Nicodemus

Job interviews can be nerve wracking.  You enter the room and feel intimidated and humbled.  You are in the hotseat and the questions begin. If the interview process is difficult for an adult, even for a prospective pastor, think how it would be for a child.  I can remember several of the places that our family went to so my father could "candidate" at a church.  I remember one place where I had to sleep with my sister at a person's house; there's a picture of me at another place, sitting on the edge of the bed in the motel room, stuffed into my Sunday suit, with a look that would make the devil run and hide.  The place that I remember best was at the church in the town where Suann grew up.  It was Sunday afternoon and we had gone to one of the elders' home for dinner.  We were sitting around the living room, and he was making small talk, trying to get to know us better.  He asked me what my name was, and I told him.  He asked me when I was born, and I told him.  Then he asked me when I was born again, and I realized I had been tricked.  Here was the test:  Could I tell him my testimony of when I had had a salvation experience.  Luckily for me, I could -- I didn't know the exact date (that is to be preferred), but I could tell my story of how I asked Jesus into my heart.  I survived the interview, but I never have forgotten I was tricked.

A few years ago I had another occasion to be put to the test.  I was having a theological discussion with a person through electronic mail.  For some reason he did not regard me as a believer.  I tried to tell him that I have always been a believer as far back as I can remember.  In fact, I don't remember a time when I have ever really doubted God's existence.  He replied that I must not be a true believer, because if I were, then the devil would have attacked me and brought doubts into my mind.  I didn't pass this man's test.

There was a man who came to Jesus under the cloak of darkness.  He came to announce to Jesus that he considered Jesus to be a prophet from God.  "That isn't good enough," Jesus said, "Ye must be born again."

The Gospel of John is clearly a different sort of gospel than Matthew, Mark and Luke -- the ones we call Synoptic gospels, because they "see things the same way."  John has much the same material as the others, but he has added a lot.  The language is different, and the meaning of words has changed.  Entire episodes that we find in the synoptic gospels are replayed in John only with different circumstances and even different characters.  John is writing in his gospel a theological narrative of the life of Jesus suited for his time.  John has brought the gospel to the churches of Asia Minor and struggles against the hellenistic mystery religions and gnosticism on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Jewish synagogue which boasts of its antiquity and its resultant status as a legal religion in the Roman empire. 

When we read the words, "Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews," we can imagine that John is saying to his audience, "Here is not just a Jew who comes to Jesus, but a leader of Jews, a Pharisee, one who is a member of the Sanhedrin, one of noble birth.  He was a Jew just like the Jews in the Jewish quarter of our city who despise us and refuse to accept Jesus as the Son of God.  He approaches Jesus in the darkness of ignorance and tries his flattery."

One of the indications that John is using narrative to teach theology in this passage is that when he gets to verse 12, he has Jesus drop the second person singular and switch to the plural:  From that point on -- through verse 21 -- John is teaching his audience.  They wouldn't have been confused for a minute because they knew how John wrote and how he preached.  In that context we should not expect John the theologian to be John the journalist and "get his facts straight" and "double-check his quotes."  The narrative is the vehicle through which John is teaching, and John's use of narrative to teach is the vehicle through which the Spirit of God is transmitting divine truth.

The response to Nicodemus is "flattery will get you nowhere.  it is not good enough that you think I'm a teacher from God.  You cannot experience the kingdom of God unless you have undergone a spiritual rebirth.  It is not good enough to be born a Jew (remember, John has the Jews, possibly of Ephesus, in mind); you have to be born a second time; not a physical birth, but a spiritual rebirth."

In verse 11 then, the typical phrase is reiterated, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee..." and that is the last singular usage.  The targeted audience becomes more clear when John writes, "we speak what we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen; and you people are not receiving our witness."  The churches of Asia Minor preach the gospel and give their testimony of Jesus, but the people in their neighborhoods reject the message.

Remember what I said about who Jesus was, about how he was a prophet of national restoration, how he came to call the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  When Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you," we could more properly translate it, "Your faith has made you well."  When Jesus said, "I came to seek and to save those who were lost," he meant that he had come to restore the nation of Israel by helping the forgotten people, and to save them from God's judgment against the nation at the hands of the Romans.  But for John, that time is all over with.  The city of Jerusalem has been overtaken and the temple destroyed.  Jesus of Nazareth obviously did not come to establish the kingdom on earth.  The resurrected Jesus, John says, is the Word of God who was with God and who was God.  He is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not comprehended it.  He came to the Jewish people, John writes, and they did not receive him, but those who did receive him were given the right to be called children -- not children of Israel, but children of God.  It was not Israel that he came to save, John tells us, but the world.  It was the world that God loved so much that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him will have eternal life.  The reason God sent his son into the world was not to bring about its final judgment, but that the world might be saved through him.

This divine Logos -- the Word become flesh -- is the same Jesus that Matthew, Mark and Luke talk about; He is the same Jesus that John and his community experienced as Lord of their lives; He is the same Jesus that Paul preached from one end of the empire to the other; He is the same Jesus that the church has experienced down through the centuries;  He is the same Jesus who comes to us, sometimes before we even know him by name.

John describes Jesus as the light who lightens every man.  This is one of the distinguishing theological axioms of the Quakers.  Robert Barclay explained it this way: 

Some have interpreted this doctrine to mean that Christianity and Christ is just the outer packaging of the Light Within, and it doesn't matter what type of package the message comes in, as long as a person responds to the Light.  But Christianity and the Jesus of the Bible are not merely the outer trappings of the Light:  the Light which lightens every person is the eternal Spirit of God made known to us in the flesh through God's Son, Jesus Christ.  If anyone teaches that the Indwelling Light of Quaker terminology is not Jesus Christ, that person is not conveying the views of the early Quakers, but a modern, distorted view.

George Fox spoke to a congregation one Sunday morning whose priest had abandoned them at the presence of Fox, and he writes that he, "directed them from the darkness to the Light, and to the grace of God, that would teach them, and bring them salvation."  Before a justice who was surprised by Fox's behavior of not removing his hat and using the familiar pronoun Thou, George Fox, "warned him to repent, and come to the Light with which Christ had enlightened him; that by it he might see all his evil words and actions, and turn to Christ Jesus whilst he had time."  At an inn near Pendle Hill, George Fox wrote to the priests and the professors, "declaring the day of the Lord, and that Christ was come to teach people Himself, by His power and Spirit in their hearts, who had bought them, and was the Saviour of all them that believed in Him."  In a great house in the Dales, George Fox "exhorted them to repentance, and directed them to the Light of Christ Jesus, that through it they might come unto Him and be saved."  In a steeple-house yard, George Fox "declared the everlasting truth of the Lord and the Word of life for several hours, showing that the Lord was come to teach His people Himself, and to bring them off from all the world's ways and teachers, to Christ, the true teacher, and the true way to God."

John tells us of the interview Nicodemus had with Jesus.  If Jesus had been taking notes he would have written, "applicant just doesn't get it."  You see, in order to experience the kingdom of God you must be born again; in order to undergo a spiritual rebirth, you must believe in Jesus Christ; in order to believe in Jesus Christ you must accept the light, not reject it.  You will be confronted by the light of Christ for he lightens every person; the message is for "whosoever"; it is for the world.  If the Quaker doctrine that people can receive the light without knowing the history of Jesus and the cross, then I would argue that when those people hear the gospel they will recognize the light they have embraced, and will affirm Jesus Christ as their Savior.  If they do not, then it is not light they have chosen, but darkness.

What if you were to be interviewed today?  Do you know what it means to have experienced spiritual rebirth?  Are you one who has accepted Jesus Christ by faith and claim the promise of everlasting life?  If you have not, why not make today your birthday?