Life of Christ 28
Arguably, the most
famous phrase in all the Bible is 'born again'. Arguably, perhaps the most
famous verse in all the Bible is John 3.16. Both of them are found in the
context of one conversation, and understanding why Jesus uttered those immortal
words is both instructive and helpful. Read on, then, if you would like to
receive that instruction and help.
The last time we saw
Jesus He had just begun His public ministry. Leaving Nazareth an anonymous
carpenter, He had traveled to Judea to be baptized by John the Baptist, endure
forty days of fasting, resist the devil's temptations, and gather His first
disciples. He then returned to Galilee, and launched His ministry by turning
water into wine in Cana. Almost immediately, He returns to Judea for the
Passover, and upon entering the Temple He sends the moneychangers and cattle
merchants heading for the hills. At this point, while still in Judea for
Passover, Scripture tells us that He did several unnamed miracles, and that
these miracles caused people to believe on Him (John 2.23).
These miracles, and the
cleansing of the Temple itself, brought Him attention not just from the common
people, but also from Israel's religious leadership. The Sanhedrin, the seventy
one men, mostly Pharisees, who met in the Hall of Hewn Stone, and led Israel
under the direction of the High Priest, would most certainly have sat up and
taken notice. After all, one of their designated responsibilities was to
investigate reports of miraculous events, and so to determine and declare
whether they were authentic or fake. It would be this background, then, that
provoked Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, to come to Jesus.
As a Pharisee, Nicodemus
would have expected Jewish people to go to Heaven on the basis of 'the merits
of the fathers.' This phrase, found often in the rabbinic writings of Jesus'
day, implied that since the Jewish people were directly descended from Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob they were already guaranteed direct access to Heaven. Jesus
denied this. He explained that parents can only transmit the nature they are,
and that since each parent is a sinner then each child is a sinner. What is
sinful cannot possibly enter the kingdom of Heaven, so in order to enter the
kingdom one needed a nature transmitted from a sinless parent. God is the only
one sinless, and thus each Jew needed to be 'born again', a second time, this
time with God as His parent, in order to have the merit of the Father (John
3.3-7).
Obviously, Nicodemus
didn't understand the necessity of the new birth, and Jesus actually got rather
upset with him about this (John 3.8-9). Jesus got angry because this was
precisely the problem with the state of Israel's religion at the time. It had
ceased to be a matter of the heart, one that begins by a lost sinner coming
humbly to God for salvation, and had rather become a matter of ethnicity first.
This was only aggravated by the fact that the obedience God was actually after
was clouded by a great host of external man-made rules. If anybody should have
known the reality of how to be spiritually related to Jehovah, first by
salvation and secondly by living right from the heart, it should be someone in
Israel's religious leadership. Nicodemus was an integral part of that
leadership, and he didn't have so much as a clue.
In order to help explain
this, Jesus gives Nicodemus an example from the Old Testament that pointed
toward the necessity of being forgiven directly for sin through the mercy of
God by faith. This illustration, found originally in Numbers 21, was about a
rebellious Israel suffering the just punishment of their sin from God, and
dying in great multitudes via being snake bit as a result. God, of course,
doesn't want all of His people to die, and in His mercy He instructs Moses to
make the brass image of a snake and hoist it on a pole in the middle of the
camp. Each Jew bitten would then be faced with the choice of whether to show
faith in Jehovah's mercy by simply looking at that pole, or to die a slow and
agonizing death in his rebellion.
It is in this context
that Jesus says, 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life' (John 3.16). The Pharisees, like the hyper-Calvinists of our day, did not
believe that God loved the entire world. They believed He only loved the
righteous, and that He bitterly hated the sinner. Jesus here emphatically tells
Nicodemus the exact opposite, that God loves the entire world. Jesus then goes
on to boldly claim to be God's Son, and the way to eternal life itself, and
that faith in Him is all that is necessary for that eternal life.
Wow. What a series of staggering statements, and all in one sentence! It is my belief that
Nicodemus there and then became a believer in the claims of Jesus Christ. How
many since have come to believe as a result of that same conversation? Without
exaggeration, millions. With all my heart, I hope that you are one of those
millions.
I have been reading the
Bible for thirty five years, and paying close attention while reading it for
twenty six of those years. I attended nineteen years of formal education, all
of it in a decidedly spiritual environment. In addition, for the last seventeen
years I have had the high and holy privilege of standing before a group of
God's people and preaching the Word of God as their pastor. With all of the scriptural study implied in
this paragraph it is understandable to me that there are some areas of the
Bible that are difficult for us to grasp. After all, it is a book written by
God Himself. There are some things in it that are not clear, and I'm not afraid
to say that. But, whatever we do, let us not allow salvation to be one of
those! Let us be clear on it – 'ye must be born again'. Let us emphasize it in
our churches and in our families – 'ye must be born again'. Yes, let us
emphasize it very much, for on an understanding and belief in this hangs all
things.
Truly, 'ye must be born
again.'
No comments:
Post a Comment