John 3:16
Part 1: The Backstory
One of the things that you may or may not know about me is that I am the public address announcer for the boys and girls varsity basketball games where I work. It’s something that I’ve done for over 30 years now so I am quite comfortable when someone puts a microphone in my hand and tells me to go for it. It’s a lot of fun and the view is just awesome. I have the best seat in the gym.
Now, over time, I have developed some lines that I use frequently during the games, including a couple of catchphrases for certain plays that are uniquely mine. One of these is, “SHAZZAM”, my line for a three point shot and, like a lot of my phrases that I use on the mic, there’s a backstory. The origins of SHAZZAM goes back probably 25 years ago or so. I was announcing this twelve team tournament and it was the last day of the thing and I was frankly tired. I think I had called three games the night before and two the night before that and they were all back to back games. Anyway, on this particular day it was Saturday and there was a full slate of games that culminated with the championship game at six. However, to get things started at like 10 AM I think it was, I was calling this loser out game and the two teams playing weren’t very good. As I recall, they were playing like a couple of loser out teams but in the middle of this game however, all of a sudden two kids, one on either team, got hot and started draining threes. I especially remember this one kid launched this bomb from about halfcourt that he had absolutely no business making but he made it anyway. The rock went in hard, slamming into the back of the rim on its way through the hoop.
Thinking on my feet, the call that I made was, “Bang! Three points for …” The game went on and after it was over, I evaluated my performance like I always do. As I thought about that particular play, I liked the idea that I had come up with on the fly but I just wasn’t crazy about the line. I started to think in terms of alternatives and about a month or so later I came up with a replacement line. At the time I was part of a worship band for the elementary kids church service and we did a song regularly that had this line in it. “Shazam and Superman are real bad dudes, but they don’t do nothin’ like Jesus do.” The light went on in my head. Shazam was the word I was looking for. I added an extra z in the word so it could be uniquely mine and began using it as one of my three point lines. It was no big deal in my mind, it was just another line in my repertoire except that it morphed into something else. It caught on…big. The players, both the boys and the girls, loved it. So much so, in fact, that if a kid hit a three in a game and I didn’t use that line when I announced it, I’d hear about it the next day in the halls. Within a year, SHAZZAM had become my catch phrase, my signature line, and it’s still with me to this day.
As I examine the life of Jesus, I don’t know if He has a signature line as much as He has a signature verse. It’s John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” It’s a verse that many people, even those who do not attend church, know, or at least have heard of, and they have definitely associated it with Jesus. Aside from churches and Sunday schools and what not, the reference, John 3:16, shows up in sporting events as someone will put it on a handheld sign and hold it up where the cameras can’t help but see it. I’ve even seen it on walls as graffiti, not that I’m endorsing vandalism here, but I have seen it nonetheless. The bottom line, John 3:16 is Jesus’ signature verse and, like SHAZZAM, it has a backstory. What I would like to do over the next few weeks is take John 3:16 and break it down to its basic components starting with its backstory and present a clear explanation to what Jesus was saying, when He said it. Like always, I won’t be using churchy phrases if I can help it, and, if you’re a person who either has never been to church or it’s been a long time, I’m going to write especially for you so you can see what this verse is about and how it relates to you in 2022.
The story begins toward the end of the previous chapter in John’s Gospel. Jesus was at the beginning of His public ministry and, like the song says, “Shazam and Superman are real bad dudes but they don’t do nuthin’ like Jesus do.” That may be a kid’s worship song but theologically and historically it’s spot on. Jesus had begun teaching and every time, after the crowds heard Him teach, what stood out to them was that He taught as one having authority, not like the other teachers they had heard. He was also performing miracles on a large scale and presenting evidence that He was the promised Messiah that they had been waiting for. How convincing was He? According to John, this rabbi from the hole in the wall town of Nazareth in Galilee was convincing enough that many people were beginning to believe that He was the real deal and that He was the promised Messiah. And Jesus, for the record, never denied it. In fact, often that was the point of the miracles He performed. He was giving the crowds concrete evidence to support his claims to His Deity and to the fact that He was, indeed, the promised Messiah.
That wasn’t the only thing that He did though. He also stepped on the toes of the religious leaders of His day. No, that’s not quite right. Let me revise that. He stomped on their feet. John records that Jesus had been teaching in Galilee and came down to Jerusalem to participate in the Passover Feast. Like all practicing Jews during this time, He went into the temple to worship and what He saw infuriated Him. He saw merchants selling sheep and cattle that would be used for sacrifices at exorbitant prices and He saw people being exploited. He couldn’t let that slide, He had to act. John records that He took some cords and made them into a whip and drove out all the livestock, the cattle, and the sheep. He overturned the money changers tables and scattered their coins and He sternly told those who were selling the pigeons to take them out of the temple. John records that Jesus told the merchants who were selling the pigeons to, “take these things out of the temple and stop making my Father’s house a house of trade.”
And, when confronted by the Jewish leaders who asked Him for a sign for why He was doing this, His answer confused them. “Destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up.” His answer made no sense to them. He was standing in the middle of a temple that had taken 46 years to build but John told us that He was referring to the temple of His body. Right out the blocks He was pointing to the crucifixion where He would pay for the sins of the entire world.
So, this was the backstory behind John 3:16. There was Jesus, this Jewish rabbi from Galilee who had achieved rockstar popularity in a short time. In other gospel accounts it’s recorded that He had no peace whatsoever because the crowds just flocked to Him, 24/7. He was also controversial enough to get on the radar of the Jewish leadership and not in a good way. And it was in this setting that a man named Nicodemus, one of the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, probably their version of the United States Supreme Court, came to see Jesus at night, and that’s where we’ll pick up the story next week.
In the meantime, for today, in terms of application, I’d like to go back to the answer that Jesus gave the Jewish leadership when they asked for a sign for why He was doing what He was doing. He told them, “Destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up.” It’s an interesting answer because it wasn’t the only answer He could have given. He could just as easily could have lectured them on the Mosaic Law that forbade the exploitation of the poor, especially when it came to sacrifices and worship. It would have been a slam dunk because He had the weight of the Mosaic Law, that Law that they revered, to back Him up. In fact, using the Mosaic Law, Jesus could have chewed them up and spit them out. Trust me, He had everything He needed to shut them down, but that’s not where He went. Instead, He went straight to His mission. He alluded to His death and resurrection. He alluded to Easter.
So, why is that such a big deal? I mean, why is that so significant for you and me? Consider the evidence. If Jesus thought that His death and resurrection was the most important thing about Him back then, then it probably still is the most important thing about Him today…especially if it really happened. Let’s talk about this in simple terms and think about the ramifications of that for a minute because it’s absolutely profound. If the resurrection really happened then that means that Jesus really is God. It means that everything that He said is true and that’s amazing news. It means that if a person chooses to end their rebellion against God and follow Jesus on His terms, that every act of rebellion that they have ever committed is forgiven because Jesus paid the penalty for it. Think of the worst thing that you’ve ever done. Whatever it was, it was wrong and you knew it was when you did it but you did it anyway. Now, if Jesus really did rise from the dead, then even if there are earthly consequences for that act, (you might actually be in jail – I don’t know. You’re the one who did it. I wasn’t even there.) in terms of eternal consequences, you can be forgiven. It also means that not only is there life after death, but it’s amazing. It means that if a person will choose to follow Jesus on His terms, that life could change forever, and that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s SHAZZAM worthy.
For the next few weeks, using John 3 as my text, I am going to take a look at what following Jesus on His terms actually looks like. In the meantime, though, if you’re wanting to take Jesus up on His offer right now, here’s how to do it in a nutshell. In prayer, just use modern English, God is quite fluent in it, admit to God that you have rebelled against Him and that you deserve hell because of that. Tell him that you are sorry enough for that rebellion that you want you want to end your rebellion against Him right now. Thank God for sending Jesus to die in your place and that you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. Tell God that you accept Jesus as your savior and that you want to follow Jesus for the rest of your life. Tell God that your rebellion against Him is over and as an act of faith, thank Him for forgiving you.
Now, if you just did that, please get ahold of me. I want to help you get connected with people in your community right now who can help you grow in your newfound faith. I can be reached at [email protected] In the meantime, next week we’ll get into Nicodemus’ head on that fateful night when Jesus uttered his catchphrase for the first time and see not only where he was coming from but what it has to do with us. See you then.
Now, over time, I have developed some lines that I use frequently during the games, including a couple of catchphrases for certain plays that are uniquely mine. One of these is, “SHAZZAM”, my line for a three point shot and, like a lot of my phrases that I use on the mic, there’s a backstory. The origins of SHAZZAM goes back probably 25 years ago or so. I was announcing this twelve team tournament and it was the last day of the thing and I was frankly tired. I think I had called three games the night before and two the night before that and they were all back to back games. Anyway, on this particular day it was Saturday and there was a full slate of games that culminated with the championship game at six. However, to get things started at like 10 AM I think it was, I was calling this loser out game and the two teams playing weren’t very good. As I recall, they were playing like a couple of loser out teams but in the middle of this game however, all of a sudden two kids, one on either team, got hot and started draining threes. I especially remember this one kid launched this bomb from about halfcourt that he had absolutely no business making but he made it anyway. The rock went in hard, slamming into the back of the rim on its way through the hoop.
Thinking on my feet, the call that I made was, “Bang! Three points for …” The game went on and after it was over, I evaluated my performance like I always do. As I thought about that particular play, I liked the idea that I had come up with on the fly but I just wasn’t crazy about the line. I started to think in terms of alternatives and about a month or so later I came up with a replacement line. At the time I was part of a worship band for the elementary kids church service and we did a song regularly that had this line in it. “Shazam and Superman are real bad dudes, but they don’t do nothin’ like Jesus do.” The light went on in my head. Shazam was the word I was looking for. I added an extra z in the word so it could be uniquely mine and began using it as one of my three point lines. It was no big deal in my mind, it was just another line in my repertoire except that it morphed into something else. It caught on…big. The players, both the boys and the girls, loved it. So much so, in fact, that if a kid hit a three in a game and I didn’t use that line when I announced it, I’d hear about it the next day in the halls. Within a year, SHAZZAM had become my catch phrase, my signature line, and it’s still with me to this day.
As I examine the life of Jesus, I don’t know if He has a signature line as much as He has a signature verse. It’s John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” It’s a verse that many people, even those who do not attend church, know, or at least have heard of, and they have definitely associated it with Jesus. Aside from churches and Sunday schools and what not, the reference, John 3:16, shows up in sporting events as someone will put it on a handheld sign and hold it up where the cameras can’t help but see it. I’ve even seen it on walls as graffiti, not that I’m endorsing vandalism here, but I have seen it nonetheless. The bottom line, John 3:16 is Jesus’ signature verse and, like SHAZZAM, it has a backstory. What I would like to do over the next few weeks is take John 3:16 and break it down to its basic components starting with its backstory and present a clear explanation to what Jesus was saying, when He said it. Like always, I won’t be using churchy phrases if I can help it, and, if you’re a person who either has never been to church or it’s been a long time, I’m going to write especially for you so you can see what this verse is about and how it relates to you in 2022.
The story begins toward the end of the previous chapter in John’s Gospel. Jesus was at the beginning of His public ministry and, like the song says, “Shazam and Superman are real bad dudes but they don’t do nuthin’ like Jesus do.” That may be a kid’s worship song but theologically and historically it’s spot on. Jesus had begun teaching and every time, after the crowds heard Him teach, what stood out to them was that He taught as one having authority, not like the other teachers they had heard. He was also performing miracles on a large scale and presenting evidence that He was the promised Messiah that they had been waiting for. How convincing was He? According to John, this rabbi from the hole in the wall town of Nazareth in Galilee was convincing enough that many people were beginning to believe that He was the real deal and that He was the promised Messiah. And Jesus, for the record, never denied it. In fact, often that was the point of the miracles He performed. He was giving the crowds concrete evidence to support his claims to His Deity and to the fact that He was, indeed, the promised Messiah.
That wasn’t the only thing that He did though. He also stepped on the toes of the religious leaders of His day. No, that’s not quite right. Let me revise that. He stomped on their feet. John records that Jesus had been teaching in Galilee and came down to Jerusalem to participate in the Passover Feast. Like all practicing Jews during this time, He went into the temple to worship and what He saw infuriated Him. He saw merchants selling sheep and cattle that would be used for sacrifices at exorbitant prices and He saw people being exploited. He couldn’t let that slide, He had to act. John records that He took some cords and made them into a whip and drove out all the livestock, the cattle, and the sheep. He overturned the money changers tables and scattered their coins and He sternly told those who were selling the pigeons to take them out of the temple. John records that Jesus told the merchants who were selling the pigeons to, “take these things out of the temple and stop making my Father’s house a house of trade.”
And, when confronted by the Jewish leaders who asked Him for a sign for why He was doing this, His answer confused them. “Destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up.” His answer made no sense to them. He was standing in the middle of a temple that had taken 46 years to build but John told us that He was referring to the temple of His body. Right out the blocks He was pointing to the crucifixion where He would pay for the sins of the entire world.
So, this was the backstory behind John 3:16. There was Jesus, this Jewish rabbi from Galilee who had achieved rockstar popularity in a short time. In other gospel accounts it’s recorded that He had no peace whatsoever because the crowds just flocked to Him, 24/7. He was also controversial enough to get on the radar of the Jewish leadership and not in a good way. And it was in this setting that a man named Nicodemus, one of the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, probably their version of the United States Supreme Court, came to see Jesus at night, and that’s where we’ll pick up the story next week.
In the meantime, for today, in terms of application, I’d like to go back to the answer that Jesus gave the Jewish leadership when they asked for a sign for why He was doing what He was doing. He told them, “Destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up.” It’s an interesting answer because it wasn’t the only answer He could have given. He could just as easily could have lectured them on the Mosaic Law that forbade the exploitation of the poor, especially when it came to sacrifices and worship. It would have been a slam dunk because He had the weight of the Mosaic Law, that Law that they revered, to back Him up. In fact, using the Mosaic Law, Jesus could have chewed them up and spit them out. Trust me, He had everything He needed to shut them down, but that’s not where He went. Instead, He went straight to His mission. He alluded to His death and resurrection. He alluded to Easter.
So, why is that such a big deal? I mean, why is that so significant for you and me? Consider the evidence. If Jesus thought that His death and resurrection was the most important thing about Him back then, then it probably still is the most important thing about Him today…especially if it really happened. Let’s talk about this in simple terms and think about the ramifications of that for a minute because it’s absolutely profound. If the resurrection really happened then that means that Jesus really is God. It means that everything that He said is true and that’s amazing news. It means that if a person chooses to end their rebellion against God and follow Jesus on His terms, that every act of rebellion that they have ever committed is forgiven because Jesus paid the penalty for it. Think of the worst thing that you’ve ever done. Whatever it was, it was wrong and you knew it was when you did it but you did it anyway. Now, if Jesus really did rise from the dead, then even if there are earthly consequences for that act, (you might actually be in jail – I don’t know. You’re the one who did it. I wasn’t even there.) in terms of eternal consequences, you can be forgiven. It also means that not only is there life after death, but it’s amazing. It means that if a person will choose to follow Jesus on His terms, that life could change forever, and that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s SHAZZAM worthy.
For the next few weeks, using John 3 as my text, I am going to take a look at what following Jesus on His terms actually looks like. In the meantime, though, if you’re wanting to take Jesus up on His offer right now, here’s how to do it in a nutshell. In prayer, just use modern English, God is quite fluent in it, admit to God that you have rebelled against Him and that you deserve hell because of that. Tell him that you are sorry enough for that rebellion that you want you want to end your rebellion against Him right now. Thank God for sending Jesus to die in your place and that you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. Tell God that you accept Jesus as your savior and that you want to follow Jesus for the rest of your life. Tell God that your rebellion against Him is over and as an act of faith, thank Him for forgiving you.
Now, if you just did that, please get ahold of me. I want to help you get connected with people in your community right now who can help you grow in your newfound faith. I can be reached at [email protected] In the meantime, next week we’ll get into Nicodemus’ head on that fateful night when Jesus uttered his catchphrase for the first time and see not only where he was coming from but what it has to do with us. See you then.
John 3:16
Part 2: Nicodemus and a Spiritual Birth
John 3 starts out like this. “Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “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.” (NIV)
You know, one thing that I appreciate about John both as an eyewitness and a writer is that he often uses few words but he speaks volumes. In just two verses, he painted a clear picture of what was going on and laid a solid foundation so that we could put everything that Jesus said in context. In the first verse, John introduces us to a man named Nicodemus (phonetically spelled Nick-uh-deem-us) who was both a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council. Now, if you have never been to church in your life or at least not since you were a kid and you don’t know what a Pharisee is, don’t feel bad, neither do half of the people who go to church every Sunday. I mean, they know that the Pharisees are an important group of people in the narrative of Jesus’ life but they don’t exactly know what they believe, much less why that detail is important in the John 3 narrative. So, let’s break things down, shall we, and see what this Nicodemus guy is all about.
First of all, he’s a member of the Jewish ruling council, and that’s a big deal. This Jewish ruling council’s official name is the Sanhedrin and while it is true that because Judea was part of the Roman Empire, the Sanhedrin was accountable to Rome, they still had a lot of political and religious power within Jewish society at the time. The Sanhedrin was essentially the entity that interpreted the Law of Moses that was given 1400 to 1500 years earlier and could therefore dictate how that Law was to be applied in Jewish society at the time when Jesus was on earth. Now, because so much of Jewish life revolved around the worship of God in the Temple in Jerusalem, that gave the Sanhedrin a lot of social, political, and economic power. They dictated affairs in Judea, Galilee and, to a degree, throughout the entire Roman Empire where Jewish communities would meet to worship in local synagogues. (Synagogues were kind of like a community church.) Now, considering that there were only 72 members in the Sanhedrin and Nicodemus had a voice in that body, that meant that he was an important person who was coming to see Jesus that night.
The second thing about him that John revealed is that Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were kind of a political party, kind of a society that took the Mosaic Law seriously. Their lives revolved around it, so much so that they added traditions and other rules to help them obey that law. As far as we’re concerned, for the sake of this article, in terms of morality, we can safely assert that the Pharisees were an extremely moral group of people, rigid but moral nonetheless and if they were moral, so was Nicodemus because he was one of them.
The last thing that John reveals about Nicodemus is that he came to see Jesus at night and the question that I think that we have to ask ourselves is why? Why did Nicodemus come to see Jesus at night and, more importantly, why did John think it was important to include that detail, because, if all John is doing is telling us what happened, I’m not sure that it’s necessary. The problem is that John doesn’t explicitly tell us so we’re kind of on our own here. Using logic however, there are probably four reasons, any one of which could be true or perhaps even all of them could be true.
The first and most obvious reason is that to come to Jesus at night might have been the only time that Nicodemus could actually get a private audience with Jesus. Throughout His ministry, especially at this point in time, Jesus, because of the miracles and signs that He performed, was extremely popular. In fact, I have heard some pastors actually use the term “rock star status” to describe his popularity. He always drew a huge crowd whenever He went anywhere so it’s entirely possible that the only chance that Nicodemus had to get a private audience with Jesus was at night.
The second possibility has to do with the fact that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and Jesus was a rabbi from Galilee. In terms of status, generally a rabbi would seek an audience with a Pharisee who was a member of the Sanhedrin, that’s just the way that it works in the world. The lesser generally seeks an audience with the greater and not the other way around. And, even if Nicodemus wanted to see Jesus, which he obviously did, he could have invited Jesus into his home and done it that way. He would have gotten what he wanted while maintaining his status at the same time, but that’s not how he did it. Instead, he went to see Jesus and, by doing this at night, that meant that no one knew so he could maintain his social status with everyone. (Personally, I think that this reason is a reach but that’s just me.)
There’s a third reason, however, that is much more plausible in my mind. It’s related to the second reason except for one big difference. It’s entirely possible that yes, Nicodemus desired to hide his visit to Jesus, however not necessarily from the masses because they couldn’t hurt him. The masses lacked the means. However, his colleagues in the Sanhedrin…well, that was an entirely different matter. You see, when Jesus overturned the money changers tables in the Temple courtyards and drove out all of the animals in John 2, He made enemies within the Sanhedrin because they were the ones who set things up, and instantly became a controversial figure. It’s entirely possible that Nicodemus wanted to investigate Jesus for himself but not necessarily let the other members of the Sanhedrin know that he was doing it. When examining the motives of Nicodemus here and trying to get inside his head, this is the reason that I would bet money on. On the other hand, it could have been a combination of all three. John just didn’t say.
Now, lastly, there’s one other reason why John may have chosen to insert this detail into the story and it has nothing to do with Nicodemus’ reasons for coming to see Jesus at night but everything to do with John’s reasons as a writer, to include this seemingly insignificant detail. One of the themes throughout John’s Gospel is the contrast between light and darkness. Speaking metaphorically, light is the symbol that John often employs to indicate that a person can see or comprehend the truth and darkness is a symbol to indicate that a person is blind to it. In the case of Nicodemus, this morally devout man is blind to the truth.
As you read the next seven verses in whatever version of the Bible you’re using, keep in mind that we aren’t told if this is a summary of what was said or if Jesus was actually that abrupt in the dialog but, in any case, John indicates in this story the heart of the issue. Reading from the NIV, let’s look at what John wrote.
Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and said, “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.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
”How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely, they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 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.”
“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
Are you confused by all of this? Don’t feel bad. So was Nicodemus. He began the conversation by giving Jesus honor by calling Him rabbi and continued by acknowledging that Jesus came from God based on the evidence that he saw. One thing about Nicodemus that’s quite clear is that the man was a highly intelligent thinker. He saw the miracles, he heard the teaching and he came to the conclusion, and rightly so, that God’s fingerprints were all over this. And Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, because He loved Nicodemus, perceived where Nicodemus was spiritually, something that not even Nicodemus was aware of apparently, and went right to the heart of the issue. Jesus tailored an approach on the fly specifically for Nicodemus in such a way that Nicodemus could understand the truth and respond.
“You must be born again.” is what Jesus specifically said, and, because Nicodemus had no idea what Jesus was talking about, Jesus repeated Himself. One thing to remember about stuff that Jesus said, if He says it once, it’s important and if He says it more than once, it’s critical. Do the math here. You must be born again must be really important. So, what was Jesus talking about?
To answer that question, let’s begin by recognizing what Jesus wasn’t talking about. He wasn’t talking about doing more religious stuff. He couldn’t have been. He was talking to Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees for pity’s sake. Extremely strict and highly disciplined, those guys were the ultimate religious rule followers and Nicodemus was no exception to that. No, Jesus wasn’t talking about external rule following, He was talking about something else. He was talking about an inner transformation and Nicodemus had no idea what Jesus was talking about. When Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again, the only thing that Nicodemus could figure that Jesus was talking about was a physical birth and Jesus, in a graceful manner, played the hand He was dealt and took Nicodemus right where he was and told him the truth, beginning the process of course correction.
First, what Jesus was alluding to is a truth that is taught in the Bible and that’s the fact that every person has three parts, a body, a soul, and a spirit. Non church attenders, please hang in there with me for a minute because you’re probably going to learn something new here. The body is easy. It’s just the physical us, tall, short, blonde hair, red hair, gray hair, no hair (I’m not there yet, I still have most of mine!), it’s just us in all of our physical glory or selfsame lack thereof. But, according to the Bible, there’s two other parts, the soul and the spirit.
Now when the word soul appears in the Bible, it’s referring to that part of us that includes our will, our desires, our personal choices, and our preferences. It’s the inner us and it's reflected in what we call our personality.
The spirit, however, is something entirely different. The spirit is that part of us that is pointed toward and communicates with God. It belongs exclusively to God and it’s always God centered. And, what Jesus was saying here, was that every person also has to be born spiritually as well as physically if they were to enter the Kingdom of God. When Jesus said that to Nicodemus, it went right over his head and Jesus had to bring it back down and explain it to him on his level.
Side note: Readers, Jesus also made mention of the wind and I get that this might throw you a little bit. This is just my opinion but I kinda think that the point that Jesus was making to Nicodemus when he did this was to simply give Nicodemus an analogy that he could relate to. So, what is this spiritual birth that has similarities to the wind?
Notice, first of all, who actually causes the spiritual rebirth to happen. According to Jesus, it isn’t the person who it happens to, it’s God the Holy Spirit. According to Jesus, this spiritual birth, this birth that enables a person to be able to, using laymen’s terms here, do life with God, is the work of God the Holy Spirit and not human effort. This point was and still is essential to grasp. It was essential for Nicodemus back then and, it’s essential for us today.
It was essential for Nicodemus because, as we said earlier, he was a Pharisee and Pharisees were rigid rule followers. Now, in and of itself, following the rules is not a bad thing, in fact it can even be a good thing, often a smart thing, but here’s where things went south. In a nutshell the Pharisees believed that in order to be accepted by God they had to obey the Mosaic Law, do all the sacrifices and then God would accept them because of all of the good works that they were doing. To varying degrees, they were placing their faith and their trust in the good works that they were doing and what Jesus was saying was that without faith, as we will see in the upcoming weeks, in Jesus Himself, those works were pointless. And that was the sticking point for Nicodemus. His thinking was that if he followed the Mosaic Law to the letter, that he would be accepted by God. He was blind and unable to see the truth of a need for a spiritual rebirth. That was what he wasn’t seeing and that night Jesus began the process of bringing this man to the point where he could see the truth and respond to it.
So how does all of this apply to us? Well, many of us are doing at least to some degree the same thing that Nicodemus and the Pharisees were doing. Like them, we’re trying to earn our way into heaven. We’re trying to win God’s approval by doing enough good stuff or right stuff. It looks different in each of us, but, at its core, it’s the same thing. For some of us, we’re trying to be a good and kind person. For some of us church going types, we’re trying to do all of the righteous kind of things, go to church, give money, don’t sin, all of that. And all of us, if we were to carefully examine our lives, have at least this in common. We’re all trying to be decent and upright people. You know what? So was Nicodemus. And you know what else? If I had to hazard a guess, that man was probably better at it than most of us are and if Jesus told him that he had to be spiritually reborn in order to enter into God’s kingdom, what does that say about all of us? Yep, so do we.
So how do we do that? We do it the same way that Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to do it. We have to place our faith and trust in Jesus rather than in our own best works. One of the simplest ways to do that, if that’s our desire, is to tell God about it in prayer. Pray something like this. “God, I need you. I want the spiritual birth that Jesus talked about but I can’t do it myself. The best I have to offer you are my good works but that’s not enough to get it done, that’s not enough to outweigh the acts of rebellion against you and other people that I have also done. I need you to forgive me and I place my faith in Jesus’ death on the cross as sufficient payment for my rebellion. I believe too that Jesus raised from the dead and that if I trust in Him and not myself that I will be born spiritually. Thank you for forgiving me of my rebellion. I believe you. In Jesus name, amen.” You can use your own words too, God is much more concerned with our attitude and motive than He is our actual words.
If you did pray that prayer or something similar to it, please get a hold of me. I want to help you get connected with people in your community right now who can help you grow in your newfound faith. I can be reached at [email protected]
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
You know, one thing that I appreciate about John both as an eyewitness and a writer is that he often uses few words but he speaks volumes. In just two verses, he painted a clear picture of what was going on and laid a solid foundation so that we could put everything that Jesus said in context. In the first verse, John introduces us to a man named Nicodemus (phonetically spelled Nick-uh-deem-us) who was both a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council. Now, if you have never been to church in your life or at least not since you were a kid and you don’t know what a Pharisee is, don’t feel bad, neither do half of the people who go to church every Sunday. I mean, they know that the Pharisees are an important group of people in the narrative of Jesus’ life but they don’t exactly know what they believe, much less why that detail is important in the John 3 narrative. So, let’s break things down, shall we, and see what this Nicodemus guy is all about.
First of all, he’s a member of the Jewish ruling council, and that’s a big deal. This Jewish ruling council’s official name is the Sanhedrin and while it is true that because Judea was part of the Roman Empire, the Sanhedrin was accountable to Rome, they still had a lot of political and religious power within Jewish society at the time. The Sanhedrin was essentially the entity that interpreted the Law of Moses that was given 1400 to 1500 years earlier and could therefore dictate how that Law was to be applied in Jewish society at the time when Jesus was on earth. Now, because so much of Jewish life revolved around the worship of God in the Temple in Jerusalem, that gave the Sanhedrin a lot of social, political, and economic power. They dictated affairs in Judea, Galilee and, to a degree, throughout the entire Roman Empire where Jewish communities would meet to worship in local synagogues. (Synagogues were kind of like a community church.) Now, considering that there were only 72 members in the Sanhedrin and Nicodemus had a voice in that body, that meant that he was an important person who was coming to see Jesus that night.
The second thing about him that John revealed is that Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were kind of a political party, kind of a society that took the Mosaic Law seriously. Their lives revolved around it, so much so that they added traditions and other rules to help them obey that law. As far as we’re concerned, for the sake of this article, in terms of morality, we can safely assert that the Pharisees were an extremely moral group of people, rigid but moral nonetheless and if they were moral, so was Nicodemus because he was one of them.
The last thing that John reveals about Nicodemus is that he came to see Jesus at night and the question that I think that we have to ask ourselves is why? Why did Nicodemus come to see Jesus at night and, more importantly, why did John think it was important to include that detail, because, if all John is doing is telling us what happened, I’m not sure that it’s necessary. The problem is that John doesn’t explicitly tell us so we’re kind of on our own here. Using logic however, there are probably four reasons, any one of which could be true or perhaps even all of them could be true.
The first and most obvious reason is that to come to Jesus at night might have been the only time that Nicodemus could actually get a private audience with Jesus. Throughout His ministry, especially at this point in time, Jesus, because of the miracles and signs that He performed, was extremely popular. In fact, I have heard some pastors actually use the term “rock star status” to describe his popularity. He always drew a huge crowd whenever He went anywhere so it’s entirely possible that the only chance that Nicodemus had to get a private audience with Jesus was at night.
The second possibility has to do with the fact that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and Jesus was a rabbi from Galilee. In terms of status, generally a rabbi would seek an audience with a Pharisee who was a member of the Sanhedrin, that’s just the way that it works in the world. The lesser generally seeks an audience with the greater and not the other way around. And, even if Nicodemus wanted to see Jesus, which he obviously did, he could have invited Jesus into his home and done it that way. He would have gotten what he wanted while maintaining his status at the same time, but that’s not how he did it. Instead, he went to see Jesus and, by doing this at night, that meant that no one knew so he could maintain his social status with everyone. (Personally, I think that this reason is a reach but that’s just me.)
There’s a third reason, however, that is much more plausible in my mind. It’s related to the second reason except for one big difference. It’s entirely possible that yes, Nicodemus desired to hide his visit to Jesus, however not necessarily from the masses because they couldn’t hurt him. The masses lacked the means. However, his colleagues in the Sanhedrin…well, that was an entirely different matter. You see, when Jesus overturned the money changers tables in the Temple courtyards and drove out all of the animals in John 2, He made enemies within the Sanhedrin because they were the ones who set things up, and instantly became a controversial figure. It’s entirely possible that Nicodemus wanted to investigate Jesus for himself but not necessarily let the other members of the Sanhedrin know that he was doing it. When examining the motives of Nicodemus here and trying to get inside his head, this is the reason that I would bet money on. On the other hand, it could have been a combination of all three. John just didn’t say.
Now, lastly, there’s one other reason why John may have chosen to insert this detail into the story and it has nothing to do with Nicodemus’ reasons for coming to see Jesus at night but everything to do with John’s reasons as a writer, to include this seemingly insignificant detail. One of the themes throughout John’s Gospel is the contrast between light and darkness. Speaking metaphorically, light is the symbol that John often employs to indicate that a person can see or comprehend the truth and darkness is a symbol to indicate that a person is blind to it. In the case of Nicodemus, this morally devout man is blind to the truth.
As you read the next seven verses in whatever version of the Bible you’re using, keep in mind that we aren’t told if this is a summary of what was said or if Jesus was actually that abrupt in the dialog but, in any case, John indicates in this story the heart of the issue. Reading from the NIV, let’s look at what John wrote.
Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and said, “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.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
”How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely, they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 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.”
“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
Are you confused by all of this? Don’t feel bad. So was Nicodemus. He began the conversation by giving Jesus honor by calling Him rabbi and continued by acknowledging that Jesus came from God based on the evidence that he saw. One thing about Nicodemus that’s quite clear is that the man was a highly intelligent thinker. He saw the miracles, he heard the teaching and he came to the conclusion, and rightly so, that God’s fingerprints were all over this. And Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, because He loved Nicodemus, perceived where Nicodemus was spiritually, something that not even Nicodemus was aware of apparently, and went right to the heart of the issue. Jesus tailored an approach on the fly specifically for Nicodemus in such a way that Nicodemus could understand the truth and respond.
“You must be born again.” is what Jesus specifically said, and, because Nicodemus had no idea what Jesus was talking about, Jesus repeated Himself. One thing to remember about stuff that Jesus said, if He says it once, it’s important and if He says it more than once, it’s critical. Do the math here. You must be born again must be really important. So, what was Jesus talking about?
To answer that question, let’s begin by recognizing what Jesus wasn’t talking about. He wasn’t talking about doing more religious stuff. He couldn’t have been. He was talking to Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees for pity’s sake. Extremely strict and highly disciplined, those guys were the ultimate religious rule followers and Nicodemus was no exception to that. No, Jesus wasn’t talking about external rule following, He was talking about something else. He was talking about an inner transformation and Nicodemus had no idea what Jesus was talking about. When Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again, the only thing that Nicodemus could figure that Jesus was talking about was a physical birth and Jesus, in a graceful manner, played the hand He was dealt and took Nicodemus right where he was and told him the truth, beginning the process of course correction.
First, what Jesus was alluding to is a truth that is taught in the Bible and that’s the fact that every person has three parts, a body, a soul, and a spirit. Non church attenders, please hang in there with me for a minute because you’re probably going to learn something new here. The body is easy. It’s just the physical us, tall, short, blonde hair, red hair, gray hair, no hair (I’m not there yet, I still have most of mine!), it’s just us in all of our physical glory or selfsame lack thereof. But, according to the Bible, there’s two other parts, the soul and the spirit.
Now when the word soul appears in the Bible, it’s referring to that part of us that includes our will, our desires, our personal choices, and our preferences. It’s the inner us and it's reflected in what we call our personality.
The spirit, however, is something entirely different. The spirit is that part of us that is pointed toward and communicates with God. It belongs exclusively to God and it’s always God centered. And, what Jesus was saying here, was that every person also has to be born spiritually as well as physically if they were to enter the Kingdom of God. When Jesus said that to Nicodemus, it went right over his head and Jesus had to bring it back down and explain it to him on his level.
Side note: Readers, Jesus also made mention of the wind and I get that this might throw you a little bit. This is just my opinion but I kinda think that the point that Jesus was making to Nicodemus when he did this was to simply give Nicodemus an analogy that he could relate to. So, what is this spiritual birth that has similarities to the wind?
Notice, first of all, who actually causes the spiritual rebirth to happen. According to Jesus, it isn’t the person who it happens to, it’s God the Holy Spirit. According to Jesus, this spiritual birth, this birth that enables a person to be able to, using laymen’s terms here, do life with God, is the work of God the Holy Spirit and not human effort. This point was and still is essential to grasp. It was essential for Nicodemus back then and, it’s essential for us today.
It was essential for Nicodemus because, as we said earlier, he was a Pharisee and Pharisees were rigid rule followers. Now, in and of itself, following the rules is not a bad thing, in fact it can even be a good thing, often a smart thing, but here’s where things went south. In a nutshell the Pharisees believed that in order to be accepted by God they had to obey the Mosaic Law, do all the sacrifices and then God would accept them because of all of the good works that they were doing. To varying degrees, they were placing their faith and their trust in the good works that they were doing and what Jesus was saying was that without faith, as we will see in the upcoming weeks, in Jesus Himself, those works were pointless. And that was the sticking point for Nicodemus. His thinking was that if he followed the Mosaic Law to the letter, that he would be accepted by God. He was blind and unable to see the truth of a need for a spiritual rebirth. That was what he wasn’t seeing and that night Jesus began the process of bringing this man to the point where he could see the truth and respond to it.
So how does all of this apply to us? Well, many of us are doing at least to some degree the same thing that Nicodemus and the Pharisees were doing. Like them, we’re trying to earn our way into heaven. We’re trying to win God’s approval by doing enough good stuff or right stuff. It looks different in each of us, but, at its core, it’s the same thing. For some of us, we’re trying to be a good and kind person. For some of us church going types, we’re trying to do all of the righteous kind of things, go to church, give money, don’t sin, all of that. And all of us, if we were to carefully examine our lives, have at least this in common. We’re all trying to be decent and upright people. You know what? So was Nicodemus. And you know what else? If I had to hazard a guess, that man was probably better at it than most of us are and if Jesus told him that he had to be spiritually reborn in order to enter into God’s kingdom, what does that say about all of us? Yep, so do we.
So how do we do that? We do it the same way that Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to do it. We have to place our faith and trust in Jesus rather than in our own best works. One of the simplest ways to do that, if that’s our desire, is to tell God about it in prayer. Pray something like this. “God, I need you. I want the spiritual birth that Jesus talked about but I can’t do it myself. The best I have to offer you are my good works but that’s not enough to get it done, that’s not enough to outweigh the acts of rebellion against you and other people that I have also done. I need you to forgive me and I place my faith in Jesus’ death on the cross as sufficient payment for my rebellion. I believe too that Jesus raised from the dead and that if I trust in Him and not myself that I will be born spiritually. Thank you for forgiving me of my rebellion. I believe you. In Jesus name, amen.” You can use your own words too, God is much more concerned with our attitude and motive than He is our actual words.
If you did pray that prayer or something similar to it, please get a hold of me. I want to help you get connected with people in your community right now who can help you grow in your newfound faith. I can be reached at [email protected]
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
John 3:16
Part 3: A Snake on a Pole
One thing about Jesus, He was the most amazing and perceptive teacher who ever lived and He proved it with Nicodemus. If you’ll recall from last week, when Nicodemus came to see Jesus, the first thing that Jesus told him was that he had to be born again if he wanted to enter God’s kingdom. And…it went right over Nicodemus’ head, totally lost the man. The only thing that Nicodemus could figure that Jesus was talking about was a physical birth and that was impossible. Jesus had to correct him and tell him that He was talking about a spiritual rebirth. And then, to further explain what this rebirth was about and how it could happen to a person, he told him a story from Israel’s history, a story that Nicodemus would have been quite familiar with. Let’s pick up where we left off last week.
Now, without going into a lot of irrelevant detail, after Nicodemus asked Jesus what He was talking about, Jesus kind of chided the Pharisee for his lack of faith and understanding and then educated him by taking him back to a story in the Old Testament that Nicodemus would have been quite familiar with. The Message translation tells it like this. This is Jesus speaking, “No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.”
Now, in order to learn what Jesus was trying to teach Nicodemus here, and us too, we’re going to have to go back to the Old Testament and look at the story that Jesus was alluding to here. Before we do however, there’s a nugget of truth about Jesus that’s worth noting, something about Jesus that makes Him truly unique and truly in a class all of His own. One of Jesus’ favorite titles for Himself that He often used was the title, “the Son of Man.” Throughout the Gospels, whenever Jesus used that title, He was always speaking of Himself, never anyone else. Look at how Jesus used that term here. Paraphrasing, what Jesus told Nicodemus was that no one had ever gone into the presence of God the Father, except the one who had come down from that presence, the Son of Man. As soon as Jesus said that Nicodemus would have been tracking with Him to a point. The main place in the Old Testament where the term the Son of Man is used is in the Book of Daniel and the Jews, Nicodemus included, would have understood that it referred to the coming Messiah. They would also have ascribed all of the characteristics of deity to the Son of Man. Here’s the kicker though. What Jesus did was to take that title and pin it on Himself. For the record, unless Jesus really was God, that was blasphemous.
For Nicodemus, that would have been a lot to take in. I get it. It’s a lot for us to take in. Think about what Jesus was saying. He was saying that He existed eternally. If true, then that meant that Jesus is different from any other person who has lived throughout history, ever. Our existence, for example, began in our mother’s womb, however Jesus, by taking this title and pinning it on Himself, was saying that He existed before Bethlehem, throughout all eternity, past and future. And, because Nicodemus, like the rest of the Jewish elite at the time, would have understood that the Son of Man was on equal footing with God the Father, Jesus, by taking that title and pinning it on Himself, was putting Himself on equal footing with God the Father also. Think about it. No other religious leader throughout history has ever done that. Muhammad didn’t, the Buddha didn’t, Confucius didn’t, but Jesus did. That claim would have been enough to make Nicodemus sit up and pay attention. It should do the same thing for us.
Then Jesus, like any good teacher, went from the known to the unknown and began to teach Nicodemus a new application of an ancient truth taught in the Old Testament. He referred Nicodemus back to a story from Israel’s history that Nicodemus would have been quite familiar with. He went back to the story that we would be able to find in Numbers 21: 4 – 9. Here’s that story in a nutshell. The Israelites had escaped from Egypt and were on their way to Canaan when they became impatient with the speed that God was going and they began to complain. They turned on God and on Moses, their leader. “Why have you brought us out here in the desert to die?” they said. “There’s no bread, there’s no water and we hate this miserable food, (referring to manna that was sent from God).” And when they complained, God actually responded, although not in the way they were hoping that He would. For better or for worse, they got His attention and then He got theirs. He sent a bunch of venomous snakes with an attitude into the camp and these snakes started biting people and lots of people were dying.
To their credit, the people responded appropriately. “We’ve sinned against God and against you. Please pray for us that God will take the snakes away.” Moses prayed for the people and God responded in kind. We’re not told when God took the snakes away but we are told explicitly about God’s remedy. He instructed Moses to make a snake, which Moses did, he made it out of bronze, and put it on a pole. Anyone who was bitten could look at the snake statue and live.
Like I said, it would have been a familiar story for Nicodemus but then Jesus did something extraordinary. He took that familiar story, linked it to another familiar story, the Son of Man referred to in Daniel, and then pinned both on Himself. The implications of all of this, if true, were game changing for both Nicodemus and for us. Let’s break it down.
One of the things that would have stood out to Nicodemus was the concept of simple faith and obedience. If a person was bitten by one of these snakes, all they had to do was believe God when He said that if they looked at the bronze snake that they would be healed and have enough faith to actually do it. Like I said, Nicodemus was quite familiar with the story. He’d probably heard it repeated many times since he was a kid. However, that’s where the familiarity stopped. What was a new concept to Nicodemus was first, the claim that Jesus was making that He was both the Messiah and the Son of God. Frankly, I’m not sure that Nicodemus knew quite what to do with that one. What was also new was the idea, both of a spiritual rebirth as being necessary in order to essentially gain access to heaven and, perhaps even more mind blowing, the idea that in order to be spiritually reborn, that a person had to place their faith in Jesus. This especially would have flown in the face of what Nicodemus was currently counting on to obtain God’s approval. You see, Nicodemus thought that in order to obtain entrance into heaven that a person had to diligently obey the Laws of Moses and do a bunch of religious rituals. This was something that Nicodemus laboriously practiced. (For the record, I suspect that Nicodemus probably lived a more moral life than you and I combined.) But Jesus said none of that. Instead of talking about obeying the Mosaic Law, what He did rather, was reference an act of faith and then, in terms of application, point to Himself as being the object of that faith. He also alluded to what kind of death he would die when He spoke of the Son of Man being lifted up.
You know, as I look at this, I can really see where Nicodemus was coming from because many of us are, or at least were, to one degree or another in the same boat. For some of us, the idea that Jesus is God, well, we aren’t sure what exactly to make of that. That He was a good man? Sure, we’ll buy that. That He was a wise teacher? Yeah, no problem. But God? Whoa! That’s a lofty claim we’re thinking and we’re right because if it’s true, then that means that what Jesus says trumps everything that anyone else says. That means that what He says carries more weight than what any other religious leader past, present or future, said, says, or will say. It means that his definition of morality and what is moral, carries more weight than anyone else’s as well. It means that, in the end, governments will be held accountable by Him for what laws they passed and policies they practiced. For you and me, it also means that just because something is legal, doesn’t necessarily make it moral in God’s estimation. It also means that Jesus has the final say in terms of who will enter heaven and who won’t.
For some of us, the idea that faith in Jesus is the only way to obtain entrance into heaven is something that we’re not sure of. We’re trying to be a good person and doing the best that we can. We’re thinking that if we do enough good things that God will figure that’s good enough and let us in. The problem with that way of thinking though, is that Jesus never mentioned it. His silence on that subject here shouts volumes. And to my church going audience, this is especially a sticking point for us. Come on guys, those of you church goers, you grew up in the same environment that I did. Does this sound familiar? We knew the Bible stories by heart and we said that Jesus was the only way to God and we hung our hats on John 3:16 as assurance that we were right with God because we believed the right stuff. We listened to the right music, we went to church every Sunday and we went to youth group regularly. We didn’t smoke or drink and we memorized Bible verses. We didn’t swear (much…). We went to Bible camp every summer and rededicated our lives to the Lord on the last night of the fireside service each year at these camps. (That should have been a clue that something wasn’t quite right but we didn’t pick up on that…) We kept our hair cut short just like good church kids should and we didn’t hang out with the partiers. Guys let’s face it and call it for what it is. We were, or are in some cases, nothing more than a Nicodemus clone in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Catholic, Lutheran, or whatever other denomination that we care to fill in the blank with, clothing and Jesus is telling us, “All of that is well and good but it won’t get you into My kingdom. If you want to do that, you have to experience a spiritual rebirth and the only way to do that is to place faith in Me.” In other words, what Jesus is telling us is that in order to be right with God, we have to place our trust in Him realizing that none of these other good things that we might do really matters in God’s estimation concerning this matter.
So, what do we do with all of this? How do we know that it’s true? We have to do what Nicodemus had to do, we have to examine the evidence and draw our conclusions from that. Nicodemus, for example, got to hear Jesus preach and teach firsthand and he got to witness the miracles. He might have been present at Jesus’ trial and it’s a fact that he handled Jesus dead body as he and Joseph of Arimathea prepared the body for burial. Also, church history records that Nicodemus was an eyewitness to having seen Jesus alive after His resurrection so yes, one could argue that Nicodemus had a little better vantage point on much of the evidence as compared to you and me. However, the evidence that we do have we have is sufficient. It is enough for us to make an educated decision regarding Jesus. We still have access to the recorded testimony eyewitness accounts and based on those testimonies alone, we have sufficient evidence to reach a verdict.
To my non church attending audience, allow me to let you in on a secret. Everything that Jesus said regarding whether or not it’s true, hinges upon the resurrection. That Jesus is an historical figure who actually lived is true, and even the atheist historians would agree on that. There’s also no evidence to the contrary suggesting that He wasn’t crucified. It’s the next claim that gets dicey, this issue of the resurrection. Folks let’s not kid ourselves here. Everything that Jesus said rises or falls on one basic question, did Jesus rise from the grave or not? The evidence for it? There’s an empty tomb and documentation of the early church founders being martyred for only one reason. Of the twelve disciples, aside from Judas, only John died a natural death. The rest claimed that they had seen Jesus alive after He had been crucified by the Romans and they paid for it with their lives. They weren’t the only ones who saw Jesus though. The Apostle Paul recorded in his letter to the Corinthians that Jesus appeared to more than 500 people at the same time, many of whom were still living at the time and could corroborate his story. That’s strong evidence.
And the evidence against it, yeah that’s the problem, there isn’t any. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead that meant that his body would have had to have been somewhere and all that His enemies had to do was produce it. For the record, if any of them had the body, it was definitely in their best interests to cough it up. None of them ever did though. It seems that none of them had it and to make matters worse, they didn’t know where it was. Now, considering that the early disciples of Jesus were persistent in their claims to having seen Jesus alive, that was a problem, one that Jesus’ enemies had no solution for. It seemed that only thing they could do was try to use fear and silence the eyewitnesses because they had no credible argument to refute these witnesses. To quote Josh McDowell regarding evidence for the truth of the resurrection, “the silence of the Jews speaks louder than the voice of the Christians.”
So, what’s the importance of all of this? Why does it matter? According to Christian author and pastor Tim Keller, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” If Jesus didn’t rise from the grave then we can dismiss Him completely as being a total fraud. However, if Jesus rose from the grave then it means that what He told Nicodemus concerning His deity is true. It also means that He is in fact the Messiah and that faith in Him is the only way to experience a spiritual rebirth. It all hinges however, on the resurrection. Did it happen or not? We have to examine the evidence and decide. That’s a lot to process, I know.
Next week is Easter and we’re going to examine the events surrounding that key event from the lens of the actual verse, John 3:16. We’re going to pay special attention to what motivated God to do what He did and we’re going to examine some key elements of how a person can experience a spiritual rebirth. It’s been a post that I’ve been looking forward to writing since I began this series three weeks ago. See you then.
Now, without going into a lot of irrelevant detail, after Nicodemus asked Jesus what He was talking about, Jesus kind of chided the Pharisee for his lack of faith and understanding and then educated him by taking him back to a story in the Old Testament that Nicodemus would have been quite familiar with. The Message translation tells it like this. This is Jesus speaking, “No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.”
Now, in order to learn what Jesus was trying to teach Nicodemus here, and us too, we’re going to have to go back to the Old Testament and look at the story that Jesus was alluding to here. Before we do however, there’s a nugget of truth about Jesus that’s worth noting, something about Jesus that makes Him truly unique and truly in a class all of His own. One of Jesus’ favorite titles for Himself that He often used was the title, “the Son of Man.” Throughout the Gospels, whenever Jesus used that title, He was always speaking of Himself, never anyone else. Look at how Jesus used that term here. Paraphrasing, what Jesus told Nicodemus was that no one had ever gone into the presence of God the Father, except the one who had come down from that presence, the Son of Man. As soon as Jesus said that Nicodemus would have been tracking with Him to a point. The main place in the Old Testament where the term the Son of Man is used is in the Book of Daniel and the Jews, Nicodemus included, would have understood that it referred to the coming Messiah. They would also have ascribed all of the characteristics of deity to the Son of Man. Here’s the kicker though. What Jesus did was to take that title and pin it on Himself. For the record, unless Jesus really was God, that was blasphemous.
For Nicodemus, that would have been a lot to take in. I get it. It’s a lot for us to take in. Think about what Jesus was saying. He was saying that He existed eternally. If true, then that meant that Jesus is different from any other person who has lived throughout history, ever. Our existence, for example, began in our mother’s womb, however Jesus, by taking this title and pinning it on Himself, was saying that He existed before Bethlehem, throughout all eternity, past and future. And, because Nicodemus, like the rest of the Jewish elite at the time, would have understood that the Son of Man was on equal footing with God the Father, Jesus, by taking that title and pinning it on Himself, was putting Himself on equal footing with God the Father also. Think about it. No other religious leader throughout history has ever done that. Muhammad didn’t, the Buddha didn’t, Confucius didn’t, but Jesus did. That claim would have been enough to make Nicodemus sit up and pay attention. It should do the same thing for us.
Then Jesus, like any good teacher, went from the known to the unknown and began to teach Nicodemus a new application of an ancient truth taught in the Old Testament. He referred Nicodemus back to a story from Israel’s history that Nicodemus would have been quite familiar with. He went back to the story that we would be able to find in Numbers 21: 4 – 9. Here’s that story in a nutshell. The Israelites had escaped from Egypt and were on their way to Canaan when they became impatient with the speed that God was going and they began to complain. They turned on God and on Moses, their leader. “Why have you brought us out here in the desert to die?” they said. “There’s no bread, there’s no water and we hate this miserable food, (referring to manna that was sent from God).” And when they complained, God actually responded, although not in the way they were hoping that He would. For better or for worse, they got His attention and then He got theirs. He sent a bunch of venomous snakes with an attitude into the camp and these snakes started biting people and lots of people were dying.
To their credit, the people responded appropriately. “We’ve sinned against God and against you. Please pray for us that God will take the snakes away.” Moses prayed for the people and God responded in kind. We’re not told when God took the snakes away but we are told explicitly about God’s remedy. He instructed Moses to make a snake, which Moses did, he made it out of bronze, and put it on a pole. Anyone who was bitten could look at the snake statue and live.
Like I said, it would have been a familiar story for Nicodemus but then Jesus did something extraordinary. He took that familiar story, linked it to another familiar story, the Son of Man referred to in Daniel, and then pinned both on Himself. The implications of all of this, if true, were game changing for both Nicodemus and for us. Let’s break it down.
One of the things that would have stood out to Nicodemus was the concept of simple faith and obedience. If a person was bitten by one of these snakes, all they had to do was believe God when He said that if they looked at the bronze snake that they would be healed and have enough faith to actually do it. Like I said, Nicodemus was quite familiar with the story. He’d probably heard it repeated many times since he was a kid. However, that’s where the familiarity stopped. What was a new concept to Nicodemus was first, the claim that Jesus was making that He was both the Messiah and the Son of God. Frankly, I’m not sure that Nicodemus knew quite what to do with that one. What was also new was the idea, both of a spiritual rebirth as being necessary in order to essentially gain access to heaven and, perhaps even more mind blowing, the idea that in order to be spiritually reborn, that a person had to place their faith in Jesus. This especially would have flown in the face of what Nicodemus was currently counting on to obtain God’s approval. You see, Nicodemus thought that in order to obtain entrance into heaven that a person had to diligently obey the Laws of Moses and do a bunch of religious rituals. This was something that Nicodemus laboriously practiced. (For the record, I suspect that Nicodemus probably lived a more moral life than you and I combined.) But Jesus said none of that. Instead of talking about obeying the Mosaic Law, what He did rather, was reference an act of faith and then, in terms of application, point to Himself as being the object of that faith. He also alluded to what kind of death he would die when He spoke of the Son of Man being lifted up.
You know, as I look at this, I can really see where Nicodemus was coming from because many of us are, or at least were, to one degree or another in the same boat. For some of us, the idea that Jesus is God, well, we aren’t sure what exactly to make of that. That He was a good man? Sure, we’ll buy that. That He was a wise teacher? Yeah, no problem. But God? Whoa! That’s a lofty claim we’re thinking and we’re right because if it’s true, then that means that what Jesus says trumps everything that anyone else says. That means that what He says carries more weight than what any other religious leader past, present or future, said, says, or will say. It means that his definition of morality and what is moral, carries more weight than anyone else’s as well. It means that, in the end, governments will be held accountable by Him for what laws they passed and policies they practiced. For you and me, it also means that just because something is legal, doesn’t necessarily make it moral in God’s estimation. It also means that Jesus has the final say in terms of who will enter heaven and who won’t.
For some of us, the idea that faith in Jesus is the only way to obtain entrance into heaven is something that we’re not sure of. We’re trying to be a good person and doing the best that we can. We’re thinking that if we do enough good things that God will figure that’s good enough and let us in. The problem with that way of thinking though, is that Jesus never mentioned it. His silence on that subject here shouts volumes. And to my church going audience, this is especially a sticking point for us. Come on guys, those of you church goers, you grew up in the same environment that I did. Does this sound familiar? We knew the Bible stories by heart and we said that Jesus was the only way to God and we hung our hats on John 3:16 as assurance that we were right with God because we believed the right stuff. We listened to the right music, we went to church every Sunday and we went to youth group regularly. We didn’t smoke or drink and we memorized Bible verses. We didn’t swear (much…). We went to Bible camp every summer and rededicated our lives to the Lord on the last night of the fireside service each year at these camps. (That should have been a clue that something wasn’t quite right but we didn’t pick up on that…) We kept our hair cut short just like good church kids should and we didn’t hang out with the partiers. Guys let’s face it and call it for what it is. We were, or are in some cases, nothing more than a Nicodemus clone in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Catholic, Lutheran, or whatever other denomination that we care to fill in the blank with, clothing and Jesus is telling us, “All of that is well and good but it won’t get you into My kingdom. If you want to do that, you have to experience a spiritual rebirth and the only way to do that is to place faith in Me.” In other words, what Jesus is telling us is that in order to be right with God, we have to place our trust in Him realizing that none of these other good things that we might do really matters in God’s estimation concerning this matter.
So, what do we do with all of this? How do we know that it’s true? We have to do what Nicodemus had to do, we have to examine the evidence and draw our conclusions from that. Nicodemus, for example, got to hear Jesus preach and teach firsthand and he got to witness the miracles. He might have been present at Jesus’ trial and it’s a fact that he handled Jesus dead body as he and Joseph of Arimathea prepared the body for burial. Also, church history records that Nicodemus was an eyewitness to having seen Jesus alive after His resurrection so yes, one could argue that Nicodemus had a little better vantage point on much of the evidence as compared to you and me. However, the evidence that we do have we have is sufficient. It is enough for us to make an educated decision regarding Jesus. We still have access to the recorded testimony eyewitness accounts and based on those testimonies alone, we have sufficient evidence to reach a verdict.
To my non church attending audience, allow me to let you in on a secret. Everything that Jesus said regarding whether or not it’s true, hinges upon the resurrection. That Jesus is an historical figure who actually lived is true, and even the atheist historians would agree on that. There’s also no evidence to the contrary suggesting that He wasn’t crucified. It’s the next claim that gets dicey, this issue of the resurrection. Folks let’s not kid ourselves here. Everything that Jesus said rises or falls on one basic question, did Jesus rise from the grave or not? The evidence for it? There’s an empty tomb and documentation of the early church founders being martyred for only one reason. Of the twelve disciples, aside from Judas, only John died a natural death. The rest claimed that they had seen Jesus alive after He had been crucified by the Romans and they paid for it with their lives. They weren’t the only ones who saw Jesus though. The Apostle Paul recorded in his letter to the Corinthians that Jesus appeared to more than 500 people at the same time, many of whom were still living at the time and could corroborate his story. That’s strong evidence.
And the evidence against it, yeah that’s the problem, there isn’t any. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead that meant that his body would have had to have been somewhere and all that His enemies had to do was produce it. For the record, if any of them had the body, it was definitely in their best interests to cough it up. None of them ever did though. It seems that none of them had it and to make matters worse, they didn’t know where it was. Now, considering that the early disciples of Jesus were persistent in their claims to having seen Jesus alive, that was a problem, one that Jesus’ enemies had no solution for. It seemed that only thing they could do was try to use fear and silence the eyewitnesses because they had no credible argument to refute these witnesses. To quote Josh McDowell regarding evidence for the truth of the resurrection, “the silence of the Jews speaks louder than the voice of the Christians.”
So, what’s the importance of all of this? Why does it matter? According to Christian author and pastor Tim Keller, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” If Jesus didn’t rise from the grave then we can dismiss Him completely as being a total fraud. However, if Jesus rose from the grave then it means that what He told Nicodemus concerning His deity is true. It also means that He is in fact the Messiah and that faith in Him is the only way to experience a spiritual rebirth. It all hinges however, on the resurrection. Did it happen or not? We have to examine the evidence and decide. That’s a lot to process, I know.
Next week is Easter and we’re going to examine the events surrounding that key event from the lens of the actual verse, John 3:16. We’re going to pay special attention to what motivated God to do what He did and we’re going to examine some key elements of how a person can experience a spiritual rebirth. It’s been a post that I’ve been looking forward to writing since I began this series three weeks ago. See you then.
John 3:16
Part 4: For God So Loved the World
For God so loved the world. As I said when I began this series last month, this is Jesus’ signature verse. It’s a verse that oozes with hope for a world that desperately needs a message of hope all the time. I’m in my sixties. One thing that I have noticed over the years is that there’s always a crisis, always something that steals our joy and leaves us longing for hope. That’s what’s cool about Jesus though, He takes the hand He’s dealt, and in the middle of whatever situation He finds Himself in, He brings a pathway that if we have faith enough to take that path, will lead us to a place where we will find hope. It’s a path paved with an unconditional love. For God so loved the world.
Our story this week is one that took place in three days and really, it’s one where the world changed forever. Thursday at sundown the world was one way but by sundown Sunday, the layout was entirely different and Jesus, this rabbi from Nazareth orchestrated the events that changed the landscape of the world forever. Now, the events that transpired in those seventy two hours happened in rapid succession. Think of it like an action movie that we’ve seen in theatres. You know how fast things happen in those? Yeah, it happened that fast here too except, this time it was real. And it wasn’t script writers and editors writing the script, it was Jesus Himself in full control, manipulating events and making reconciliation between God and His creation, something that had been lost centuries earlier, possible for all who would have it for all time. It was God’s love on full display for all of creation to see, for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.
It began with Jesus and his disciples eating the traditional Passover meal in an upper room, somewhere in Jerusalem. The location was probably kept on the downlow because by that time a conspiracy was afoot to betray Jesus and Jesus, being God, knew it. Yes, He would be arrested and executed, but it would be on His timetable, no one else’s. The meal itself took maybe four hours in real time and Jesus spent much of that time teaching and preparing His disciples for what was to come, although much of what He said went right over their heads. Although in time they would, that night, they just didn’t understand, it was too much of a paradigm shift for them to comprehend. In laymen’s terms, they didn’t get it.
Then the scene shifted to the Garden at Gethsemane, a place where Jesus often went according to eyewitnesses and it was here that to the discerning eye, Jesus’ deity and humanity were truly revealed. Peter, as recorded in Mark, and Matthew in his eyewitness account, both agree that Jesus said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Luke added one more detail to that night, although he didn’t know the medical term for what it was, he did record that the eyewitnesses, most likely Peter and John, told him that Jesus was sweating blood, a rare condition known as hematohidrosis, a condition that can occur in individuals when they are suffering from extreme stress. Using laymen’s terms again, when a person experiences extreme stress, the blood vessels around the sweat glands burst and the blood can mingle with the sweat giving an appearance that a person is sweating blood. This is what Peter and John saw and the only way they could describe it was to say that Jesus was sweating blood. What caused Jesus to experience such stress? He was God. He knew what was coming and that there was no other way. But He was also fully human and He would have to endure that suffering in the confines of a human body, complete with its limitations. It would be the hardest thing imaginable and, what motivated all of this? Love. For God so loved the world.
What I want to do for the rest of this article is unpack just what that love looked like so we can grasp to what extent Jesus really did love the world, us, me, and you. It started with His prayer in the garden. “Father, (that’s what He called God the Father) if there’s any other way to do this, if there’s any other way, please, don’t make me do this.” And, knowing that there was no other way, knowing that He and He alone was the only one qualified and would be the only one who would ever be qualified to be an acceptable substitute to pay the penalty that we had incurred for our rebellion against God, Jesus put our interests ahead of His own and prayed, “Nonetheless, not what I want but what you want.” And with that He agreed, with eyes wide open, to go through with the events that would transpire in the next eighteen hours or so. For God so loved the world.
Shortly after Jesus prayed that prayer, when He heard the mob coming to arrest Him, He walked straight into their arms, willingly. Did He have other options? Sure, He did. He had options that could have been exercised without Him having to use any of His divine power. There were other escape routes available. There had to have been. In the eyewitness accounts it’s recorded that His disciples, once he was arrested, scattered in all directions and fled in terror. If they found a way out, He could have too. But He didn’t. Instead, He allowed Himself to be captured and made sure that the disciples were able to flee. It was time to complete His mission and do what He came to do. He faced His accusers alone. For God so loved the world.
Then there was the trial. What a façade that was. It was hastily thrown together and took place at night, an act explicitly forbidden by the Mosaic Law, but the Sanhedrin, the body that interpreted that law, knowingly violated it, and held the trial anyway. That made it an illegal trial but who’s counting. The witnesses against Him, paid by His enemies to lie that night, couldn’t get their stories straight. According to the Mosaic Law, one witness wasn’t enough for a conviction in a capital crimes trial, two were needed and their stories had to line up. These guys couldn’t do it though. In fact, not only could they not get their stories straight, but they actually contradicted each other. It would have been a slam dunk case for Jesus to refute had He chosen to do so. But instead, Jesus said nothing. He remained silent before His accusers, so that among other things, the Old Testament prophecies concerning Him would be fulfilled and it’s apparent that His silence frustrated His primary accusers, the High Priest, a man named Caiaphas, and his father in law Annas, the loud voices in the room that night, the men willing to do whatever it took, legal or otherwise, to get a conviction. Finally, in total exasperation, Caiaphas put Jesus, the accused, under oath, and asked Him one question. “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One, (Another name for God the Father)?”
And Jesus, with His eyes wide open, being placed under oath, fielded the question and said the only thing that could possibly get Him convicted. He said, “I am.” And then, just to make sure there was no doubt in their minds what He was saying, added this gem. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” He quoted Daniel 7:13, a prophecy that was definitely Messianic and applied to Himself. If I could paraphrase quoting the unauthorized Sam Roach paraphrased version of the Bible, He said it like this. “Upon hearing the question, Jesus answered, “I am. And you know that guy that Daniel talked about in Daniel 7:13, the guy who would sit at the right hand of God the Father in power? That’s me.” And the room exploded! The High Priest, allowed only to tear his robe if blasphemy was uttered in his presence, tore his robe in horror and this dignified body of men morphed into an unruly mob. They blindfolded Jesus and began to beat him. And Jesus, although He had the authority to call down legions of angels to put a stop to the whole procedure, did nothing. He willingly submitted to this because for us to have the possibility to be reconciled with our Creator, there was no other way. For God so loved the world.
In the interest of time and space I’m going to skip over the Roman flogging and His trial with Pilate, who, just for the record, found nothing when he examined Jesus that was worthy of death, in fact he even said so, and go straight to the crucifixion itself.
Crucifixion was the Roman Empire’s brainchild and was a brutal and humiliating way to die. The victim would be stripped naked and the arms and legs would be placed in such a way that there would be no way to hide that nakedness. It was absolute humiliation.
Then there’s the physical aspect of crucifixion. The pain that’s inflicted on a person during this form of execution is so intense that the Romans had to invent a new word to describe it because the ones they did have did not exist to do it justice. The word they invented was excruciare, and it’s from this word that we get the English word, excruciating. What caused the Romans to resort to inventing this word? It was all in the method. They would drive seven inch nails into the hands and the feet of the victim and they did it in such a way that the median nerve was severed driving the pain levels off the rails. They would also place the legs at a 45 degree angle to the cross so that all of a person's body weight was on the arms and the legs so that in order to breath, the person had to lift themselves off the cross in order to take the pressure off of their chest so that they could exhale, a task made almost impossible because every joint in the body was out of place by the time that they died. At the end of a crucifixion, a victim’s arms would be six to eight inches longer than they were at the beginning of the ordeal. And the organs would shut down during the process as well. In the end, a person being crucified would die of suffocation usually because they would lose the ability to breath. And Jesus, knowing that it was coming before any of this started, endured it anyway. For God so loved the world.
The Gospel accounts record that Jesus said seven things while hanging on that cross. He might have said more, I don’t know, but seven are recorded for us. I want to focus on the last one. The last thing that Jesus said before He died was, “It is finished,” or “tetelestai,” in the original language. There were several uses for that word, tetelestai, in Jesus’ day. In the Old Testament sacrificial system, each year when the High Priest would sacrifice a lamb for the sins of the nation during the Day of Atonement, at the end of the sacrifice, he would come out and announce to the people, “tetelestai”, signifying that the sacrifice had been made for all of the sins of the people for the past year. In New Testament times, if a worker was tasked with a job by their boss, when they completed the task, they would use the word to mean that they had finished the job and were either going home or were ready for the next thing on the punch list. The most common use of the word however during Jesus’ day, was in economics. If a person had incurred a debt and was paying off that debt, once that debt was paid in full, they would stamp or write the word tetelestai across the certificate of debt and it signified that the debt was completely and permanently paid for. Jesus, by using this word, was combining all three meanings to the world as a cry of triumph. Let me explain.
First, it was a cry to God the Father that He had completed His mission. Make no mistake here, this was not a cry of defeat, He didn’t say, “I’m finished.” He said, “It is finished.” And it was loud enough so that people around Him could hear it. It was a shout of triumph and victory.
Second, it was a statement that alluded back to the Day of Atonement, that all of the lambs that had been sacrificed on the Day of Atonement by the High Priest since it was instituted in the time of Moses, pointed to Him. He was the perfect sacrifice, and, tying in the economic meaning of the term, a permanent and once for all sacrifice. He was telling the world, once and for all, that they no longer had to sacrifice bulls and goats and lambs for their sin but that He was the perfect sacrifice that ended all of that. He was the final sacrifice. The sacrificial system was over. Its time was done.
Then there’s the final context for the use of that word, the economic one, that is quite telling. And it’s here where I want to camp for a minute. Like I said, when someone incurred a debt during Jesus’ day, like any debt, they had to pay it back and when they did, the creditor would write tetelestai across the paper signifying that the debt had been paid in full. Here’s the thing about creditors, they want their money and they aren’t picky about who pays a debt in full as long as someone does. It could be a family member who pays the debt, it could be a neighbor, for all that matters, it could be a total stranger. The creditor doesn’t care, they just want their money. Now, here’s what this has to do with us. The Bible clearly teaches that when the first humans, Adam and Eve, rebelled in the Garden of Eden, that sin, the opposite of holiness, was introduced to the human race and the payment for that rebellion was death, both physical and spiritual. Now for those of you who have a problem with the concept that you and I are what the Bible calls sinners because of something that Adam and Eve did, fine, I won’t debate with you. Instead, I’ll ask you this question. Have you ever violated your own moral code? I’m guessing that it's a less stringent moral code than God’s is, just sayin’. Have you done something that you knew was wrong no matter how you tried to justify it but you did it anyway? Go on, I’ll wait, not for you to produce an answer but for you to actually muster up the moxie to nod your head. Yeah, we haven’t followed our own moral code, much less a higher one that God has instituted, so, it’s like Paul wrote in Romans, “For everyone has missed the mark and fallen short of the glory of God.” That’s everyone, you, me, everyone. And the problem is that the only way to be accepted by God is to be absolutely perfect, to not miss the mark. In fact, we can’t miss once; we can’t rebel once…ever because God’s holiness is the mark to hit and He’s absolutely holy. And because, speaking once again in economic terms, the wages of our rebellion, what we’ve earned in other words, is death, a spiritual separation from God that lasts forever, we’re in bad shape. I’ve heard it said like this, we aren’t as bad as we could be. We could always use our imaginations and come up with new and improved ways to be bad, but we are as bad off as we possibly could be because we have offended a holy and perfect God and we have no way to make things right.
Now here was and is where Jesus came in. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, fully God in every sense of the word, became just as human as you and me, and did live a perfectly sinless life. When He went to the cross, He was holy and here’s what He did. He took every act of rebellion ever committed for all time by every person who ever lived and took it on Himself. Think of the worst thing that you have ever done, that thing that if everyone knew that you did that would just finish you forever. Well, Jesus said, “put that on my account, I’ll pay for it and everything else that they did too.” Jesus had all hell condensed into three hours, and at the end of three hours, when the price for every act of rebellion was paid for, He gave out the victory declaration, “Tetelestai! It is finished!” And what was the motivation? Love. For God so loved the world.
Now there’s one last part of this story, the story of the cross that has to be told here before we wrap things up. That’s God the Father’s part in all of this. When Jesus hung on the cross, He became sin and God the Father, because He is holy, had to turn His back on His Son, Jesus, for three full hours. Jesus had to experience physical and spiritual death. However, when Jesus made that declaration, tetelestai, God the Father agreed with Him. Our debt had been paid in full, completely and permanently, and access to God was restored.
Wrapping things up, we need to tell one last story. We need to shift our attention to the temple in Jerusalem, to the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. Its history goes all the way back to the time of Moses and in terms of volume, suffice it to say that it was a monster to pick up when they had to clean it. It took a group of priests to carry it. It was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide and approximately four inches thick. It was ornate and it signified that there was a barrier caused by our rebellion that prevented us from having direct access to God. Well, Matthew records that at the moment that Jesus shouted out, “Tetelestai!” that that veil tore in half from top to bottom signifying that direct access to God was now restored. In other words, as far as God was concerned, whoever wanted to end their rebellion and come to God on His terms, could now do so. As far as He was concerned, that debt was paid in full.
So where does that leave us? Well, God loved us enough to pay the penalty for our rebellion so now it’s up to us. How will we respond? Will we end our rebellion and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord or will we go it on our own? If we renounce our rebellion against God, surrender to Him and accept Jesus as our substitute for our rebellion, we will be accepted, strike that, adopted by God with full family rights and privileges. Imagine that, forgiven and accepted by our Creator. On the other hand, if we chose to turn Jesus down, we’re going to remain strapped with a debt that we will never be able to repay even if we want to and the place that the Bible calls hell is our destiny.
I know that I don’t talk much about hell here, I probably should do it more because, if the truth be told, Jesus talked more about hell than He did about heaven and the overriding message was always the same – you don’t want to go there. And that’s what the cross was all about. Jesus took on hell so we don’t have to. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him, will not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
We’re going to wrap up this series in the next couple of weeks but, in the meantime, if you want to end this rebellion today, here’s a model of a prayer that might help you do that. God is not as concerned with your words as He is with your attitude. You might want to pray something like this. “God, I know that you’re holy and I’m not. I’ve rebelled against you and offended you and I have a debt to you that I know I can never repay ever. I want to end my rebellion against you today and I thank you for sending to Jesus to die in my place and pay that debt that I can’t pay. I believe that you raised Jesus from the dead and I am choosing today to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. My rebellion against you is over. Thank you for forgiving me. Please help me to live like you want me to live. In Jesus name. Amen."
By the way, if you've been following this website, prayed that prayer and want to contact me, I can be reached at [email protected]
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
Our story this week is one that took place in three days and really, it’s one where the world changed forever. Thursday at sundown the world was one way but by sundown Sunday, the layout was entirely different and Jesus, this rabbi from Nazareth orchestrated the events that changed the landscape of the world forever. Now, the events that transpired in those seventy two hours happened in rapid succession. Think of it like an action movie that we’ve seen in theatres. You know how fast things happen in those? Yeah, it happened that fast here too except, this time it was real. And it wasn’t script writers and editors writing the script, it was Jesus Himself in full control, manipulating events and making reconciliation between God and His creation, something that had been lost centuries earlier, possible for all who would have it for all time. It was God’s love on full display for all of creation to see, for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.
It began with Jesus and his disciples eating the traditional Passover meal in an upper room, somewhere in Jerusalem. The location was probably kept on the downlow because by that time a conspiracy was afoot to betray Jesus and Jesus, being God, knew it. Yes, He would be arrested and executed, but it would be on His timetable, no one else’s. The meal itself took maybe four hours in real time and Jesus spent much of that time teaching and preparing His disciples for what was to come, although much of what He said went right over their heads. Although in time they would, that night, they just didn’t understand, it was too much of a paradigm shift for them to comprehend. In laymen’s terms, they didn’t get it.
Then the scene shifted to the Garden at Gethsemane, a place where Jesus often went according to eyewitnesses and it was here that to the discerning eye, Jesus’ deity and humanity were truly revealed. Peter, as recorded in Mark, and Matthew in his eyewitness account, both agree that Jesus said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Luke added one more detail to that night, although he didn’t know the medical term for what it was, he did record that the eyewitnesses, most likely Peter and John, told him that Jesus was sweating blood, a rare condition known as hematohidrosis, a condition that can occur in individuals when they are suffering from extreme stress. Using laymen’s terms again, when a person experiences extreme stress, the blood vessels around the sweat glands burst and the blood can mingle with the sweat giving an appearance that a person is sweating blood. This is what Peter and John saw and the only way they could describe it was to say that Jesus was sweating blood. What caused Jesus to experience such stress? He was God. He knew what was coming and that there was no other way. But He was also fully human and He would have to endure that suffering in the confines of a human body, complete with its limitations. It would be the hardest thing imaginable and, what motivated all of this? Love. For God so loved the world.
What I want to do for the rest of this article is unpack just what that love looked like so we can grasp to what extent Jesus really did love the world, us, me, and you. It started with His prayer in the garden. “Father, (that’s what He called God the Father) if there’s any other way to do this, if there’s any other way, please, don’t make me do this.” And, knowing that there was no other way, knowing that He and He alone was the only one qualified and would be the only one who would ever be qualified to be an acceptable substitute to pay the penalty that we had incurred for our rebellion against God, Jesus put our interests ahead of His own and prayed, “Nonetheless, not what I want but what you want.” And with that He agreed, with eyes wide open, to go through with the events that would transpire in the next eighteen hours or so. For God so loved the world.
Shortly after Jesus prayed that prayer, when He heard the mob coming to arrest Him, He walked straight into their arms, willingly. Did He have other options? Sure, He did. He had options that could have been exercised without Him having to use any of His divine power. There were other escape routes available. There had to have been. In the eyewitness accounts it’s recorded that His disciples, once he was arrested, scattered in all directions and fled in terror. If they found a way out, He could have too. But He didn’t. Instead, He allowed Himself to be captured and made sure that the disciples were able to flee. It was time to complete His mission and do what He came to do. He faced His accusers alone. For God so loved the world.
Then there was the trial. What a façade that was. It was hastily thrown together and took place at night, an act explicitly forbidden by the Mosaic Law, but the Sanhedrin, the body that interpreted that law, knowingly violated it, and held the trial anyway. That made it an illegal trial but who’s counting. The witnesses against Him, paid by His enemies to lie that night, couldn’t get their stories straight. According to the Mosaic Law, one witness wasn’t enough for a conviction in a capital crimes trial, two were needed and their stories had to line up. These guys couldn’t do it though. In fact, not only could they not get their stories straight, but they actually contradicted each other. It would have been a slam dunk case for Jesus to refute had He chosen to do so. But instead, Jesus said nothing. He remained silent before His accusers, so that among other things, the Old Testament prophecies concerning Him would be fulfilled and it’s apparent that His silence frustrated His primary accusers, the High Priest, a man named Caiaphas, and his father in law Annas, the loud voices in the room that night, the men willing to do whatever it took, legal or otherwise, to get a conviction. Finally, in total exasperation, Caiaphas put Jesus, the accused, under oath, and asked Him one question. “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One, (Another name for God the Father)?”
And Jesus, with His eyes wide open, being placed under oath, fielded the question and said the only thing that could possibly get Him convicted. He said, “I am.” And then, just to make sure there was no doubt in their minds what He was saying, added this gem. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” He quoted Daniel 7:13, a prophecy that was definitely Messianic and applied to Himself. If I could paraphrase quoting the unauthorized Sam Roach paraphrased version of the Bible, He said it like this. “Upon hearing the question, Jesus answered, “I am. And you know that guy that Daniel talked about in Daniel 7:13, the guy who would sit at the right hand of God the Father in power? That’s me.” And the room exploded! The High Priest, allowed only to tear his robe if blasphemy was uttered in his presence, tore his robe in horror and this dignified body of men morphed into an unruly mob. They blindfolded Jesus and began to beat him. And Jesus, although He had the authority to call down legions of angels to put a stop to the whole procedure, did nothing. He willingly submitted to this because for us to have the possibility to be reconciled with our Creator, there was no other way. For God so loved the world.
In the interest of time and space I’m going to skip over the Roman flogging and His trial with Pilate, who, just for the record, found nothing when he examined Jesus that was worthy of death, in fact he even said so, and go straight to the crucifixion itself.
Crucifixion was the Roman Empire’s brainchild and was a brutal and humiliating way to die. The victim would be stripped naked and the arms and legs would be placed in such a way that there would be no way to hide that nakedness. It was absolute humiliation.
Then there’s the physical aspect of crucifixion. The pain that’s inflicted on a person during this form of execution is so intense that the Romans had to invent a new word to describe it because the ones they did have did not exist to do it justice. The word they invented was excruciare, and it’s from this word that we get the English word, excruciating. What caused the Romans to resort to inventing this word? It was all in the method. They would drive seven inch nails into the hands and the feet of the victim and they did it in such a way that the median nerve was severed driving the pain levels off the rails. They would also place the legs at a 45 degree angle to the cross so that all of a person's body weight was on the arms and the legs so that in order to breath, the person had to lift themselves off the cross in order to take the pressure off of their chest so that they could exhale, a task made almost impossible because every joint in the body was out of place by the time that they died. At the end of a crucifixion, a victim’s arms would be six to eight inches longer than they were at the beginning of the ordeal. And the organs would shut down during the process as well. In the end, a person being crucified would die of suffocation usually because they would lose the ability to breath. And Jesus, knowing that it was coming before any of this started, endured it anyway. For God so loved the world.
The Gospel accounts record that Jesus said seven things while hanging on that cross. He might have said more, I don’t know, but seven are recorded for us. I want to focus on the last one. The last thing that Jesus said before He died was, “It is finished,” or “tetelestai,” in the original language. There were several uses for that word, tetelestai, in Jesus’ day. In the Old Testament sacrificial system, each year when the High Priest would sacrifice a lamb for the sins of the nation during the Day of Atonement, at the end of the sacrifice, he would come out and announce to the people, “tetelestai”, signifying that the sacrifice had been made for all of the sins of the people for the past year. In New Testament times, if a worker was tasked with a job by their boss, when they completed the task, they would use the word to mean that they had finished the job and were either going home or were ready for the next thing on the punch list. The most common use of the word however during Jesus’ day, was in economics. If a person had incurred a debt and was paying off that debt, once that debt was paid in full, they would stamp or write the word tetelestai across the certificate of debt and it signified that the debt was completely and permanently paid for. Jesus, by using this word, was combining all three meanings to the world as a cry of triumph. Let me explain.
First, it was a cry to God the Father that He had completed His mission. Make no mistake here, this was not a cry of defeat, He didn’t say, “I’m finished.” He said, “It is finished.” And it was loud enough so that people around Him could hear it. It was a shout of triumph and victory.
Second, it was a statement that alluded back to the Day of Atonement, that all of the lambs that had been sacrificed on the Day of Atonement by the High Priest since it was instituted in the time of Moses, pointed to Him. He was the perfect sacrifice, and, tying in the economic meaning of the term, a permanent and once for all sacrifice. He was telling the world, once and for all, that they no longer had to sacrifice bulls and goats and lambs for their sin but that He was the perfect sacrifice that ended all of that. He was the final sacrifice. The sacrificial system was over. Its time was done.
Then there’s the final context for the use of that word, the economic one, that is quite telling. And it’s here where I want to camp for a minute. Like I said, when someone incurred a debt during Jesus’ day, like any debt, they had to pay it back and when they did, the creditor would write tetelestai across the paper signifying that the debt had been paid in full. Here’s the thing about creditors, they want their money and they aren’t picky about who pays a debt in full as long as someone does. It could be a family member who pays the debt, it could be a neighbor, for all that matters, it could be a total stranger. The creditor doesn’t care, they just want their money. Now, here’s what this has to do with us. The Bible clearly teaches that when the first humans, Adam and Eve, rebelled in the Garden of Eden, that sin, the opposite of holiness, was introduced to the human race and the payment for that rebellion was death, both physical and spiritual. Now for those of you who have a problem with the concept that you and I are what the Bible calls sinners because of something that Adam and Eve did, fine, I won’t debate with you. Instead, I’ll ask you this question. Have you ever violated your own moral code? I’m guessing that it's a less stringent moral code than God’s is, just sayin’. Have you done something that you knew was wrong no matter how you tried to justify it but you did it anyway? Go on, I’ll wait, not for you to produce an answer but for you to actually muster up the moxie to nod your head. Yeah, we haven’t followed our own moral code, much less a higher one that God has instituted, so, it’s like Paul wrote in Romans, “For everyone has missed the mark and fallen short of the glory of God.” That’s everyone, you, me, everyone. And the problem is that the only way to be accepted by God is to be absolutely perfect, to not miss the mark. In fact, we can’t miss once; we can’t rebel once…ever because God’s holiness is the mark to hit and He’s absolutely holy. And because, speaking once again in economic terms, the wages of our rebellion, what we’ve earned in other words, is death, a spiritual separation from God that lasts forever, we’re in bad shape. I’ve heard it said like this, we aren’t as bad as we could be. We could always use our imaginations and come up with new and improved ways to be bad, but we are as bad off as we possibly could be because we have offended a holy and perfect God and we have no way to make things right.
Now here was and is where Jesus came in. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, fully God in every sense of the word, became just as human as you and me, and did live a perfectly sinless life. When He went to the cross, He was holy and here’s what He did. He took every act of rebellion ever committed for all time by every person who ever lived and took it on Himself. Think of the worst thing that you have ever done, that thing that if everyone knew that you did that would just finish you forever. Well, Jesus said, “put that on my account, I’ll pay for it and everything else that they did too.” Jesus had all hell condensed into three hours, and at the end of three hours, when the price for every act of rebellion was paid for, He gave out the victory declaration, “Tetelestai! It is finished!” And what was the motivation? Love. For God so loved the world.
Now there’s one last part of this story, the story of the cross that has to be told here before we wrap things up. That’s God the Father’s part in all of this. When Jesus hung on the cross, He became sin and God the Father, because He is holy, had to turn His back on His Son, Jesus, for three full hours. Jesus had to experience physical and spiritual death. However, when Jesus made that declaration, tetelestai, God the Father agreed with Him. Our debt had been paid in full, completely and permanently, and access to God was restored.
Wrapping things up, we need to tell one last story. We need to shift our attention to the temple in Jerusalem, to the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. Its history goes all the way back to the time of Moses and in terms of volume, suffice it to say that it was a monster to pick up when they had to clean it. It took a group of priests to carry it. It was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide and approximately four inches thick. It was ornate and it signified that there was a barrier caused by our rebellion that prevented us from having direct access to God. Well, Matthew records that at the moment that Jesus shouted out, “Tetelestai!” that that veil tore in half from top to bottom signifying that direct access to God was now restored. In other words, as far as God was concerned, whoever wanted to end their rebellion and come to God on His terms, could now do so. As far as He was concerned, that debt was paid in full.
So where does that leave us? Well, God loved us enough to pay the penalty for our rebellion so now it’s up to us. How will we respond? Will we end our rebellion and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord or will we go it on our own? If we renounce our rebellion against God, surrender to Him and accept Jesus as our substitute for our rebellion, we will be accepted, strike that, adopted by God with full family rights and privileges. Imagine that, forgiven and accepted by our Creator. On the other hand, if we chose to turn Jesus down, we’re going to remain strapped with a debt that we will never be able to repay even if we want to and the place that the Bible calls hell is our destiny.
I know that I don’t talk much about hell here, I probably should do it more because, if the truth be told, Jesus talked more about hell than He did about heaven and the overriding message was always the same – you don’t want to go there. And that’s what the cross was all about. Jesus took on hell so we don’t have to. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him, will not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
We’re going to wrap up this series in the next couple of weeks but, in the meantime, if you want to end this rebellion today, here’s a model of a prayer that might help you do that. God is not as concerned with your words as He is with your attitude. You might want to pray something like this. “God, I know that you’re holy and I’m not. I’ve rebelled against you and offended you and I have a debt to you that I know I can never repay ever. I want to end my rebellion against you today and I thank you for sending to Jesus to die in my place and pay that debt that I can’t pay. I believe that you raised Jesus from the dead and I am choosing today to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. My rebellion against you is over. Thank you for forgiving me. Please help me to live like you want me to live. In Jesus name. Amen."
By the way, if you've been following this website, prayed that prayer and want to contact me, I can be reached at [email protected]
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
John 3:16
Part 5: It’s Not a Stand Alone Verse
I want to take us back today to the idea that I made in the post that began this series, and that’s the idea that John 3:16 is the signature verse of Jesus. I stand by that assertion but there’s a problem here and that’s that people often treat this verse as a stand alone verse and it isn’t. It’s an important verse that’s right in the middle of a section with a bunch of other important verses. What I want to do today is unpack that and for my readers who grew up in church, saddle up, here we go again.
Now for those of you who didn’t grow up with going to church, let me tell you something about this whole going to church and Sunday school thing when you’re a kid. In Sunday School especially, they would tell you Bible stories (which was a good thing), and as part of the teaching process, they would often ask you questions about the story either as they tell it or after they tell it and the correct answer was almost always God and, if it wasn’t God, you could use a lifeline and get a prompt and say that the answer is Jesus and you’d probably get it right. You think that I’m lying? Hey, those of you who grew up in church, am I right or am I right? Yeah, I’m right.
There’s something else about this experience that was also true. Memorizing verses of the Bible was also stressed. They used a variety of techniques to get us to do it, including but not exclusively, contests with prizes. Once again, this is a good thing because memorizing Bible verses is like memorizing God’s thoughts and words. (For my readers who are new to all of this, reading and memorizing the Bible has the potential to change the way that you think and change your whole life really. Marriages have been repaired when one or both people in a marriage start reading the Bible and take it seriously. Addictions have been broken. People who lacked joy suddenly found themselves with a source of joy. I’m not making this up, these are the stories of real people.) Anyway, many of the verses we had to memorize were verses that taught valuable lessons for how to understand the key issues of life. The problem was, however, we memorized them as stand alone verses and missed sometimes the context in which they appeared in the Bible and one of these verses that we did this with was John 3:16, quite possibly the first verse that we all learned. What I want to do today is to look at John 3:16 not as a stand alone verse but as one sentence in a conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus and clear up some misconceptions that have evolved over the years around that verse.
If you’ll recall from previous weeks, the conversation began with Nicodemus coming to see Jesus at night and Jesus cut right to the chase, telling him that he needed to be born both spiritually as well as physically. The phrase that He used was, “you must be born again.” It went totally over the man’s head. He had no clue what Jesus was talking about. All he could figure was that Jesus was suggesting was that a person had to reenter their mother’s womb and, if that was what Jesus was saying, then Jesus was crazy. Fortunately for Nicodemus, and us too now that I think about it, Jesus wasn’t crazy. He was talking about something else. He was just using birth as a metaphor to explain what needed to happen and the rest of the dialogue, actually monolog, was the explanation about what He was talking about.
The conversation had begun when the first thing that Nicodemus said to Jesus was, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus never corrected him on that and Jesus’ silence speaks volumes. Because Jesus didn’t correct him here, the only assumption that we’re left with is that Jesus was affirming that what Nicodemus said was true. And then, in a way that only Jesus could do, He took the man by the hand and guided him through an explanation of what was what, beginning with what had to be a bombshell.
He laid things out, step by step, beginning with an explanation of who He was. Look at what He said. “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man,” verse 13. There are no accidents here in this conversation. Jesus used Nicodemus’ own ideas as His launch point for the discussion. Paraphrasing what He said, Jesus essentially told Nicodemus, “Yes Nicodemus, you’re right. I am from God and here’s something else you may not have realized. No one has ever gone up into heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. Come on Nicodemus, you’re an educated Pharisee, who am I?” That had to have been a jolt. Nicodemus was well versed in the Old Testament Scriptures. The term, Son of Man, was a direct reference to a Messianic prophecy in Daniel and it was understood that the Son of Man was divine. Jesus, this rabbi from Nazareth, was taking that term and applying it to Himself. Jesus was making a claim to deity. Using laymen’s terms, Jesus was claiming to be just as much God as God the Father and I don’t even want to begin to speculate what was going on in Nicodemus’ head about that time. His understanding of spiritual matters was being flipped on its ear and Jesus was just getting started.
What Jesus did next was use a technique that in the educational world we call going from the known to the unknown. He reminded Nicodemus of another story that Nicodemus would have been quite familiar with, the story of Moses lifting up a bronze serpent in the wilderness, so the people could be healed from deadly snake bites from snakes that had come into the camp and were biting people. This was a problem; people were dying from these bites. And what was even worse, the people had brought this on themselves. The people were complaining loudly about the food that they had and the conditions that they were living in. They were railing against God and they were railing against Moses. God’s response was that he sent in the vipers and once the people realized what they had done, or more to the point, the consequences for what they had done, they repented and asked for forgiveness. God instructed Moses to make this bronze serpent and put it on a pole where everyone could see it. If anyone was bitten, all they had to do was have enough faith to look at the bronze snake and they were healed.
Now, that part of the story, Nicodemus would have been familiar with. The next part however would have been uncharted territory. Jesus said that in the same way that the bronze snake was lifted up, so the Son of Man would be lifted up and everyone who had faith in Him would live. John doesn’t say it but I would have to guess that Jesus lost Nicodemus again. This Son of Man being lifted up business kind of sounded like Jesus was saying that the Son of Man would be crucified, but that couldn’t be. As far as Nicodemus’ understanding of Scripture went, the Son of Man wouldn’t die – well, except that contrary to what Nicodemus believed, He would. And then He said that in the same way that people in the wilderness had to place their faith in a bronze snake in order to be healed, so everyone who had faith in the Son of Man would have eternal life. Once again, I doubt if at this point that Nicodemus understood half of what Jesus was saying. It was such a major paradigm shift that Nicodemus’ journey to faith was going to take time.
Jesus then explained God’s role in all of this, including the motive. “God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die,” were Jesus’ words (John 3:16). What He was saying was that all of this was God’s idea. He said that God loved the people of this world so much that He gave His only Son to die for these people and if they would place their faith in His Son, that they would never really die. The emphasis however was faith, and not good works. Bookmark that idea in your mind. We’re coming back to it in a couple of paragraphs.
He also said these two statements. God didn’t send His Son down to condemn the world, He sent Him down to save the world. He also said that no one who placed their faith in the Son would be condemned but that anyone who did not place their faith in the Son was condemned already. Folks, when we actually stop and think about it, that’s a lot to take in. So, let’s break it down a bit.
First, let’s look at the big idea here, the point that Jesus was especially driving home to this Pharisee. Jesus’ big idea is that in order to enter God’s kingdom, there is only one requirement that matters, and that’s faith, but not just faith in any old thing, it’s faith that has an object and, using 20/20 hindsight, that object is Jesus. And Jesus didn’t just mention it in passing, He drove it home three times.
He started with the story of Moses and the bronze snake. In order to be healed, people had to place their faith in an object, a bronze snake on a pole in the middle of the camp. Did that defy logic…duh…ya think? But it wasn’t about logic, it was about faith and people had to make a fundamental decision, did they trust that God was telling the truth or not. If an individual decided that God was telling the truth and exercised faith, they lived. If they didn’t, they died. It was that simple.
He then spoke the famous words that we know today as John 3:16. “Whoever believes in Him, places their faith in Him, trusts in Him, relies on Him, will not perish but have eternal life.” What was Jesus saying? If you want to have eternal life, you have to place your faith in Jesus. That’s the second time He said it.
Folks, we need to pause here for a moment and I think kind of clear up a misconception that’s been circulating for probably 80 years or so. Now for those of you who didn’t grow up in a church or just spend much time there, I don’t blame you if you’ve been misled. It wasn’t your fault. On the other hand, those of us who have grown up in church and should know better, guys, we kinda dropped the ball here. It has to do with the phrase, “whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” In our zeal to educate people and lead them to faith, we’ve watered things down and kind of soft sold an important ingredient that’s necessary in order to come to faith. I’m talking about two words here, the r word and the f word. Throughout the Gospel accounts, over and over again Jesus said these two things in a variety of ways, repent of your rebellion against God and follow Me. For simplicity’s sake, a simple definition of these two concepts, repent and follow, is to quit thinking like we do and quit rebelling against God and start thinking like Jesus thinks and live life the way that Jesus wants us to.
A valid question here might be, why didn’t Jesus mention repentance in John 3:16? Look who He’s talking to…Nicodemus, a Pharisee. Nicodemus was a rule follower and he would have agreed with Jesus on that point. Jesus wasn’t shooting at vacuums here, when it came to the issue of the need for repentance, Nicodemus was doing that every year when lambs were sacrificed for the people’s rebellion. And, if we really want to belabor the point, look at the story that Jesus told to set up John 3:16. It was that story of the bronze snake in Numbers. Look at the pattern in that story. The people rebelled, the snakes came in, the people confessed their sin and repented, the snake was erected, people believed what God said and looked at it and they were healed. God provided the healing and the people exercised faith to receive that healing. What is important to note about that story though is this. After the people were healed, their behavior changed…at least for the moment. What’s my take on this? As I study this passage and others like it, what stands out to me is that repentance is a prerequisite to faith. In layman’s terms, we have to be sorry enough for our rebellion against God to want to end it and then place our faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection in order to receive a pardon for it. To approach this with the idea that we’re going to place our faith in Jesus but not have any intention to change how we live I believe is erroneous. That pattern never appears in the Bible anywhere.
Okay, now that that’s off my chest, coming back to the big idea that Jesus was driving home, I want to talk to us rule followers and those of us who are keeping a score card. You know the idea, if I do enough good stuff and if I’m a good enough person, God will accept me because that’s just how He rolls. Well look what Jesus said to Nicodemus, the rule follower. (And for the record, Nicodemus was a good guy. He sincerely tried to obey the Mosaic Law diligently. He was probably a better person than you or I put together.) I especially like how The Message translation puts it. “God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.” Notice what Jesus said was the difference maker in terms of who was acquitted of their rebellion and who wasn’t. It was the people who placed their faith in Jesus. Their personal morality and good works aren’t even mentioned. And also notice what He said about people who refused to place their faith in Jesus, they’re condemned already. Connect the dots here. What Jesus was saying is that we’re starting out condemned, guilty in other words and that it’s only by placing our faith in Jesus that we’re acquitted of our rebellion.
So, what do we do with all of this? We have to do the same thing that Nicodemus had to do. We have to decide if we are going to end our rebellion and place our faith in Jesus or not. What did Nicodemus decide to do that night? We aren’t told. John left that detail out of the story although I am of the opinion that Nicodemus didn’t decide that night although he might have. However, Nicodemus appears twice more in Scripture and by the last time he appeared in the Gospel accounts, it’s quite clear that he was all in. In any case, what he decided is irrelevant because when we face God at the end of our life, what Nicodemus decided to do with Jesus won’t be the topic of conversation. What God will be talking to us about is what did we do. Some of you are going to need some more time, I get it, just don’t quit asking questions, don’t stop investigating Jesus. For some of you though, you’re ready and you know it. You’re ready to end this rebellion and receive this pardon. How do you do it? The usual way is through prayer. If you don’t know what to say, here’s a sample prayer to pray. Perhaps you could pray something like this. “God, I know that you’re holy and I’m not. I’ve rebelled against you and offended you and I have a debt to you that I know I can never repay ever. I want to end my rebellion against you today and I thank you for sending Jesus to die in my place and pay that debt that I can’t pay. I believe that you raised Jesus from the dead and I am choosing today to, by faith, accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. My rebellion against you is over. Thank you for forgiving me. Please help me to live like you want me to live. In Jesus name. Amen.
Something that my proofreaders have mentioned to me about this post is that I haven't always cited the exact verse if I quoted something out of John 3. All of the verses that I quoted were taken from John 3: 1 - 18. One other thing, if you've been following this website and want to contact me, I do welcome interaction with my readers. I can be reached at [email protected]
Now for those of you who didn’t grow up with going to church, let me tell you something about this whole going to church and Sunday school thing when you’re a kid. In Sunday School especially, they would tell you Bible stories (which was a good thing), and as part of the teaching process, they would often ask you questions about the story either as they tell it or after they tell it and the correct answer was almost always God and, if it wasn’t God, you could use a lifeline and get a prompt and say that the answer is Jesus and you’d probably get it right. You think that I’m lying? Hey, those of you who grew up in church, am I right or am I right? Yeah, I’m right.
There’s something else about this experience that was also true. Memorizing verses of the Bible was also stressed. They used a variety of techniques to get us to do it, including but not exclusively, contests with prizes. Once again, this is a good thing because memorizing Bible verses is like memorizing God’s thoughts and words. (For my readers who are new to all of this, reading and memorizing the Bible has the potential to change the way that you think and change your whole life really. Marriages have been repaired when one or both people in a marriage start reading the Bible and take it seriously. Addictions have been broken. People who lacked joy suddenly found themselves with a source of joy. I’m not making this up, these are the stories of real people.) Anyway, many of the verses we had to memorize were verses that taught valuable lessons for how to understand the key issues of life. The problem was, however, we memorized them as stand alone verses and missed sometimes the context in which they appeared in the Bible and one of these verses that we did this with was John 3:16, quite possibly the first verse that we all learned. What I want to do today is to look at John 3:16 not as a stand alone verse but as one sentence in a conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus and clear up some misconceptions that have evolved over the years around that verse.
If you’ll recall from previous weeks, the conversation began with Nicodemus coming to see Jesus at night and Jesus cut right to the chase, telling him that he needed to be born both spiritually as well as physically. The phrase that He used was, “you must be born again.” It went totally over the man’s head. He had no clue what Jesus was talking about. All he could figure was that Jesus was suggesting was that a person had to reenter their mother’s womb and, if that was what Jesus was saying, then Jesus was crazy. Fortunately for Nicodemus, and us too now that I think about it, Jesus wasn’t crazy. He was talking about something else. He was just using birth as a metaphor to explain what needed to happen and the rest of the dialogue, actually monolog, was the explanation about what He was talking about.
The conversation had begun when the first thing that Nicodemus said to Jesus was, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus never corrected him on that and Jesus’ silence speaks volumes. Because Jesus didn’t correct him here, the only assumption that we’re left with is that Jesus was affirming that what Nicodemus said was true. And then, in a way that only Jesus could do, He took the man by the hand and guided him through an explanation of what was what, beginning with what had to be a bombshell.
He laid things out, step by step, beginning with an explanation of who He was. Look at what He said. “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man,” verse 13. There are no accidents here in this conversation. Jesus used Nicodemus’ own ideas as His launch point for the discussion. Paraphrasing what He said, Jesus essentially told Nicodemus, “Yes Nicodemus, you’re right. I am from God and here’s something else you may not have realized. No one has ever gone up into heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. Come on Nicodemus, you’re an educated Pharisee, who am I?” That had to have been a jolt. Nicodemus was well versed in the Old Testament Scriptures. The term, Son of Man, was a direct reference to a Messianic prophecy in Daniel and it was understood that the Son of Man was divine. Jesus, this rabbi from Nazareth, was taking that term and applying it to Himself. Jesus was making a claim to deity. Using laymen’s terms, Jesus was claiming to be just as much God as God the Father and I don’t even want to begin to speculate what was going on in Nicodemus’ head about that time. His understanding of spiritual matters was being flipped on its ear and Jesus was just getting started.
What Jesus did next was use a technique that in the educational world we call going from the known to the unknown. He reminded Nicodemus of another story that Nicodemus would have been quite familiar with, the story of Moses lifting up a bronze serpent in the wilderness, so the people could be healed from deadly snake bites from snakes that had come into the camp and were biting people. This was a problem; people were dying from these bites. And what was even worse, the people had brought this on themselves. The people were complaining loudly about the food that they had and the conditions that they were living in. They were railing against God and they were railing against Moses. God’s response was that he sent in the vipers and once the people realized what they had done, or more to the point, the consequences for what they had done, they repented and asked for forgiveness. God instructed Moses to make this bronze serpent and put it on a pole where everyone could see it. If anyone was bitten, all they had to do was have enough faith to look at the bronze snake and they were healed.
Now, that part of the story, Nicodemus would have been familiar with. The next part however would have been uncharted territory. Jesus said that in the same way that the bronze snake was lifted up, so the Son of Man would be lifted up and everyone who had faith in Him would live. John doesn’t say it but I would have to guess that Jesus lost Nicodemus again. This Son of Man being lifted up business kind of sounded like Jesus was saying that the Son of Man would be crucified, but that couldn’t be. As far as Nicodemus’ understanding of Scripture went, the Son of Man wouldn’t die – well, except that contrary to what Nicodemus believed, He would. And then He said that in the same way that people in the wilderness had to place their faith in a bronze snake in order to be healed, so everyone who had faith in the Son of Man would have eternal life. Once again, I doubt if at this point that Nicodemus understood half of what Jesus was saying. It was such a major paradigm shift that Nicodemus’ journey to faith was going to take time.
Jesus then explained God’s role in all of this, including the motive. “God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die,” were Jesus’ words (John 3:16). What He was saying was that all of this was God’s idea. He said that God loved the people of this world so much that He gave His only Son to die for these people and if they would place their faith in His Son, that they would never really die. The emphasis however was faith, and not good works. Bookmark that idea in your mind. We’re coming back to it in a couple of paragraphs.
He also said these two statements. God didn’t send His Son down to condemn the world, He sent Him down to save the world. He also said that no one who placed their faith in the Son would be condemned but that anyone who did not place their faith in the Son was condemned already. Folks, when we actually stop and think about it, that’s a lot to take in. So, let’s break it down a bit.
First, let’s look at the big idea here, the point that Jesus was especially driving home to this Pharisee. Jesus’ big idea is that in order to enter God’s kingdom, there is only one requirement that matters, and that’s faith, but not just faith in any old thing, it’s faith that has an object and, using 20/20 hindsight, that object is Jesus. And Jesus didn’t just mention it in passing, He drove it home three times.
He started with the story of Moses and the bronze snake. In order to be healed, people had to place their faith in an object, a bronze snake on a pole in the middle of the camp. Did that defy logic…duh…ya think? But it wasn’t about logic, it was about faith and people had to make a fundamental decision, did they trust that God was telling the truth or not. If an individual decided that God was telling the truth and exercised faith, they lived. If they didn’t, they died. It was that simple.
He then spoke the famous words that we know today as John 3:16. “Whoever believes in Him, places their faith in Him, trusts in Him, relies on Him, will not perish but have eternal life.” What was Jesus saying? If you want to have eternal life, you have to place your faith in Jesus. That’s the second time He said it.
Folks, we need to pause here for a moment and I think kind of clear up a misconception that’s been circulating for probably 80 years or so. Now for those of you who didn’t grow up in a church or just spend much time there, I don’t blame you if you’ve been misled. It wasn’t your fault. On the other hand, those of us who have grown up in church and should know better, guys, we kinda dropped the ball here. It has to do with the phrase, “whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” In our zeal to educate people and lead them to faith, we’ve watered things down and kind of soft sold an important ingredient that’s necessary in order to come to faith. I’m talking about two words here, the r word and the f word. Throughout the Gospel accounts, over and over again Jesus said these two things in a variety of ways, repent of your rebellion against God and follow Me. For simplicity’s sake, a simple definition of these two concepts, repent and follow, is to quit thinking like we do and quit rebelling against God and start thinking like Jesus thinks and live life the way that Jesus wants us to.
A valid question here might be, why didn’t Jesus mention repentance in John 3:16? Look who He’s talking to…Nicodemus, a Pharisee. Nicodemus was a rule follower and he would have agreed with Jesus on that point. Jesus wasn’t shooting at vacuums here, when it came to the issue of the need for repentance, Nicodemus was doing that every year when lambs were sacrificed for the people’s rebellion. And, if we really want to belabor the point, look at the story that Jesus told to set up John 3:16. It was that story of the bronze snake in Numbers. Look at the pattern in that story. The people rebelled, the snakes came in, the people confessed their sin and repented, the snake was erected, people believed what God said and looked at it and they were healed. God provided the healing and the people exercised faith to receive that healing. What is important to note about that story though is this. After the people were healed, their behavior changed…at least for the moment. What’s my take on this? As I study this passage and others like it, what stands out to me is that repentance is a prerequisite to faith. In layman’s terms, we have to be sorry enough for our rebellion against God to want to end it and then place our faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection in order to receive a pardon for it. To approach this with the idea that we’re going to place our faith in Jesus but not have any intention to change how we live I believe is erroneous. That pattern never appears in the Bible anywhere.
Okay, now that that’s off my chest, coming back to the big idea that Jesus was driving home, I want to talk to us rule followers and those of us who are keeping a score card. You know the idea, if I do enough good stuff and if I’m a good enough person, God will accept me because that’s just how He rolls. Well look what Jesus said to Nicodemus, the rule follower. (And for the record, Nicodemus was a good guy. He sincerely tried to obey the Mosaic Law diligently. He was probably a better person than you or I put together.) I especially like how The Message translation puts it. “God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.” Notice what Jesus said was the difference maker in terms of who was acquitted of their rebellion and who wasn’t. It was the people who placed their faith in Jesus. Their personal morality and good works aren’t even mentioned. And also notice what He said about people who refused to place their faith in Jesus, they’re condemned already. Connect the dots here. What Jesus was saying is that we’re starting out condemned, guilty in other words and that it’s only by placing our faith in Jesus that we’re acquitted of our rebellion.
So, what do we do with all of this? We have to do the same thing that Nicodemus had to do. We have to decide if we are going to end our rebellion and place our faith in Jesus or not. What did Nicodemus decide to do that night? We aren’t told. John left that detail out of the story although I am of the opinion that Nicodemus didn’t decide that night although he might have. However, Nicodemus appears twice more in Scripture and by the last time he appeared in the Gospel accounts, it’s quite clear that he was all in. In any case, what he decided is irrelevant because when we face God at the end of our life, what Nicodemus decided to do with Jesus won’t be the topic of conversation. What God will be talking to us about is what did we do. Some of you are going to need some more time, I get it, just don’t quit asking questions, don’t stop investigating Jesus. For some of you though, you’re ready and you know it. You’re ready to end this rebellion and receive this pardon. How do you do it? The usual way is through prayer. If you don’t know what to say, here’s a sample prayer to pray. Perhaps you could pray something like this. “God, I know that you’re holy and I’m not. I’ve rebelled against you and offended you and I have a debt to you that I know I can never repay ever. I want to end my rebellion against you today and I thank you for sending Jesus to die in my place and pay that debt that I can’t pay. I believe that you raised Jesus from the dead and I am choosing today to, by faith, accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. My rebellion against you is over. Thank you for forgiving me. Please help me to live like you want me to live. In Jesus name. Amen.
Something that my proofreaders have mentioned to me about this post is that I haven't always cited the exact verse if I quoted something out of John 3. All of the verses that I quoted were taken from John 3: 1 - 18. One other thing, if you've been following this website and want to contact me, I do welcome interaction with my readers. I can be reached at [email protected]
Part 6: So Now What?
So, what do we do now? We began this series six weeks ago talking about a sign that shows up at football games and ended up with a monologue given by Jesus with some pretty heavy assertions in it. We started with what we thought was just a simple catch phrase verse that was warm and fuzzy and the whole thing morphed into a loaded package with enough stuff crammed in it to make our heads explode. We speculated about the back story of this Pharisee named Nicodemus, we spent some time with Moses in the wilderness with a bunch of snakes, and we glanced at a prophecy by a prophet named Daniel. And then we wrapped all of this up together, put it in a package with neat tidy little bow tied on top of it and served it up complete with an incredible offer that is a total game changer from word say go. So, what are we supposed to do with it? How are we supposed to respond? If he were here with us, Nicodemus would understand our plight because he probably asked the same kinds of questions. As he left Jesus that night, the question that was bouncing in his head was, “What do I do now?”
Yes, what do we do now because seriously, Jesus didn’t give a bunch of new information and perspective just to make that Pharisee smarter or tweak his curiosity. No, He gave it to Nicodemus so that Nicodemus could make an intelligent decision about whether to follow Him or not. In fact, this whole dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus was actually an invitation by Jesus uniquely tailored specifically to Nicodemus, using verbiage and examples that Nicodemus was well versed in, so that Nicodemus could make an intelligent decision about what to do with Jesus. “Nicodemus,” Jesus was asking. “Are you going to follow me or not?” Never has a question been more simple and yet more difficult at the same time.
In order to intelligently answer this, it really boiled down to two fundamental questions that Nicodemus had to ask himself, the first being as he evaluated Jesus was whether or not Jesus was telling the truth about Himself. Was Jesus really who He claimed to be or was He just blowin’ smoke? Was Jesus really God, the Son of Man who Daniel wrote about in his prophetic book? That’s a serious question because if the answer to it was no and if it turned out that Jesus was lying about himself, then any discussion regarding whether or not Jesus was to be followed was ridiculous. And the second question was whether or not Nicodemus was willing to pay the price in order to follow Jesus.
Now, in order to make an intelligent decision regarding the first question, Nicodemus had to evaluate the evidence that he had at the time. He saw the miracles firsthand, and what miracles they were. He saw Jesus do things that no one else did on a scale that no one had ever done them before. You know, some people think that the only reason that Jesus did all of the miracles that He did, the healings and whatnot, was simply because He had compassion on hurting people and, while it was true that He did have compassion on hurting people and it did compel Him to act, that wasn’t the only reason that He did them. He also did them as proof to a world that desperately needed to hear it and see it, that He was who He claimed to be, He was the Messiah. Jesus was and still is the most logical being in existence and it stands to reason that if He was going to claim to be God, claim to be the Messiah, then He had to do things that only God could do. He had to act the part and He had to offer convincing evidence that the world could see. Going down a rabbit trail here, around the time that Jesus lived, there were many men claiming to be the promised Messiah but none of them could do what Jesus did. Jesus, by performing these miracles, set Himself apart from all of the others. He presented evidence that screamed out, I am the Messiah, the real deal, the rest of these guys are nothing more than cheap charlatans. The question however, was this, would Nicodemus believe the evidence in front of him or not?
The other question that Nicodemus had to answer was whether or not he would change some fundamental beliefs that he had held to be true since childhood. What I mean is this. Nicodemus had believed his entire life that in order to be accepted by God, what a person had to do was obey the Mosaic Law as best that a person could, follow the rituals, and offer the sacrifices and that was what God expected. Jesus, however, stressed that because a person was condemned already, that it was faith in Him and not performing religious rituals that allowed a person to be accepted by God. I’m not sure if Nicodemus knew quite what to do with that, especially in light of what following this rabbi from Nazareth would cost him.
Here’s what Nicodemus was faced with. He was living in a unique time in the history of the world when God’s dealing with His creation would make a fundamental change. It was a time when the old system would be ushered out and a new system would be ushered in, and it would happen right before Nicodemus’ eyes. He would have a ringside seat and be an eyewitness to events that we can only read about today. He would witness the crucifixion. He, along with a friend, would secure the body of Jesus from the Romans once Jesus had died and would give it a proper burial. On the third day he would witness that while the grave clothes of Jesus were perfectly in tac, that the body was gone and the tomb was empty. And the implications of all of this would be game changing. Jesus would be the perfect sacrifice, sufficient to pay for the rebellion of humanity for all time. God’s justice would be satisfied and a way would be made possible for the relationship between God and His creation to be restored as it was intended to be from the beginning. Using the Old Testament terminology here, the sacrificial system, that system of yearly animal sacrifices for the remission of sins, would be obsolete, unnecessary…gone. But would Nicodemus buy into it or not? That was the question that no one could answer for Nicodemus except Nicodemus himself.
So why wouldn’t Nicodemus buy into this? Probably for the same reason that we’re reluctant to. The cost. Jesus was really sharp the way that He wrapped this conversation up. Paraphrasing here, what Jesus said in John 3:19 was that it all boiled down to what a person loved most. Did they love their rebellion and being their own god, calling their own shots in life, or did they love God. Specifically for Nicodemus, would he love the old way of doing things, placing whatever faith he did have in the animal sacrifices, a way that Jesus made quite clear would leave him condemned when he faced God at the end of his life, or would he embrace the new and place his faith in Jesus as being the sufficient sacrifice to pay the penalty for his rebellion against his Creator. And, even more importantly, would he follow Jesus in spite of what it would cost him, socially, politically, and economically?
Although I’m not sure exactly when it happened, in the end all evidence points to the fact that Nicodemus probably ended up following Jesus. In the John’s Gospel, Nicodemus does appear at the crucifixion when he took Jesus’ body to give it the proper burial. That’s an act of a follower. The Sanhedrin who crucified Jesus wouldn’t have cared at all what happened to the body once Jesus was dead. Nicodemus did though, and he acted on it. Also, there’s more to the story although we have to go to sources outside of the Bible to get it. According to one source, Nicodemus lost his position on the Sanhedrin and was eventually banished from Jerusalem by hostile Jews. If this is true, and it really lines up with the Biblical evidence, then Nicodemus followed Jesus and it did cost him everything. How he died, however? Of that, we are not sure. The Bible doesn’t say and neither do the early church fathers.
So, what do we do with all of this? We have to do the same thing that Nicodemus had to do. We too have to examine the evidence that we have and decide whether we believe Jesus when He said that He was God and we too must decide if He is worth following or not. We too must decide if the price of following Jesus is a price that we want to pay.
In terms of the evidence, as far as Jesus is concerned, it really comes down to the resurrection on that Easter morning. If that really happened the way that the eyewitnesses said that it did, then Jesus has to be taken seriously. I have covered evidence for the resurrection so I won’t do it here. Suffice it to say that the evidence for the resurrection is strong.
The evidence is often not the issue though, nor is even the fact that He’s God. Often times it comes down to this, this issue of cost and control. Do I want to give up control of my life to follow Him, to live differently or do I love my life the way that it is and don’t really want to change. Society says that certain behaviors are acceptable and even legal but the Bible says something else to the contrary. In terms of what we will do, who wins, Jesus or us? Putting blue jeans on this questions and shoes so we can live it out, these might be some questions that we need to ask ourselves. Take the use of money, do I own my money or does Jesus? Does Jesus have access to my checkbook or not? How about how I treat those people I don’t really like? Or how about the play lists on my phone, the music that I listen to or the movies that I watch? Does Jesus have veto power of that area? And, what about the habits that no one sees? You get the idea. When it comes to choices, does Jesus win or not. Is He in charge or not?
In the end, Nicodemus decided that Jesus was worth following and he placed his faith in Jesus. The question for you and me is, will we. According to Jesus, if we place our faith in Jesus, spiritual rebirth and everything that goes with it is ours. That’s the promise. Jesus won’t force us though, any more than He forced Nicodemus. He wants us to follow Him, just like He wanted Nicodemus to but in the end, He’ll leave that decision up to us. I would say that the day that we decide to follow Jesus, we pray a prayer that sounds something like this. “God, I’m in. I’m through running my life on my terms and I’m ready to follow Jesus. I’m ready to live life on Your terms. I want to love You more than I love my life. As an act of faith, I believe that Jesus died for my sin and that He was raised from the dead. I’m ready to follow. In Jesus name, amen.”
Next week I want to start a series that will look at several instances where Jesus reached out to people and how He manipulated circumstances to find them, starting actually with Nicodemus. I’m especially going to try and focus on how this applies to us in the real world. In the meantime, if you want to reach me directly, I can be reached at [email protected]. I do monitor that email account regularly.
Yes, what do we do now because seriously, Jesus didn’t give a bunch of new information and perspective just to make that Pharisee smarter or tweak his curiosity. No, He gave it to Nicodemus so that Nicodemus could make an intelligent decision about whether to follow Him or not. In fact, this whole dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus was actually an invitation by Jesus uniquely tailored specifically to Nicodemus, using verbiage and examples that Nicodemus was well versed in, so that Nicodemus could make an intelligent decision about what to do with Jesus. “Nicodemus,” Jesus was asking. “Are you going to follow me or not?” Never has a question been more simple and yet more difficult at the same time.
In order to intelligently answer this, it really boiled down to two fundamental questions that Nicodemus had to ask himself, the first being as he evaluated Jesus was whether or not Jesus was telling the truth about Himself. Was Jesus really who He claimed to be or was He just blowin’ smoke? Was Jesus really God, the Son of Man who Daniel wrote about in his prophetic book? That’s a serious question because if the answer to it was no and if it turned out that Jesus was lying about himself, then any discussion regarding whether or not Jesus was to be followed was ridiculous. And the second question was whether or not Nicodemus was willing to pay the price in order to follow Jesus.
Now, in order to make an intelligent decision regarding the first question, Nicodemus had to evaluate the evidence that he had at the time. He saw the miracles firsthand, and what miracles they were. He saw Jesus do things that no one else did on a scale that no one had ever done them before. You know, some people think that the only reason that Jesus did all of the miracles that He did, the healings and whatnot, was simply because He had compassion on hurting people and, while it was true that He did have compassion on hurting people and it did compel Him to act, that wasn’t the only reason that He did them. He also did them as proof to a world that desperately needed to hear it and see it, that He was who He claimed to be, He was the Messiah. Jesus was and still is the most logical being in existence and it stands to reason that if He was going to claim to be God, claim to be the Messiah, then He had to do things that only God could do. He had to act the part and He had to offer convincing evidence that the world could see. Going down a rabbit trail here, around the time that Jesus lived, there were many men claiming to be the promised Messiah but none of them could do what Jesus did. Jesus, by performing these miracles, set Himself apart from all of the others. He presented evidence that screamed out, I am the Messiah, the real deal, the rest of these guys are nothing more than cheap charlatans. The question however, was this, would Nicodemus believe the evidence in front of him or not?
The other question that Nicodemus had to answer was whether or not he would change some fundamental beliefs that he had held to be true since childhood. What I mean is this. Nicodemus had believed his entire life that in order to be accepted by God, what a person had to do was obey the Mosaic Law as best that a person could, follow the rituals, and offer the sacrifices and that was what God expected. Jesus, however, stressed that because a person was condemned already, that it was faith in Him and not performing religious rituals that allowed a person to be accepted by God. I’m not sure if Nicodemus knew quite what to do with that, especially in light of what following this rabbi from Nazareth would cost him.
Here’s what Nicodemus was faced with. He was living in a unique time in the history of the world when God’s dealing with His creation would make a fundamental change. It was a time when the old system would be ushered out and a new system would be ushered in, and it would happen right before Nicodemus’ eyes. He would have a ringside seat and be an eyewitness to events that we can only read about today. He would witness the crucifixion. He, along with a friend, would secure the body of Jesus from the Romans once Jesus had died and would give it a proper burial. On the third day he would witness that while the grave clothes of Jesus were perfectly in tac, that the body was gone and the tomb was empty. And the implications of all of this would be game changing. Jesus would be the perfect sacrifice, sufficient to pay for the rebellion of humanity for all time. God’s justice would be satisfied and a way would be made possible for the relationship between God and His creation to be restored as it was intended to be from the beginning. Using the Old Testament terminology here, the sacrificial system, that system of yearly animal sacrifices for the remission of sins, would be obsolete, unnecessary…gone. But would Nicodemus buy into it or not? That was the question that no one could answer for Nicodemus except Nicodemus himself.
So why wouldn’t Nicodemus buy into this? Probably for the same reason that we’re reluctant to. The cost. Jesus was really sharp the way that He wrapped this conversation up. Paraphrasing here, what Jesus said in John 3:19 was that it all boiled down to what a person loved most. Did they love their rebellion and being their own god, calling their own shots in life, or did they love God. Specifically for Nicodemus, would he love the old way of doing things, placing whatever faith he did have in the animal sacrifices, a way that Jesus made quite clear would leave him condemned when he faced God at the end of his life, or would he embrace the new and place his faith in Jesus as being the sufficient sacrifice to pay the penalty for his rebellion against his Creator. And, even more importantly, would he follow Jesus in spite of what it would cost him, socially, politically, and economically?
Although I’m not sure exactly when it happened, in the end all evidence points to the fact that Nicodemus probably ended up following Jesus. In the John’s Gospel, Nicodemus does appear at the crucifixion when he took Jesus’ body to give it the proper burial. That’s an act of a follower. The Sanhedrin who crucified Jesus wouldn’t have cared at all what happened to the body once Jesus was dead. Nicodemus did though, and he acted on it. Also, there’s more to the story although we have to go to sources outside of the Bible to get it. According to one source, Nicodemus lost his position on the Sanhedrin and was eventually banished from Jerusalem by hostile Jews. If this is true, and it really lines up with the Biblical evidence, then Nicodemus followed Jesus and it did cost him everything. How he died, however? Of that, we are not sure. The Bible doesn’t say and neither do the early church fathers.
So, what do we do with all of this? We have to do the same thing that Nicodemus had to do. We too have to examine the evidence that we have and decide whether we believe Jesus when He said that He was God and we too must decide if He is worth following or not. We too must decide if the price of following Jesus is a price that we want to pay.
In terms of the evidence, as far as Jesus is concerned, it really comes down to the resurrection on that Easter morning. If that really happened the way that the eyewitnesses said that it did, then Jesus has to be taken seriously. I have covered evidence for the resurrection so I won’t do it here. Suffice it to say that the evidence for the resurrection is strong.
The evidence is often not the issue though, nor is even the fact that He’s God. Often times it comes down to this, this issue of cost and control. Do I want to give up control of my life to follow Him, to live differently or do I love my life the way that it is and don’t really want to change. Society says that certain behaviors are acceptable and even legal but the Bible says something else to the contrary. In terms of what we will do, who wins, Jesus or us? Putting blue jeans on this questions and shoes so we can live it out, these might be some questions that we need to ask ourselves. Take the use of money, do I own my money or does Jesus? Does Jesus have access to my checkbook or not? How about how I treat those people I don’t really like? Or how about the play lists on my phone, the music that I listen to or the movies that I watch? Does Jesus have veto power of that area? And, what about the habits that no one sees? You get the idea. When it comes to choices, does Jesus win or not. Is He in charge or not?
In the end, Nicodemus decided that Jesus was worth following and he placed his faith in Jesus. The question for you and me is, will we. According to Jesus, if we place our faith in Jesus, spiritual rebirth and everything that goes with it is ours. That’s the promise. Jesus won’t force us though, any more than He forced Nicodemus. He wants us to follow Him, just like He wanted Nicodemus to but in the end, He’ll leave that decision up to us. I would say that the day that we decide to follow Jesus, we pray a prayer that sounds something like this. “God, I’m in. I’m through running my life on my terms and I’m ready to follow Jesus. I’m ready to live life on Your terms. I want to love You more than I love my life. As an act of faith, I believe that Jesus died for my sin and that He was raised from the dead. I’m ready to follow. In Jesus name, amen.”
Next week I want to start a series that will look at several instances where Jesus reached out to people and how He manipulated circumstances to find them, starting actually with Nicodemus. I’m especially going to try and focus on how this applies to us in the real world. In the meantime, if you want to reach me directly, I can be reached at [email protected]. I do monitor that email account regularly.