Jesus and a scholar (cameo 3)
- Introduction
- Teaching overview
- Nicodemus Conversation
- The endorsement by John the Baptist
- Personal response – surrender or pride-control
Introduction
John Chapter 3 is the third cameo John uses to unfold the identity of Jesus he was discovering. It relates an encounter of Jesus with a high status academic and religious leader, not someone with whom John would have regularly rubbed shoulders. No doubt, what Jesus had to say to this elite member of Jewish society would have fascinated John. The highlights of John’s record of their interaction is possibly one of the most referenced chapters of the Bible. Its popularity comes from creating life-changing impacts in the lives of millions, who previously were confused or had lost all hope for their life until they read and grasped the comments on the life Jesus offered to Nicodemus. Through it, many have entered into a relationship with God that has brought new hope and freedom from a dreary and aimless life of controlling moods and habits. By taking this advice given by Jesus in his encounter with a scholar seeking truth, many have discovered a new world of spiritual understanding and experienced the progressive freedom from negative aspects of oneself becoming supplanted by the joys of a growing focus on loving others. By taking your time to ponder this very personal teaching, may you experience the same result.
Jesus lived among the superstitions and religious rituals of the ancient world. The Greeks groped for the unknown god and an understanding of life after death through their schools of philosophy and the creation of a pantheon of gods, which they sought to appease to gain protection and favours. Every civilisation before them had done the same. Superstition had reigned. The Jews sought out their one God by combing through their scriptures for understanding, rehearsing their history on sacred days, adhering to their laws and religiously offering up ritual blood sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. In addition, they tried diligently to obey an accumulating stack of added ritual requirements placed on their daily routine by a religious caste that needed to justify its existence and increase its control. Yet none of this activity brought their spirits alive and set them free. Every Jew was trapped in the maxim of their laws, "if you are guilty of one, you are guilty of all".
Jesus came into these two confused and burdened worlds of Gentiles and Jews with his message of freedom available to all. In this chapter and the next, Jesus speaks to the Jewish and Gentile mind-sets controlling two individuals who could not have been more starkly different. In Chapter 3, he interacts with a Jewish male at the pinnacle of his nation’s government and scholarship, esteemed by his society for both achievements. In Chapter 4, he interacts with a Samaritan female at the bottom rung of her society – a despised outcast to both her society and the Jews, who were banned from interacting with any Samaritan, particularly a woman. John does not even address her by name in his account of her meeting Jesus. She remains as an incognito Samaritan woman throughout his account. Her race practiced a syncretistic religion worshipping Yahweh the God of Moses, the God who broke their ancestors free from slavery in Egypt, plus a mixture of pagan gods adopted by their forefathers when Assyria transplanted other races among the northern regions of Israel to replace the Israelites he had taken into captivity in 721 B.C. (2 Kings 17:24-33). Consequently, the Jews classified Samaritans as Gentiles rather than accepting them as half-brothers with a commonality in inheritance. Jesus ignored the entrenched cultural and religious animosity between Jews and the Samaritans and engaged the woman in conversation.
Both the Jewish ruler and this Gentile outcast were deeply impacted for life by their one encounter with Jesus. Every person since, who has embraced his teaching in these two chapters, has likewise been impacted for the rest of their life. The Jewish ruler later came out of from hiding within his socially esteemed ruling council and guardians of Jewish law to take the criminal Jesus down from his cross, whom they had put to death by their law. He associated himself fully with Jesus upon whom they had applied the highest penalty of their law. In so doing, he put at jeopardy all the prestige that he had attained in his life. He had clearly become a follower of the Teacher he originally sought out by this encounter at night.
By comparison, the Samaritan woman had no fame to put at jeopardy. The only fame she carried was the fame of her shame. Nevertheless, she made a life changing decision to step into the glare of her society’s condemnation to tell how Jesus miraculously knew all about her disgraced life and claimed to be the Messiah, to whom both the Jews and Samaritans looked for their national restoration. She brought an entire people group to Jesus by her simple testimony and so became the first evangelist of Jesus to the Gentile world. Because of her, many Samaritans believed in him and gained eternal life. John learned much watching how Jesus on his journey related to these two very different individuals with very different journeys in their past and very different potential journeys in their future. Carefully observing and recording these two interactions enriched John’s journey.
When taken together, these two encounters with Jesus show his intention from the outset to make the good news of his kingdom open to all peoples – both Jew and Gentile at any strata in their society, from the highest and honoured to the lowest and despised. He intends for his kingdom to be open to all people. The continued global relevance of these two encounters is that they show that none of us is excluded from God’s love and salvation regardless of our race, gender, position in society, personal history, religious belief (personally constructed or institutionalised) and the degree of our adherence to it. The profile of our pedigree is irrelevant to Jesus. He leaves the choice to us whether or not we want to be part of his kingdom and journey with him under his rule or avoid him.
The personal questions that confront each reader in chapters 3 and 4 are: To what extent do I trust in my pedigree of birth and achievements, religious or otherwise, to believe that they give me a right to receive eternal life? Conversely, to what extent have my failures brought me to believe I will never gain entrance to heaven and am destined to be an eternal castaway in hell? These are personal questions not to be brushed aside but considered carefully on your journey through life. We need to do ourselves the favour of asking them and not avoiding or burying them. Our personal value to Jesus warrants it.
Teaching overview
John chapter 3 contains two clear teachings by Jesus for Nicodemus that were completely new in all ancient religious thought in its various attempts to know God. They were also revolutionary. They remain so today among the multitudinous variety of quests to find God made in every civilisation on earth. These teachings abolish all religious and moral practices as valid methods to gain eternal life. They set people free from the laws and expectations of their religion, and if necessary, their culture. These are momentous, life destiny claims worth your testing. The revolutionary teachings are:
- "Unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom of God!" (v. 3). Jesus then expanded this into, "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit." (v. 5)
- "God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already,because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." (v. 16, 18)
Spiritual birth
The first teaching is about birth. The second is about belief with Jesus making himself the central identity for every person to face with belief or disbelief, i.e., trust or distrust [1]. When taken together, these two teachings of Jesus summarise how we enter the kingdom of God and gain eternal life, i.e., by means of: 1) birth by the Spirit of God, and 2) placing our trust in Jesus. They teach that we cannot sidestep the need for a spiritual birth, and we cannot by-pass placing our trust in Jesus to gain any certainty of having eternal life. This assumes of course that we have tested and accepted his historical validity as presented to us in ancient history and by his followers.
My understanding of the first teaching has grown throughout my journey with Jesus over the years. I have come to learn by reflecting on my inner self that without this second birth initiating spirit life and growth within me, I see nothing of spiritual reality, know nothing of it, hear nothing and have nothing of eternal worth. It remains true for me every day. That may sound dramatic, but Jesus throughout his teaching claimed it is true for life in the kingdom of God. I may see, know, hear, and have plenty in this world yet be bereft of everything that gives me the sight, knowledge, hearing and possessions needed for eternal life. Said another way, I am blind, ignorant, deaf and bankrupt of the spiritual essentials which I need to gain eternal life. In short, I am a spiritual fool though I may consider myself worldly wise. I remain stuck in the kingdom of this physical world unable to see and have any experiential knowledge of the kingdom of God. I cannot even analyse it, nor do I have any basis from which to criticise it. No amount of success, education, good works or money can change that fact, whether or not this suits my current beliefs and the image my pride seeks to portray to others. This is what I am discovering on my journey through my life as John did journeying with Jesus.
Only God, reaching out in grace, regardless of my profile, can change my condition by the second birth. I have discovered that the duration of extending this grace to me is under His control, not mine. This teaching by Jesus on the need for new birth is revolutionary. It departs from hopes we can have of a pleasant existence now and in the hereafter as determined by how we choose to measure our performance against religious laws, shifting social trends, or personal goals and our moral code.
Spiritual belief
Concerning the second teaching about belief, I have progressively come to understand how critical it is to grasp and trust these words of Jesus to be certain about my eternal destiny and face every situation with that confidence. A corollary of his teaching is: deny the identity of the Son of God as the Creator of all spiritual existence, then the beliefs developed for one’s eternal destiny evaporate, no matter how broadly one has searched other philosophies or religions. Peter saw this and stayed,
"Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life".
(John 6:68)
The challenge by Jesus in his second teaching is to trust him. Jesus gives this teaching in the second half of his explanation to Nicodemus about what a person can do to be born again. The person owns the control of whether to choose and to trust. When any person chooses to trust the promise of Jesus to give eternal life based on trusting in his claimed identity, the guaranteed promise of eternal life begins to take effect. Eternal life is not future but immediate when connected to the Life. The promise of his love is we will never be disconnected from Life again. Our fear-driven behaviours diminish as trust grows and God’s love is experienced in a growing number of tangible ways.
We need to take note that these two teachings of birth and belief fit together and cannot be separated. God enacts the first by a super-natural act – birth of our spirit by the Holy Spirit. The individual enacts the second by a natural act – the decision to trust. Both are operative in any person living in the eternal kingdom of God on earth now and in heaven. I pray that those with whom I converse will discover these truths revealed by Jesus with powerful immediate and eternal effect. There are millions of testimonies given by people from multiple cultures across the world and multiple situations in life, which each have accounts of specific miracles of love implemented by God in their lives, many of which are verifiable by authentic witnesses. Their only explanation is that each miracle they experience is an act of God’s love reaching out in response to faith reaching out to God.
Teaching 1 –You must be born again
The first teaching by Jesus places personal entrance into the realm of God beyond the capability of any and all religious practice and personal efforts to do "good", no matter one’s religion or its rigorous practices. It switches the hope of gaining eternal life from our self-assessed moral, religious or other achievements to an essential sight-giving second birth.
"Unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom of God!" (v. 3)
Efforts are action. Birth is a state. When a person is born physically, they gain entrance into the state of life on earth without personal effort. We are all delivered powerlessly into it this life by a medical practitioner. Then we begin to see and live in a whole new environment. Without the birth, we will never enter or see the physical world. It is likewise true of Life in the kingdom of God. We can never enter or see it without being delivered powerlessly into it by God himself. The difference between the two births is that the second must be spiritual in order to deliver us into the spiritual environment where God, who is Spirit, exists and imparts his Life, love, wisdom and righteousness. This birth, therefore, has nothing to do with my physical efforts or achievements. It cannot. It is a spiritual birth, which only the Spirit of God can initiate and deliver. He brings into Life our spirit previously disengaged from the Source of all Life. Then we see what we have never seen before. We suddenly begin to see the kingdom of God operating in situations where previously we would have been oblivious of them. The most intelligent sociologists cannot see these operations. They can only measure, see and analyse physical trends, such as a surging drug epidemic, increased family violence and so on. They devise plans hoping to reverse these trends while knowing these plans will never eliminate the societal ills completely. It is the best the kingdom of this world can do. They miss entirely the kingdom of God that is operating unrecognised within society rescuing many from the same cultural and personal behaviour trends by empowering them with new spiritual life from within, which is God’s Life, which is Life that existed eternally before any physical entities were created.
In his second directive on this birth into the kingdom of God, Jesus switches his term from "seeing" to "entering" the kingdom of God.
…"unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (v. 5)
All who have been born physically of water need to be born spiritually by the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. Without the Spirit giving spiritual birth to us we cannot see, and we cannot enter. To enter the kingdom of God is to see it. That is how we become aware that we have entered it. We now possess the faculty of spiritual sight given by the Holy Spirit. Our spiritual sight is given by continuous revelations from our spiritual Teacher within showing us multiple aspects of the Rule of God operating within us and the world. Jesus foretold of this coming internal Teacher of the kingdom of God in his parting meeting with his disciples:
"I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you". (John 14:16-17)
"… the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,will teach you all things…" (14:26)
So the Spirit of truth teaches us truth, which cannot be intellectually reasoned or debated. Firstly, our internal Teacher points out truths about our sins we had not seen before. Then with our clearer eyes, he gives insights about life we had never known before, no matter how smart or simple we thought we were. We are now walking in Truth. He exposes how much of our thinking has been upside down when we thought it was right side up. We see how much Satan, The Master of Deception and the Father of Lies, has deceived our minds to shift our thoughts from what is true. We see this displacement of absolute truths by our selfish, subjective and shifting beliefs. With clearer perception of ourselves stemming from the new birth of our spirit, we can then see the operations of the kingdom of God all around us bringing to spiritual life those who are dead and establishing its rule in their hearts.They belong to no religion, race or socio-economic class. They become our newly recognised companions of second birth. We recognise them immediately, not by a label but by the Spirit within them, which our spirit recognises because we now know Him.
The destiny-critical question this raises then is: how is one born by the Spirit? Jesus uses the rest of his interaction with Nicodemus to explain. After talking about the how the Spirit operates, he spells out in clear terms in his second major teaching how we operate in order to gain eternal life.
Teaching 2 – You must believe in the Son of God
This teaching of Jesus offers anabsolute guarantee of entrance into the eternal kingdom of God to the person who believes in him according to how he identifies himself, viz., as the Son of God and the way to eternal life:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life".
Be careful to note that Jesus teaches here that receiving the promised gift of everlasting life requires that we believe in his identity according to his claim to be the only begotten Son of God. Any religion or person that seeks to discredit Jesus as the Son of God has nothing to offer except a dead end to this life without any validated certainty for the hereafter. They are labelled "false" teachers.
It is important to note that believing in this identity of Jesus is not solely the result of an intellectual search, although a person does need to pursue a responsible assessment of the life of Jesus until satisfied to their requirements that he is who he said he is authenticated by his character, knowledge and actions. Otherwise their belief is fabricated or merely mystical. Beyond that exercise, intelligence has no part to play in choosing whether or not to trust one’s life to Jesus. Willingness to trust him fully with our life is what completes our understanding. The Greek word used for trust and belief is the same. There can be no belief in a person without trust, or trust in a person without belief in their character. Jesus cannot be known without belief and trust just as a prospective spouse cannot shift from knowing about their partner to knowing them intimately without choosing to believe in their character and placing relationship trust in them fully.
Jesus later asserted that, "unless you turn around and become like little children you certainly will not enter the kingdom of heaven". (Matt 18:3) A little child who puts their life trust in Jesus sees and enters the kingdom of God easily when a person trusting in self cannot. Pride in self must ultimately give way to complete trust in Jesus. Consequently, the constant appeal of Jesus is for us to bank our entire life on his claim to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. Our response to his claim becomes the central turning point of our history. We can choose whether or not to bank on him for guaranteed eternal life and his support in every situation we face during every day, or we can ignore his claim and invitation to us to begin a relationship with him.
In summary, these two teachings of ‘birth’ and ‘belief’ when taken together shift the hope of eternal life frompersonal philosophies to trust ina person, from religious practices to his promises, from our determined efforts to resting in his gift of Divine love, and from wistful hope to certainty.
Nicodemus Conversation
The setting that Jesus chose to announce his two explosive teachings to the world was a night conversation with Nicodemus, who sought him out because of powers of God he had observed being displayed by this Galilean carpenter. The miracles of Jesus earned the respect of Nicodemus sufficiently to address him with the title, "Teacher", which was used in his culture for, "One who walks with God". The miracles also raised significant questions Nicodemus wanted Jesus to satisfy.
The opening gambit
Flattery or recognition
Nicodemus opened the conversation he wanted with Jesus with the leading statement,
"We know you are a teacher come from God because no one can do these signs you do unless God is with him." (v.2)
This was either flattery, hoping to lead into a list of questions to test Jesus, or an honest recognition of Jesus’ identity as a man anointed by the Spirit of God, which was something his colleagues chose to ignore and resist. Academics often begin their debates with flattery as they circle each other readying for an intellectual contest that seeks to expose points of superior knowledge or weakness. It is most likely, however, that Nicodemus came as a genuine enquirer for two reasons: 1) if he had wanted to trap Jesus in questioning, he would have chosen to lay his trap in the full glare of onlookers as other professionals had done, and 2) the fact that he sought out Jesus in the undercover of darkness gives hint of his desire to push beyond the adversarial stance taken to Jesus by his colleagues, and to find out more about the way in which Jesus was related to God’s wisdom and power. Nicodemus sought out Jesus to resolve the unavoidable question: How did this carpenter from rural Nazareth come to possess the revolutionary wisdom of his teachings and the countless miracles that have demonstrated his control over the natural world?
To resolve this question, Nicodemus was not yet ready to risk his reputation and status among his colleagues in the ruling council by being seen in the company of the itinerant preacher, who they wanted to remove from Israeli society to stop the erosion of their power.
Direct response – to the heart
Whatever the intention of Nicodemus’ opening greeting, Jesus ignored it. He by-passed the analytical brain of Nicodemus and immediately responded with a direct challenge to his heart.
"Truly, truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again". (v.3)
Or paraphrasing, we can expand his direct challenge to:
"Pay very careful attention to what I am about to say. No one, including you, can see anything about the kingdom of God unless they are brought to life by a second birth."
By implication, Jesus was teaching that a person is blind to the kingdom of God before this second birth. They cannot see it no matter what religious, mystical or academic ways they are using to try to find it.
The immediate response by Jesus was the crux of what needed to be discussed with Nicodemus, who would have been hit by it as a sudden jab beneath his intellectual defences. Leading statements made by Jesus to catch our initial attention are always the crux of what we need to confront in our thinking and attitude about truth. God already knows our every thought, attitudes and past actions. He knows the composite profile we have built over the years progressively losing our innocence and building our pride. We don’t. I have no idea of the myriad of sensory inputs that forged who I am today. He knows our blockages to seeing truth and coming to know him. He knows how to break through these blockages to gain our attention. So we need to listen to him carefully. Each time we read his Word, the Spirit of God goes straight to what we need to hear like a sword thrusting through our defences and shining light on our blindness. All genuine seekers of God receive the sudden jab of God’s word like Nicodemus. If we heed that word, we see more of his kingdom. If not, we remain blind to it.
Jesus knew that the occupation of Nicodemus was to study, teach and fulfil the whole Jewish Law meticulously, in order to be sure that he would enter into the kingdom (rule) of God on earth, which he believed would one day be established by the rule of the coming Messiah and the return of the currently absent Spirit. Accordingly, Nicodemus had no significant intellectual or knowledge deficit, but he possessed the major spiritual deficit of having no connection of his spirit with the Spirit of God. That is the starting point of all humans. It is for you.
There had been no direct impartation of supernatural revelation and life to Nicodemus from the God of his scriptures. He did not expect to receive any as a scholar. Why? Only the prophets, priests, judges, and kings of Israel historically had a spiritual connection with their God Yahweh through the Holy Spirit coming upon them, i.e., anointing them. These anointed offices provided the God-directed functions used to keep Israel on track to fulfil its Divine purpose of one day producing the One anointed by the Spirit to rule and redeem mankind. With these Holy Spirit anointed offices operating, the people only had to focus on obeying the Law given to Moses by God. Nevertheless they didn’t.
As a consequence, the Holy Spirit departed from the nation (Ezekiel 10:17-18). Supernatural power was stripped from kings, judges, prophets and priests and the military power of other nations imposed on them instead. For 400 years before Jesus, there had been no prophet, priest or king anointed by the Holy Spirit. So a teaching class of rabbis arose to teach in synagogues the application of the Law to personal life. Israelites sought to relate to God solely by obedience to the Law, and the accretion of laws added by the rabbis, as the measure of their love for God, by which they would be judged. The feasts and holy days they continued to keep degenerated into ineffectual ritual with the Spirit of God absent.
Nevertheless, the teachers and people of Israel continued to cling with expectation to the words of the prophets that in the latter days the Messiah would usher in the earthly Messianic rule of God and the new Era of the Spirit as prophesied (e.g., Joel Chapter 2). As part of this new Era, they looked forward to the day when God would establish a New Covenant with them, and when he would internalise their Law within their being so that each person, regardless of their status in society, would know him intimately, as prophesied by Jeremiah 600 years beforehand:
"I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts…they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more", declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
The Law written in their minds and on their hearts would be the embodiment of God himself in a way that they would know him within. Nicodemus knew this prophecy and had studied it. The Anointing of the Spirit that had once been upon chosen offices would be replaced with the dwelling of the Spirit within any who chose to live in this New Covenant and receive its blessings. This indwelling of the Spirit would be the new spiritual birth accompanied by the full forgiveness of the Nation. All that Nicodemus had to do was to connect the new state described in this prophecy with the new birth proclaimed by Jesus. The missing sign he needed was tangible evidence that the Messiah had come.
Missing it
The way Nicodemus responded to the challenge of Jesus shows that he had missed entirely the reality of needing a spiritual birth in order to know God intimately in his mind and on his heart as prophesied by Jeremiah. Nicodemus instead gave a sceptical response:
"How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born again!" (v.4)
The mind of lawyer Nicodemus remained fixed on physical birth, which blocked him from recognising that Jesus was talking of a whole new kind of birth. His interpretation that Jesus was asserting the incredulous necessity of entering his mother’s womb again showed that Nicodemus was still thinking from his physical framework of understanding. This was as far as his brain could take him. "How can a man like me enter a second time into my mother’s womb? Your claim is not only impossible, it is ridiculous and delusional!" (Any person operating from a physical framework of reference, while remaining spiritually blind, would give a similar response.)
Consequently, Nicodemus was blind to the spiritual drama playing out in front of his eyes in the lives of John the Baptist as the forerunner of the coming Messiah and Jesus as the Messiah. He and his colleagues had already witnessed and listened to John the Baptist in the wilderness, but they had not associated him with Isaiah’s prophecy,
"A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God… Say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!" See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm’" (Isa 40:3, 9, 10).
Because Nicodemus had made no connection between the ministry of John and Isaiah’s prophecy, he was not aware that the kingdom of the Messiah was right at his doorstep, as heralded by the forerunner, "Here is your God!"
Failed connections
Nicodemus had not only failed to make the connection of John the Baptist with the prophecy, neither had he at this stage in the conversation appear to have connected the miracles of Jesus with the identity of the Anointed One. He only attributed to him the title, Teacher, or one who walked with God. He certainly was sufficiently impressed by the miracles of Jesus to cause him to search him out under the cover of darkness. If he had understood who John was, his mind would have been alerted to the fact that the Messiah’s appearing must be near at hand. Nevertheless, he had failed to see the Messiah in Jesus even though he continued to witness his dramatic miracles of love, his demonstrated grace and teachings of love that removed all ability of the Jews to use their law to condemn the weak in the name of preserving the purity of their religion. In other words, Nicodemus had missed the full expression of God revealed in human flesh as described by the prophets, i.e., the God of justice and love. The prophets heralded a Messiah who demonstrated great love and compassion carrying his people close to his heart just as much as a Messiah, who imposes his visible global rule on all nations.For example:
"He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young" (Isa 40:11)
Nicodemus had also made no connection between the compassionate works of Jesus and the Messianic prophecy of compassion, which Jesus chose to apply to himself at the beginning of his ministry given in his first synagogue reading in his home town (Isa 61:1).
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind… Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing". (Luke 4:18, 21)
Jesus could not have made his claim clearer. He fulfilled the prophecy of the anticipated Messiah. He pointed out the connection. His hometown people and Nicodemus missed it as many still do.
Looking in wrong directions
Why did Nicodemus miss the connections? He was searching for physical power as evidence for the Messiah and not the power of love directed at the poor, the prisoners and the blind. In his elite role, he was not journeying on the road of humble, all-embracing love. His missed that the greatest and enduring liberation of Israel would be in the power of love and not in the power of the Messiah’s sword. He was caught up in the political expectation of the Jews of his time that the Messiah would begin his rule from Jerusalem by breaking and casting off the shackles of Rome. He first needed to see this physical power of the Messiah as evidence of his identity. Then he could believe that the New Covenant was now operating and intimacy with God’s Spirit within one’s being was possible.
Accordingly, Nicodemus was a classic example of the Jewish leaders, who Jesus later rebuked as having a will and heart problem rather than a brain problem.
"You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me,yet you refuse to come to me to have life" (John 5:39)
Jesus pointedly highlights to Nicodemus this refusal by his colleagues to accept him (v.11) because their one aim was to retain their power over the people using the multitude of daily ritual requirements that they had added to the Law of Moses. Jesus was seen as their adversary, who was diverting the attention of the masses from their laws of control to himself. They refused to accept his teachings and miracles blinded by their hunger for power. They were unable to see that the coming Messiah and the New Covenant were right at their doorstep about to be launched as God’s new way of relating to his beloved creation. 2,000 years later, personal pride can block us from seeing Jesus at the doorstep of our life wanting to enter and journey with us.
Although Nicodemus missed the connection between being born again by the Spirit of God and Jeremiah’s prophecy about the New Covenant of knowing God within one’s heart, he did recognise that Jesus was the first person after 400 years to demonstrate the power of God. This may have raised questions in his mind, "Could this Teacher be our long awaited Anointed One? Has the Spirit returned?" If so, he would have wanted to stay in the conversation to examine Jesus closer.
Human incapacity
Nicodemus nevertheless demonstrated that had no ability within himself to understand new birth from a spiritual framework in order to have his questions answered. How could he? His spirit was dead. It remained unborn and unable to see, while his brain remained stuck in the physical dimensions of religious history, rituals, rites and practices of religion that operate from unborn hearts. Nicodemus had never stepped beyond the rituals of his religion into dimensions of the Spirit where a whole different reality of life operates. Likewise, your personal belief system can be your blindfold keeping your pride stuck on a fruitless journey trying to live up to the image it wants.
Nicodemus was typical of every individual whose spirit is dead. There are many like him today practicing their institutional, or personally constructed, religions that are incapable of seeing the kingdom of God. Our brain can be very competent and active, while our spirit is dead, but it has no spiritual insight or wisdom. In the realm of constructing spiritual reality, the most it can achieve is foolishness. Our emotions may seek to experience the ethereal, but they too have no spiritual insight. They can never open the kingdom of God to our sight.
As indicated previously,Nicodemus was an expert in religious knowledge and practice. He ardently pursued his Jewish path of scholarship and practice believing that this would lead to eternal life. It didn’t. He was intellectually and religiously fine-tuned but spiritually dead and blind to the kingdom of God that he sought. Prostitutes saw this kingdom before he did, even though he had been admitted to the ruling council of the Jews, because of his brilliance. Likewise today, there are many engaged in erudite academic debates attempting to show their brilliance in understanding the meanings of life and death. These are as blind as Nicodemus. Yet even today, broken-hearted prostitutes, who have lost all purpose for living, and who cry out to God to deliver them from the life they have become, are welcomed by the God of compassion, enter and see the kingdom of God.
Personal implications
For our own life, then, it is imperative that we observe how the teaching of Jesus, "You must be born anew", applies to us at this moment.If our instant reaction is to be offended or recoil in any way, it is almost certain that we have not been born anew and have no idea what that means in experience. The one option available to us is to seek to be brought to life by the Spirit of God, in order to gain a whole new framework of understanding. We cannot sidestep this truth and believe that we can make our own way to heaven by our own self-defined system of beliefs and our performance against its moral code. Without the character of God as our benchmark, our personal assessment of our level of morality is flawed and relatively delusional. Without acceptance that our spirit is dead until the Spirit who created life gives it life, it remains dead. Consequently, the truth Nicodemus had to face was that no amount of personal discipline, goal setting, studies or religious practices in the physical realm could ever bring him into the spiritual realm of the kingdom of God, where God, who is Spirit, exists in unlimited dimensions. He remained as a spiritually dead educated mind.
Nevertheless, we must not dismiss that Nicodemus did seek out Jesus with good intentions, because his mind was searching for answers. In his heart of hearts, he wanted to live in the kingdom of God for eternity. Otherwise he would not have spent his life searching the Scriptures as Jesus later said was his motive and that of his colleagues. The heart’s desire of most religious people is the same. We must come, however, to recognise and admit that spiritual desire translated into religious activity does not create spiritual life and sight of the kingdom of God. Nicodemus was, therefore, as dead as the state of any religious person, who is fastidiously keeping the practices of their religion as their means of justifying a right to eternal life while rejecting the terms of the One who gives it.
The one thing Nicodemus did have going for him was that his desire to meet with Jesus was driven by a heart which yearned for the coming of the Messiah and the return of the Spirit to usher in a whole new world order. Possibly Nicodemus sought out Jesus with the thought, "Maybe this Teacher knows something that could shed more light on the coming new order, because he could not do the miracles he is doing without the workings of the Spirit of God".
Critical life questions
We need to take time out at this point from the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus to ask ourselves this fundamental question that demands answers from our own life:
How can one who is spiritually dead suddenly expect to have spiritual life after death without being brought alive spiritually by the Spirit of God in this life?
We have to be very honest and clear about our answers because our eternal future depends on them. We should not ignore them. This question is worthy of the time and thought it warrants. We need to arrive at the place of accepting that: only the state of our spirit in this life determines its state after death. Nothing else does – not the state of our intelligence, or emotions, or morals or body or self-satisfaction with our personal religion and diligence in keeping its requirements.
The imperative second birth
The state of our spirit is either dead or alive. There is no middle ground. Our spirit does not slowly come alive with every good work we define as "good", because we cannot give it life. Only God can.
To make this clear, Jesus reiterated the essential importance of the second birth for Nicodemus with a more emphatic tone. In this case, he changed his choice of words from "unless" to "must" and using a plural form of "you" to make his statement apply to all.
"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.’" (v.5-7)
In order to catch the tone of this step in this teaching, we can paraphrase and elaborate:
"Nicodemus, you should know from studying your scriptures intricately that clearly flesh can only give birth to flesh and Spirit to spirit. That is, flesh cannot give birth to spirit. No amount of flesh activity, such as your studies and religious practices, can give birth to your spirit.
You should not at all be surprised, therefore, that I am claiming that you and your colleagues, in fact everybody, must be born anew by the Spirit. Take careful note that I am saying ‘must’. It is imperative for you to be born anew by the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. There are no alternatives and no one is exempt." (v.6 -7)
Thus, Jesus made it clear. We cannot confuse physical birth with spiritual. A physical process and a physical person give birth to a physical identity. Flesh births flesh. Only a spiritual process guided by the Spirit of God can birth a new spiritual identity, which we need in order to enter the spiritual kingdom of God. Spirit births spirit.
The Wind
So the question arising on the table for Nicodemus now became: if being born anew by the Spirit is so crucial to my eternal destiny, how does it happen?
Nicodemus would have been itching to know the answer to the new phenomenon of this second birth that Jesus introduced to unsettle him and grab his attention. Jesus, however, did not immediately give Nicodemus a clear and simple formula for how he can be born a second time without entering his mother’s womb. Nicodemus was used to slicing and dicing theology. Had Jesus immediately made his identity as the Son of God to be the crux of being born spiritually, Nicodemus would have launched into debate using his knowledge of his monotheistic theology to dismiss any possibility that this Teacher was Divine. Islamic scholars will quickly do the same today to protect their monotheistic belief in their god Allah promoted by Mohammed. Nicodemus was not ready yet to receive the second teaching of Jesus that the kingdom of God was where the Messiah ruled as the Son of God, even though scriptures he had studied pointed to that fact, such as:
"’I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain’. He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have become your father… Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession… Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him."(Psalm 2:6-8, 12)
Another scripture, which the Pharisees considered to be a Messianic prophecy inspired by the Spirit, was used by Jesus towards the end of his public life to challenge their understanding of the Messiah’s identity:
"The Yahweh says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’…If then, David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?"
(Matt 22:45)
In other words, if God had promised David an eternal kingdom that would be ruled by one of his descendants, why would David call him his Lord? They were left speechless. "No one could say a word in reply".
Even though Nicodemus would have read these scriptures on the identity of the Messiah, he had missed his deity. For Jesus to introduce at this stage of the conversation the need for Nicodemus to believe he was the Son of God in order to receive the second birth, he would have scrambled the mind of his listener and killed off any mental engagement with the discussion. Instead, Jesus took Nicodemus on a religiously less threatening journey to keep him engaged in the conversation before giving Nicodemus a reason to dismiss him. Jesus knew Nicodemus would have had to make an impossible mental and religious jump to place him on par with Yahweh, the Holy One, the Creator and Redeemer of Israel. His brain saturated in monotheism presented an immovable barrier. Therefore, Jesus turned the attention of Nicodemus to the role of the Spirit in bringing spiritual birth rather than focusing on himself as the gateway to entering the eternal kingdom of God. That came later. For now, the indefinable Spirit would do. People are happy to talk about spirit. Therefore Jesus began there with Nicodemus.
Talking about spirit is easy because we cannot define it. Consequently, discussions on spirit are a "large tent" where all are accommodated, whether they follow a world religion or practice their own New Age means of inner peace to arrive at some higher spiritual level. It is popular today to claim to be "spiritual" in stark contrast to being "religious". It is perceived as being superior. "Christianity" and "Islam", for example, have become terms that carry disdain for the secular critic. Switch from a nebulous "spiritual" discussion to talk about Jesus as the Son of God and Saviour and the arguments quickly line up in the listener’s mind to reject the historical identity of Jesus as claimed. The discussion switches from learning to an ego warfare that puts forward poorly researched reasons to justify one’s position relative to God. For this reason, Jesus illustrated how the Spirit works by using the metaphor of wind. This metaphor is most appropriate because the word "spirit" in the language of the Jews and the Greeks is "wind" or "breath". So here is how the Spirit, i.e. the "Breath/Wind" of God, works:
"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." (v. 5)
What does this explain about being born anew of water and the Spirit? Anything? On first hearing, it seems to say nothing tangible and does nothing except leave an ethereal impression in our mind. It sounds too nebulous for me to grasp with the hands of my brain for me to do anything about being born anew. That was probably true for Nicodemus also. What a frustrating answer! It forces a second look to see what aspect of the wind Jesus was raising here that he wanted Nicodemus to grasp in order to understand the process of being born anew.
Jesus highlighted one main characteristic of the wind to teach about the Spirit of God, who brings spiritual birth. It blows wherever it pleases. So what? That is self-evident about the wind. Jesus taught that being born anew by the Spirit is just like that. "So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." Apparently, that too should be self-evident. Who can tell the Spirit what to do, how to do it and when for a person to receive a spiritual new birth? What could Nicodemus conclude from this one characteristic of the wind Jesus pointed out to him? We can think a little about the wind to understand this characteristic a little more and why Jesus used it.
Lesson 1: We cannot formularise our engagement with the variegated Wind of God.
"It blows wherever it pleases". There is nothing more elusive than the wind, nothing so varied and unpredictable in creation with its endless currents, its swiftness, its starts and stops, caressing and whippings. Man can never view the wind as a static object nor create a simple formula to determine where and what it will be at any moment. Likewise, Nicodemus could not consider the Spirit – the initiator of him being born spiritually – to be a static theological construct that he could package in a precise description using his finely tuned theological language. This is why it is ironical, and perhaps blasphemous, for churches to run courses like, "10 steps to being filled with the Holy Spirit".
Lesson 2: We can’t capture, control or use the Wind of God for our own ends.
Man does not know where to go to find the wind, and if he finds it he cannot locate its source. We can find almost everything else – objects man has made and all the creation that God has made, even the water in the rivers, lakes and oceans. But ask us to find the wind and we are stumped. We can go to where it is blowing or stand still and know that sooner or later that the wind will blow on us. Either way, when we yell out "I’ve got it!" it will have changed. And in the end we won’t have it at all. We can scoop up some water and know that we can keep it in our container, but not the wind. Scoop it up, slam on the lid, and it is gone. So it is with the Wind of God. We cannot slam a lid on the Spirit and put him on display to use for our ends.God chooses to breathe his life on individuals when and how he pleases. That is a key lesson which Jesus is making to Nicodemus. It might be possible to go to where someone says the Spirit is blowing. Some people catch international flights to do that hoping to be caught up in the Wind operating with power in a particular gathering, but when they arrive there they are not able to capture, nor control, nor bottle up the Spirit in their lives to take him home and put him on display by giving testimonies of their experience gilded with the promotion of self.
Lesson 3: We can never describe or predict the Spirit
What more can we say about the Spirit? Can we describe him, what he looks like? Of course we can’t. Can we chart his every movement, where and in what manner he is moving now, and three minutes from now? We cannot even determine where the Spirit will blow in the next second, and exactly how. Will he be gentle or forceful? Will he bring laughter? Will he bring a vision, or wisdom or crashing conviction? We never know. That is what makes opening ourselves to the Wind of God a forever changing adventure. I sit in my back yard and feel the wind caressing my body. I hear its rustle in the crowns of the large gum trees. Its sound drops to a lull. I wait. Then I hear the first sign of what becomes a loud roar as it tears through the top of the trees pulling the crowns and branches like some stretched out elastic. Yet it swirls around my sheltered courtyard with a gentler stroking, and at my feet a leaf or two suddenly join in a waltz with the wind on the patio tiles. This is the wind: so full of different expressions within such a short distance from the tree-tops to my courtyard. Who could ever predict its multitudinous currents?
Lesson 4: We need to sit still and confidently wait for the Spirit to bring us alive
Those who sit still long enough observe that the Spirit of God is also like this as Jesus taught. No one person or Christian group can claim to have described and experienced all his sovereign variations. He comes as the Divine Wind – the Breath of God – and whenever he breathes on us our inner spirit comes to life. We do not know how he will breathe on us with his life. All we can know is that he will certainly blow in his way and time to fulfil his purpose at that time. He may come at first as a faint breath which, when recognised and welcomed, begins to blow with stronger and stronger stirrings of our spirit until our whole inner being dances with the joy of his presence. He may suddenly come stirring conviction about a sin we have committed or releasing exhilaration from intimate connection with him. Regardless of how his presence manifests, he will come to the one who waits and invites.
Although we cannot command the natural wind when, where and how it should blow, we can observe and work with it once it is blowing. We can trim the sails of our vessels, set course to our desired destination and the wind takes us there. Even then the wind remains in full control. It could disappear in an instant to leave us stranded in the millpond of the ocean or destroy all trace of our vessel through its fury. Remember that man is purely a recipient of the wind, not its producer. So it is with the Wind of God,who always retains His sovereign position as the producer of spiritual life in us. We can only bow to him, be open to His breathings and allow his life-giving wind to propel us.
Lesson 5: God prepares us to want and receive his Spirit
Everyone who asks receives from the Father, who delights to give us the good gifts of his life far more than our earthly fathers desire to please us with their gifts. Paul and John had this confidence,
"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Rom 8:32)
"… this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess what we have asked of Him". (1 John 5:14-15)
Therefore he will come when we ask, sent by the Father and in his timing. So we wait with patience. We wait with expectation. We wait in trustthat God has already heard our prayer and is readying us to receive a new manifestation of his Wind. All the experiences which we have from the day of our prayer of invitation are readying us to receive. Some may appear harsh. Some may be painful. Some may test us to our limit to the point that we will wonder if God has forgotten us. No. He is readying us to receive new life. He is breaking down the walls of our resistance. He is softening our heart for obedience. He is building our trust in him. He is answering our prayer.
The certainty that the Spirit will blow on us is not determined by how well we try to create our spirit’s activity or his. We cannot whip up a feverish current of religious group excitement to provoke his coming. That is the noise of a simulated wind that has no power. All that we can do is ask and make sure that our sails are hoisted and waiting, that our spirit of repentance continues, not striving but trusting. Then we will set sail when He blows. We will be ready to receive and be caught up by His breath. Then we will enter and traverse the kingdom of God. Then we will see new realms, news seas, new islands and new lands of the Spirit. That is what Nicodemus needed and for which he hungered, whether or not he had allowed his consciousness to receive it as truth.
When the Body of Christ allows the variations of the Wind of the Spirit to be, when any local expression of it sits still to listen and resists the temptation to take control using its organisation skills, then the Wind of God swirls through its various parts accomplishing what he wills. The power of different gifts comes alive with all the creativity of God. Dead religion becomes Pentecost.
Clarifying question
Jesus had told Nicodemus that he should not be surprised that he said he must be born again, but by using the metaphor of the wind he had still not made it clear to Nicodemus how that happens. Nicodemus was left with a knowledge gap that he wanted satisfied never having experienced the Spirit/Wind/Breath of God that he read about in Israel’s history. Therefore it was important to him to question further to clarify how the Breath of God brought about the new birth, if he was to gain an answer that he could understand to apply to himself. Now he was at the place where he needed to ask a genuine searching question for his own sake and not for the sake of a debate:
How can this be?" (v.9)
The tone of his question differed significantly from the scoffing tone of his first. Its genuine, enquiring nature was not followed by a critical comment as was the first.
"How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born again!" (v.4)
His open question showed that he was now ready to consider openly the next teaching of Jesus. He was ready in his mind and heart. Accordingly, he was now ready to be pointed by Jesus to a tangible answer in his physical world that he could understand just as Jesus his Teacher was also now ready to answer more precisely, "How this can be?" The role of a teacher is to prepare the learner’s background knowledge and attitude to receive the main thrust of his teaching; otherwise explanations are a waste of words. When he judges that has been accomplished, he too is ready to open up the answer that will change his pupil’s understanding. Nicodemus was now on the cusp of that happening.
Jesus chose a tangible event from the history of Israel about which Nicodemus had studied and could grasp – the lifting up of a serpent on a pole in the wilderness as the physical object chosen by God to re-focus the faith of each individual on his method to avert death from deadly snake bites brought upon the Israelites as God’s judgement on their persistent disobedience.
"The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.’ And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if any man was bitten, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived". (Numbers 21:8-9)
The event contained the need for a spiritual act of faith to restore physical life within the context of a physical crisis. Jesus was about to use it to show Nicodemus that to restore spiritual life an individual likewise had to look to the specific physical object chosen by God to re-focus faith on God’s method of averting eternal death and away from self or any other spiritual guru.
Qualifying statement
Before answering the genuine question of Nicodemus using the crisis of the Israelites in the desert, Jesus needed to made it clear to him: 1) how their knowledge and their sources compared, and 2) the fact that the cause for his lack of knowledge of spiritual things was due to not believing what Jesus said and what the source of his clearly seen spiritual knowledge was. Jesus needed to do this to open up the mind of Nicodemus to the heavenly component of his identity. To do so, Jesus exposed the deficiency of Nicodemus’ knowledge with a rhetorical question that would dismantle any scholar’s academic pride:
"You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?" (v.10)
Nicodemus could give only one admission in his own mind, to that question, in order to maintain his integrity, "No. I don’t understand." Jesus did not expect an answer to his rhetorical question. It was simply to destabilise the confidence that Nicodemus had in his knowledge, and to open his mind to the basis of Jesus’ knowledge. We could surmise that the tone behind his rhetorical question to Nicodemus could go something like this:
"What I am implying by my question Nicodemus is that you ought to understand these things, if you want to carry the title, ‘Teacher’ in Israel. Before I give you the answer to your question, however, let me make it clear to you why I understand these things".
So Jesus answered,
"Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" (v. 11-12)
Now Jesus stated that his knowledge of how the kingdom of God works came directly from what he had seen. His knowledge was not merely intellectually based like the knowledge Nicodemus possessed. His knowledge was from spiritual sight with its source being heaven itself. He could speak of heavenly things having seen them. This is an astounding inference for any person to make. The implication Nicodemus would not have missed was that Jesus was claiming to have been in heaven to see these things. He was, therefore, indirectly claiming to be a heavenly descended man. This could not but raise the question in the mind of Nicodemus, "Was Jesus the descended Son of Man of the prophet Daniel? To anticipate his question, Jesus stated unequivocally,
"No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven — the Son of Man". (v. 13)
There it is! This was an explosive claim made by Jesus. He was virtually inferring that he was the Son of Man of Daniel’s prophecy (Daniel 7:13), who could speak of heavenly things because he had ascended into heaven, seen and heard heavenly things firsthand and descended to earth to relate his knowledge. The difference in their knowledge was stark. Jesus was inferring that he was the descended Son of Man, who could speak of heavenly things that were beyond the earth-bound sight and scholastic knowledge of Nicodemus. Therefore Nicodemus could not dodge giving serious consideration to what Jesus was about to explain on how a person could receive their second birth from the Spirit. His answer would carry first hand heavenly authority compared to the restricted earth-bound knowledge of Nicodemus and his colleagues. More than that, it would confront Nicodemus, the monotheist, with the need to grapple with the heavenly component of the identity of Jesus. If he could speak heavenly things, which he claimed to know from seeing them, was he more than a Teacher and none other than the Son of Man to come, who had now descended?
With these thoughts sewn into the mind of Nicodemus, Jesus tackled head-on the core reason why Nicodemus had not accepted his testimony. He made clear to Nicodemus that the problem blocking his understanding of the spiritual new birth was that he did not believe in his claims. Unbelief was a shocking response for anyone to give to Jesus, if he was the Son of Man demonstrating the knowledge of the Kingdom of God in his teaching and its power in his miracles. Then it was serial unbelief in the identity of Jesus as the Son of Man that barred Nicodemus from seeing and entering the kingdom of God and not his thorough study of his scripture. In short, Jesus challenged the absence of belief in Nicodemus before giving him the heavenly answer on how he could be born anew.
We could paraphrase,
"If you have not believed what you have heard and seen of me on earth, how could you ever believe that I have the heavenly answer to your question?"
So it is with anyone. If we are unclear about how to receive spiritual birth in order to enter the spiritual realm of God, we need to focus honestly on whom we think Jesus is and investigate him more closely until we can say with integrity that we have searched the question of his identity as much as warranted.
The answer
The Son of man
Now with the question of the identity of the Teacher stirring in the mind of Nicodemus, and having been confronted with his unbelief, Jesus pointed him directly to the heart of God’s plan for him to be born anew. He swung the conversation from a discussion about the indefinable Spirit of God to direct engagement with the specific identity of the Son of Man in prophecy. The Jewish scholars considered this heavenly man to be as close to Deity as possible without being Deity. He was man yet heavenly. He was given authority to rule all the nations. He accepted their worship as a global ruler. The Jews had to recognise this made him almost divine, but they did not know how in relationship to Yahweh, who alone was worthy of worship as their one God. To worship another was blasphemy. And the rule of this Son of Man would be eternal.
"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed".
(Daniel 7:13)
Nicodemus no doubt had studied previously this Son of Man and equated him with the Messiah prophesied in his scriptures. There is a strong possibility that Nicodemus had also heard Jesus taking the title Son of Man upon himself again and again. That would have been disturbing to this scholar. Son of Man was the term Jesus used predominantly for himself throughout his ministry. He avoided the politically charged and distorted title of Messiah at that time. There had been many messiahs in his day, who had raised expectations then come to naught. To claim to be the Messiah, as he later did with the Samaritan woman, would have distracted this political ruler of the Jews.
Jesus therefore restricted his answer to Nicodemus’ question, "How can these things be?" to the role of the Son of Man as the one who can bring about his spiritual birth into the kingdom of God.
"Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: so that whoever believes in him (trusts wholly in him) should not perish, but have eternal life". (v. 14-15)
Using this statement, Jesus expanded on the revelation of the Heavenly Man. He was more than a global ruler to come. He was to be lifted up as the focus for the faith of Nicodemus and all people to gain eternal life. Could Nicodemus stay with the conversation and accept this expansion by Jesus of all that he had studied?
Nicodemus was well schooled on Moses. He most likely could quote his full writings by heart. He knew of the incident Jesus referenced of Moses being commanded by God to lift up a brass serpent on a pole in the midst of the tribes of Israel who had been smitten with the deadly poison of snakes sent by God into their midst because of their rebellion. Simply obeying God’s command to look at the serpent was all that was needed to be healed and saved from death. That’s all it took to be forgiven and saved – trust in God’s promise. The claims of Jesus now could not be clearer. To paraphrase:
Nicodemus, if you believed that I am the Son of Man, as I have called myself in public over and over again, then you need to trust in my heavenly identity in order to be born anew and receive eternal life.
Jesus presented a new purpose of the Son of Man – not just as the Messiah to come and exercise global physical rule but as the One who gives spiritual life, viz.,
"…whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life". (v. 14-15)
Could Nicodemus accept this interpretation of how the Messiah would rule as the Son of Man? Was he ready for Jesus to link this tangible event in Israel’s redemptive history to some future lifting up of the Son of Man chosen by God to be the focus of the faith needed to bring spiritual healing and life? Could he now see that his own spiritual birth was directly linked to how he personally responded to the heavenly Son of Man being lifted up as the object of the faith he needed to exercise to bring about his spiritual salvation? The lifting up of the Son of Man provided for Nicodemus the intersection of the heavenly with the physical – a heavenly act of God on earth requiring his earthly response. Could he now see and accept that belief in Jesus as the Son of Man was the key that released the Wind of God needed to bring about the new spiritual birth? His beliefs were being stretched and his knowledge of his scriptures stretched.
The Son of God
Making the Son of Man the object of the faith that is needed to receive the new birth stretched Nicodemus’ past understanding of the Son of Man. But that did not challenge the monotheistic beliefs of Nicodemus. Therefore at this point, building on the role of the Son of Man in receiving eternal life, Jesus now pushed Nicodemus all the way to grasping his full identity. Now he stretched Nicodemus’ understanding of monotheism. At this crescendo of his teaching, Jesus equated the Son of Man, who descended from heaven, with the fully divine Son of God. Both were one offering the same free gift of salvation by the same means of faith. By deduction, they were one and the same identity.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes (trust wholly) in him (and his identity) shall not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world to save the world through him. He that believes on him is not condemned: but whoever does not believe in him is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son". (v. 16)
There it is Nicodemus. This Son of Man is the Son of God sent from eternity. He was not just a son of man born to an earthly mother but the only begotten Son of God who came from above to reveal heavenly things about the kingdom of God and to be mankind’s sole God-sent Saviour from the eternal condemnation of God. That is the only deduction Nicodemus could draw from Jesus’ statements.
The understanding of Nicodemus had now been pushed all the way from believing that the Son of Man was almost divine to having to believe that he was fully Divine and critical to him gaining new birth and the certainty of eternal life. How could Nicodemus, as a devout Pharisees and ruler of Israel, who worshipped only one God, Yahweh, come close to embracing these linked statements of Jesus? Worshipping, trusting and obeying the one God Yahweh was the very reason behind his life and nation. How could Nicodemus reconcile the scriptures he had made his life’s work with these explosive claims of Jesus being the Son of Man and Son of God, whom he had to trust? Memorised scriptures on God being the one and only god would have shot through his mind, such as these:
"Before me no god was formed,
nor will there be one after me.
I, even I, am the Yahweh,
and apart from me there is no saviour". (Isa 43:11)"This is what the Yahweh says —
Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;apart from me there is no God…
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." (Isa 44:6,8)
To summarise:
"There is no other God besides me. No other saviour apart from me".
We can imagine the turmoil this generated in the mind of Nicodemus:
"Who then is this Son of God when there is no other God? Who is this saviour when there is no saviour apart from Yahweh? Who is this god and saviour that this Teacher, who claims to have seen and to speak heavenly things, is saying I must trust fully in order to receive my spiritual birth by the Spirit into everlasting life? Who is this saviour of the world that condemns me, if I will not place my trust in him? Are his claims the greatest of blasphemies, or have I missed seeing a Son of God in my studies of the scriptures? If I have, how do I reconcile a Son of God with Yahweh the first and the last and the only God?
With such questions whirling in Nicodemus’ mind, could he stay with the culmination of the mind-expanding journey on which Jesus had taken him? Could he marry up what he saw in Jesus with how Jesus interpreted the scriptures? Was Jesus, as he presented himself, present in all the scriptures? Did his observed life flawlessly match the astronomical claims he was making. If not, he deserved execution in haste. If it did, he deserved the life commitment of Nicodemus against all the attacks he might face from his monotheistic compatriots, who were hungry for the blood of Jesus. Jesus left Nicodemus with no alternative but to come to an authentic decision about his identity as the Son of God.
At this point of challenging all the past intellectual efforts of Nicodemus’ search for eternal life, and with Nicodemus reeling from trying to grasp the validity of an identity called, "Son of God", Jesus turned the mind of Nicodemus from his mind back to his heart, from his intellectual concepts to the true issue blocking his search for finding eternal life:
19 "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God".
To paraphrase:
"So this is the verdict we arrive at, Nicodemus. Light has now come into the world exposing the hearts of those who love their sins and those who genuinely seek to live by truth. The response of each person’s heart to the Light makes public their true motivation towards God – hate or acceptance; preference to live a lie or to seek truth; love of self over God, or love of God over self. The Light exposes the actual moral state of the heart hidden under self-righteous facades. The Light highlights that trust in God’s love, and in the gift of his one and only Son, is the path to spiritual birth".
The evil doer still knows what is wrong. He still knows that he commits evil. The evidence of this is that he lives daily with the fear of exposure. He hides what he does. He hides from his family. He even tries to hide from himself using habits to distract and elaborate rationalisations to justify his behaviour. And thus he sinks even further into a cesspool of deception. He becomes lies through and through. Shine the light of truth into whatever space is left in his heart and he recoils with intense pain. There is horror in having an entire web of deception exposed all at once. But God has mercy to the one who comes to the light.
Again, Jesus had made a claim that linked directly into a Messianic prophecy with which Nicodemus would have been familiar:
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. (Isa 9:1, 6-7)
Now Nicodemus was confronted with the linkage of the Light Jesus claimed had come into the world with the light prophesied over 700 years previously that was a child who would rule forever and have titles only worthy of Yahweh. This was a huge and apparently blasphemous leap for Nicodemus to embrace. Yet the claim of Jesus was that the genuine seeker of the truth about spiritual birth and eternal life, in this case Nicodemus, could not avoid accepting his words and coming to the light in full trust of him.
In a short interview, Jesus had taken Nicodemus from the mandatory requirement to be born anew to enter the kingdom of God, to the role of the Spirit/Wind in creating spiritual birth, to the identity and role of the Son of Man, and the identity and role of the Son of God to give spiritual birth, who is the Son of Man, the Light and the Messiah. His mind must have been reeling. How could he, and when could he, resolve these new and apparently contradicting claims of a Teacher, whose power and endorsement by God he could not deny because of his miracles?
The subsequent actions of Nicodemus show how he resolved these questions. He stood up among his hostile colleagues in defence of Jesus receiving a fair trial (John 7:50-2). With Joseph of Arimathea, he took the body of Jesus down from the cross, prepared it for burial and placed it in Joseph’s tomb. (John 19: 39-40) Nicodemus, therefore, became a prominent example in early Christian history of a leading scholar and ruler, who weighed the evidence about Jesus against his life and the prophecies about the coming Messiah and concluded that he was the Son of God and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 redeeming mankind from their sins. We cannot dismiss his example when considering our own position relative to Jesus 2,000 years later. Nicodemus had firsthand experience with Jesus observing him on many occasions, whereas we do not. Moreover, his knowledge of the historical events and prophecies that Jesus fulfilled was much more thorough than our own. What convinced Nicodemus to place his full trust in Jesus? What in addition to reviewing the encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus do we need to convince us? How do you plan to journey?
Comments on the answer
Uniqueness
Were the claims of Jesus to Nicodemus about his identity unique in history?
They certainly were. Do they have any validation? They certainly do. The fulfilments by Jesus of the many prophecies about the coming Messiah testify to his authenticity. His widely witnessed miracles and sinless character further validate his authenticity. Then, his witnessed resurrection and living presence teaching his disciples his identity for the following one and a half months validate his claim to be the sole avenue to eternal life provided by God. The quality of his apostles writings add to this certainty along with the power and testimony of their own subsequent lives, which were marked by miracles, courage, and joy to be considered worthy to suffer with Jesus and to die for his name. Did they die for a lie against this unparalleled weight of evidence? What is your honest assessment?
Exclusiveness
Is the claim of Jesus exclusive?
Yes, it is exclusive of other philosophies and religious claims of ways to gain eternal life. No other historical figure has demonstrated any validity to be able to promise eternal life. Hence, this claim of Jesus is exclusive of other philosophical and religious claims, but it is not exclusive of any person. The claim is exclusive but its offer is universal. The offer in his claim is that whoever chooses to believe in his identity receives the guarantee of eternal life as promised. This offer is the cause of powerful transformations in the lives of prisoners around the world and those trapped in their own prison.
Those who object to Jesus making a claim that is exclusively focused on him as the Son of God make no rational sense and base their objections on other factors. It is only common sense that the Son of God, who is fully God, is the way to God. What other way to God is there but God? In other words, the way to God is God. That should not be surprising. This should not been seen solely as a matter of exclusivity but also as a matter of identity. He has to invite us to him (no one else can). He has to provide the way (no one else can), and he has to take us to himself (no one else can). The only way back to God for the human race that has broken trust in God is the restoration of trust in him. Jesus came to show us God so that we could trust him. To trust in the Son of God is to trust in God the Spirit, who initiates the miraculous gift of the second birth when he comes to dwell within our hearts, as prophesied by Jeremiah and Jesus. This is Spirit giving birth to spirit just as flesh gives birth to flesh. To know God spiritually is to know the Spirit and the Son. To trust God is to trust the Son and the Spirit. We should not be surprised that the way to enter the eternal presence of God is by trusting all who the Son is. What other option is there? Seriously, is it to trust in someone who has no identity other than being a man?
Evidence
Every day someone in the world comes back from the dead and comes to life by embracing these emphatic teachings ofJesus to Nicodemus. Are you crazy?" you say. "No resurrections have hit the daily media cycle to my knowledge. Where is the evidence?" I simply reply, "You are sounding like Nicodemus. You can only think in physical terms".
1. Evidence from the life of Jesus
Firstly, much evidence is found in the words of Jesus backed up by his life, death, resurrection and exaltation – all being witnessed by many. The evidence confirms his power to bring our spirit to life forever. To take just one example, Jesus elevated the trust in him by grief stricken Martha with the clear statement,
"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes (trusts) in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.Do you believe this?"
This was the critical issue for Martha – could she trust in Jesus as the Giver of Life when her brother had died, because Jesus had not turned up in time to heal him? Jesus then confirmed this claim to her by bringing her brother back from the dead. So it is today. Those who believe are spiritually resurrected. Then Jesus confirms to each trusting person his identity as their Resurrection and Life by a succession of miracles in their lives, for which there are no words except praise and gratitude. Spiritually born people will tell of these miracles, and there are some who have been physically resurrected in our era.[2]
2. Evidence all around us
Secondly, we see resurrection evidence all around us in people with whom we interact. Have you ever seen or talked with someone whose whole persona, values and interests have changed dramatically from a look of death to the look of one brought alive from the dead? Have you ever asked them what changed in their life? Have you seen a stark difference between this newly alive person and the blank-eyed faces of the walking dead in our city streets, in our workplaces, in our clubs and in our homes?" We interact with the walking dead every day – people stuck in some achievement of the past upon which they hang their whole identity trying to gain some sense of value; those who live by a belief system that is propped up by handed down prejudices and has never thoroughly been examined; others who live by superstition of their own making or found in their religion. These are the walking dead.
It does not take us long to become aware of the walking dead, if over time we take care to observe body language and listen to the quality of life that comes out of a person’s mouth and actions of love. Observe the person trying to suck meaning out of a bottle of alcohol day after day, because no meaning comes from within. Notice the one trying to establish some meaning out of an endless pursuit of sexual encounters, sporting achievements and boasting in the pub. Listen to the person rehashing, in a dreary monotone, experiences long gone as they try to convince others, and perhaps even themselves, that some life still remains in their deadened existence.
3. Evidence within
Thirdly, we can observe the death of our own spirit when we experience the sensation of just going through the motions wondering, "What is the purpose of it all?" It is then that we need to be brought back from the dead through a new birth of our spirit.
The one who has lost all hope in life is dead already. We can easily detect this in ourselves. It is a symptom of death. It is a heavy weight that is forever with a person as they plod out each day unable to extract any meaning or life from it. As a result, they display a dead, self-centred cavalier attitude to people and events around them. Ceaseless gossipers are dead, already bound by their habitual addiction of needing to tear down the reputations of others to camouflage their own vacuous centre. Ever been there? Surprisingly, the great achiever basking in fame can be dead already, just as much as the person who lives in daily drudgery. They indulge in their dreams of applause, in order to avoid confronting themselves, yet fearful all the time that they will be found out for how empty they really are. Hence, they hide in the glitz of a constant social whirl projecting a superficial physical image for an applause that has no life in itself. The dead applauding the dead can never bring life.
So we need to test ourselves. Has our life come to the place of sensing it has no meaning? Then don’t miss the fact that a dead spirit creates a meaningless and plodding existence and not the reverse. Meaningless, boredom and never-ending routine do not kill the spirit. They are symptoms of a spirit that is already dead. We need to face the fact that we must start looking for the causes of our symptoms from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. This deadness is not done to us. We choose to perpetuate it and live in it when eternal Life is on offer.
The decision to escape this death rests solely with each of us. Our choice is between existence with a dead spirit, or our spirit brought alive by the One who resurrects dead spirits by dwelling within with his resurrected life. It is only common sense to choose our Creator’s life that lasts forever. Insecure pride will block it. That is the sustained choice of the fool. The humility of personal honesty with God about oneself will release it. The wise choose to trust and invite everlasting Divine Life to live within as the living Spirit of Jesus. Wise or a fool as assessed by the statements of Jesus?
The endorsement by John the Baptist
Having recorded the lengthy encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus, John follows up with a public endorsement of Jesus by John the Baptist as the prophesied forerunner to the coming Messiah (Isaiah 40:3). His endorsement of Jesus concludes,
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
This endorsement closely echoes the claim Jesus made to Nicodemus,
"…he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life… : but whoever does not believe in him is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son". (3:16-18)
Both statements are about the Son of God, both about possessing eternal/everlasting life through belief/trust in him, and both about the condemnation and wrath of God sitting on the person who is rejecting the Son.
The circumstantial setting
The precise time of the endorsement of Jesus by John the Baptist is not clear other than John giving a general sequencing of time,
22 After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized.
John indicates that Jesus split his time between his disciples and baptising. While giving personalised time in building the relationship between himself and his disciples, Jesus continued his ministry to the masses.
John precedes the endorsement of Jesus by with an account of the disciples of John the Baptist becoming protective of his unique ministry and concerned that Jesus was siphoning off people seeking baptism from John the Baptist making his popularity grow greater.
23 Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming and being baptized. 24 (This was before John was put in prison.) 25 An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing. 26 They came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan — the one you testified about — look, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him."
John the Baptist used their concern of dwindling popularity to explain the different roles he and Jesus had relative to each other. Then he reinforced the unique role of Jesus in determining each person’s eternal salvation or judgement.
The role of John the Baptist
27 To this John replied, "A person can receive only what is given them from heaven. 28 You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.’ 29 The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. 30 He must become greater; I must become less."
John the Baptist could not have been clearer. He knew the identity of Jesus as soon as he encountered him. In particular, he knew his role relative to Jesus that God had given to him in his plan of salvation for the human race. He clearly knew that he was not the bridegroom. Consequently, he knew that he did not own any person who responded to his preaching on the need for repentance and baptism. Therefore, he was free to focus his joy on the coming of Jesus and immediately point his followers away from himself to Jesus. He had already identified Jesus to his disciples as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (1:29), and God’s Chosen One, who will baptize seekers with the long-awaited Holy Spirit (1:33). Now with the coming of Jesus, John the Baptist knew that his God-ordained service was completed. He knew clearly that from now on Jesus would become greater, and he would become less. He knew that his role now was to point away from himself and point to Jesus the Divine source of all salvation.
So should it be with every church leader, who believes they have been chosen to teach their followers how to relate to Jesus in their daily lives. False teachers are quickly seen. They seek to become greater by using the unique appeal of Jesus to shift the focus artfully from Jesus to point to themselves. Their control increases, often accompanied by wealth, and teaching becomes marketing. They show no comparison with John the Baptist, who instantly pointed away from himself to Jesus, lived in the desert with no permanent dwelling, ate locusts and wild honey, and was clothed in a garment made of camel’s hair strapped on with a leather belt.
The identity and role of Jesus
Having clarified his God-given role relative to Jesus, John the Baptist proceeded to explain further the divine identity and role of Jesus. With his followers eyes directed away from him, he could now focus them on the unique aspects of the identity of Jesus.
1. His origin and status is unrivalled
31 The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.
The heavenly origin of Jesus automatically places him above all humanity and therefore above all other leaders and teachers in any religion, who all speak from learning experiences, which are limited in time and place to earth. There are no exceptions. The claim of John the Baptist is that Jesus is above all humans.
2. His witness is first-hand
32 He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony.
A first-hand witness must be in sufficient proximity to see an event or hear a person clearly, in order for their witness to be valid and not distorted. Otherwise, it cannot be accepted as valid and undistorted. In addition, if the listener distrusts the impartiality of the witness, they cannot accept unreservedly their testimony as authentic and accurate.
Even if the authenticity and accuracy of a witness’ account is proven, this still do not guarantee acceptance of it by the listener. This has always been the case, because every listener filters all new information through their own created reality. Hence, the intellectual, emotional and spiritual composition of reality developed by many over their lifetime causes them to reject aspects of Jesus that do not suit, even though the historical accuracy of the biographies of him by his disciples have been proven. That is why Jesus warned that only a few will enter the narrow door that leads to eternal life.
If we do not take time to conduct an open review of the life of Jesus until we discover the authenticity of his claims about himself, we will reject him and his offer of eternal life. We will continue to hold tightly onto our view of reality that has been forged by sensory inputs bound to our physical realm on earth, while rejecting the teachings of Jesus that originate in heaven. We will not trust him with the control of our life. Our pride will not let go.
John the Baptist considered the witness of Jesus to be authentic, because it was first hand, i.e. what he had seen and heard. He claimed that the words of Jesus originate from the direct witness of a heavenly reality above, which no human has seen or heard. Accordingly, this witness of Jesus was accurate and unable to be matched by any human.
It is not surprising that John the Baptist claimed from his perspective that no one accepted the authentic testimony of Jesus. It was early days. The entrenched religious status quo still stood and held the nation captive.
3. His words are Divine truth
33 Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 34 For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.
John the Baptist then claims that the person who accepts the testimony of Jesus has certified that God is truth. How so? The reason is that the words of Jesus spoken on earth are the direct words of God accurately describing the reality he has created in heaven, and heard undistorted first hand by Jesus in heaven. Jesus continues to speak the words of God accurately today, because he has been given the Spirit of God as a limitless gift. He only speaks truth. On that basis Jesus could later claim to be the Truth (all truth) and the Life (all spiritual and creative life). (John 14:6)
Since this claim of John the Baptist, every earnest seeker of truth has discovered that Jesus is the Truth needed to understand life, make meaning of their own life, and be guided in living out its unique purpose. They also receive the Spirit without limit.
4. He has authority over all creation
John the Baptist now affirms the kingship of Jesus over all God’s creative work including each human. He explains that this comprehensive authority has been, and continues to be, an act of Divine Love.
The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.
Each of us have been placed before our birth in the domain of this Divine love and judgement exercised by Jesus. Paul says it this way,
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:3-4)
Note that the choice has a purpose, i.e., to be holy (set apart) and blameless in his sight. That is the desired destiny of each person. Our task is to align ourself continually with this purpose.
5. Our eternal destiny hinges on him
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
It only takes a moment for each person to test if they are surrendering their daily life to Jesus in full trust and seeking to build their relationship with him, or if they are holding onto the control of their life refusing to open themselves to his control. John the Baptist made it clear that such a person lives under the wrath of God. They will never see life.
Personal response – surrender or pride-control
How have you assessed your own relationship with Jesus?
Jesus made it clear that he offered no middle ground option to his control of our life versus ours. Either we trust in him with our whole life, or our pride holds onto the decision-making role in our life. Trust in his demonstrated divine identity is what activates full surrender of our life to him. Then a relationship starts by him in response choosing to give his life to us. We now enter the super natural realm from our natural realm with his life in us. We now live by his life, which shines light upon the source of our emotions at any moment and the thoughts and choices they are producing. Now we see more clearly the division between our self-interest set against the need of another. Now our trust in Jesus opens us up to the choice of God’s Spirit in the moment and to let go of the competing desire of our pride’s self-preservation. Without his light shining within us we remain the ignorant pawn of our pride using our mind and will to justify any desire. We live in darkness creating convincing explanations and excuses for our behaviours and plans. We take self-glory in our spiritually dead accomplishments and insights instead of giving glory to the one who created us.
Each person knows if they are seeking to build their life according to their wishes, or if they trust Jesus enough to build their life according to his wishes. Those wishes are an expression of Infinite love that seeks out the highest good for the one loved. His wishes for each person are higher than our capability to imagine. They are inaccessible, however, to a pride that will not let go of control.
Therefore, assessing your relationship with Jesus begins and ends with elevating to self-awareness where your pride has placed its trust. Look at that honestly. As seen above, Nicodemus had much about which his pride could boast, yet he decided to risk it by going public before his ruling colleagues to defend Jesus in their forum and later assist in taking him down from his cross and placing him in a tomb. He let go of his pride to do so. He had chosen to trust Jesus, in order to receive spiritual life and live by his spirit united with the Spirit of God rather than by his academic knowledge. He heard and grasped what Jesus said to him,
"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.’
Nicodemus is an example of our need to look closely at whose desires are controlling us: our own or those of the Spirit of Jesus? It is critical for each person to look honestly at who controls who. Our eternal destiny is at stake in this assessment. Blatant and stupid pride will laugh this need away and never seriously approach understanding the identity of Jesus with an open mind. Fools do so.
How have you assessed your relationship with Jesus?
The Greek word, πιςτέω (pisteo), used by John for ‘believe’, is more than intellectual assent of a person’s identity. It can also be translated, ‘trust’. It is a relationship term of engagement with trust in the person being believed. Each couple facing marriage is faced with this meaning of belief. Can I trust what I believe I can see? Attempts to love based on flawed trust lead to breakdown. Trust without love cannot create a marriage. ↩︎
For example see, A glimpse of eternity: One man’s story of life beyond death, as told by Jenny Sharkey (Sjöbergs Förlag AB, 2008) – the story of New Zealander Ian McCormick’s return from death after swimming into a school of box jelly fish in Mauritius. ↩︎