John 3:1-21
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus
1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."
3In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
4"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
5Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
9"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
10"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? 11I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
Jesus taught Nicodemus about being reborn...Jesus teaches us we must be born twice to see the kingdom of heaven (verse 3)...Then He tells us no one can enter the kingdom unless he is born of water and the Spirit (verse 5)...
If we are born twice we might think we have two wombs we must pass to get to the kingdom of God...Nicodemus thought this, and his immediate thoughts were confusion...But if there are two wombs, the first womb was our mother's as we lived and grew in her womb for nine months as we awaited moving on to this world...We are first conceived...In the womb our mother is our lifeline...We started out a part of our father and a part of our mother...Then we grow from fractions of an ounce to our birth weight...Then we are born our birth heavier than our conception weight (we have grown) and we start a new life, our earthly life...While we were growing in our first womb our thoughts were babyish and premature...We did not know what was happening or going to happen...We depended on our mother and her womb completely in this nine month world in which we lived...But we did grow with her help...And we wanted to move on and get out out that world and into this world, because that is God's natural law, and that is what we are supposed to do...So although we did not know much, if anything about that first world in which we lived, we survived and moved on to our earthly world...We have only very limited knowledge, while we are in our mother's womb...We at our beginning and in our youngest of age must depend on our father and mother to see us through our youthful years...These are the two we must depend on...Then we come to an age that we are able to take of ourselves and move on...We may think we are independent, and we are independent if we only want to be born once and of this world...Even though we are independent and have access to books, information, and experience we more knowledge, but we still have a limited amount of knowledge...
Now Jesus says we are to be born again...So this world, to use an analogy, is our second womb...We do not know much about the next world, except what the Father and Son teach us...They are the two we now must depend on...If we are Christians and believers we are not independent, we are dependent on the Father and Son...We have much to learn in this second womb and it must be centered on God...That is what Jesus teaches...We need our Bibles to see us through this world to get on and into the next, the kingdom of God...Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life in this womb...No one can move on to the kingdom of God, except through Him...When we really know Jesus we will know the Father as well (John 14:6-7)...
God gave us nature and the natural laws...Gravity, the sun, the moon, the sky, all of our surroundings to help get us through and grow in this second world...We can observe the beautiful world around us and enjoy it, with all the invisible qualities of creation around us as we grow, or we can focus on the evil and the problems of pain that surround us...These natural laws make us grow and age...We do and will get older...We need to learn as we do grow...We have His Son, who is named Immanuel, which means God is with us (Matthew 1:23)...God is always near...He is not far from each one of us...God made all men of every nation from just one man, Adam...God determined that all men should inhabit the entire earth...God determined the exact places and the exact times where all men should live...God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us...In Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:25-28)...They give us unfettered free choice, to follow Them or not follow Them...The Two that we are most dependent upon teach love and are love...Their two greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart, your strength, your mind, and your soul, and love your neighbors as yourself (Mark 12:30-31)...One of Jesus' last commands, (that He says is a new command) to His twelve disciples was to love one another, as I have loved you, so you must love one another...By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another (John 13:34-35)...Our eternal lifeline is the Father and Son...
St. Paul tells us in his great definition of love that when he was a child he thought like a child and reasoned like a child...Perfection will come and our imperfections will go...We must put our childish ways behind us, and reason like men...And even though we are older we still only know part of what we want to fully know...Even though he knows the Scripture and met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he still does not fully know what is to come...When perfection comes (the kingdom of heaven) we will fully know the ways of this world and the times to come (1 Corinthians 13:10-12)...
The greatest thing we can do in this world to get to the next is love...