Transformed! (part 2)
Day 206
October 8, 2020
He chose to go at night. This way, he was less likely to be seen by the others. They had questioned the Teacher so furiously, and the words still echoed in his own ear: “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” (John 2:18). This Jesus had overthrown the tables of the moneychangers and there was chaos everywhere but He simply looked at them, with a zeal in his eye and responded, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
And so Nicodemus now stood before Jesus with even more questions. He believed this man had to have come from God because of all the signs he was performing; but was he the Messiah? Was this the One who would usher in the kingdom of God that he had waited and hoped so long for?
Jesus answered the questions of his heart, “...no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (John 3:3)
This troubled Nicodemus even more. How can a man be born again when he is old? How can any of us have a “restart” to possibly correct the sins, mistakes, and problems of our lives to then be accepted by God, to enter his kingdom? Surely, no one can be transformed like that!
To be born again, Jesus clarifies, is to be “born of water and the Spirit.” As a Pharisee, or as Jesus calls him a “teacher of Israel,” Nicodemus would know the following text from the book of Ezekiel. In Chapter 36:25–27 it says:
I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Nicodemus wasn’t really asking if he could somehow go back into his mother’s womb to be “born again” and start his life over. But the transformation of “rebirth” that Jesus describes to Nicodemus--the transformation that was foreshadowed in the miraculous changing of water into wine, and most importantly, the transformation that was already declared by God in the Scriptures in both Ezekiel and other places--this transformation is possible because God himself initiates it! He sprinkles the water that makes us clean. He gives us a new heart. He puts His Spirit in us. Our old heart of stone can be replaced by a new heart of flesh, and through Christ, we can be transformed!
Nicodemus couldn’t see it just then: Jesus had not yet given his life; his body (this temple) had not yet been destroyed, nor had it been raised again on the third day. Yet tenderly, Jesus says to him to have faith: God is a God who saves! “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17)
Jesus urged Nicodemus not to rely on his sight, but to rely on faith. Faith was like the wind. We know the wind exists because we feel it, we can see its effects, but we cannot see the actual wind with our eyes. We cannot be sure exactly where it comes from or in what direction it is going. But the wind, like faith, is real, it is true. They both originate with God himself. This is what Jesus urged Nicodemus to consider. True transformation was not by sight, but by faith. By faith in the God who promised ages ago that He ALONE, the God that saves, would make us new.
Read John 3