Christ Encounter / John 3:1-21

What will happen when you have an encounter with Jesus? Is there a way to know what we will learn or what we will experience or what He will change in us? I think not. It is always uncharted waters, or like the blowing of the wind. We don't see it coming or now what happens next, but we certainly feel its effects. It is so much more important that we trust Him to do what we need and teach us what we don't know and grant us the experiences He wants for us than that we can predict it or put it into principles or even to tell others exactly what they're getting in to. We think we want to know and have some control over it. But we would only sap the joy and freshness and life and wonder out of what it is like to encounter Jesus and to belong to Him. So we learn from Nicodemus.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says some incredible things to Him. We know you are from God. Your miracles/signs validate to us who you are and what you teach. Nic thinks Jesus could be the Messiah and is looking for some evidence either for his own faith or to make this seem more acceptable to the rest of the leaders and Pharisees who don't share his opinion of Jesus. (thus the nighttime visit). We would be quick to help him on his quest for information. We would tell him about the nature of the Christ being man and God, about the mystery of the Trinity, and about the wonders of the sacrificial atonement Jesus would offer. It is a little surprising to us that Jesus doesn't tell him such information directly. Maybe the information isn't what is needed as much as something else.

Jesus cuts straight to the chase with Nicodemus. Not giving him the answers he looks for says a great deal. Jesus is saying that knowing, understanding or even earning through keeping the rules or being somehow worthy whether by heritage or purity are not what this is about. What Nicodemus needs, what all of us need, is an infusion of life, a work that only God can produce. Yet he told him he needed it, so He obviously meant that Nicodemus was to play a part: the part of receiving, believing, trusting, looking to Him. Receiving what God would do qualify us for life with God/for the kingdom of God.

Nic tries to wrap his mind around what they are actually talking about now. The Kingdom is a different category than he thought (and that we think, for that matter). What our efforts and our strength and intelligence can produce is more of the same. What we need is spiritual, of God, more than we can guess or see or comprehend or control. We always have had to be careful about reducing the work of God into things we can explain. This is mystery, the great mystery. We will be changed by our encounter with Jesus. We will testify of incredible experiences. But it must remain mystery. It needs less description and more invitation: God has incredible life for you, or Jesus words, You must be born again.

How are we going to pull that off? Nicodemus wants to know. Jesus lets him know in no uncertain terms that He is going to have to trust Him since He has seen things Nic would know nothing about. It as much a mystery as the bronze snake that kept the Israelites from dying from snake bites in the wilderness. There's a reproducible principle we will probably all add to our Sunday services, or not. It's a mystery. It's an invitation to trust God again when they were reaping the consequences of the complaining and lack of trust even though God was providing for them miraculously, remarkably.

Many scholars point out the allusion to Jesus being lifted on the cross. That point is undeniable and important, but not the end of the point. Jesus is giving us hope in his words to Nicodemus. We haven't always been true, we've misunderstood and disobeyed and been totally selfish in our grumbling. But we can turn to Christ. He will still let us come to Him and work in us in unexpected ways full of grace to renew us and place us back in good standing and make us alive and able to live in Him and with Him.

That is the encounter. It was lifechanging. Encounters with Jesus are like that. Verses 16-22 are John's comment of this encounter. It is some of the most important explanation of what is going on when we meet with Jesus that we have. God has not given up on us or let us stay in the consequences of our turning away from Him. In Jesus he has made away for us to turn back. The turn is simple, it is honest, it provides instantaneous change of the kind of and source of life we have. Some won't receive it. It scares them. Their guilt makes them think God will treat them worse than the experience they already have. If only they would see in the light. Those who live by the truth come into the light. It makes you wonder if Jesus is challenging Nic to let what is happening be the guiding force of his life so that it is seen and he is honest about what he really thinks.

Life is available in an encounter with Jesus. How will that happen? You don't need to know. You need to respond to the invitation: Be born again. Let Jesus give you life. Look to Him in the middle of your doubts and fears and put your confidence in Him and not what you could do to earn what He would give. Nic came at night but lift in the day.

Created about 4 years ago