There is one verse in the Bible searched over 25 million times a year online. And shared hundreds of millions more, by Christians and non-Christians alike. And when Tim Tebow wrote the verse on his eye paint during the 2009 National football championships, it was Googled 90 million times in a matter of hours!
As always, the temptation with something so frequented, I mean we are talking about the most famous evangelical line in Scripture here - John 3:16 - the temptation is to let the good news become old news.
The truth is, it could not be newer. It could not be more potent. It could not be more decisive or any sharper then when it first came off the tongue of Yahshua. Let’s look at the section of verses from John 3. Let’s see it with fresh eyes like Nicodemus might have, when hearing it for the first time:
John 3: 1-17 (ESV)
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
To be there, a fly on the wall, or better yet, to be Nicodemus himself when Jesus cut in, pulling no punches. Straight to the heart of the matter.
And you really need to catch something profound in John Chapter 3. The wisest man in all of Israel, or at the very least, one of the top 10, had absolutely no idea what Jesus Christ was saying.
He was a learned man of Israel. Familiar, not to the random verse reference, but to the line-by-line, word-for-word memory of the entire Torah. He was a high level, senior elder, a specifically chosen and selected member of the special Hebrew counsel called the Sanhedrin. In fact, from the Greek he was referred to by Jesus as archigos, meaning a high level ruler or chief. Also from this, we get the word arch, meaning a strong architectural shape in buildings. In other words, he was not merely a teacher, but Nicodemus was a teacher to the teachers.
He was almost certainly on the Sanhedrin floor when Jesus was brought to trial during Holy Week on the morning of His crucifixion.
Perhaps then, but definitely in the late night soiree with the King, he had absolutely no clue what Jesus was teaching him.
Unless the revelation power of the Holy Spirit reveals Yahshua to you, you will not see the Truth, you will not hear the Truth and you definitely won’t understand the Truth. Or worse, you’ll do what that Pharisees did, and say that the Savior of the world was actually a demon. How costly an error for anyone to make.
We have the incredible blessing of hindsight. We can read through John 3, and easily make the mistake of judging Nicodemus to be childish, or even a fool. But in a physical sense, he was very stable. Very solid. Very absolute.
How can a man or woman or child, be born again? He asked a valid question.
I read this same chapter in the Beginners Bible with my son and daughter this week. And it was actually very refreshing. As I quoted the line of Jesus from Verse 4, “you must be BORN AGAIN…” Almost word for word, my daughter cut me off and said, “Daddy…How can someone be born again? I can’t go back inside mommy’s tummy.”
They were coming at the story just as freshly as Nicodemus. They were hearing Jesus’ words for the first time, and they were rightly pointing out, it just doesn’t make any sense. Like so many of His teachings, here Jesus introduced a brand new concept, being ‘born again’ for the very first time. He told the senior elder of the Jewish court, “you must not be born of the body only. You must also be born of the Spirit.”
If anyone has witnessed, or for the mothers reading, actually given birth. A child is ABSOLUTELY dependent on his or her mother. Not only after delivery. But in the birth process itself. God has uniquely designed mothers to bring new lives into the world. Birth is one of the greatest miracles I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing. Without a doubt I believed more strongly in the Lord after I witnessed my children being born.
And that was physical birth.
Now we are shifting the lens, according to Jesus, from birth of the flesh, to birth of the Spirit. In the Greek text the word for ‘born again’ is anothen. And it means from above. So put simply, we’ve all been born once down below. We must also be born once from above as well.
So we come to John 3:16. And this is where we find a dividing line in the Text again. The word of God divides rightly. And the words of Jesus are each and every time a definitive line in the sand. There is nothing subtle or wishy-washy about Jesus’ words.
In one definitive statement, He puts to death the philosophy of religion as a path to God. In fact, He obliterates the notion that right living can get you anywhere close.
And of all the moments in all Creation, in a back alley in Israel, under cover of darkness, Jesus Christ dropped the quintessential mission statement of His existence.
For YAHWEH SO LOVED the world, that He gave His only Son. And WHOSOEVER believes in Him will not perish, but will have ETERNAL LIFE.
This is a quote I found while preparing this post that really shook me:
Before Jesus Christ came into this world no one ever dreamt of saying ‘God loves.’ Some of the Old Testament psalmists had glimpses of that truth and came pretty near expressing it. But among all the ‘gods many and lords many,’ there were lustful gods and beautiful gods, and idle gods, and fighting gods and peaceful gods: but not one of whom worshippers said, ‘He loves.’ Once it was a new and almost incredible message, but we have grown accustomed to it, and it is not strange any more to us. But if we would try to think of what it means, the whole truth would flash up into fresh newness, and all the miseries and sorrows and perplexities of our lives would drift away down the wind, and we should be no more troubled with them. ‘God loves’ is the greatest thing that can be said by lips.
Potent stuff. And then, “Whosoever.” Surely one of the greatest words in the English lexicon.
It speaks with such breadth and fullness. Yet comes with an enormous catch. It’s a dividing line in the spiritual sand, because Jesus qualifies the WHOSOEVER by adding a verb.
If He did not qualify His statement, then everyone would be saved, past, present and future. And I would ask the question, why are any of us here right now? What was the purpose of existence after the Fall of Man, if we were already all saved? Why did God separate and divide Adam and Eve from the Garden and the Tree of Life, if we were all, already, saved? Why indeed did Jesus Christ die, if we are all, already, saved?
But Jesus adds a verb. And it is an action.
It’s WHOSOEVER BELIEVES UPON. You have to take action to make the promise real. You must take your faith and actually stick it somewhere. Upon some One. And that is exactly what the follower of Christ must do. We must grapple with the ultimate question:
Is Jesus Christ the Messiah?
We must, to borrow from my favourite line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “screw our courage to the sticking place.” We must take hold of that for which Christ took hold of us. And we do it through belief upon Christ.
But notice how Nicodemus came to Him. In the dark, under the flicker of candlelight, or perhaps moonlight. In the watch of the night when light had not yet broken.
It’s the symbol in the story, the object lesson of the writer, that revelation has not taken root. And then Jesus points it out for greater clarity, emphasizing the dividing force of the Gospel.
V. 19: And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his works should be exposed.
Could Jesus be calling out Nicodemus right there, with such direct potency, right to his face? He is, and He does the same to each of us.
But WHOSOEVER does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Which is a great time to flash forward to another one of my favourite verses in Scripture, also from John’s Gospel:
John 6:29, Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
It’s a circle. If you believe in Him, you will be saved. But without works, faith is dead. So Jesus lays out clearly, what is the work of God?
TO BELIEVE.
Can you see how difficult it would have been to follow God rightly? Can you see the dividing line? We would not have a chance of following, or knowing, or seeing God. We would - all of us - be Nicodemus. Still stumbling in the darkness over the cornerstone that is Christ, stumbling blindly like the blind guides the Pharisees were. Not able to see the light on behalf of the covering darkness of our sin.
But then.
Christ made an eternal Way.
The Light of the world.
Came down.
And He passed us the key.
Entering the Eternal door.
Into the Kingdom.
It should be your bumper sticker, your mission statement, your tattoo if you must have one, you should be writing it on the mirror and more importantly on the tablet of your heart: I BELIEVE UPON CHRIST.
And coming around to the way to Faith, Jesus so graciously pointed out two Rabbinical, Hebrew, Jewish emblems to Nicodemus. He knew the mind He was speaking to, so He gave him the meat with the potatoes.
Jesus refers to the two most famous Jews in the Torah. Abraham and Moses.
Abraham, the father of Faith. The one whose faith was credited to him as righteousness. The one the Sanhedrin members including Nicodemus aligned the most with, clinged to for hope of their own Salvation.
And Moses, the father and shepherd of the Israelite nation. The man who gave them the Law from God Himself. Saw Him on the mountain, shone with His brilliance, knew Him so intimately. The one the Pharisees most aligned with in a religious sense, as they tried to perfect every line and nuance and character of the law.
Catch this: the great man of God Moses saw Yahweh’s BACK while hiding in the cleft of a rock, and he worshiped Him there. Nicodemus saw Yahweh’s FACE in the person of Jesus, and he didn’t have a clue!
And tearing down his preconceived notions, Jesus almost certainly offended the darling beliefs Nicodemus had in his heart for Moses and Abraham, by poking through it all and simplifying it so decisively. Like a sword to the heart. A dividing line. A righteous judgment.
God did not arrive in the world to condemn it. That was what the Pharisees did with their stoic adherence to the Law: whether purposefully or in some cases inadvertently, they separated themselves from the people. They became spiritually prideful and set themselves on the weak foundation of religious living. Believing works alone could connect them to the Kingdom forever.
But what Jesus told Nicodemus that was most unthinkable, was that even for a Jew, the Kingdom of God was not guaranteed. And it would have shaken him to the spiritual core. Because like so many other Jews, he had faced hardship, worldly rejection, and political persecution. He invested himself fully in his religious knowledge and even, to his benefit, righteous living.
But it was not, and could not, and would never be enough. Because like Adam and David and Abraham and Moses and all his forefathers before him, Nicodemus was separated by sin, that dividing line of darkness, distant and separate from God.
Until now. Because the One he and all the world had been waiting for was not only coming, He was now here, speaking to Nicodemus face to face. Mouth to mouth. More intimate than Moses and Yahweh on the Mountain of Law called Sinai.
And as Jesus so freshly revealed to him, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is What must enter a man, a woman, a child, to translate them from darkness into light. And before it can, while it is, and after it has, it is Faith in Christ that empowers the Spirit to breathe and to blow and to reveal.
As Jesus spoke eternal truths to people like Nicodemus, the Bible tells us, many put their faith in Him.
We don’t know where or how the Spirit of God, in His eternal wisdom is blowing. It’s not our job to know. But when the Wind blows upon us, it IS our job, to respond with Faith.
We must not only hear the word of Christ. We must believe it. This is the work of God: believe upon the One that Father has sent. And when we believe upon Him, we enter into His Kingdom. Forever.
Keep Breathing,
Daniel Kooman
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Woosh. Such a powerful unpacking of a life-altering truth.
My kids just watched the Nicodemus episode on Superbook for the first time and that moment when the question is posed is so potent. Constantly challenged and refreshed by what the work is: to believe.
Grateful for your words and how they bring hope and challenge to so many!