“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.”
They
are such familiar words, aren't they?
The
absolute basis of our faith –
they
are pretty much the heart of what it means to be a Christian.
But,
of course, like all of these things,
it's
really hard to unpack what it originally meant.
We
all have our own interpretation, of course, and who's to say we're
wrong?
But
let's look at the whole passage, first of all,
before
trying to look more closely at our text, since it's a well-known fact
that “a text without a context is a pretext!”
Nicodemus
seems to have been an older man,
prominent
among the Jews,
a
Pharisee.
Maybe
the local equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or of
Westminster.
Certainly
well-known in his community,
and
very much looked up to as a religious leader.
But,
for him, something was missing.
He
was beginning to realise, perhaps, that he was coming to the end of
his life here on earth,
and
wondering what his religion had to say about this.
And
now there is this new young teacher going the rounds,
doing
miracles,
really
seems to be from God.
Nicodemus
begs a very private interview.
He
can't be seen to be too closely associated with Jesus,
although
he does, in fact, stand up for him in the Sanhedrin,
and
helps Joseph of Arimathea prepare his body for burial.
But
at this stage he doesn't want to be seen to be too interested in what
might, after all, prove to be another cult.
But
it wasn't.
Jesus
tells him that he doesn't just need to be physically alive,
he
needs to be spiritually alive, too.
He
must be born from above, born anew, born again –
the
word used translates as all those things.
And
Nicodemus doesn't understand.
Perhaps
he's not really used to thinking in spiritual terms,
or
perhaps it totally doesn't make sense to him.
So
he blanks it.
“How
can you enter your mother's womb a second time?”
But
Jesus explains that this second birth is of the Spirit.
We
need to be born spiritually, to recognise that we are more than just
animals, to allow God's spirit to work in us.
And
Nicodemus says, “Yes, well, how do you do this?”
and
the answer, of course, is through Jesus.
“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.”
---oo0oo---
You
note, of course, that this is all God's idea!
It's
not something we humans can do.
We
may or may not have our own interpretation of the phrase “Born
again”, but I think we all agree that it's something that God does,
not
something that we do.
Had
God not sent his only Son, Jesus,
then
it would not be an option for us.
But
Jesus came, we are told, out of God's love for us.
And
our response must be one of believing.
Again,
people differ, sometimes, as to what degree of belief actually
“counts”, whether it is a mild intellectual assent,
or
a total commitment to the exclusion of anything else,
or
somewhere in between.
For
some of us, “being a Christian” is kind of like being pregnant –
you
either are or aren't, there's no two ways about it.
Others
see it as a journey, a process,
starting,
perhaps with a tiny step of faith,
an
intellectual assent to the fact that God could exist,
that
Jesus perhaps is God's son,
and so on.
And
gradually growing more and more into our faith,
going
through various stages,
and
gradually, perhaps over many years,
developing
a mature and wonderful faith,
and
becoming the sort of Christian we all look up to and admire!
It's
a bit of both, isn't it.
Many
of us will look back to a moment when we first said “Yes” to
Jesus –
perhaps
we even remember the date and the time!
For
me, it was the tenth or the seventeenth of October, 1971,
I
can't remember exactly which.
Sheesh,
was it really that long ago – help!
But
loads of people don't have a datable conversion –
it
happened so gradually that they simply can't point to a date and say
“before
then I wasn't a Christian;
after
it I was.”
But
even those of us who did have a definite date which they remember as
their conversion, it didn't happen in a vacuum.
It
might have felt, at the time, like a total bolt from the blue,
something
totally unexpected,
but
when you look back, it probably wasn't.
Let’s
take John Wesley as an example.
We
remember the date of his conversion, on 24 May.
Remember
what he wrote:
“In
the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate
Street,
where
one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.
About
a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God
works in the heart through faith in Christ,
I
felt my heart strangely warmed.
I
felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation;
and
an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine,
and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
A
not untypical conversion experience, perhaps.
But
Wesley was already a minister of the Church.
He
had been on missionary trips in the USA,
and
he had been searching and searching for the faith that he knew
existed, but that he himself couldn’t find.
One
of his counsellors –
I
forget who, offhand –
had
told him to “preach faith until you have it,
and
then you will preach it because you can’t help it”.
So
for John Wesley, that experience on Aldersgate Street was very much a
part of his Christian journey.
Would
anybody really say that before it he was not a Christian?
I
don’t think I would, and I’m not sure that Wesley himself did,
either!
And
another thing to notice is that although Wesley was searching and
searching for the personal faith he knew was a reality for so many,
it
was, in the end, God who gave him that faith.
Wesley
didn’t manufacture it himself.
He
wasn’t working himself up at an emotional revival meeting.
He
was just sitting listening to a sermon on the Epistle to the Romans!
And
God acted.
I’ve
seen that happen, too.
I
remember once, many years ago, a group of us were sitting in a café,
singing
Christian songs,
when
quite suddenly the words we were singing became real to one of the
group in a totally new and different way.
I’ve
long since lost touch with that person,
and
have no idea whether she still follows Jesus or not,
but
I will not forget how it suddenly became totally real to her.
But
that young woman had been coming to Church,
and
joining in our fellowship, for several weeks.
I
can’t remember whether she’d been a churchgoer at home, or
university, or whatever –
this
was in Paris, and a great many young people came to the church to
meet other English people, and met Jesus when they were at it!
I
did, myself, for that matter!
And
for many years I assumed that I had not been a Christian before I
went to that church,
and
heard someone preach on “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”....
but,
when I looked back, I realised that in fact,
I
had experienced a call to preach some years earlier than that,
when
I was about fifteen!
And
I had been a regular attender at Church –
usually
because I had to, because it was required when I was at school,
but
also at the voluntary mid-week Communion services the school held
occasionally, where I acted as a server.
I
know my Confirmation was very real and special to me, too.
I
reckon that what happened that October evening was a huge milepost on
my Christian journey,
but
it was a milepost on the road, not the start of that journey!
---oo0oo---
Of
course, the start of a journey to faith is just that, a start.
Like
Abraham and Sarah, from our first reading, we have to carry on.
Jesus
told Nicodemus that we need to be born from anew,
but
it’s always so sad when people have a baby who simply doesn’t
develop and grow, but remains an infant throughout life.
As
Christians, we need to be open to allowing God to grow and change us,
to
become the people he created us to be,
the
people he designed us to be.
Abraham
was told to get up and move to the land God would show him,
and
God would bless him abundantly,
in
a way that perhaps would not have been possible had Abraham remained
in Ur.
And
we know how Abraham believed God,
and
he and his brother Lot got up and travelled,
leaving
a very comfortable and civilised life in Ur
to
become nomads, travellers.
And
were blessed enormously by God,
despite
all sorts of trials and tribulations,
times
when they lacked faith,
times
when they sinned,
all
sorts of awfulnesses.
But
there again, it was God’s idea.
Abraham
didn’t just suddenly decide that he’d abandon his settled life
and go off into the desert in the hope that God would bless him for
doing so.
God
told Abraham to go, and that if he went, he would be made great.
---oo0oo---
Sometimes,
we who are Christians forget that it’s all God’s idea.
We
act as though our relationship with God depended totally on us.
It
doesn’t.
It
depends far more on God.
“For
God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world,
but
to save the world through him.”
God
has far more invested in the relationship than we do,
no
matter how committed we are.
God
loves us far more than we love him!
And
God’s love is constant, unremitting, and never, ever grows cold.
We
can be very variable in our faith, but God never changes.
There
are times when we move away from God –
and
you can practically see
the Good Shepherd donning Barbour and wellies to go off in search of
us!
Of
course, there are those people who say “No” to God.
As
C S Lewis once said, if people go on refusing to say “Thy will be
done”, eventually God will, with great sadness, say “All right,
have it your own way! Thy will be done!”
But
that, I think, does not apply to any of us here.
We
have said “Yes” to Jesus, we have said, like Martha, “Yes,
Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, who has come
into this world.”
And
we know, deep in our hearts, that “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.”
Thanks
be to God.