Jesus was not one to do a lot of things privately. He always had witnesses to what He said and did. The primary thing He purposed to do privately was prayer, and He would frequently go out alone to pray because He did not want the interruptions of His disciples or other people. But there is one teaching we have recorded in Scripture that was done in private: a secret meeting at night with Nicodemus. Now, we can be certain that John was nearby because He is the one who recorded the account, however, this was one of the few times Jesus ever dealt with someone in private, most likely at Nicodemus’ request.
For Nicodemus, to show admiration for Jesus in public would have been very controversial. He had heard about Jesus and about the working of miracles; he likely witnessed one of them, possibly the healing of the paralytic who was lowered through the roof by his friends, because that was one of the few publicly seen miracles early in Jesus’ ministry. Other Pharisees were there as well. The Chosen depicts Nicodemus’ intrigue with this miracle as well, but of Jesus’ early miracles where Nicodemus could have been present, this one seems to be most plausible. In any case, Nicodemus needed to meet Jesus and wanted to meet privately, so Jesus agreed.
Nicodemus opens by realizing that Jesus was sent by God, and Jesus goes straight to the message and tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, explaining it is spiritual birth he needs. Then Jesus gave the Gospel message, but not without a warning about those who would reject Him. I am certain there was more back and forth than John records, and we don’t have Nicodemus’ response. The Chosen depicts him receiving Jesus as the Messiah but unable to let go of his life to actually follow Him. All we do know is that Nicodemus opposed the attempts to put Jesus to death without trial and a proper hearing and then helped Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus. Here, I want to get into Jesus’ mindset as to why He said what He said.
Jesus opened up by telling Nicodemus that he needed to be born again. This is the only passage where the actual phrase “born again” is used in the Bible, however, the concept described occurs throughout Scripture with different pictures and different images but the same concept. We must be born again. We must forget everything we have thought and thought we knew in the old life and start completely over again. Nicodemus was considered one of the elite rabbis among the Sanhedrin, the teacher of all the teachers. He didn’t have that much political power per se, but he was highly regarded. When he showed up, all wanted to sit at his feet. And Jesus gave Nicodemus the same thing He gave the rich young ruler: give up your most prized possessions. He told the rich young ruler that his money was an idol that would keep him from doing things God’s way, and he walked away unable to let it go. Nicodemus was asked to give up his position, education, and learning to follow Jesus. He did later to a degree, but Nicodemus had to forget everything he thought he knew about God’s point and purpose.
The Jews never actually understood the Law. They thought the Law was what you did to prove your value to God. That was never its intention. Its intention was to showcase how man never had and never will meet up to God’s standards. Jesus showed the intention of the Law through His ministry by raising the bar to include your thoughts and motives in morality, and also that certain laws were not so strict to keep you from doing weightier things like loving your neighbor in time of need. Jesus told Nicodemus, who taught the strict enforcement of ceremonial laws, to forget it all and start all over. Now, let’s be clear; Jesus never once taught that He was getting rid of the old system. He was saying its purpose is finished, but only for those who would believe in Him. Those outside of Christ are still going to be judged by the Law.
Jesus wanted Nicodemus to shift his entire mindset from “do this to be right with God” to what God intended all along: “Believe and by faith trust God, and the good works will follow.” Jesus cited one of Israel’s key moments in the wilderness, the raising of the bronze serpent so that all who look upon it would be healed, to showcase that He Himself would be lifted up on a cross and all who look upon Him would be saved from something far more severe than the bite of a serpent: sin itself. The message of the Gospel is about trust and reliance on God. The amazing thing is that this was the message all along; Jesus never came up with a new system. It was there the whole time. Abel understood it. Noah understood it. Abraham understood it. Yet from Moses on, it seems only David truly understood it, though a number of those in Hebrews 11 had it to a degree.
So as Jesus explained the faith-based system, He then came to the most famous verse in the Bible: John 3:16, the simplest one-sentence summary of the Gospel. All it takes to be saved is to believe in Jesus, but as we have seen with Jesus’ other teachings, to believe in Him is a very different thing than intellectual agreement or mental ascent. It is a total trust in Him, which involves and requires denial of self and rejecting our way of doing things. While Jesus offers this great hope, He also gave a stern warning, because those who chose not to believe Him stand condemned already. Jesus’ message is not “turn or burn” with a threat. His message is “Turn because you ARE burning. Come out. Get help. Let Me save you.”
We do not know the immediate result of this discussion with Nicodemus, but we know that Nicodemus did come to Jesus’ aid and stood by Him from his position with the Pharisees. And we are left with the same question: will we trust in Jesus and start over? Paul did. Or are we going to stay in our world system and reject Jesus?
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