Nicodemus was an expert. He was a religious expert. He knew what made for good religion, and he knew it all. His way of life, like many other of the Pharisees was pretty comfortable. He was respected and he’d even made it on to the ruling council. Life couldn’t get better. He was the ideal respectable and respected citizen.
Then his comfort zone is invaded. Along comes this firebrand of a teacher. Well, there had been John the Baptist already, and he’d caused enough trouble, apart from all the rude things he had said about respectable religious men like himself. Now there’s this Jesus of Nazareth. He’d caused quite a stir, it was rumoured, by turning gallons of water into wine at a wedding feast at Cana up in Galilee. If that weren’t enough, he had caused a real storm in the Temple- and just before the Passover feast. Then he’d performed miracles right in the heart of Jerusalem, and during the middle of the feast. Yet…..it gave one to think.
So: Nicodemus decides one night to find Jesus out and have a few words with him. Now, it’s interesting that he comes to Jesus at night time. Was he afraid of what his fellow-Pharisees might think of him going and consorting with this Jesus? Or- did he simply recognise that there were too many crowds round Jesus during the day-time?
He begins with a complement. ‘Rabbi’ (giving Jesus some mark of respect). ‘We know that you are a teacher come from God. For no-one could perform the miracles you are doing if God were not with him’ Then Jesus cuts him short.
‘You must be born again’ In effect Jesus is saying to Nicodemus:
You’ve got to start all over again. It’s no use seeing me as a special teacher or even a miracle worker from God; specially because I turned water to wine at the wedding. No! The water of your life has got to be turned into wine. Poor old Nicodemus was on the wrong track: he might witness the signs, but he could never perceive the Kingdom of God, of which they were but signs, without that complete new start which is the equal of a new birth; a new life with new faculties.
Nicodemus just can’t fathom this out! Born again! You mean I’ve somehow got to crawl back into my mother’s womb! Put yourself in Nicodemus’ shoes. What else was he to think. And, unless you go through with this then there’s no place for you in God’s Kingdom. Certainly Jesus had set out, as John the Baptist had with the proclamation that the Kingdom was at hand, and well, yes, that’s what every good Jew looked forward to, and the Pharisees would surely have the place of honour in that Kingdom- they’d preserved the purity of God’s laws for him, for goodness sake! But- no place in the kingdom without being born all over again. Straightway Jesus tries to resolve Nicodemus’ conundrum for him. ‘Spirit gives birth to spirit and flesh gives birth to flesh’. In other words, Jesus is talking about the birth of an entirely new form of life.
But, let’s leave Nicodemus to one side for a moment. For what Jesus had to say in the midst of a night 2 000 years ago impacts us today. The message is still there; still true, still relevant, and you know, it still confounds and annoys many good ‘religious’ people. Plenty of good church people there are, who maybe, say, know what makes a good church service, who know what the churches ought to be doing, but at the mention of being born again, they lose interest at once.
We are all born. Well, I hope so, though occasionally from vantage point of a pulpit one might be forgiven for doubting even that basic fact! We all have ‘life’ The trouble with the English language is that it can’t cope with all the intricacies of New Testament Greek. For there are two words for ‘life’
First, there’s bios. That’s biological life, the physical life we have from our mother’s womb. It’s the basis of human life. We eat, sleep, talk and take part in all human activities, and possess all human faculties. Yet, that life is not sufficient. It is a life which is finite. The one certain event in our future is our physical death. ‘Bios’ will come to an end. ‘Flesh gives birth to flesh’
But there is another from of life- zo’e. This is something quite different. It is ‘zoe’ which gives life to our spirits, and God’s Kingdom, which is eternal requires this extra dimension of life, a dimension of life that was lost when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden.
So, this life comes from God’s Spirit; it is something we can’t see, feel or touch’ And it is not something at our- or anybody else’s, command. Only God can give it. We only have this life as God’s Spirit breathes it into us. It is not something which we can make or cause to happen. We don’t know even where it comes from or how. That’s maybe a corrective to those who would try and proscribe a set train of events before a person can be said to be ‘born again’ The way and the route and sequence of events is as free as God’s Spirit.
Paul in 1 Corinthians spells this out for us: ‘The man without the Spirit does not accept that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him’ (2:14). Are we the totally passive in all this. Well, the short answer is, ‘No!’. Something drove Nicodemus to seek Jesus out, and there lay the first key. And Jesus didn’t leave Nicodemus floundering. He points out two things to him; two things which are relevant also in the here and now.
Firstly, Nicodemus was unbelieving.
Nicodemus first question now (v9) is ‘How can this be?’ Jesus answers him quite straightly. Nicodemus, he says, you may be a teacher of Israel, a very religious man, but you just don’t understand, do you? ‘I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak to you of heavenly things?’ (v12) Fundamentally, Nicodemus, for all his religious teaching, was basically dull to truth of the Spirit. Paul in 2 Corinthians wrote this: ‘The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel’ (4:4). Put very simply, we are born into a world under satanic control, and Satan sees to it that folk are kept blind to Gospel Truth.
Secondly, Nicodemus needed to receive. Nicodemus was learned, yes. He might happily have spent the whole night in discussion with Jesus, but Jesus knew that wasn’t what Nicodemus needed. Jesus, I suspect, knew Nicodemus was in earnest. He knew he was different in fact from the crowds who believed when he worked the miracles in Jerusalem, which are reported at the end of John chapter 2. There we read (v24) ‘he would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men’; he knew for all profession of belief that their hearts had not been changed.
Rather, Jesus points Nicodemus to his need, and cleverly, he does so by latching on to Old Testament Scripture with which Nicodemus would have been very familiar. ‘Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life’ (v14).
Jesus harked back to an occasion during the Exodus when deadly serpents were biting the Israelites. Moses killed one and hoisted it up on a pole, an all who gazed on it were saved from the deadly venom. We (like Nicodemus) have the deadly venom of sin in us, and only by gazing on Jesus and believing on Him may we be saved form that sin and live, live eternally.
This leads us into the best-known and best-loved Gospel verse of them all. John 3:16. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that all who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life’
That verse is a key to eternal life; a key to the ‘new birth’, and it’s a verse which divides its hearers into two clear-cut groups. And that division is of utmost importance to our eternal destiny.
If we believe, if we entrust our salvation to the Lord Jesus Christ, if we look to his Cross and recognize God’s judgment on our sin, then we shall indeed live; that process of new birth will be sown in us. Look, my fiends, for the verb in the verse about Moses’ serpent implied not a once off, cursory glance, but a steady gaze. That way, and that way alone, lies the portal of God’s Kingdom, and the door to eternal life.
For, there is the other option. ‘that all who believe in him should not perish, It matters that much. For without belief we shall perish. And that word perish is used by Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, where he writes about the Cross, and it was teaching on this verse which led to my spiritual birth at Lee Abbey in 1957.
‘The message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’ (v18) People may stubbornly rebel in their sin. They may reject any knowledge of God and go from bad to worse. Natural man, even in his natural ’goodness’ is divorced from God and is going from bad to worse. Even his good deeds are- so Isaiah, but ‘filthy rags’ (64:6) And in that separation here and now, man is doomed to eternal separation. he is doomed to isolation and sunk into the despair of for ever going from bad to worse. Can you look hell in the face?
How did Nicodemus respond? John in writing his Gospel does not leave us in the dark. Did Nicodemus stand and watch the crucifixion? Did he now recall the night when Jesus told him of the bronze serpent of Moses?; of the Son of Man lifted up; of eternal life? Did he now realise that eternal life is not the universal human possession, and needed a new birth, just as common life needs a birth?- and that this new birth comes through the Son of Man lifted up on a Cross? Did he now go out and seek Joseph?
Nicodemus, we are told, came to the burial with the anointing mixture: myrrh and aloes, about seventy pounds (v39) That much of these precious spices would normally only be used for a king. Had Nicodemus read the placard on the Cross- ’The King of the Jews’? Did he now realise its significance and believe? Did he come to honour the King of the Jews as his Messiah?
All this leaves us with one very pointed question: What of you and I?
Do we believe?
Are you and I born again?
If there be any shadow of doubt, look on the Son of God on the Cross, and know that he loves you and desires that you believe.
