Exercise Your Curiosity Correctly

So how does this rebirth happen? It happens through water and the Spirit said Jesus (John 3:5). This was a reference to baptism. Through baptism the Holy Spirit comes into our lives and creates faith in what Jesus did to forgive our sins. Just as we had nothing to do with the first time we were born so we had nothing to do with the time we were reborn. Conversion is God’s work.

This was still all too much for Nicodemus. “How can this be?” he asked (John 3:5). I don’t understand it either. How can God call me forgiven and cleansed of my sin just because a little water has been sprinkled on my head and his name invoked at my baptism? It’s not important that I understand how this works but simply to believe that it does work. That’s what Jesus meant when he said: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). I don’t need to understand everything about atmospheric pressure to believe that there is such thing as wind. I can feel it even if I can’t see it or understand how it works. In the same way I don’t need to understand how the brakes on my car work before I’ll step on the brake pedal to stop the car. And so I shouldn’t have to understand everything God tells me in his Word before I come to trust his promises. This is what it means to exercise curiosity correctly. Go ahead, ask questions of God but then in faith accept the answers he gives.

Why should I accept the answers God gives in his Word if I can’t make sense of them? I can believe God’s answers because he loves me and has my best interest in mind. Jesus made that clear when he said: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14, 15). Jesus had Nicodemus recall an incident from Israel’s march to the Promised Land. One day after the Israelites complained again about the food God provided for them, God sent poisonous snakes that bit and killed many people. The Israelites quickly repented of their sin of grumbling and asked God to save them from the snakes. God listened to their cries and had Moses do something curious. He told Moses to make a snake out of bronze and put it on a pole. God then promised that whoever looked at the bronze snake would be healed. That bronze snake served as a picture of what Jesus would come to do. He would be lifted up on a cross and God promises that all those who look to Jesus in faith will be saved from their sins. Why should I listen to God even though not everything he says makes sense? I want to listen to him because if he sent his Son to shed his blood to pay for my sins, he certainly has my best interests in mind. He wants us to be in heaven with him and the only way we’ll get there is by trusting that Jesus died and rose again to take away our sins.

Did Nicodemus come to believe in Jesus? Yes! About three years later he was one of two men bold enough to take Jesus’ body down from the cross and lovingly prepare it for burial even though this act would have clearly marked Nicodemus as a follower of Jesus and therefore made him an enemy of those who hated Jesus enough to arrange for his crucifixion. And to think such devotion to Jesus all started with a little curiosity.