What about My Blessed Assurance?

While a lot of people know John 3:16 by heart, not as many know the full story of the relationship between Nicodemus and Jesus. They meet as Passover approaches, Jesus has traveled to Jerusalem and gone to the temple. When he got there, he found men selling animals for sacrifice…and he turns over the tables and coins fly everywhere. And John tells us that while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in him. This is the context for Nicodemus’s visit with Jesus.

Under the shroud of darkness, while the rest of the world slumbers, Nicodemus got up, put on his cloak and ventured out to find this traveling teacher/miracle worker. Why did he come at night? Nicodemus, remember, is a member of the Jewish ruling council. “We know you are a teacher who has come from God,” he said to Jesus. The miracles Jesus was doing could only be done by someone who had God with him.

Wonder why Nicodemus came to talk with Jesus? Maybe he wanted to be certain about his position on Jesus with the council. Maybe he wanted to talk Jesus into piping down and not bucking the system so much. Maybe he was hungry for more; he had risen to the top of the Jewish faith, but maybe he still ached for a deeper relationship with God. Maybe it was a combination of the three that propelled him out of bed in the middle of the night.

Jesus says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless that person is born again.”

Nicodemus hears Jesus’ words and his reaction is odd. He asks, “How is that even possible? You can’t go back into your mother’s womb as an adult!” Now, we have to understand that he heard a lot more than we hear when we hear “born again.” The word we translate as again doesn’t have a good Greek to English translation, though. It can mean again in the sense of a second time, but it can also mean completely or radically and it can mean from above, as in from God. So, in those two little words, “born again” Jesus is saying in order to see the kingdom of God, which is God’s will being done perfectly on earth, each person needs ”to undergo such a radical change that it is like a new birth; it is to have something happen to the soul [that] can only be described as being born all over again; and the whole process is not a human achievement, because it comes from the grace and power of God.” (Barclay)

William Barclay posits that Nicodemus didn’t really want to understand Jesus. He was curious. He knew that this man was a messenger of God. But, he came in the dark of night to learn more. He didn’t want his life to change when the light of day came. So, Jesus says, you can’t stay in the darkness. You have to emerge, to leave the comfort of the womb of the life you have established for yourself.

Then Jesus tells him, “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless that person is born of water and the Spirit.” The birth of water refers to baptism, but what does the birth of Spirit mean? The word for Spirit in Hebrew and in Greek both is the same as the word for wind. So, Jesus is using a play on words. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” The Spirit is the same way. You cannot control the Spirit, it blows where it pleases. You can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, but you can tell it is coming and you can see where it has been.

Nicodemus is upset. All his life, he has been a good Jew. He was thankful for being born a part of God’s family. He was faithful to the law. He was a leader in the temple. With the same fervor that we sing “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine” he has sung about the steadfast love of God for God’s people Israel. Now Jesus is saying that to see the kingdom of God, you have to be born again. Jesus is redefining the family of God. People not born Jews can be born again into God’s family. And Jesus says that you can only enter the kingdom of God if you have been born through water and the Spirit .

And how hard for Nicodemus, who as a religious leader has been able to judge and rule and pronounce God’s blessing or condemnation, to hear that you can tell which way the wind is blowing if you want to know where it might go and you can tell where it has been, but you cannot control it.

Confused, wide-eyed, he exhales, “How can this be?”

Jesus responds with a story Nicodemus knows well – the story of the bronze snake. It is recorded in Numbers 21. Israel was in the wilderness along the route to the Red Sea, they were going the long way around Edom because Edom had already come out against them with a large and powerful army and refused to let them go through their territory. Aaron, Moses’ brother, and the better orator of the two leaders, had just died. And the people were like a 3 year old with no nap, whining to Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” In response, God sent venomous snakes, and many Israelites died. The people repented, and God told Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So, Moses make a bronze snake and put it on a pole and anyone who was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake lived.

Jesus says “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

It is a rich, multi-layered metaphor that “puts into words what is really beyond words.” (Westminster Bible Companion) What comes to mind when you think of snakes in the Bible? Garden of Eden, right? Sin. It has bitten us, and its venom kills. So the Son of Man must be lifted up, like a snake on a pole.

Remember, this conversation happens just before Passover, within a few days Jesus will be crucified. Nicodemus is a leader, a member of the Jewish ruling council; he knows that they are plotting to have Jesus crucified. Anyone who is bitten by sin and looks at Jesus lifted high on the cross has what we translate as eternal life.

William Barclay wrote about this life, “There is only one person who can properly be described by this adjective eternal and that one person is God. Eternal life is the kind of life that God lives; it is God’s life. To enter into eternal life is to enter into possession of that kind of life which is the life of God. It is to be lifted up above merely human, temporary, passing, transient things, into that joy and peace which belong only to God. And clearly a man can only enter into this close communion and fellowship with God which he renders to God that love, that reverence, that devotion, that obedience which truly bring him into fellowship with God.”

And the only way to this relationship is to be born again – to come out of the darkness, into the light. God so loved the world; we are saved by grace. The grace of God, lifted up high on a cross, through faith, not knowledge, not deeds, not words, by trust. We are saved by grace through faith. We are born to the kind of life God lives because God loves us when we trust. Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim. Amen.