I AM NICODEMUS
I Am Nicodemus
Source, mode, and means — three answers to the question Nicodemus carried into the dark.
I Am Nicodemus
John 3:1–16 — source, mode, and means: three answers to the question Nicodemus carried into the dark.
There's an old clip I keep coming back to. Tom Brady is on 60 Minutes — this was back when he only had three Super Bowl rings — and the interviewer asks him what's next. Brady pauses. Then he says, I look around and I think, there's got to be more than this.
He had climbed every mountain we hand out trophies for. Success. Fame. Athletic prowess. Respect. He got to the top and looked around and thought, was that all?
That's the man who comes to Jesus in John 3. His name is Nicodemus. He is a Pharisee, a teacher of Israel, one of the ruling elite of Jerusalem. By every metric his world handed out, he has it all. And he is sneaking through the streets in the middle of the night to find a thirty-something carpenter from Galilee, because somewhere underneath the credentials he knows there has to be more than this.
I am Nicodemus. I bet you are too.
John has been doing something careful with light and dark all the way back to chapter one — the world in darkness, the light shining, the darkness not comprehending it. And here it is, the metaphor walking around on two legs. A learned, respected man feeling around in the dark for the light. He has one question on his heart, even if he can't quite say it out loud: how do I find the life God is offering?
Jesus answers him in three moves. They build on each other. Watch what he does.
One — the source. No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus hears this literally — do I have to crawl back into my mother? — and that's actually the point. There is no climbing into this life. It can't come from you. It comes from above, as a gift, and the only thing you can do with a gift is receive it. Every other mountain Brady climbed, Brady climbed. This one you don't climb. You're given.
Two — the mode. The Spirit, Jesus says, is like the wind. You can't see wind. No one has ever seen wind. You only ever see what wind does — the leaves rustling, the dust moving, the surface of the water rippling. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. I don't always know where God is taking me next. But I can look in the rearview mirror and see where he's been. I can look at this week, this year, this decade, and trace the places he was clearly at work even when I couldn't name it at the time. That's how you trust him going forward. You stop demanding a map of tomorrow and you start noticing the rustled leaves of yesterday.
Three — the means. This is where Jesus reaches into the back of the Old Testament and pulls out one of the strangest stories he could have picked. Moses, the bronze snake, Numbers 21. The Israelites are dying of poisonous snake bites in the wilderness, and God tells Moses to make a snake out of bronze, set it on a pole, lift it up — and anyone who looks at it lives. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Here is the pattern: God takes the thing that is killing you, lifts it up on a pole, and says look and live.
"The way of your salvation is this — God takes the thing that is killing you, nails it to a pole, and tells you to look and live."
Our snake is not a snake. The Bible has a more honest word for it. Sin — not just the things I do wrong, but the whole web of severed relationship with God, of strife between people and nations, of the war I find inside myself when I want to do one thing and end up doing another, of creation groaning under our mismanagement. It is a death sentence. And Paul says it as plainly as it can be said: God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Romans 8 puts it even more bluntly — God took sin and nailed it to the cross in the body of Jesus. There is therefore now no condemnation.
That is the means. Source from above. Mode like the wind. Means like a man lifted up. Look, and live.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the most offensive sentence in the Christian faith: you can't do this on your own. Nicodemus came to Jesus looking for another book to read, another argument to win, another rung on the ladder. Jesus told him to put the ladder down. There is no climb. There is only a Savior lifted up and an invitation to look at him.
So here is the take-home this week. If you are a Nicodemus — respectable, accomplished, quietly suspicious there has to be more — stop building. Look up. Find a quiet hour and read John 3:1–16 slowly, twice, and let the wind of the Spirit show you where he has already been at work in your life. Then receive what only he can give. That's the whole gospel. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.
You don't have to be the one who climbs. You only have to be the one who looks.
