More Than Just a Story - the Book of Johnಮಾದರಿ

Night time. Generally, this point of the day is associated with crime, menace, fear and poor decisions. ‘Nothing good happens after midnight,’ you will hear most wise, protective mothers say. In this passage of John, Jesus uses night time to bring revelation of himself to Nicodemus.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, automatically making him a politician and a very spiritual man. When he approached Jesus at night, he was met with a soul blowing conversation that can bring even the hardest of hearts to their knees. Although Nicodemus knew many facts about God, he had missed the entire spiritual understanding of God. So, in the night, Jesus teaches Nicodemus a spiritual and eternal truth, “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus knew that Nicodemus (and the other Pharisees at that time) had spent their lives coming up with a precise formula for following the law, a checklist if you will, that needed to be followed to perfection. They ruled with fear and terror, enforcing all laws to all people. However, Jesus says that the Spirit works differently — humans do not know how the Spirit moves or works, but God does. The Spirit regenerates hearts and brings people to their fresh, new, fully forgiven birth. In other words, salvation unto God is a work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of his people; not a perfectly followed set of rules, not being good enough or kind enough — only through the death of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit alone do our feeble hearts find their ultimate and eternal salvation.

As Jesus so often does in his parables, we do not get the ending of this story with Nicodemus. He was tender enough to ask questions and have his lifelong ideas challenged and pushed against, but we end with Jesus once again speaking of heavenly truths of himself - In Him, life comes from death and the mysteries of Heaven are able to be revealed to us through Him. How beautifully dependent we are on Jesus to make us new. May we be ever leaning upon His grace and following His ways.

• Have you been born again by the Spirit?
• In what ways do you find yourself to be like Nicodemus?
• How can you, like Nicodemus, come to Jesus and ask hard questions and find answers?