Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus gives us a serious look into the concept of Christian conversion. Two key thoughts are, “We must be born again” and “For God so loved the world.”
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Dear Father in Heaven,
We thank you for sending Jesus Christ, your Son, so that we might believe in him and receive eternal life. We do not want to be among those who would hear this message from Jesus and yet reject him all the same.
We grasp the fact that our eternity depends upon our response to Jesus Christ. We receive him and believe in him so that we might be born again – born from above – and be able enter your kingdom.
We receive this free gift of eternal life, which we cannot earn or strive to achieve. It can only come from you. This is in fact why you sent your Son, so that we might believe in him. Cleanse and renew us now by your Holy Spirit’s power.
Let Christ now increase as we each decrease. Let us be who you make us, nothing more, or less or other than who we now are, in Christ.
Amen
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
It is not uncommon for those who believe in Jesus to still feel a serious level of guilt, shame or condemnation over past or current failures. We need to remind ourselves that there is no need for this. This is not to say that sin is OK and not to be dealt with. We need to repent, come to God again asking for forgiveness and taking our sin to the cross.
Have you fallen in the same way repeatedly? I want to be careful here as I write this, because I don’t want to be perceived as going easy on sin. But consider this additional passage, Matthew 18:21-22, where Peter asks about our need to forgive.
21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
God is not asking something from Peter or us, which he is not already doing himself. I believe this is one way we can look at the “is not condemned” phrase in John. When Christ died for our sins, he died for all of them – past, present and future. He gives us power to walk away from sin and the grace to walk in forgiveness at the same time.
In the words of Paul in Romans 8:1-3,
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.
Our sin is condemned but we are not.
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
One of the more remarkable things about this passage is that Jesus got baptized at all. If anyone had zero need for a baptism of repentance, it was Jesus. Matthew 3:15 adds the detail that Jesus said it was “to fulfill all righteousness,” but I confess I do not find it easy to say what that even means under the circumstances.
But I do see that many people were being baptized and they certainly saw that they needed a baptism of repentance, even if Jesus didn’t. At least some of Christ’s earliest disciples were first followers of John, who in turn saw himself as Christ’s forerunner. Finally, we also know from a later verse, Luke 7:30, that many Pharisees and lawyers did not receive the baptism of John.
Under the circumstances, we might at least see that Jesus did not want to be confused with self-satisfied Pharisees and lawyers. If there was to be any confusion, let it be that the sinless Son of God and Messiah went all the way in his identification with sinful humanity. A baptism of repentance? He submitted to it, just like so many of his followers. John, who was some kind of blood relative, saw Jesus outwardly and obviously supporting his ministry. Christ did everything he could to be “one of us.”
And isn’t that the great thing about him? God the Son emptied himself and he began his public ministry getting baptized by John.