Introduction
I have taught canoeing
at camp. As I have done so, I have watched people who had never canoed before look
with fear at the canoe, step awkwardly into the canoe and nearly tip and then paddle
awkwardly. Then after a period of instruction and practice, I have seen them
grow in their proficiency. They stepped into the canoe lightly and effectively,
they were able to make the canoe go where they wanted with efficient, almost
effortless paddling. With enough training, practice and effort we can learn
almost anything.
Can that be said of
God’s call to us in I Peter 1:16 ?
If we work hard at it and if we learn the right things, can we be holy as He is
holy?
That is what
Nicodemus was wondering. He was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were those members of
Jewish society who made a concerted effort to obey the law and the traditions
of the elders. In fact Barclay says that every “Pharisees took an oath “in
front of three witnesses that they would spend all their lives observing every
detail of the scribal law.”
He
came to Jesus at night, perhaps for fear of others of his sect finding out, or
perhaps because he wanted uninterrupted time with the teacher to discuss
matters of mutual interest. He wanted to know, can we be holy enough that God
will accept us?
He
had seen something in Jesus that intrigued him and addressed Jesus by saying,
“we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these
signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Other Pharisees said that
Jesus was from Satan, but Nicodemus was more gracious than that and recognized
some divine connection. Was it academic interest in the way to God that brought
him to Jesus or had he seen something in Jesus that caused him to wonder if
Jesus really knew the way to God?
As
Jesus answered his question, he also answers our question. I invite you to
examine John 3:1-17
with me.
I. The
Necessity of Being Born From Above 3-7
A. You
Can’t See the Kingdom without It vs. 3
Jesus didn’t beat around
the bush, but answered the question quite directly in verse 3. Please take
careful note of what Jesus said. He said that “no one” can see the kingdom of God
It is the kingdom of God
We already know the
reason for this because of the passages which we studied in the last two weeks.
God is an absolutely holy God. From Psalm
99 we saw that God is majestic, glorious, a righteous judge, a
forgiving God, who nevertheless holds everyone accountable for every wrong they
do.
Last week, as we
examined Genesis 3 , we
saw that we are anything but holy. We made a deliberate choice to disobey the
one exception God had made and we sinned and as a result separation from God
has come into the world and we are completely and hopelessly dead in our
relationship with God and this lost and broken condition is true of every person
because every person has similarly sinned.
Because of God’s
holiness and our unholiness, the only way we can be holy is if we are born from
above.
B. You
Can’t Enter God’s Kingdom without Spirit Birth vs. 5-6
But how is this
possible? Nicodemus wanted to know. It seems as if he desired this possibility,
but he had no concept about how that was possible. To him it seemed as
impossible as if one could go back into his mother’s womb and be born again.
Jesus answered that the
way to be born from above involves two steps. Jesus said, “no one can enter the
kingdom of God
1. Repentance
There has been
considerable debate about what being born of water means. Some suggest it could
refer to Christian baptism, some that it could refer to human birth (the next
verse could imply that) and some suggest that it refers to the baptism of John.
My preferred interpretation is that it refers to the baptism of John. The
baptism of John was a baptism of repentance and it is repentance which is a
necessary part of being born from above. We cannot be born from above unless we
admit our need of change. We cannot be born from above unless we agree with God
that we have disobeyed Him and have broken our relationship with Him.
2. Spirit
Change
The second part
of being born from above is that we must be “born of the Spirit.” In verse 6,
Jesus picked up on the statement of Nicodemus that it is impossible to be born
a second time from your mother. In verse 6, Jesus agreed with Nicodemus and
indicated that a second human birth would still only accomplish a human result.
He said, “What is born of the flesh is flesh.”
What he was
saying is that any kind of human renewal will only accomplish a human renewal.
If we could obey all the laws, all we would accomplish would be a check list of
good works, which are unable to make us holy. Every religion in the world is
the same. It is “flesh giving birth to flesh.” This includes much of what
passes for the Christian religion. Every religion seeks to change us by giving
us human duties or practices which accomplish human results. They are imperfect
because we fail in them and therefore they can never bring us to the holiness
which is necessary in order to be holy as God is holy.
There is only
one thing that can make us holy as God is holy. There is only one thing that
can bring us to see the kingdom
of God
This
was a radical concept for Nicodemus because he and his fellow Pharisees had
such a strong sense of what they had to do. They had a hard time understanding,
as we do that the only possible way to enter the kingdom of God is if God makes
the change in us. Barclay says, “…when the Spirit takes possession of us the
Spirit does what only the Spirit can do and the defeated life of human nature
becomes the victorious life of God.”
C. You
Must Be Born From Above vs. 3, 7
Now some of you will be
using different translations and some of you have memorized this passage, or at
least parts of it and you are wondering about the wording that I am using. It
is true that all of the translations that we are familiar with use the phrase
“born again.” This includes NIV and KJV. The NRSV uses “born from above.” Why
the difference and why am I using the phrase “born from above?”
The Greek word used
here can be translated in three different ways. It can be translated as “from
the beginning” or “again” or “from above.”
Nicodemus wondered
about being born again when he suggested the impossibility of returning to
one’s mother’s womb and being born a second time. When Jesus answered, he
corrected his understanding and said that one must be “born of the Spirit.” To
be born again could imply some kind of a renewal effected by some change of
heart in us or a change in our mind. It almost seems that Nicodemus was asking
Jesus, “Is it really possible to start all over again?” Jesus, however, was
pointing in a completely different direction. He was not saying that it is
possible to start again on the right foot, or that a revival of some kind will
help us do it better the second time. Jesus was saying and is saying to us that
the only possible way to enter into the kingdom of heaven is if God does
something to change the essential nature within us. Nothing less than God doing
something in us makes it possible to enter the kingdom of heaven. That is why I
prefer the translation “born from above.” The only way to enter the kingdom of
God is if God changes us. Verse 7 uses a common Biblical word that declares the
absolute necessity of this when it says we “must” be born from above.
II. The
Mystery of Being Born From Above 8-12
How does this birth
from above, this radical change happen? Where do we see it if God is the one
doing it?
When you translate
something from one language to another, there are some things that are very
difficult to translate. They only make sense in the source language because of
words used or the nuance of certain words. That happens in verse 8. The Greek
word for wind is “pneuma” and the Greek word for Spirit is also “pneuma.” It is
exactly the same word and only the context helps us understand which word is
meant. When we understand that, we can understand something of the beauty of
this passage and the message it contains.
Christina Rosetti has written a poem: Who Has Seen
the Wind?
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
That
is what Jesus was saying here. We cannot see the wind, but when the leaves
rustle or the trees bend or we feel the breeze on our faces or we hear it, we
know that the wind is blowing.
Then
Jesus went on to say, “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Yet
just as it was for Nicodemus, this is difficult to understand. Sometimes we
urge people to make a decision by following certain steps. But if they make a
change in their life by our urging, have they really been born from above?
Being born from above is not something that can be manipulated. It is something
that the Spirit accomplishes in the life of a person and you can’t see it
happen, but you surely can see its effects in a changed life.
Sometimes
we determine that we will do the right things, but being born from above is not
something mechanical for which we can subscribe to a formula. It is something
the Spirit accomplishes and when the Spirit has caused a person to be born from
above, the evidence is all over the person’s life.
There is mystery about
what God does and how He does it and when He does it and that is how it is with
everyone born of the Spirit. It is our responsibility to tell the story of
Jesus. It is our responsibility to invite people to respond to God. It is our
responsibility to encourage people to follow Jesus, but it is always a mystery
of God as to how and when they are born from above.
III.
The Way to Be Born From Above 13-17
So being born from
above is a mysterious work of the Spirit of God. Yet it is not something which
requires no response from us. When the Spirit of God begins to work in our
heart, first of all convicting us, then drawing us and finally changing us, there
is something that we must do.
A. In
The One Who Came Down 13&17
What we must do has
everything to do with Jesus.
Because this is a work
from above, it takes someone from above to do it. In verse 13, Jesus pointed
this out when He said, “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who
descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” Jesus could entered the Kingdom of God
because He had come from the kingdom of God in the first place. Because He came
from heaven He is able to make the change necessary in us. It is only those who
know Him and have a relationship with Him who will be born from above.
When we spoke about the
holiness of God and recognized our unholiness, we acknowledged that we were
under condemnation. We somehow knew and sensed that there was no hope. In verse
17, we have the good news that Jesus did not come into the world in order to
reinforce this message of condemnation. Jesus came into this world to save it.
He came into the world in order to bring us the birth from above. It is only
through Jesus that it is possible to be born from above. It is only in Jesus
that we can see the kingdom of God. It is only in Jesus that we can be holy as
God is holy.
So when the Spirit
begins to work in our hearts, it is a response to Jesus that is necessary. We
must acknowledge that He is the Son of God who has come into this world to save
it.
B. By
Believing in Him 14-16
As we acknowledge Jesus
it is by believing in Him that we receive the birth from above.
In verses 14-16, this
is the point that is made. Jesus makes reference to an intriguing story from
the Old Testament, which is found in Numbers 21. In this story, the people of
Israel became impatient in their long journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.
They began to complain and God punished them by sending serpents to torment
them. Anyone who was bitten by one of these serpents died. The punishment was
severe. Moses was told by God to make a bronze replica of a serpent and God
promised that everyone who looked to that serpent would not die of the poison.
Jesus used this
as an illustration of what it means to believe in Jesus. He mentioned that
“Moses lifted up the serpent.” Then he said “so must the Son of man be lifted
up.” This is a clear reference to the death of Jesus on the cross. In the
wilderness the people simply had to look at the bronze serpent and they were
spared. Similarly, our response is that we must look to Jesus. That is what it
means to believe. It means to look to Jesus. Both verse 15 and 16 point us to
the means by which we will receive the birth from above and that is by believing
in Jesus. Believing in Jesus, or looking to Jesus, means trusting that He is
who God has declared Him to be - the Son of God who cares for us, forgives us
and gives us life. Believing in Jesus means to place all our hope in Him.
Conclusion
We meet
Nicodemus again on two occasions in the gospel of John. In John 7:50-52, when a
group of Pharisees were questioning Jesus, Nicodemus challenged them to listen
to Jesus before they condemned him. In John 19:39, he provided some of the
spices with which Jesus was wrapped for burial. Is this the wind blowing? Is
this evidence that He believed in Jesus and experienced the birth from above?
And what about
us? Have you been born from above? Have you recognized the holiness of God and
repented of your sin to acknowledge that the holy God is right in barring you
from heaven? Have you believed in Jesus? Is your salvation accomplished by the
work that God has done in you?
I speak these
things to those here who may not yet have accepted Jesus. I would encourage you
that if the Spirit is nudging you, please respond to His invitation and put
your trust in Him and you will be born from above.
I am also
speaking to those who have identified themselves as Christians. I am speaking
to Christians to provoke us to think about the nature of our relationship with
God. Have we embraced a creed or a law or have we been changed by the Spirit,
have we been born from above?
The
promise of this text is that if we are born from above? We will see the kingdom
of God. We will enter the kingdom of God. We will have eternal life. We will
not perish and we will be holy as He is holy.
Yet
as those who have been born from above, we understand that we will not behave
in a holy way all the time right away. We will be acceptable to God right away
because of the one who came down. By believing in Jesus, God sees us in Jesus
and declares us fit to be in His kingdom.
We will grow in
holiness as we continue daily to draw near to Jesus. Keith Price writes,
“…’conversion’ to Christ means only that my journey to knowing God has begun.
The process will take a lifetime – and then some! If God has truly wrought a
work in my heart, I will inevitably be drawn to Him in increasing measure.”
And when Jesus returns,
we will see God and He will make it possible for us to be holy as He is holy.
I thank God that He has
made it possible for us to be holy as He is holy by making it possible for us
to be born from above.
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