Nicodemus was having his doubts. As a Pharisee – and member of the Jewish ruling council, no less! – confidence, not questioning, had been his hallmark. He was taught and trained that if any group of people could be confident of its salvation, it was them. They were in. And they even reinforced their self-confidence. They tacked on additional manageable rules for themselves to highlight their rigid adherence to the law and pointed out the numerous failures and shortcomings of others in doing so. This was his life – the Pharisees fueled their self-assurance by patting each other on the back and elevating each other on pedestals of comparison to others.
But the normally self-assured Nicodemus was not so sure. Doubts were creeping in. At the very least, questioning replaced confidence. We aren’t even told what it was exactly that began to leave him unsettled – a new experience for a confident Pharisee, for sure! While he couldn’t place his finger on exactly what it was, he knew the source that was causing it: Jesus. So, to avoid being seen and ostracized by his fellow Pharisees for cozying up to the enemy, he felt more comfortable approaching Jesus under the cover of darkness. The key to regaining his confidence was to look for answers to his questions. Jesus was the place to start.
Jesus is still the place to start. You have questions, questions you may or may not have ever verbalized to others, but questions that jumble around in your head, refusing to settle down quietly until they are eventually answered. Questions about Christianity. Questions about teachings. Questions about God. Questions about yourself and perhaps where you stand with God. That last one is the one question that demands an answer, and only Jesus can provide it: Am I in? Am I in with God? In other words, Can I be sure that I will be in heaven, and if so, how?
Sometimes things are backward. The least engaged among Christians are sometimes the most confident, while the most engaged are the least confident. There are those who make infrequent appearances in God’s house on a Sunday morning because they feel as if they have the Jesus thing down. They believe what they need to believe and are happy to call it good.
Others treat the church as their second home. This isn’t to impress others or because they are so confident of where they stand, but the exact opposite. They aren’t sure and so they internally cling to the hope that their above-and-beyond participation at church will help boost their credentials before God – as if that was how it really worked.
But Jesus, and not worship attendance or church participation, is the place to start. Only in Jesus are questions replaced with confidence.
That was the experience of Nicodemus. As John records the conversation for us, we see Jesus take over. That’s what he does! When souls are at stake, Jesus takes control. In fact, Nicodemus may not even have really known precisely what question he had for Jesus, as he doesn’t even actually ask a question until after Jesus made his first point.
Nicodemus said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him” (v.2). It’s as if Nicodemus is talking himself through it, unsure exactly of how to articulate what it was that he needed to hear from Jesus. So what does Jesus do? He doesn’t just wait for Nicodemus to stumble through some incoherent, bumbling questions, but rather speaks up and starts down the path that takes Nicodemus to what he needs to hear.
He started by taking some of the wind out of Nicodemus’ pharisaical sails. “Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again’” (v.3). You better believe that the self-righteous ears of the Pharisee perked right up when Jesus started with the attention grabber: “no one can see the kingdom of God.” No one. Regardless of your religious status or titles. No matter the recognition or reputation. Disregard the achievements or accomplishments. No one. Everyone is excluded. That is, “… unless…
they are born again.” Now before we rush into judgment at how simple-minded Nicodemus’ response to Jesus was (he had questioned how someone could return back into the womb to be born a second time), realize that Nicodemus was unintentionally highlighting the very point Jesus was stressing about being “in” with God: it’s impossible for us to do. It’s not our work, any more than anyone of us can claim any stake in the hard, toiling work we did on the day we were born.
Regarding our birth, who of us has ever thought, “Oh man, that sure was a long day and a lot of work on my part when I was finally born. It involved a lot of planning and preparation. I had to train extensively. Then, when the time came, I put in the grueling effort and decided it was time to leave the womb for the world and be born. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.” Laughable foolishness! We take and we get zero credit for any participation on the day we were born. So Jesus uses that very picture to emphasize that we also take and get zero credit for any participation in entering into the kingdom of God, into a relationship with the Lord.
Next, Jesus places the focus where it always must be in man’s relationship with God: away from man and squarely on God. Specifically the Holy Spirit. “Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit’” (v.5-8). Jesus essentially told Nicodemus how this all works by ruling out all of his works and leaving only room for God’s work through the Holy Spirit.
Let’s not pretend that’s any easier for us to grasp today – even where faith is already present. We still fight, demanding some credit for this work, still reasoning that the two categories of “us” and “them,” of those who are in God’s kingdom and those who aren’t, has at least the slightest bit to do with me. It’s the real reason we struggle to forgive others or struggle to see grace extended to others.
We pretend it’s because of who they are, but really that struggle comes because of who we think we are. It’s our own perceived self-righteousness that demands at least a little bit of acknowledgment because “I would never do what that person did” or would at least make things right if I did, unlike that person. When we deceive ourselves into thinking this way, do we see how we’re really just right back there on the day of our birth demanding some amount of credit for our birth? Laughable foolishness!
Our birth is entirely the Spirit’s work and only the Spirit’s work. Jesus made that much clear. “Flesh,” the Bible’s term to describe how utterly and sinfully corrupt mankind is on its own, cannot upgrade its status. No matter how much success parents might set up their kids for, the best they’re ever able to achieve before God is to present another generation of sinners. And we are powerless to do anything about it.
If anything of us or any part of us is going to be spiritual, it must come from the Spirit, Jesus said. And since that is God’s work, just as little as we can predict the direction, intensity, or frequency of the wind blowing, so little can we predict when God will do the work of changing a fallen-in-flesh sinner into a filled-with-faith saint.
Understandably, Nicodemus still didn’t get it. So Jesus boiled it down to the simplest point. He gave him the gospel, which includes perhaps the most quoted, repeated, verse in all of Scripture in John 3:16. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. 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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (v.14-17).
Jesus referenced the historical account of the grumbling snake-bitten Israelites being healed and saved – not with some anti-venom or ointment, but simply by looking up at a bronze snake that was hoisted up on a pole. In the same way, Jesus would be hoisted up on a cross, and all who look to him in faith as their Savior would also be healed and saved. Through him alone there would be – and there is – entry for the excluded.
Nicodemus’ doubts could be laid to rest. Your doubts can be laid to rest. This is not because you can become more confident in yourself or your own actions, but in the simple promise of God that his love has given us what was needed to be “in,” to be good with God. His love has given us Jesus, not just the best place to start, but the best place to stay.
This clandestine conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus concludes with somewhat of a surprise ending: it doesn’t have one. We are not told what happened to Nicodemus after this. His name comes up on two more occasions in John’s Gospel, one of which pairs him with a believer named Joseph at Jesus’ burial. While it would seem that Nicodemus did become a believer, we aren’t told that directly. We’re left hanging. Perhaps that is on purpose. It may be so that rather than speculating on what is uncertain, we can instead focus on something that is certain: our own salvation, based solely and surely on Jesus. About that there is no doubt. Believe it.