John 3:9-12 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
The religious ruler is astonished to hear that entering the Kingdom of God is accomplished, not by human efforts and work of being “good, faithful followers of God’s Laws and Commandments but, by being born again, born anew, born from above, born of the Spirit for the regeneration of the spirit, our redemption and our salvation. Nicodemus didn’t fully understand sin from God’s perspective, which was later explained by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:1-3 that, “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
What Nicodemus needs to realize is that knowledge and moral behavior aren't enough to make him right with God or earn your way into the kingdom of heaven. There was some key salvation truth that he didn’t know, and the Savior of the world, sent by God the Father, was explaining that essential truth. Nicodemus is honestly seeking answers, unlike many of the other Pharisees. He sought out Jesus, and correctly interpreted His miracles as signs from God. And yet, Nicodemus' Pharisaical legalistic mindset won't let him accept the ideas that Jesus is teaching of spiritual truth and eternal destiny. 1 Corinthians 2:14 tells us, “The natural person [in their fallen sin nature of the flesh] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
In John 3:13 Jesus continues to teach Nicodemus stating, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” Daniel 7:13 must have immediately came to mind as Jesus enlightened him, “I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed.” Jesus was identifying the Son of Man prophesied as the Lord and Savior sent by God to pay for the sins of the world in God’s Plan of Salvation process of being born again by belief, repentance, acceptance, atonement and redemption. The kingdom of God is eternal and the Son of Man was to come from heaven to earth with everlasting dominion. The Scripture pieces were coming together and the truth into focus.
Let's continue Jesus' revelation of the truth of salvation to Nicodemus and us in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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