Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of New Birth from John 3:1-21
I would like to make one or two preliminary remarks before I embark on the message this morning. First, as we accelerate toward the end, I wouldn’t want to forget the courtesies. So many have been kind and encouraging, and I’m grateful to you for your hospitality. If this conference doesn’t prove anything else, it makes me unutterably full of admiration for the capacity of Australians to sit.
I am grateful for the kindnesses shown by many, not least by Peter Adam. There are not many people with whom one can let one’s hair down in the ministry, and he’s definitely one of them, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe you can’t let your hair down with him, but I can. He’s an immensely compassionate sort of man. He has this dog called Poppy, short for Popworth, I think. This dog is very old. It is deaf, blind, and black. It’s so blind he was telling me he was thinking of buying a seeing-eye cat for it. You can just tell the level of the conversations we’ve been having.
Now there is a sense in which what I’m doing this morning is so artificial I’m embarrassed by it. I think I need to say something about that before I do it. The very nature of preaching, as I’ve insisted, is that it is not an art form. It is not a performance. It is not something you turn on. So here I’m telling you that I’m assuming that you’re non-Christians, so I’m going to turn something on. The whole thing is so artificial that it is not only, in my view, distasteful; it’s actually dangerous.
It may present to you a suggestion, a hint, that I think evangelism is something you can sort of turn on and off or parade in a certain way. I really hate that sort of approach to things. The whole thing must come out of a certain kind of study, form, grasp of text, and structure, yes, but also a passion and a connectedness between preacher and congregation audience that is not exactly the same as the kind of connectedness you get between a vaudeville comedian and a congregation or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa when she’s singing an aria. It’s just not the same sort of thing.
So I reconcile myself to this assignment, which is, after all, self-imposed, partly because I’m quite persuaded that despite the fact that most of you are here to improve your preaching, I have no doubt whatsoever in a congregation this size, in an audience this size, that some of you are not Christians.
I’m probably not supposed to say that out loud, but I’ve been teaching in theological colleges for enough years that I know we get some input, despite our very careful screening, of unbelievers. So I’m preaching to you. The only additional thing is that I’m going to assume, partly for the sake of modeling, that you don’t know very much; in fact, very little. Now within that framework, let’s turn to John, chapter 3.
A few years ago, the Datsun automobile underwent a name change. The parent company, Nissan Motors, decided that Nissan would be the base name of its cars. Datsun would become as extinct as the dodo. In America, at least, the name change was accompanied by endless advertisements on television and in other media about the born-again Datsun.
Thus, in America at least, born again entered the mainstream of the national vocabulary. Pretty soon it was applied not only to cars but to people. If a politician changed his party or if she changed her economic policy, she was referred to as a “born-again Democrat” or a “born-again free economy type,” a market economist.
Then it was also applied to certain kinds of religious people. There is a group in America apparently, according to the media, called born-again Christians. Some Christians think that’s tautologous. It’s like referring to cold ice. But according to the media, there are Christians, and then there are born-again Christians. The born-again Christians are the nutters. They’re the fanatics, the people who throw bombs, the people who hate others, the people who don’t think. They’re the born-again Christians.
So what does the expression mean? Is someone who claims to be born again claiming to have changed his name, his mind, or simply not have one? In fact, when the expression was first coined, so far as our sources go, the chap who heard it didn’t know what it meant either, despite the fact that he was a scholar. His name was Nicodemus. He lived almost 2,000 years ago, and when he heard the expression from the lips of Jesus, he didn’t know what it meant.
If you will take the sheet of paper that was on your seat when you walked in and which you may be crunching under your derriËre, we’ll follow the narrative ourselves. It’ll be easy to follow the passage, which is drawn from the Christian Bible, in four points. This passage was written as part of a short book describing the life, ministry, and death of Jesus by one of Jesus’ immediate disciples, a man by the name of John, and this is what he writes.
Now if I were preaching this evangelistically, I would now read it. That’s the way I might get into something. I’m going to pause and make a few remarks now and then so that you will see the sort of thing I’m doing for at least a neutral and possibly a hostile crowd.
1. What Jesus said about being born again.
Verses 1–10. Those are the little numbers on the sheet. Let me tell you, when you’re dealing with university evangelism, you’re dealing with people who don’t even know that much. Literally. In some university contexts, people have never heard prayers at all. Often when I have prayer meetings or if I end this thing with prayer, I will literally stop and explain what prayer is.
I will say something like, “God is a talking God, and he loves to hear his people talk too. All that prayer is is his people talking to him. We often close our eyes to shut out distractions and bow our heads to signal reverence, but all we’re doing is talking to God. So let’s pray.” People don’t know that. Literally. They’re brought up in such pagan backgrounds they literally don’t know. (That was the parenthesis. Let me come back a bit.)
What Jesus said about being born again, the first 10 verses. “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.” The Pharisees in Nicodemus’ day were a strict religious sect, many of them quite learned, upright, certainly moral, and quite influential, but at that time the Jews were one of the vassal states under the mighty Roman Empire.
Under the ruling Roman authority, there was a Jewish ruling council. This Jewish ruling council (sometimes we call it the Sanhedrin) had authority under Rome not only to legislate and with executive power and even judicial power and even more in the religious realm it could meddle and control things … As a result, the 70 people who were on it had extreme influence in the nation.
Nicodemus, then, is already presented as a powerful man, a moral man, a religious man. A little farther on, down in verse 10, he is described as Israel’s teacher. This was first written in Greek, not in English. This is a translation. The particular expression that’s used suggests that it may have been an honorific, like Regius Professor of Divinity or Grand Mufti, or whatever it was at the time. So he was learned as well as powerful.
He comes to Jesus, and, according to verse 2, addresses him, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Rabbi is a Jewish honorific for a religious teacher. At the time, it had nothing to do with ordination or being set apart. That didn’t happen for another century. So although he was learned and powerful, he did address this man Jesus with a certain respect.
While some people were doubting Jesus’ miracles or even wondering if he was some kind of shyster, some kind of cheap trickster, Nicodemus, who had seen his share of tricksters in his own day, had watched closely enough to see that Jesus was rather different. He had a certain kind of integrity, and his miracles certainly could not be set aside as the kinds of thing that relieve back pain but never restore a limb or relieve a headache but can’t remove congenital blindness.
Jesus was turning out to be someone in a category he couldn’t quite handle. So he had come to the conclusion, at least, that Jesus was something special, a teacher come from God, because what he was doing was not the sort of thing a human being could do apart from God. “No one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
At the same time, one can’t help but see that he approaches Jesus with a certain pompousness. “We know you are a teacher come from God,” he says. It’s almost sort of a philistine “we,” like the queen. “We are not pleased, we are not.” As if he’s speaking for the whole Sanhedrin or something like that. Jesus will pick up on this point a little later in the chapter. He approaches Jesus with a certain set of pretentions, as if he is in the place to assess all who Jesus is.
In fact, John, as he describes what happens, says that he came to Jesus at night. Some people have thought that a man like Nicodemus wouldn’t want to come in the daytime with all of the great pools of the unwashed, so he came at night in a private audience, as it were. Well, it may be, but the text doesn’t say so. If you want to find out what John thinks of this, it’s better to read the whole book of John. There are some free copies at the back that you can pick up on your way out.
If you read the whole book of John, you discover that John is constantly playing with light and darkness and day and night. A little later in this section, for example, he’s going to say (verse 19), “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does the evil hates the light.” This light/darkness contrast is a constant theme in John.
A little later, for example, one of Jesus’ own followers betrays him and goes out, and it’s nighttime, and John comments, “And it was night.” Doubtless it was night, but from John’s point of view, it’s more than a chronological marker; it’s a way of saying that he goes out into the blackness of rebellion and moral anarchy and lostness.
So also here. Doubtless Nicodemus, for whatever reason, did come at night, but John is already flagging something. He came to Jesus at night. That is, he didn’t really understand, as we’ll see Jesus points out in due course. “You are a teacher who has come from God. No one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
So how does Jesus respond? Verse 3: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” This kingdom of God language needs to be explained. The Jews had a long religious history, and they looked forward to a time when God himself, by some agent whom he would send, would invade that history and bring his reign to pass on the earth.
Many of them interpreted this sort of thing in highly political terms. Israel would be restored to its national and even international prominence, the kind of prominence it had a millennium before under the famous King David and his son Solomon, proverbial for wealth and wisdom. “What we need is a God who will come onto our side and do things and make us politically strong.”
Others had a notion of the kingdom of God coming and setting up justice and integrity, getting rid of the bad people, eliminating corruption. Jesus, thus, taps into this long expectation in the nation about God’s intervention in history. “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
Yet at the same time, you have to scratch your head and say, “What kind of an answer is that to Nicodemus’ words?” Nicodemus hasn’t mentioned the kingdom. He certainly hasn’t mentioned being born again. Well, some people think it went like this. You see, Nicodemus was approaching Jesus, and this is what he would have asked, except Jesus sort of cut him off at the pass.
“Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher sent from God. For no one could do these miracles that you’re doing unless God were with him. So tell me, are you bringing in the long-awaited kingdom or not?” Then Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Of course, if that’s the way you read the text, what you’re presupposing is that Jesus is one of these rude people who can’t ever wait for you to finish your question before he has to chip in with his own answer.
Oh no. Jesus’ answer is much more profound than that. He is cutting down Nicodemus’ pretentions right away. Nicodemus approaches Jesus and acts as if he can evaluate Jesus. “We know, we do, that you are a teacher sent from God. For you couldn’t do this sort of thing that you’re doing unless you were a bit special, you know.”
Jesus looks at him and says, “My dear Nicodemus, you don’t see a thing. You think you’re seeing the kingdom at work. That is, God breaking in in my miracles. You think you see the kingdom, and I tell you, no one can see the kingdom unless he’s born again.” Nicodemus replies, “How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
Clearly, Nicodemus found Jesus’ teaching incomprehensible, but he was no fool. You don’t get to be Regius Professor of Divinity and fail to see a metaphor when Jesus uses one. I suspect that he thought Jesus was promising too much. Most conservative Jews in Jesus’ day longed for the coming of the kingdom, but in this light, Jesus could be understood to be saying that what we need is new men and new women, not new institutions.
We need new lives, not new laws. We need new creatures, not new creeds. We need new people, not displays of power. “You want a kingdom that’s going to come in powerfully. That’s what you think you see, but I’m telling you, you need new people. You have to be born again.” So Nicodemus is saying, in effect, “But you can’t generate new people. You’re promising too much. How can you start over again? You can’t go back to your mother’s womb and start all over.”
Haven’t most morally sensitive people wished on occasion that they could start over? Haven’t you ever thought how wonderful it would be to have all of the wisdom you have gained by this point in your life and start all over again and keep all the wisdom? Haven’t you felt the pressure sometimes when you’ve woken up in the middle of the night and remembered something you have said or done that hurt some people so badly you sort of writhe there in bed? You wish you could do it over again, and you can’t do it. It’s done. It’s written. You can’t undo history.
“You can’t be born again.” That’s what Nicodemus is saying. “What is written is written.” Most thoughtful people have felt something like that. If you’ve never felt something like that, then you’re morally dead. You have no conscience at all. Thus, a poet like Alfred, Lord Tennyson could write, “Ah, for a man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be.” Or the poet John Clare: “If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.”
Many people have said that kind of thing. Nicodemus was a moral, religious man. He would have liked to correct the proofs, but you can’t do it. You don’t start laying up standards for entrance into the kingdom that mean you have to start over again, because then nobody gets in, but Jesus doesn’t back down. Verse 5: “I’m telling you the truth,” he says, “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”
If you compare verse 3 and verse 5 (that is, where Jesus first speaks about being born again and this verse) and take away the common elements, you discover very quickly that being born again is the same thing as being born of water and the Spirit. You can’t enter the kingdom or see the kingdom unless you are born again (verse 3), born of water and the Spirit (verse 5).
In other words, being born of water and the Spirit is not two births. It’s not born of water … maybe the water refers to the amniotic fluid, which runs when the sack finally is broken, and then born of Spirit is something else. So you have one birth and then you have two births. That’s not what it is. The parallelism between the two verses shows that you have one birth, a birth of water and Spirit.
Some people in the long history of the Christian church have thought the water here refers to Christian baptism. You have to be baptized and then have the dose of Spirit in some way. But at this point, Christian baptism hasn’t been invented. It’s reading a text anachronistically. Besides, Jesus clearly does expect Nicodemus to understand. Look at verse 10. He bawls him out because he doesn’t understand.
“You’re the teacher of Israel, and you don’t understand these things? You’re the Grand Mufti and you haven’t caught on?” Well, a teacher of Israel wouldn’t have caught on to Christian baptism that hasn’t been invented yet. It would be a little unfair on Jesus’ part to demand such reflection. No, if Nicodemus is the teacher of Israel, what does Jesus expect him to know? What Jesus expects him to know, of course, is the Scripture in which he’s an expert.
Someone like Nicodemus would have memorized at least hundreds of pages of Hebrew text of Scripture. That was the way you learned in those days. You rocked back and forth and you learned and you learned and you learned. He had learned huge chunks of what is now the Christian Bible, what we call the Old Testament, the first part of the Christian Bible, which takes us from the beginning all the way up to the time of Jesus.
He would have learned that by heart, and Jesus expects him to know what it says. So we ask ourselves, “Where, then, does that Old Testament, this first part of the Christian Bible, speak about new birth?” The short answer is, “It doesn’t.” So why does Jesus blame Nicodemus for not knowing? “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”
Reflect a little further. There are some passages in that Old Testament Scripture, in that writing, that speak of water and the Spirit precisely in line with the thought that people must start over. It must be generated anew. Six centuries earlier, for example, there was a prophet by the name of Ezekiel who spoke for God and said that on the last days God would sprinkle the hearts of his people with water and they would be clean.
He would pour out his Spirit upon them, and they would all know him. He would take away their hearts of stone, and his people would know him, from the least to the greatest. What has Jesus added to that sort of language? All he has added is the metaphor of new birth. In that earlier period, God regularly visited his people through mediators, intermediaries, go-betweens.
God spoke through kings and prophets and priests, and again and again and again, the Scriptures picture those people as being mightily endowed by the presence of God and the Spirit of God, but their access to God was through rites and temples and priests. They taught the people, “Hear the word of the Lord; know the word of the Lord.”
But the prophets looked forward to a time when God would pour out his Spirit upon all of his people, when God would pour out his Spirit and clean their hearts (the water) and give them a real knowledge of the living God (the Spirit), a changed mind brought about by something God poured out upon them.
It is so radical a revolution that the only adequate analogy is new birth, starting over. Not starting over with merely our human resources but starting over with God’s Spirit poured out upon you, so that the things you used to like look different now. The knowledge of God, which may have seemed very alien to you, now is something you’re passionate about and you want. If God’s Spirit were to come upon you, that’s the way it would change you. It would make you clean, and you’d want to be more like him. Jesus calls that new birth.
Then Jesus gives some quick analogies. First, verses 6–7. Like produces like. “Flesh gives birth to flesh. The Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ” Pigs sire pigs. Kangaroos sire kangaroos. Wallabies sire wallabies. I’ve never yet seen a pig sire a wallaby.
If we’re really going to have this kind of genuine, organic connection with the living God, God must do a kind of siring work. He must regenerate us. He must beget us again, as it were. He must pour out his Spirit upon us or we’ll never be children of God in the sense that we’re connected with him and he has sired us and we know him. We’ll always be part of a brood that is alienated from God.
Then there’s another analogy. It works better in the original because there’s a pun. Verse 8: “The wind …” Or the Spirit, the same word. “The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the wind.” Or the Spirit, same word. That is, you can’t deny the effects of the wind even when you can’t explain all of its origins and its destinations.
So also with the Spirit of God. You can’t deny the effects when the Spirit of God comes upon a person and transforms him or her. You may not be able to explain all the mechanics, but let me tell you, if you meet genuine Christians, you’ll see by their lives that they’re different. Then, to Nicodemus’ astonished, “How could this be?” Jesus quietly says, “You are Israel’s teacher, and you do not understand these things?” That’s what Jesus said about being born again.
2. Why could Jesus speak about being born again with such authority?
Verses 11–13: “I tell you the truth,” Jesus continues. “We speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.” Notice Jesus here resorts to the plural we. All kinds of people have suggested that this means Jesus is including his own small band of disciples at the time, but if you read the surrounding passages from the whole gospel of John, you discover that, at this point, Jesus’ own disciples don’t understand very much.
They’re really quite awkward and embarrassed most of the time themselves. There’s no way Jesus is incorporating his disciples. Others have suggested, “Oh, this shows John has made a mistake. It’s sort of reading the later experience of the church back into the text. It’s sort of a slip. It’s not just Jesus here but Jesus and the later Christians, at least, understand.” But all that means, of course, is that you’re presupposing that John, as an author and an editor, is a bit stupid and fails to read the text as it stands.
No, you have to picture the dynamics of what’s going on. Nicodemus has come to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, we do,” and Jesus now, after this explanation, replies gently with just a trace of humor, “We know one or two things too, we do.” He’s still pricking the pretentions. Nicodemus can’t see it, and he’s going to have to learn that someone does know what he’s talking about.
Why? Jesus immediately reverts to first person. “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.” The Son of Man is one of Jesus’ self-designations. We don’t need to pursue it here, but that’s what it is.
When he says, “No one has ever gone into heaven …” That is, to come back and tell us what’s going on. “… except the one who came from heaven …” That is, he didn’t have to go there to come back. He came from there in the first place. “The only person who has come to tell us is me,” he says in this self-designation.
Now there’s just no way that you can escape what Jesus is saying. You may not like it. You may not believe it, but you have to face what he’s saying. What he’s claiming here is that when he speaks on these matters, he’s not speaking as one of many different religious theologians or gurus who is giving his opinion on some complex subjects.
He is claiming to speak not only about earthly things (that’s how he designates this new birth, because it takes place amongst people here on earth), but he’s claiming that he could actually say much more than that. He could tell you what goes on in the very throne room of God. He could tell you about heavenly things. Why? “Because I came from there,” he says.
Now at this point, you can throw up your hands in despair and say, “This man Jesus is a real nutter,” or you can at least hear him out, read his life. That’s why we have some copies of the Gospels at the back for you on your way out. An aside now. Do you see what I’m doing? It’s not that I’m just trying to explain a text; I’m trying to get people into Scripture.
In any evangelistic series I do anywhere now, we set up evangelistic Bible studies afterwards based on free copies of the New Testament that we hand out. You’re building for the long haul. You’re just beginning to break through into people’s consciousness of what could be out there. So you keep drilling certain things again and again and again. (That was an aside. Let me come back.)
You can’t dismiss Jesus easily as a nutter after you’ve read his life again and again and again, but above all, what you can’t do is say he’s a good man and that’s all. Good men do not go around saying, “I and I alone have come from the very throne room of God. You’d better listen to me.” People like that you dismiss on the level with someone who claims to be Napoleon or a cabbage, but that’s what is at stake here.
Christianity is not claiming that it is setting forth a nice way to live or how to be fulfilled or how to be happy in life. It’s not saying, “Stick with us, and we’ll show you how to put your acts together.” It’s saying something more than that. It’s saying that God himself has sent someone, someone who’s tied to God, someone who is in some sense one with God, someone who has come from the very presence of God, someone who didn’t have to go up there in order to get some information and come back down; he already was there, and he has come to us.
Though he’s a human being who can be touched and handled, his origins are not simply in humanity. His origins are something beyond that. So the reason Jesus can speak about being born again, in his understanding, is that he has come from the very presence of God. In other words, we’re dealing here with what Christians call revelation.
Revelation in Christian nomenclature does not mean that suddenly you have a moment of serendipity, an “Aha!” experience. You’re working your way in the research lab or probing away at the binomial theorem. Suddenly something clicks, and you say, “Aha! That’s serendipity,” as if it just came to you in a moment of revelation. That’s not what Christians mean.
What Christians mean is that God chose to disclose himself. He revealed things that otherwise we just wouldn’t have found out. The Christian claim is not ever based on the assumption that we’re better or brighter or wiser than other people. Christians know at best they’re poor beggars telling other poor beggars where there is bread. Within this framework, then, what we insist is that we have come to know simply because God has graciously revealed himself.
That’s what Jesus’ claim is here. Jesus talks about the new birth with this kind of authority precisely because he has come from the presence of God. Everything else I’m going to say about what Christianity is about is predicated on that assumption. If Christians are wrong at that point, there’s no Christianity left. Somewhere along the line, if you’re interested in pursuing what Christianity is, if you’re interested in pursuing a knowledge of God, you have to come to grips with the claim of revelation. You cannot duck it.
That means there is something central to God. That goes back to the rebuke of Nicodemus. Nicodemus wants to stand in judgment of Jesus, but if Jesus really is who he claims to be, you can’t start off an appropriate relationship with him by finally making yourself the arbiter of all that he says and does. “Oh, I like that little bit, thank you. Yes, I’ll put that in the pot. That little bit I don’t like, thank you.”
Rather, he is the one who speaks from the vantage of revelation, and sooner or later, you have to bow before him. That is why biblical Christianity is bound up with the confession, “Jesus is Lord.” Biblical Christianity, thus, is not simply going to add something to your life. It’s going to demand that you bend the knee because of revelation.
3. How Jesus brings about this new birth.
This next section (verses 14–15) is very strange to us but would not have been strange to Nicodemus, so it’s important to read it in its historical context. “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.”
Precisely because this man Nicodemus was steeped in Scripture, he knew, just from those few words, what incident Jesus was referring to. Let me read it to you. It’s from the fourth book of the Bible, a book called Numbers. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. That’s the way the books of the Bible open up. In fact, we not only have some of the Gospels at the back there, we have full Bibles you can pick up for free.
This little bit comes from Numbers, chapter 21. The account is weird, but let me read it to you. What it’s talking about in the context is the Jews, who at this point have recently escaped slavery in Egypt, and this because God has worked even with miracles to help them get out. They would not have gotten out if, in fact, God had not worked miracles to enable them to get out. Now they’re crossing the desert. God is nurturing them along and providing for them, but it’s a bit of a rough go.
They’re heading for the land of Canaan, what is now modern Israel, where they will eventually settle. At this point, they’re becoming discontent along the way because there are a few privations. “The people grew impatient on the way,” we read. “They spoke against God and against Moses, and said, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert?’ ”
Moses was the one who was God’s agent to lead them on the way. They’re speaking against God, and they’re speaking against God’s agent, his leader. “There is no bread! There is no water! We detest this miserable food!” Which God had provided for them. “Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.
The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.” That’s all that is said.
Now 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.” What does this mean? You see, in the Old Testament narrative, what has gone on is massive rebellious ingratitude. God saves them from endless slavery. He’s bringing them to a land of plenty.
Formally, they acknowledge him as their Lord, as their God, as their Savior, the one who has saved them from this kind of wretched existence, but the first little pressure that comes along, they want to join the Frank Sinatra chorus and say, “I did it my way.” There’s no sense of owing God. There is no sense of turning to him for help and simply asking for help. Immediately you blame God. You blame anybody God sends. You blame the messenger.
In God’s universe, God finds that anarchic. That is the heart of what the Bible calls sin. I know sin is a snicker word. “Somebody sinned. Isn’t that funny?” But in the Bible, sin is bound up with looking at things from God’s point of view, and from God’s point of view, when people he has made in his image to know him and to love him and to enjoy him forever … He is God. He is to be worshiped and cherished. His ways are to be thought through. He is to be adored, and there’s pleasure and privilege in the delight of his glory, of his holiness.
When people instead make themselves the center of the universe, God simply cannot stand by and say, “Oh, it doesn’t really matter.” That would be to impugn his own holiness. When God first made things, he was at the center, and his own people, each one related individually to him, no doubt, because they were already related to him, they were related to each other properly.
When they wake up in the morning, they think of God. When they order their priorities and their values, they think of God. They delight in his way and word. Now each one thinks of himself or herself at the center of the universe. In a massive act of rebellion, each one declares his or her individual autonomy, thinks it’s a point of strength. If there’s any place left to think about God at all, then God, if he exists, must serve them. So each one of them is at the center of the universe.
You don’t believe me? All right, let me hold up a picture for you of your high school graduation class. I suddenly hold it up and say, “This is a picture of your high school graduation class.” Where does your eye go first? Or you have an argument, a real good humdinger, a knock-down, drag-out scrap with your parents or roommate or a friend at work or a teacher. A real good argument, and you’re steaming angry.
You go away, and the whole thing is being replayed in your mind. You think of all of the things you could have said and all of the things you should have said and all of the things you would have said if you had thought them up fast enough. As you play this back and rerun the argument, who wins? I’ve lost many, many arguments, but I’ve never yet lost a rerun. Why? Because I want to be the center of the universe.
Out of this wretched self-focus, this wretched individualism, come our wars and our hate and our manipulation of people and our abuse. All the socio-pathologies are bound up, at the end of the day, with this fundamental rebellion against the one who’s the center of the universe to whom we must give an account.
That’s what was going on, of course, in the matter of the serpents in the wilderness. Even after God saves them, they don’t even have the courtesy to say, “Thank you. Now will you help us again?” Instead, all they do is murmur and complain. So God sends them judgment. God, at the end of the day, is not simply going to say, “It doesn’t matter,” because if he did that, he would be impugning his own glory, his own authority, his own integrity, his own godhood.
The intriguing thing about that story is that when the people do repent, it is God also who provides a rather surprising remedy. There’s a snake put up on a pole, and the people look at it. It’s a miracle. What else can you say? It’s a miracle, but it’s a miracle provided by God. The people don’t have to earn their way back. God provides it.
Now Nicodemus knows that story. He knows all about it, and in a sense, Jesus is suggesting that Nicodemus is just like the people in the Old Testament, questioning God, wanting to be the center of the universe, the ultimate academic authority, you know. Just as many of us in our postmodern certainties insist there’s no truth and yet at the same time insist that we have the truth. The truth is my truth, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the only truth, which is, of course, at the end of the day, another way of saying God can go fly a kite.
“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.” That is to say, eventually, the only way back is going to be provided by God himself, and it’s going to be by something else lifted up on a pole, and you’re going to have to look to him. What you’re going to have to look to is the Son of Man, stuck up on a pole, lifted up, provided by God, or else there is no way back.
Now if you read on in John’s gospel, you’ll find this lifting up language becomes developed more and more until it’s bound up with Jesus being lifted up on a cross. So Jesus is already preparing the way for a theme that John develops in the whole book. The only way back to this God, the only way back to seeing things his way, is ultimately by looking to Jesus, God’s own provision, up on a hideous cross. That’s what he’s saying.
4. Why was Jesus sent to bring about this new birth, this eternal life that can be gained by looking at this Jesus on a cross?
“For God so loved the world he gave his one and only Son.” What does that mean? I’ll explain rather quickly about what we mean when we speak of God loving us.
It is simply astonishing that God loves us. Picture John and Sue at the end of term walking on Bondi Beach. The exams are over. The pressure is off. They’ve kicked off their sandals. Hand in hand, they walk along Bondi Beach. The air is warm. The wet sand squishes between their toes. There’s a sense of relaxation and freedom. John turns to Sue and says, “Sue, I love you. I really do.” What does he mean?
Well, in our culture, it’s not obvious. He could mean several things. He could mean that he feels like testosterone on legs and wants to go to bed with her. He may mean no more than that, but if we’ll assume for a moment that he has a modicum of decency about him, then the least he means is something like, “In my eyes, you are wonderful. I hate to be away from you. I love to be in your presence. You make me laugh. You’re pretty to me. I like being with you. In fact, I’d really like to spend all of my life with you. I love you.” Isn’t that what he means?
He certainly does not mean, “Sue, quite frankly, you have the most amazingly bulbous nose I have ever seen. You have the worst case of halitosis that would chase off a herd of elephants, and frankly, your hair is so stringy you need a fire hose even to begin to cope with it, but I love you.” Now God comes along and says, “I love you.” What does he mean? Does he really mean, “You are so attractive to me. I can’t imagine life without you. You’re pretty. I want to spend all my time with you. You’re so cherished. I love you.” Is that what he means?
The astonishing thing about God’s love in the Bible is that, actually, God’s love for us is for us even though, morally speaking, we’re the people with the bulbous nose and the halitosis and the stringy hair. That’s the truth. In other words, God loves us because he’s that kind of God, not because we earn it, not because we’re so lovely. That’s the truth. That’s why in the Bible it is always astonishing that God loves us.
We live in a strange generation. A few hundred years ago, people found it hard to believe that God actually loved them. They somehow believed that God was holy, that he was angry, that he was just, that there was judgment at the end, but they found it hard to believe that God loved them, so preachers emphasized a great deal of the love of God. We’ve somehow come around to the conclusion that God, if he exists … Well, of course he loves us. We’re so lovable in all of our lovely postmodern diversity, aren’t we? He must love us if he, she, or it exists.
I remember a number of years ago working in Germany, trying to improve my use of the language, and sometimes wanting to speak anything but German. There was a young French West African chap who was there as well. His wife was in London doing an advanced degree in medicine, and he was in Germany trying to improve his German to get into a PhD program in engineering at a German university.
Because he was from French West Africa and knew the language and I was brought up in French Canada and knew the language, we spoke French. We would go for a meal once or twice a week and natter away in a nice language like French rather than German. It became obvious to me after a while that he was once a week going down to the red-light district in town, paying his money, and having his woman.
Eventually, I said to him, “What would you say if you found out your wife were doing something similar in London?” He said, “Oh, I’d kill her.” I said, “That’s a bit of a double standard, isn’t it?” He said, “Well, you don’t understand. From my tribe in Africa, men have the right to do this sort of thing, and the women don’t. If she betrayed me, she’d deserve to die, and I’d kill her.”
I said, “But you told me you were brought up in a Christian mission school. You were taught that God doesn’t play like that, that he doesn’t have double standards. There’s some basic integrity to him, and he doesn’t expect you to have one standard and your wife another standard. Isn’t that right?” He said, “Ah, le bon Dieu; il doit nous pardonner; c’est son mÈtier. God is good. He’s bound to forgive us. That’s his job.”
That’s just not the way the Bible thinks. Not at all. God isn’t bound to forgive us. It’s always astonishing that God loves us. Always. In fact, in this context, the whole assumption here is that we don’t deserve it. Look at verse 19. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” Verse 20: “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
Verse 17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world …” The assumption is that the world deserved it. “… but to save the world through him.” In other words, according to the Bible, God could, with perfect justice, write us off, let us just go more and more rotten until we blow ourselves up or shoot ourselves or drop A-bombs on ourselves. It wouldn’t take much for us to kill ourselves off. All he’d have to do is withdraw his hand. It wouldn’t take long.
Quite frankly, it’s what we as a race deserve. In fact, it is wonderful that God, who owes us justice should, because of who he is, love us anyway. Moreover, the measure of God’s love for us is Jesus. That’s what 3:16 says. “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” In other words, we’re having confirmed again that this Son came down from heaven. He was one with God, in some sense, and the measure of God’s love for us is that he gave us the one he loved supremely.
Christians often talk about the love of Jesus, and this is right. Let me say something about that before we think about this a bit more. I love stories, don’t you? Jesus told a lot of stories. They’re called parables, but they’re just stories. This is a modern parable. It’s a story. Let me read it to you. It was written in 1982 by Walter Wangerin.
“I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing in my life, my street sense, my sly tongue, had ever prepared me for. Hush, child. Hush now, and I will tell it to you. Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of the city. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear tenor voice, ‘Rags!’
Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music. ‘Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags. I give you new rags. Rags!’ ‘Now this is a wonder,’ I thought to myself, for the man stood six-foot-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?
I followed him. My curiosity drove me, and I wasn’t disappointed. Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into her handkerchief, sighing and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking. The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping around tin cans, dead toys, and dirty nappies.
‘Give me your rag,’ he said so gently, ‘and I’ll give you another.’ He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver. Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing. He put her stained, snotty handkerchief to his own face, and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left behind without a tear.
‘This is a wonder,’ I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery. ‘Rags! Rags! New rags for old!’ In a little while, when the sky showed gray behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheeks.
Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart. ‘Give me your rag,’ he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, ‘and I’ll give you mine.’ The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw. Against his brow ran a darker, more substantial blood … his own. For with the bandage went the wound.
‘Rags! Rags! I take old rags!’ cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman. The sun hurt the sky now and my eyes. The Ragman seemed more and more in a hurry. ‘Are you going to work?’ he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head. The Ragman inquired, ‘Do you have a job?’ ‘Are you crazy?’ sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket. It was flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.
‘So,’ said the Ragman. ‘Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine.’ Such quiet authority in his voice. The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman, and I trembled at what I saw, for the Ragman’s arm stayed in the jacket, and when the other put it on, then he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs, but the Ragman had only one. ‘Go to work,’ he said.
After that he saw a drunk lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it around himself, but for the drunk he left a new suit of clothes. And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably and bleeding freely at his forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old and sick, yet he went very fast.
On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the city, this mile and the next, until he had come to its limits, and then he rushed beyond. I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such a haste, perhaps to know what drove him so. The little old Ragman … he came to a landfill. He came to a garbage dump. I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding.
He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with that army blanket. And he died. Oh, how I cried to witness that death. I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope, because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I cried myself to sleep.
I did not know—how could I know?—that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night. But then on Sunday morning, I was awakened by a violence. Light … pure, hard, demanding light … slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And besides that, healthy. There was no sign of sorrow or of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.
Well, then I lowered my head and, trembling for all I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice, ‘Dress me.’ He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!”
It’s only a story, and we’re moved, but I’m telling you a true story, the story of one who, according to the first witnesses, bore in his body all of our offenses, the curse of God, our sin, our judgments, our hates. All that we deserved he bore on that cross. He died, the just for the unjust, because he loved us. In the nineteenth century, a great poet picked up one of the lines of Christ on the cross when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So great was Jesus’ agony.
Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry this universe has shaken
It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!”
It went up from the Holy’s lips amid a lost creation
That, of the lost, no son should use this cry of desolation!
But this verse goes even beyond that. This verse pictures not only the love of the Ragman, the Christ, but God so loved the world that he gave his Son.
