¹³ No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. ¹⁴ And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

¹⁶ “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

John 3:13-17

Dear God, It’s been about seven or eight years since the first time I really spent time with this speech from Jesus to Nicodemus and went and looked up the Moses story he references in verse 14. Now, whenever I see a cross being marched down the aisle of a church or hung in a church somewhere, I almost always think of this passage and look at it as my Jesus being that salvation. You save me, Jesus. And now, you teach me, Holy Spirit. You are my God. I am even here this morning because of you.

Then there’s the most ubiquitous verse in Evangelical Christendom: John 3:16. It’s easy to forget that it’s part of an overall speech to Nicodemus about what it means to be born again. To be a new creation. To have my soul die and be resurrected in you.

I also never read verse 17 without thinking about my pastor from high school. He would have us recite both 16 and 17 at the end of each service for a year.

Just for fun, I want to look at this whole conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus, as recorded by John:

3 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. ² After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”

³ Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

⁴ “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

⁵ Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. ⁷ So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”

⁹ “How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked.

¹⁰ Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? ¹¹ I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. ¹² But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. ¹⁴ And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

¹⁶ “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

¹⁸ “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. ²⁰ All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. ²¹ But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

Father, this conversation laid the groundwork for Nicodemus becoming, at first, a closet-Jesus follower, and ultimately led to him being one of the two men who cared for Jesus’s body after the crucifixion. Personally, I think he became part of The Way after that because John knows these stories to tell us. I appreciate Nicodemus’s open and seeking heart. He was trying to be cautious. He didn’t want to be led astray from you. But when he saw who Jesus was he embraced him. Thank you for this example. I look forward to meeting Nicodemus, one of my three favorite men of the Bible (I’m looking at you, Jesus’s earthly father Joseph and Jonathan). I pray that I will have the necessary courage to follow you as they did.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen