Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no-one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’
John 3:3 NIVUK
I felt so bad for the people of the nation of Albania during the 1990s. It’s a proud place with a glorious history. But Albanians had been reared for decades on a heinous lie. When it collapsed around them, it caused utter chaos. Twice.
Allow me to explain. For decades the country had been ruled by the dictator Enver Hoxha. Hoxha had turned the entire nation into a hermit state – like a North Korea in the Balkans. He cut them off from every surrounding country, even their allies, and brutally repressed them. One man was allegedly jailed for more than ten years for asking why a Greek port he could see across the water had lights and the Albanian port where he worked did not.
Hoxha perpetrated the lie that Albania was the richest nation in Europe. And people believed it. Why wouldn’t they? What other source of information did they have?
Then one day Enver Hoxha died. Information flooded into the country. Overnight, Albanians went from believing they were the richest nation in Europe to realising they were actually the poorest.
You can imagine how much that would have hurt.
But then the country was quickly flooded with western shysters and conmen, with their ‘get rich quick’ pyramid selling and Ponzi schemes. The Albanians had no defence to this. They had never seen anything like it before. They participated in this in their millions.
Every one of those schemes collapsed, leaving an already poor nation much, much poorer.
It caused riots, looting, a huge degree of unrest, and general anarchy. There is a stable government now, but the nation still struggles to shake off the perception of criminality, even though, on the most part, it’s undeserved.
There is a detail in these verses that we often miss because we come from another time and culture. What Jesus says here in this passage is dynamite that blows into the air the entire bedrock of the Jewish culture and mindset of His day - just like the death of Hoxha did to Albania.
And it sends Nicodemus reeling. He simply cannot comprehend it.
So what do we see here?
Firstly, we see a privileged man. And that man is Nicodemus.
He has so much in his favour. He is a member of the Jewish Levitical line and therefore part of the elite. He is on the Jewish ruling Council- the Sanhedrin – and a man of considerable standing. He’s not poor either. His contribution to Jesus’ burial was both generous and highly substantial (John 19:38-42).
More than that, as several commentators have pointed out, even the fact that he was Jewish meant, in his mind anyway, that salvation was completely assured.
So why would a man like this need to be born again, as if he was a common sinner?
To Nicodemus it would not make sense.
And this is how people have thought for decades.
When I was a student in the 1990s, I used student surveys as a means of evangelism. Most students I spoke to had no concept that they could be sinners. None at all. They hadn’t murdered. They hadn’t raped. They hadn’t robbed. They hadn’t lied... not too much anyway. They were decent people. Some had even been churchgoers for many years and came from fine churchgoing families.
So how could they be sinners?
This was the confusion Nicodemus felt.
He is also a private man. He comes to meet with Jesus at night, likely to escape from the crowds that pressed Jesus during the day and to gain an uninterrupted audience with Him.
Nothing at all wrong with that. Jesus would go on to commend the practice of cutting ourselves off from others and being alone with God (Matthew 6:6).
But why did he do that?
It seems from his later intervention in a Sanhedrin session (John 7:50-52) that he wanted to give Jesus an opportunity: he didn’t want to judge Jesus without giving Him a fair hearing.
And that is thoroughly commendable. There are many who are simply not willing to do that for the Gospel: they would prefer to mock it and dismiss it out of hand.
Instead, I urge you to be like Nicodemus. Step away from the crowds. Ignore the noise clamour of accusations and the mocking laughter. Come instead to Jesus in the quiet. Explore His claims for yourself in private.
It’s there that you will truly meet with Him.
But Nicodemus is also a perplexed man. He just doesn’t get it.
He cannot figure out how this could work: how Jesus could turn over decades of tradition and Rabbinical teaching and say that we need to be born again.
You see, the rabbis taught that three things were necessary for the Jews to have a kind of golden age:
· Thy would need to be gathered to one place, like they were following the return from exile
· They would need to be purified, and they believed that the teaching of the Pharisees did that
· The Messiah would need to return
It did not cross their minds that the ‘golden age’ they dreamed of would be a spiritual kingdom and that to participate in it they would need to be born of water (symbolising a pure new life) and the spirit.
We can understand why he was confused!
And yet the simple truth remains: for all his pedigree and status and wealth, Nicodemus would need to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God.
Paul came from a similar background. This is what he said:
For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh – though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
Philippians 3:3-8 NIVUK
How much more us?
We do not share their huge advantages.
We might have a heritage of generations in Christ, but that does not change a thing – we must be born again.
We might have every advantage going in this life in terms of power and wealth and influence, but it does not change a thing – we must be born again.
We might have the finest of theologies and philosophies and have a brain that can fathom out the deepest mysteries, but it does not change a thing – we must be born again.
Just as it was critical for Nicodemus, so it is critical for us.
We must be born again.
And that is why real Christians – true Christians – preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3; Acts 2:38, 3:19, 5:31 and many, many more), because this is the Gospel – the real Gospel. This is the Gospel that causes us to be born again.
Anyone who promises you salvation any other way is a liar and a charlatan. The Bible is painfully clear: the only way you, or, indeed, anyone, can be saved is through being born again. There is no other way. There is no other solution.
That is why Jesus says to Nicodemus that he must be born again. He must start his life over again as a follower of Jesus.
That’s why I am telling you now that you must be born again.
So what about you? Isn’t it time you repented? Isn’t it time you were converted?
Isn’t it time you were born again?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, forgive me for all the times I've ignored this message or sought to explain it away. I’m done with running from it. I want to be born again. Show me how. Amen.
Questions
1. Why was Nicodemus confused about his need to be born again? Are there any modern equivalents for this?
2. Why would a man like Nicodemus need to be born again?
3. Do you need to be born again? Why? How can you do this? Will you do it?
Comments