John 3:1-21 – Born Again or Die

“These ‘born again’ Christians have no place in my church! They think that the only way to be accepted by God is through Jesus! What about all the other good people who obey the law- like my nice Buddhist neighbor?” I was shocked and disappointed by these words from a middle-aged lady who attended the church where Abi and I were serving.

It was 1987 and I was ministering in a Presbyterian church here in Sydney. The church was too small to support a full-time Minister so the Presbytery appointed me to work as assistant to the Minister in a large church nearby. But most of my time was spent with this little church. Abi and I were trying to repair the damage done by years of neglect and poor bible teaching by past church leaders.

We had been there about 6 months. Abi taught the small Sunday school in the church hall while I took the service. I had been preaching each Sunday from the bible. My aim was to teach the basics of the Christian faith so that everyone understood the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I was worried right from the first few weeks serving in this church. In my conversations with church members over a cup of tea in the hall after the Sunday church service it was clear that many of them didn’t understand anything of God’s message about Jesus.

They didn’t believe that they were sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. They didn’t know why Jesus had to die on the cross to take their place under God’s just judgement for their sin. They didn’t see the importance of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead three days after his agonising death. The essential foundations of God’s message of sin, judgement and forgiveness through the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus were missing from their church life.

Many of them seemed to believe that if you are a nice law-abiding person then you will go to heaven when you die. After about 6 months of bible teaching each Sunday, the lady confronted me after the church service saying, “These ‘born again’ Christians have no place in my church!” I was saddened that she still didn’t seem to understand even the basic gospel message of Jesus Christ.

I still had my bible in my hand and it had the bookmark in the John 3 passage I had preached that morning. I quickly flipped the bible open and showed her the passage.

“Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom of God.’” [John 3:3]. “How can you be against ‘born again’ Christians?” I asked. “Jesus said that you have to be born again in order to be one of God’s people- a subject of the great king and creator of the universe.”

“You keep talking about Jesus as if he was the only way to heaven! What about all the other good people who don’t believe in Jesus?” she replied. I moved my finger down the page and pointed to verse 16, “For this is how God loved the world. He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16].

I explained to her, “Believing in Jesus Christ, God’s one and only Son, is how we receive the gift of eternal life. The bible is clear about that.” I flipped over a few pages and pointed to John 14:6, “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’”

I said to her, “You seem to believe that people can be nice enough to earn their place in eternal life with God. But remember a few months ago I preached from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome.” I turned over a few pages in my bible and showed her Romans chapter 3. Paul taught them,

“For everyone has sinned, we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God in his grace freely made us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins. God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in past times, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time…” [Romans 3:23-26a].

I told her, “Jesus loves us so much that he was willing to carry our sins on the cross and receive the judgement that we deserve. We can only be right with God because of what he did for us. The bible is clear- it doesn’t matter how good you try to be, or how religious you are. All people, both those born before Jesus’ time and everyone now, needs what God has done for us through his Son. That’s why Peter said, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” [Acts 2:38].

A man’s voice broke into our conversation. He asked, “Why do you keep quoting the bible all the time? It’s Abraham did this…Jesus said that…Paul taught this? Why don’t you give your sermons from the newspaper instead of always preaching from the bible? We want something new and relevant for today. Not always this stuff from thousands of years ago.”

I explained to him, “When I preach from God’s word, the bible, I always try to explain what God was saying back then and how that message helps us to live as his people today in this unchristian society. But the first, and most important message, is how we can come back into a good relationship with our God and Father only through his Son, Jesus.”

“I know what I believe,” the lady replied. “I think all nice people will go to heaven. I don’t care what the bible says.” She and the man walked away. The conversation was over as far as she was concerned. It didn’t matter what God wrote in the bible. She wanted to believe what she wanted to believe. It didn’t matter to her what Jesus said.

Does what God says really matter to you? Or would you rather just believe what you want to believe? The words of Jesus can be confusing and confronting, but they are also wonderfully comforting.

Nicodemus was a respected member of a major group of Jerusalem religious teachers. As a Pharisee he would have devoted much of his life to studying the Scriptures. But he came to Jesus at night- probably so that no one would see him visiting this man who had already angered many of his fellow religious leaders. He says to Jesus, “We all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” [v2].

But Jesus’ reply confuses him. “I assure you no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the spirit gives birth to spirit, so don’t be surprised when I say you must be born again…” [vs5-7].

But Nicodemus would have believed that he was already in the kingdom of God. He was a descendant of Abraham so he was already a member of God’s people, and God was the king and ruler over his special nation. And Nicodemus faithfully studied and kept the laws of the Lord God. So, he was not a sinful subject of his God and king, in danger of being thrown out of the kingdom of God for doing evil.

He knew that being born into the nation was not enough- you had to obey the law God gave through Moses. So, if anyone could have confidence that they were already in the kingdom of God because of their privilege of birth and strict obedience to God’s law, Nicodemus was such a man. But Jesus told him he could not even see the kingdom of God unless he was born of water and the spirit.

We can easily understand why Nicodemus is confused. “’How are these things possible?’ Nicodemus asked. Jesus replied, ‘You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things?’” [vs9-10]. Jesus gently rebukes Nicodemus. He is an expert in God’s word, but has failed to recognise the passage of Scripture that Christ Jesus is referring to.

About 600 years before Jesus’ time, God’s people had become repeatedly unfaithful to the Lord. They trusted that because they had the temple in Jerusalem that they were safe from God’s judgment. They worshipped the Lord in his temple and then went home and in secret prayed to idols of foreign gods. The rich abused and oppressed the weak, the poor, widows and orphans.

But God had had enough of them. They ignored his warnings of judgement given by the Lord’s prophets. So the Almighty brought in the Babylonian army to destroy the city and temple. Most of the people were either killed or taken away as prisoners. The prophet Ezekiel was exiled to Babylon but the Lord continued to speak through him to the people.

God had a future for his people in which he would finally end their repeated sin and unfaithfulness. God knew they needed more than his laws written on stone tablets- they needed new hearts. God’s message through Ezekiel was,

“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart, and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.” [Ezekiel 36:25-27].

Jesus’ message to Nicodemus is the same as his message to us today. Being born as an ordinary human being and trying to be a nice person who keeps God’s laws is not enough. All people need to be born again- a birth done by God and his spirit. We all need to be washed clean from our sin, and given a new heart by the spirit of God.

If Nicodemus is feeling a bit lost and confused now, he is about to become even more confused. Jesus said to him, “No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.” [vs13-15].

The prophets received God’s message from heaven and passed it on to the people. But Jesus claims to be more than any previous prophet- he claims to have come down from heaven himself. He is fully human (the Son of Man) but his origins are not from the earth but from heaven. And his reason for coming is so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

The religious leaders would have said, No! Eternal life comes to us who work hard to keep the laws of God. But Christ’s reference to Ezekiel shows that the law is a failed system that cannot bring us up to God. We needed God to come down to us. We need him to wash our hearts clean from sin and give us a new, tender heart. And we need the work of the spirit of God to help us to obey his good laws from a sincere, washed clean heart.

The Westminster Confession is our church’s summary of the main teachings of Scripture. It reminds us that the work of God’s spirit in a Christian is imperfect in this life because sin remains within us- this leads to an ongoing internal war between our sin and God’s spirit. “Sin may from time to time prevail (have control) yet from the continual supply of strength from the Spirit of Christ, the Christian does overcome: so they grow in grace, increasing in holiness and respect for God.” [Westminster Confession 13.3].

We are born again by the cleansing waters and powerful Spirit of God. Yet it is Christ Jesus we look to so that we may begin, and continue, in our walk toward eternal life and our heavenly home. Jesus referred to a time when God had rescued his people from Egypt and was bringing them to a new and beautiful land.

But the people were impatient and complained against God saying “why did you take us out of Egypt”. In his judgment for their sin, God sent poisonous snakes so that many were bitten and died. When they repented and confessed their sin, God told Moses to make a bronze snake lifted up on a pole. Anyone who was bitten by a snake could look to the bronze snake and be healed. [Numbers 21:4-9].

The earlier parts of the bible are full of these little incidents that point forward to the work of Christ Jesus. We read about the Temple in Jerusalem that was God’s chosen place where people from all over the world could come and meet with him. But Jesus claims to be the fulfilment of the Temple- that building pointed forward to him. So people from every nation and language on earth can come to God the Father through Jesus the Son.

And we, like the ancient people of God, have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. So we are under his just judgement. Yet we look to Jesus, lifted up on a cross, so that we may be healed.

In a 40- year career in the church the Minister had served in 8 different churches. He faithfully conducted the prayer book service each Sunday and encouraged his congregations to be good people and obey God’s laws. The Evangelism Department in church head office sent a young minister, named John Chapman, to work with him for a few months. The old Minister thought that he was supposed to teach this young man how to serve as a leader in a church. And so he was happy to have this young minister take the sermon each Sunday.

John preached a series of ten sermons from the gospel of John. Each week he carefully and clearly explained Jesus’ teaching and applied it to the present- day life of the Christian believer. The old Minister had never experienced this kind of ministry. Each week he had preached from a different verse somewhere in the bible, and he usually ended up with encouraging his congregation to be good people so that they can get to heaven.

But as John clearly explained the teaching of Christ Jesus, the old Minister realized that he had never been born again. He was not a Christian. All through his ministry he had taught people to come to church and obey God’s laws and you will make it up to heaven. He had taken more than 2000 church services but never really understood the reason for Jesus’ death and resurrection. But now he saw Jesus lifted up on a cross “so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.” [v15]. And he understood his need to be washed clean by Christ and receive a new heart guided by the spirit of God.

Late one Sunday evening he knelt on the floor of his church office and asked for God’s forgiveness through the cross of Christ, and a new heart washed clean by the Spirit of Almighty God.