn’t into that though, in fact we have a series of events where Jesus told those He healed and His disciples – don’t tell anyone about this!
Jesus knew why He came to this earth, He knew what He came to do was teach repentance, He knew that he came to teach forgiveness, He knew that HE came to die on the cross! Among celebrities in the ancient world, Jesus was unique – He was unique in that He was the real thing!
There had been other Messiahs – Maccabeus was considered a Messiah because he fulfilled the Israelites political asparations when he ran the Greek Seceulids out of Israel. But that was all he did. Even today, there are people to claim the title of Messiah among the Jewish diaspora, men who are very wise, many who even quote Jesus – seeing Him as a wise Jew whose real message has been misquoted. The world is full of pretenders, in a world full of pretenders a genuine person stands out.
So our mate Nick goes to Jesus to find out the truth, he wants to know without a shadow of a doubt if he has pitched his tent in the right camp. He is even willing to risk his hard earned reputation among the group by going to see Him.
And Jesus doesn’t even need to hear the question… he knows why Nick came to see Him.
Jesus did not need Nick to tell Him his question – it was obvious to Jesus. Maybe the guy came with a look on his face, maybe it was the question everybody was asking Jesus at the time… whatever the reason, Jesus knew!
And He pipped him to the punch… before Nick could get to his Q, Jesus had the A!
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
No one… no one! Wow!
We preachers often get into trouble because we have to translate it when the Bible talks about men, or man or his and make it more inclusive language. But I looked at the Greek and even in the Greek it’s not like that – so you know it’s a big deal…
No one… no man, no woman, no scholar, no charity worker, no philanthropist, no minister, no pastor, no criminal, no evil person, not even a good person… can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again.
But what does that mean: Born again?
John does something cool here; I know you can’t often say cool to things in the Bible, but I think this is cool!
John uses this Greek expression γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν – this means born from above,
You might be thinking… “wow, my bible has been wrong all these years!” No, your bible’s not wrong but our translation doesn’t have this nuance, Jesus is saying you’ve got to be a child of God to see His Kingdom. In our sinful state, we cannot perceive the Kingdom of God. We must be born from above to understand what that means – and if you’ve heard this before and are thinking… “nothing new here…” then it’s worse for you than for those who’ve not heard this before.
Jesus is using an expression like we do in music when you say ‘from the top’ it means you’ve got to go back to the start; like a baby, fully trusting, fully dependant, you’re still you, but you’ve got to take on those traits that make you able to see the Kingdom of God.
So it doesn’t matter if you’ve heard a thousand sermons on John 3:16, because the challenge is the same: Here it is directly from Christ’s lips, you’ve got to go back to the start! It’s not a once off thing, no way!
So there’s a double reading here, Jesus is challenging us, we’ve got to back to the start to be able to see God’s Kingdom.
Don’t be ashamed if you didn’t get this in your first reading, our mate Nick, didn’t get it either – and he was there!
He says to Jesus “How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” Sarcasm? Maybe, but Jesus has the response:
“Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (v. 5)
We forget this part often when studying this passage – it’s that we are born of the Spirit, the Spirit of God above! I heard it put really well this week on a documentary on the reformers – it’s not that are good to be saved, it’s that we are good because we are saved!
When my wife and I were newlyweds we were sitting at my mother’s house and my sister’s boyfriend at the time was watching wrestling on the TV. Someone must have had one of those John 3:16 signs so he turned to my sister and asked “what does that mean?”… she said “it’s a Bible verse” but didn’t know what it was so he asked me and my wife and I recited it in unison…
He was a little weirded out by it, but I explained that this is the foundation for our belief in Jesus!
I’ve seen this verse on signs at sporting events, car bumper stickers, t-shirts… When I was a Uni here in Adelaide Students for Christ put up a huge banner with this verse on it! It was awesome!
You see, salvation is not something we can do, we don’t go out and grab it, we don’t search for it until we find it…
The first statement of this verse makes it clear – For God….
It wasn’t us, it was God, like the hymn says “I once was blind but now I see…” he doesn’t mean that he had his eyes shut and then decided to open them… he talks about blindness, spiritual blindness healed by God!
The second statement is the one you’ll have to be patient with me on, in Greek it says Οὕτως γὰρ, basically ‘for so…’ but no so as in soooo much, so as in ‘for this reason’
You may have noticed that I’ve skipped over a few verses here, don’t worry I won’t a scolding from John when I get to heaven for it, but I did it on purpose for this reason.
“…that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” that Him is Jesus, the Son of Man as he says in v. 14. You see the so in 16 points to this person, the one who we must believe in in order to have eternal life:
In this way, God loved the world so much that He handed over His Son so that each and every one that believes in Him will not be destroyed! They will have eternal life! (my translation)
This is the crux of our belief…”He gave His one and only Son,” God didn’t give anyone else, he didn’t give Buddha, Mohammad, Gandhi, Ronald Reagan… NO, he gave His one and only Son!
We are all God’s children, but there is no one like Jesus – He is unique in that He is of God and He is God, He is both a part of God and God Himself. He is precious to God… and only the most precious could take the greatest cost for sin.
You may also have noticed that I’ve put sooo much in my translation, that’s because God does love the world sooo much! The so in the verse doesn’t mean this but the actual kind of love does. You see Jesus says that God loves with the most profound and deepest kind of love there is. In English we need to use adjectives to describe it, but Greek has levels of love, so Jesus uses the highest level of love to describe God’s love for us…. A love that sent Jesus to the cross.
Which leads me to the point Jesus is really making for Nick, you see Nick and his buddies had issues with Jesus talking about dying – a Messiah is supposed to reign for a thousand years! He’s not supposed to die, certainly not die the death of a criminal.
The book of Numbers, one of the revered books of the Law of Moses says that the man that’s hung on the tree is cursed!
“How’s that possible?” Nick must’ve been thinking, “Moses tells us that someone who dies like this is cursed yet this man who’s acting like the Messiah says that’s how he’ll die?”
Jesus is all about shaking expectations – we expect an all-powerful God to rain thunder and lightning and kill everyone and everything in his way, rather He sends a baby to be born in a most humble way, no thunder, no lightening, just a blinking star!
The Jews expected a Messiah that like Maccabeus was going to rout the Romans, chase them out of Jerusalem with a sword – the Roman legions fleeing with their tails between their legs, not a man from the north who lived as a Bedouin and never lifted a sword…
Jesus stressed to Nick that He would be lifted up, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness.
He’s talking about the last complaint the Israelites had – in Numbers 21 we see that they were complaining and so God sent snakes among them. They thought they were going to die, but God offered the solution Moses made a brass serpent and put it on a pole and everyone that looked at the serpent did not die.
They didn’t have to touch it, they didn’t have to pray to it, they didn’t have to do anything – just look at it:
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,”
Jesus was lifted up, like the snake, on a pole. His death is completely effective to erase our sins. We don’t need to do anything, just look to Jesus on that cross – we don’t need to count our good deeds, number our prayers, or the number of people we’ve brought to the Lord! What we need to do is look at that cross, looking at the cross is admiting that Jesus can save us!
So Jesus explained salvation like this:
- You must be born again, from the top, fresh start, don’t bring all the attitude of your old life, live life anew.
- You must look to the cross, nowhere else is there salvation
The institution of religion means that we often confuse man’s things with God’s things; we use words like spirituality and religion when we should be using words like faith, trust, and hope. Let’s not confuse the things that we do which are man’s things with those which are God’s – this cross here hanging up on the wall, its just a symbol, the Lord’s Supper we take, they are symbols, symbols of something we have assurance of in our hearts, in our souls,
That Jesus died… for us and through Him we are born again!
