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The Midnight Interview
Larry Kirkpatrick, Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, November 28, 2004
Introduction
How is a person saved? What is it to be saved? Does the common teaching found in Christendom today faithfully echo the teaching of Jesus, or does it tend to be a blend of interests from the West and Roman culture instead? This morning we will find out.
Join me in turning to the gospel of John and the third chapter. Here we discover one of the most profound passages in all Scripture to help us understand salvation; a good place to start.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee; more, he was one of the leading men in Jerusalem, an important figure. He was seeking for truth, but endeavoring to evade significant notice for the time being. He sought out the Savior by night, and thought to engage Jesus in a theoretical discussion about truth. He told Jesus, “We know you are a teacher sent from God.” But Jesus understood. He saw Nicodemus was under some conviction, and He laid bare the foundation principles of truth. Nicodemus needed regeneration. Jesus bypassed the tangential discussion. He replies to Nicodemus, “You are not able to see the kingdom of God unless you have been born from above.”
An Abrupt Word
This abrupt word from Jesus shocked Nicodemus. Consider what has just passed. Nicodemus told Jesus that he knew that He was a teacher sent from God. But Jesus was so much more. He was/is God. Nicodemus is under conviction but his words have actually expressed not faith but unfaith. He has not spoken all his conviction. He concedes but part of what is in his heart.
Here is a man who has risen to heights in his nation. He has wealth, education, position. But he is hungry for that which he has heard Jesus speaking. By appearances here is a man that mostly has what can be had. But he hungers for more. Yet in his hunger he has radically missed understanding the desperation fo his position. Jesus tells him that he is not able to see the kingdom of God unless he has been born from above.
Nicodemus thinks he can see something of the kingdom of God, for he has declared that Jesus is a teacher sent from God. He certainly is right as far as he goes. But the experience of Nicodemus is far from what is possible. The one he has acknowledged is sent from God to teach tells him, “You, Nicodemus, will never even see this kingdom you think you belong to unless you are born from above.”
There is a place for discussion—a large place. But at the bottom line, we must understand as Nicodemus had to understand, that we must be born from above. What is birth? It is a launch into the human experience; it is creation; it is the creation of a being in God’s image, a creature in some sense patterned after and uniquely able to reflect the character of the infinite, morally pure, holy, righteous God. A being who, growing up will be able to make moral choices, to select good or evil.
Nicodemus is surprised. Disbelievingly he answers, “How can you be born when you are an adult? Can you enter the womb again?” And Jesus replies just as firmly as before, “Unless you are born from water and from the Spirit, you will not be able to enter God’s kingdom. That which is born of flesh is flesh, that which is born of Spirit is spirit. Don’t be surprised that I am telling you that you must be born from above. The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of its passage, but you do not know where it came from nor where it is going. This is the way it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Here was a picture of a kingdom too pure for Nicodemus to inhabit. He was startled. But Jesus was telling him that he must have an entire and complete spiritual transformation. Notice, He did not lead Niocodemus through the sinner’s prayer. There is a place for that, but Jesus here is trying to present to Nicodemus something far broader than he had before imagined. Jesus is, if you will, trying to press home a new idea to him.
Becoming a Child of God
What does the Bible say? “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But the Jews felt secure. Being Jewish, they had come to feel that being a “chosen” people set them apart from everyone else. But being chosen and agreeing with the choosing are two different things. It is one thing for God to call and it is another for people to answer. No one has an edge. All are in need. In the beginning of John’s gospel he reminds us of this truth. Consider John 1:12, 13:
As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Nicodemus was no more born a son of God than were you or I! But God gives us the opportunity to “become” His children. Very simply, this sonship is premised not upon our bloodline. We cannot become God’s children because we are born with certain DNA, whether Jewish, or Caucasian, or whatever. It is not your blood. Nor is it the will of man. You can’t be saved because you know the right people. Being Billy Graham’s, or the Pope’s best friend, would guarantee you nothing. Having a line of ministers, even Seventh-day Adventist ministers in your family history, again, guarantees you nothing.
Again, we cannot become God’s children by the will of the flesh. We cannot just choose to be Christians and enforce that choice by our will power alone. Yes, we are granted the power of choice, and yes, we must exercise it. But we have not the power in us to exercise it. God can do for us—must do for us—that which we can never do for ourselves. We can obey God, completely obey Him, but only by the power that He provides. Our own desire or our own will, unaided by divine help, gets us nowhere.
This is a hard truth for Americans. We have been, historically, a sturdy kind of people. This nation was carved out of a wilderness that was not always friendly to us, and it wasn’t carved out by a bunch of folks who just sat on their hands and waited for it to happen. You can look at a tree all day long and it won’t fall down. Someone needs to go get an axe and start chopping. This is the reality of the temporal world. It is not the reality of the spiritual world! In the spiritual world, the fact is that we are broken and must have help. You can never become Christian by just trying to become one. But our text said what? That it is by the will of God that we become His children. He invites us to freely choose His kingdom. But then it is His will that makes the choice effectual.
Did you notice something else? The passage here in John 1:12, 13 never spoke of being “saved,” did it? I used the language a couple of times, but you didn’t catch it. The actual language of the passage is to speak of our becoming “sons of God.” And it is important for us to let the Bible language guide our understanding. Too often our conceptions are “pre-shrunk,” and we see being “saved” as having this cold, forensic meaning, just God counting us right when we have not yet permitted Him to make us right. But our passage here speaks not only of being made into a “son of God” but also of our receiving, our believing, and of our exercise of the power He gives us: “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.”
When you think of being “saved,” do you think of all these things? When you think of being a son though, doesn’t what the Bible says makes sense?
Born of Water and of the Spirit
You see the parallels:
John 3:3: ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’
John 3:5: ‘Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’
Unless a person is “born again,” (actually, the translation is “born from above”), he cannot see God’s kingdom, and the reiteration and restatement of Jesus says we must be born of water and of the Spirit, and that if we are not, then we cannot enter the kingdom of God. Now who had come before Jesus? John the Baptist. And what did John the Baptist preach? He urged his hearers to be baptized in the Jordan river, to confess their sins, and to look for the one who would come along after him, the one who would be the Messiah, who would baptize with the Spirit.
So when Jesus said that one must be born of both water (testifying to repentance), and the Spirit (testifying to an inner renewal), he knew what ground he was on. But still he was very surprised. For, you see, Nicodemus felt no need of this rebirth. As far as he could see, he was fine. This was a hard word for him. Nicodemus thought he was already assured of an entry into the kingdom. You see, his picture of salvation had been a very small one. Jesus would not stop short of expanding his (and our) horizons! The Christian’s life is not a modification or improvement of the old, but a transformation of nature. There is a death to self and sin, and a new life altogether. This change can be brought about only by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus was determined to bring some clarity on this to Nicodemus.
Nicodemus asked, “How can these things be?”
And how does Jesus respond? He asks him, How can you fill such a high position and not understand this? How, urged Jesus, can you look out across the human experience and not see that whether Jew or Gentile, people have to have a dramatic change? Selfishness is alive and well (as well as selfish can be) in hearts where the doors are locked and bolted against the Savior. Too many of us have had a kind of Christianity where what we experienced was a modification of our old life. We began to study the Bible, we began to pray a bit more. We were told that we had passed from death to life and been saved. But unless you and I aggressively seek for transformation, we will inevitably settle for a modified life, an improved life, but not a life that is truly filled with the effectual working of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told Nicodemus, We understand this and tell about it from our experience, but the elite refuse to accept it. If I have shared with you such elementary points and if you have difficulty in believing them, how will you believe truly advanced points?
Here Nicodemus had come to Jesus as a ruler of Israel, a teacher, a do-gooder, a Pharisee of the straightest sort. But Jesus is telling him that what he has envisioned as being the life of a follower of God is immeasurably less than what God has envisioned. God would transform our nature; He would empower us to resist the selfishness we have habituated ourselves to, and live a new life altogether. What place does sin have in this new life? None at all. His plan for us is death to self, death to sin. Transformation. Nicodemus was humiliated. But still he was under conviction.
Jesus continued, I am the undisputed source of truth, said Jesus, from above, for I have been there. None of you have ever been there. People were rejecting the ministry of Jesus, calling Him an imposter, undermining His teachings under whispers of disdain and superiority. But they had never been in heaven. On what basis then did they reject Jesus’ testimony?
The Testimony of the Cross
Now in verses 14 and 15 Jesus comes to the heart of the matter. Nicodemus had acknowledged Him only as being a teacher sent from God. But now God in human flesh, Jesus Christ Himself says to Nicodemus,
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Here is a simple illustration from the history of the Hebrews. In their traveling from Egypt to Canaan, they had been a faithless and pitiful band, constantly complaining, and making life hard for their human leader Moses. Eventually they grew caustic and tired of everything, and Numbers 21 tells the story. They found the way to be hard, they were dissatisfied with the bread that God had given them, the manna. So out came their complaints as vigorously as ever before. Now God had been protecting them so long and so much, that they had come to the place where they were quite oblivious of His protection of them. So He determined that He would withdraw some of that protection so they could have a taste of just how much He had been protecting them. We pick up the action in Numbers 21:6-9:
And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.
God withdrew His protection but a small space, and suddenly it was clear that He had been protecting them. Venomous snakes now made their presence felt, and many of the Hebrews were hurt by their venomous bites. The people began to die on every side. They came to Moses, in painful recognition acknowledging their sin, and urging that Moses intercede on their behalf. So he prayed to God for the people. Then came a strange answer. God told Moses to make a representation of a fiery serpent and to affix it to the top of a pole, and to raise up that pole in the camp, and to tell the people who had been bitten, to look upon it. The promise was that whoever accepted God’s provision, and looked to the raised image, would live.
What’s more, nearly 40 years before this, God had commanded His people not to create “any” graven images of anything in the earth, and not to bow down to them or serve them (Exodus 20:4, 5). Wasn’t this in direct contradiction of that?
No it wasn’t. For the command had been that they not make unto themselves any graven image. This was not an image of their making; God had commanded it. Further, they had been prohibited from bowing down to such images in worship. Here however was an image that was to be raised up on the pole and they were commanded simply to look at it and be healed. Not to bow to it.
The images that the Ten Commandments prohibited were false Gods. The image that the true God commanded to be made was to be a symbolic representation of something never envisioned by pagan rites and religions. It was to symbolize the sacrifice of God, His taking our sin and giving us His righteousness. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He [the Father] hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin [Jesus]; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
Jesus was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. And the Bible says, “With His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
God’s provision for our salvation actually is so simple. He wants to transform us. He says to us, Look and live! Look to Jesus. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
The picture is of a great sacrifice, a taking of sin, a giving of life, a transformation just waiting. Just waiting. Just waiting.
Jesus here announces the most sublime truth of the gospel to Nicodemus under the star-spackled sky of the midnight interview. He tells him so simply, People must be directed to Me, and believe, and receive life.
Just where the interview ends is unclear. It seems to end right here, and John to carry onward as he writes his gospel, and to comment on this interview.
For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
So you see, God so loved the world that He gave Jesus, that whoever would participate could be changed through the simple means provided. God did not send Jesus to condemn the world, but to save it/make it whole through Him. The word used here is literally, to make whole.
Hide in Darkness or Come to the Light
Those who believe are not condemned. But those who refuse to believe have rejected the moral foundation illustrated by Jesus’ character. Men are condemned because God sends light to them, and, seeing it, they refuse to change their moral alignment, and prefer to deepen their commitment to darkness and their tiny worlds and crooked things. Those who love evil refuse to come to the light because it condemns their behavior. I understand this, because for years I refused to come to the light. But God is working. He is trying to persuade us to taste and see whether the Lord is good. And so providence works. God calls on us time after time. Some harden and go away and are never quite as receptive again. And some begin to realize the fatal living-death of their snake-bitten lives and feel at last their need. And choose. And look up. They have done evil in their lives and they turn and begin to do truth. They come to the light. And their lives begin to glow. It begins to be seen that the changes reveal in their deeds the effectual working of the Holy Spirit. What becomes a live event, a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit, is seen to be done through the power of God.
The untransformed do evil. The transformed do truth. What do you do? What does the gospel you embraced do? Are you ready today to accept Jesus all over again? Are you ready to look and to live!? Is salvation so hard?? Is it a narrow little list of things we have to say in a certain order? Or, is it a vibrant, transforming personal relationship with Jesus made effectual by the working of the Holy Spirit as guest in your heart? GCO
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