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Recently, I’ve become convinced that I need to start my life over. I was reading the story in John about Nicodemus this morning, and, I’ve got to say, its themes were familiar to me.

Nicodemus is a religious guy. He’s a member of the Jewish ruling council – a Pharisee. Like me, he does religion by day, and approaches Jesus by night, offering a cognitive realization of who He is, but with a marked lack of understanding. He says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” It’s a basic admission—empiricism that wants to be faith.

I don’t understand Jesus’s reply. I puzzle over it, wondering if He is somehow changing the subject, and, if he is, if it’s rude, or if he’s just answering Nicodemus’s real question—the one he didn’t ask. If this were Jeopardy, and the answer were Jesus’s response, “I tell you the Truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again”, maybe the question Nicodemus is dying to know is, “Who is Jesus?”

Maybe it’s the enigma of Jesus that I find most off-putting. I can’t tell what He’s doing. Is he reassuring Nicodemus in his deepest questionings? Or is His agenda something else entirely – to preach repentance, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near? Who is Jesus?

Nicodemus and I are carnal comrades, imprisoned by our pragmatism, and caught in the confines of the clearly observable. How can a man be born when he is old? What are you talking about, Jesus? You’re talking nonsense, and it makes me uncomfortable, frankly.

“Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit’.”

I don’t want to go all Pentecostal, and I don’t know what Nicodemus’s reaction was (actually, I do….he said, “How can this be?”), but that I am as tempted as he to be dumbfounded and confused. The only interpretation that makes sense in my mind is that Jesus is telling me something I already know—exposing the flaw in that way only He can. Maybe the first thing I should note is that, in this way, Jesus is demonstrating that His personality is consistent with God’s. By causing me to confess that which I already know to be a problem, He reminds me of the very first conviction in the Garden of Eden, when God asks the searingly evaluative question, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). Jesus mimicks this technique in my heart even now. “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit”. Which of these have I?

“Water,” I answer. “…maybe just the water.”

Flesh gives birth to flesh. Jesus begins the deconstructive process on Nicodemus’ heart, and mine as well. Keep “doing religion”. Keep living like a body. These are things of the flesh, and they will give birth to flesh, and nothing more. Our need—Nicodemus’s and mine—is beyond the flesh. The Spirit gives birth to spirit. You must be born again.

Here is the nagging and troublesome question: “How can this be?”. It rings in my head, shifting like a spectre through every solid, stayed thing, sticking to nothing and sounding more unanswerable with every echo. How can this become true of me? How can I be born of the Spirit?

I believe that I’ve been God’s adopted child for many years now, but don’t know that I’ve ever had a life-changing rebirth, ever been imbibed with the profundity of Truth, or done more with my worldview than cautiously evaluated it from a distance.

Jesus’s first rhetorical question is, “Ok, so, who are you?”. “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”.

“I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

We speak of what we know. Jesus acknowledges Nicodemus’ empiricism and inability to understand while pointing out to me that there is much of the physical world that I do not understand, and, yet, trust implicitly. I don’t understand my metabolism, but I feel its promptings deep inside me, telling me in our shared secret language when I need to eat, and how to preserve my life. Elsewhere, in John ch. 5, Jesus says, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

I am Nicodemus—or maybe the rich young ruler—I am so hung up on the details and the knowledge and the law that I cannot accept His testimony, do not feel His promptings inside, and will not come to Him to have life. The silence makes me so uncomfortable, but Jesus keeps talking, and that makes me so happy I could cry.

“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. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

And maybe that’s the answer to the question. Who is Jesus?

He is the intervening arm of love.

“This is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

It doesn’t say here what Nicodemus does at this point. I’m not sure what I’m going to do at this point. It looks like the only hurdle is the willingness to be exposed.

I’d say that I still have a lot of thinking and chewing to do on this topic, but, over again, it seems that the answer is to go to Him. Stop thinking, stop doing, stop trying to be religious or worrying about being right. Stop withholding belief in the absence of understanding. Stop shutting Him up in my life; He was lifted up like the snake in the desert, and I need to quit looking at Moses, or the Torah, or the bites I’ve received over the years from lesser things.

Updates will be given on this topic as they become available.