Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. Jesus’ nighttime encounter with Nicodemus is one of my favorite stories in life of Christ. And one of our favorite Bible verses comes in the context of this conversation: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only [begotten] Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, ESV).[1] So did Nicodemus believe? Who is this prim and proper man who comes to Jesus under cover of darkness? What impact did Jesus’ cryptic words have upon this Teacher of Israel? Did he ever come to faith?
Nicodemus features prominently as a main character in the first season of The Chosen (2017-), a television series I know many of you have watched at least a few episodes. In The Chosen, Nicodemus is a wealthy, respected rabbi on a preaching tour of Galilee. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious council. He has trained many other rabbis. When we first meet Nicodemus, we witness his unsuccessful attempt to perform an exorcism on Mary Magdalene. Next we see him interrogate John the Baptist in prison. Nicodemus is also there in the crowd when Jesus heals the paralytic man and tells him to take up his mat and walk. Baffled by Jesus, Nicodemus is drawn to him by curiosity and requests a meeting with him.
That is where the Biblical account begins. Nicodemus comes to Jesus “by night” (John 3:1), under cover of darkness. (Aside: That’s why my title for another sermon on this text is “Nick at Night”). In John’s Gospel, darkness symbolizes unbelief. Nicodemus is not a disciple, but he is a seeker.
“Rabbi,” he inquires, “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” (v. 2). Of what signs does Nicodemus speak? Up to this point in John’s Gospel, the only miraculous sign Jesus has done is to turn water into wine at the wedding of Cana. His second sign, the healing of the nobleman’s son, doesn’t occur until the end of chapter 4. So what signs is Nicodemus talking about? Let us assume, for the moment, that because this comes in the context of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, Nicodemus refers to other miracles mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In Matthew 4, for example, we witness Jesus “healing every disease and every affliction among the people,” including “all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics” (Matt. 4:23-24).
Nicodemus sees these signs for what they are: demonstrations of God’s power at work through Jesus. They look a lot like the kinds of things that the prophets Elijah and Elisha did during the time of the kings. So nobody could do these signs unless God were with him.
Yet rather than being flattered or saying something kind to Nicodemus in response, Jesus cuts right to the point on which Nicodemus’s life must pivot: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
“Born again.” What in the world does that mean? It’s a strange expression when you hear it for the first time. For Nicodemus, it conjured up the absurd image of him as an adult trying to crawl back into his mother’s womb again (v. 4). That sounds like a painful prospect for everyone involved. And what if your mother is dead? What then?
Some Christians believe that it means you have to pray a certain prayer or assert certain doctrines in order to be saved. In the Pentecostal and non-denominational churches of my youth, in order to become born again, you had to pray some variation of the Sinner’s Prayer, in which you decide to follow Jesus and ask him to come into your heart. But there are two problems with that: first, Jesus doesn’t say anything like that here or anywhere else in the Gospels. Second, those Evangelical ideas of making a decision for Christ and asking him to come into your heart to become your personal Lord and Savior put all the responsibility and agency of your salvation upon you. You must pray the prayer. You must make a decision. You must ask Jesus to come into your heart.
But being born again isn’t about what we do for God. It’s about what God does for us. The same Greek word anōthen, translated as “again” in verse 3 can also be translated as “from above.” In fact, “from above” is the primary meaning of the word. So when Jesus speaks about being “born again,” what he means is that we are “born from above”—that is, born of God (cp. 1:12-13). We don’t choose to become born again any more than we chose to be born in the first place. God makes us born again. And how does he do it?
Jesus tells Nicodemus (and us): “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I say to you, ‘You must be born again’” (3:5-7).
Being born again means being “born of water and the Spirit” (v. 5). Thanks, Jesus! [Sarcastically.] That explains everything. Now what are you talking about?! We are born of water and the Spirit when we are baptized. As St. Peter writes in his first epistle, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you…” (1 Pet. 3:21a). And in Titus 3, Paul writes: “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:5). That word “regeneration” (Greek: palingennesia) is another way to say “born again.” So in Holy Baptism, God pours out his Holy Spirit upon you through water and the Word. He washes away your sins, and you are reborn as a child of God. “None of this is your own doing. It is the gift of God, lest anyone should boast (cf. Eph. 2:8-9).
God alone is at work in our baptism, our salvation, our being “born again” or “born from above.” Theologians call this divine monergism, which literally means that God alone does all the work. He does the heavy lifting. Jesus emphasizes this unilateral approach in his next comment to Nicodemus: “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 born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). By the way, Jesus makes a wonderful pun here, because in both Greek and Hebrew, the words for “spirit,” “breath,” and “wind” are one and the same (pneuma and ruah). You could just as easily translate verse 8 this way: “The Spirit blows where he wishes, and you hear his sound, but you do not know where he comes from or where he goes…”
But at this point, Nicodemus is way in over his head. Born again, born from above, water and the Spirit—what does it all mean? Whether in wonder or exasperation, Nicodemus throws up his hands in the air and exclaims, “How can these things be?” (v. 9).
You can almost see a smirk in the corner of Jesus’ mouth as he replies, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” (v. 10). Nicodemus, with all your learning and all your degrees and all your speaking engagements, are you confused by all these “earthly” things? How then will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? The irony, of course, is that Jesus has been talking about “heavenly things” (spiritual things) all along—but using the elements of creation to illustrate his points. Yet Nicodemus, it seems, is just as bewildered as we are.
At this point, Jesus appeals to a familiar Old Testament story from the time of the Exodus. In Numbers 21 we read how the Israelites got bored eating manna every day. Manna was the flaky bread that God sent each morning to feed his people during their 40 years of wilderness wanderings. But they got sick and tired of eating the same thing day after day. So they grumbled about it and complained to Moses. Remember when we used to eat onions and cucumbers in Egypt? We might have been slaves, but at least there we could get something from the salad bar!
So God punished the Israelites for their ingratitude. He sent “fiery serpents” throughout their camp—venomous snakes that bit and killed the people by the thousands. In terror, they cried out for God to save them. And this was his solution: Moses was to construct a bronze (copper) serpent and lift it up on a pole. If anyone got bit, the people could look to the bronze serpent, and then they wouldn’t die. God would rescue them. He would save them.
This story may be less familiar to you and me. It’s not ordinarily part of Sunday school curricula, but for a wise old rabbi like Nicodemus, he would have known it better than we remember the plots of our favorite Disney cartoons.
Jesus alludes to this story when he says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). Just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness to save the people from physical death, so also the Son of Man must be lifted up to save people from eternal death and damnation. And who is the Son of Man? Jesus! In fact, Son of Man was one of his favorite titles for himself throughout the Scriptures. It was a messianic title going back to the Book of Daniel. Nicodemus would have understood this.
But how would Jesus be lifted up? Not on a bronze pole? And certainly not on a pedestal. Jesus would be lifted up on the cross, where he would die for all humanity—not just Israel—to save us from our sin. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:32).
The bronze serpent was a foreshadowing of the cross of Christ. But this is an oblique, not an explicit reference, to Jesus’ crucifixion, and Nicodemus couldn’t have known that yet. Jesus still spoke to him in riddles.
But the very next thing Jesus said to Nicodemus—everybody’s favorite Bible verse—was plain as day: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 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” (3:16-17).
This is Jesus’ invitation to Nicodemus—and to us. Believe in Jesus and be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and you will be born again, born from above, born of water and the Spirit. Believe in Jesus, and you will live forever. It is an incredible offer, and yet it is true. Jesus doesn’t lie or promise things he can’t deliver. He is the real deal. He is “the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through [him]” (John 14:6).
Believe Jesus or don’t believe him. The Spirit blows where he wills. But the consequences are forever: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (3:18). Which will it be for you?
And how did it turn out for Nicodemus? Whatever happened to him? After this conversation, did he believe in Jesus? Did he ever become a disciple? We cannot know for certain. In The Chosen, Nicodemus is baffled by Jesus and drawn to his teaching, but he cares more for his prestige and position. He is not ready to leave everything behind in order to follow Jesus—and his wife certainly isn’t keen on the idea either. When Jesus leaves Galilee, Nicodemus secretly gives him a purse full of coins to help bankroll Jesus’ mission and ministry. But he cannot bring himself to follow Jesus. We see Nicodemus crying behind a wall just around the corner from where Jesus and his disciples gather before setting out. But that is television, not Scripture, and The Chosen does have the authority of canon. (Aside: I sometimes wonder and worry what impact this show will have on people’s memory of Bible stories. Will they use it as a substitute for reading the Gospels? What wonky ideas will they import into their understanding? After all, The Chosen gave us Peter as a gambler who got behind on his taxes and Matthew as an autistic mathematical savant. The Bible mentions none of this. What other ideas will intrude?)
The Bible doesn’t speak much more about Nicodemus. The only thing we know for sure is that after Jesus died on the cross, Nicodemus helped Jospeh of Arimathea to bury Jesus’ body (John 19:39). In Medieval art, Nicodemus and Josephus are often depicted at the crucifixion scene, letting down Jesus’ body from the cross with ropes in a rudimentary “pulley” system. St. John writes:
“After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there” (John 19:38-42).
Make of this story what you will, but it took an incredible amount of courage for Joseph to ask for Jesus’ body and for Nicodemus to assist him. Ordinarily, after they crucified a false messiah, the Romans would round up the rest of his followers to put them to death also. Joe and Nick stuck out their necks for Jesus, and it’s hard for me to believe they would take such a risk, if they did not believe. Will we see Nicodemus in heaven? I can’t really say, but I hope so. Perhaps Nicodemus finally learned what it means to be “born again.”
And what about you? What will happen to you? Are you born again? Have you been born of water and the Spirit? Have you been baptized? Do you believe in the only begotten Son of God? Do you look to his work on the cross as your only hope of salvation? I hope so because Jesus is your only hope. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.
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