The Pharisee who was Born Again

During an election year, the thoughts of the American people turn to politics. Beginning in February with the primaries, stretching into the summer conventions, and climaxing with Election Day in November, we’re bombarded with the claims of the rival candidates. One of the complaints heard frequently is that underneath all the rhetoric there isn’t a great deal of difference between the two major parties in our nation. Whether you agree or not with that observation, the same could not have been said in the country where Jesus lived. For Judea had a number of parties which offered a wide range of options to the people.

They did not have elections of course, for they chafed under the domination of the Roman legions who occupied their country. But they did have parties, or sects which had widely differing religious and political views.

You had the Sadducees, who stood for the politics of accomodation. Their motto with regard to the Romans was “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” The Sadducees had come to terms with the Roman government and they had joined hands with them in ruling the country. They were urbane and sophisticated, the highly educated and refined Jews of their time. They were interested in bringing the best the world had to offer to their backward countrymen, and that happened to be Greek culture. And so the Sadducees sought to introduce a little more worldliness and sophistication to the people of Judea. Their only problem was that they never reached the man in the streets with their agenda. In spite of the fact that the Sadducees sat in the seats of power, they were never popular, for they did not represent the common man.

Then you had the Essenes, who represented the politics of isolation. The Essenes were deeply religious: so much so that they turned their back on the world. You see, they were convinced that their Judea was so sinful and worldly that the only option for a true Jew was to withdraw from it. And so the Essenes headed for the wilderness, where they built communes. Living together in these isolated and forbidding places, they waited for the coming Messiah. He would overthrow the Romans, judge the sinful and worldly Jews, and set up a kingdom with faithful ones like themselves in the chief places.

It so happens that archaeologists have uncovered one of the Essenes’ settlements in a place called Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. Today, if you visit Israel, you can go to this settlement to see how they lived. You will see the remains of rooms where they carefully copied the scrolls of Scripture. Dried ink still sits in the inkwells after 2000 years. They hid their precious scrolls in caves in the surrounding cliffs. In 1947, a young shepherd boy playing among these caves stumbled onto the scrolls - the Dead Sea Scrolls, which not only gave us our earliest manuscripts of the OT, but gave us some understanding of this strange group called the Essenes.

Then you had the Zealots, who stood for the politics of confrontation. Their goal was to be rid of the Romans and they were willing to go to any lengths to make it happen. They did not hesitate to use violence, intrigue, and deception to harrass the Roman occupation government. They were like the Irish Republican Army in the practice of terrorism. They saw themselves as freedom fighters who helped God do his work with the assassin’s knife. They refused to pay taxes, they refused to cooperate in any way with the government, they refused to use the Greek language of trade and commerce, and they harrassed anyone who did. One of Jesus’ own disciples, Simon, was a Zealot. One can only imagine the conversations he must have had around the campfire with someone like Matthew, who had been a tax-collector for the Romans!

Finally, you had the Pharisees, the most popular party of all. The Pharisees didn’t believe in accomodation, they didn’t believe in isolation, and they didn’t believe in confrontation. They believed in endurance. They believed that the Roman occupation was a judgment from God on the nation’s sin. And they believed that the way for the Jews to be restored was for them to redouble their efforts to observe the Jewish Law. If they could but endure the occupation and keep the Law, God would intervene and save them. So the Pharisees made it their business to study the Law, to interpret the Law, to keep the Law, and to enforce the Law. Josephus calls them “the most accurate exegetes of the Law.”

This viewpoint was a very popular one among the common people. They looked up to the Pharisees as holy men, as leaders of the Jewish people. And because they did, the Pharisees became very influential in politics. They weren’t collaborators like the Sadducees, they weren’t mystics like the Essenes, and they weren’t dangerous fanatics like the Zealots. They were experts in the Law of Moses. Popular teachers, called Rabbis, rose up among the Pharisees such as R. Hillel and R. Shimei and R. Gamaliel (all mentioned in the NT). They set up schools where they taught their followers the minutae of the Jewish Law. A young man named Saul of Tarsus became a disciple of R. Gamaliel. And he would have spent a lot of time developing interpretations of the Law to apply to every conceivable situation of life, for that is what Pharisees did.

But the only problem was what all this did to the Pharisees themselves. Because they were known as experts in the Law, and because they went to great lengths to personally observe the Law, they became proud and blind to their own sinfulness. They became so good at pointing out the sins of others, they overlooked their own. They looked down on the common people who would not or could not go to such religious lengths as they themselves did. They prayed loud and pious prayers of thanks that God had not caused them to born Gentiles, or born women, or born sinners. And their name - Pharisee - which means “separated one”, began to refer to the way they felt about everyone but themselves.

No wonder then that Jesus called them hypocrites. And no wonder that they hated him for pointing out their sin and inconsistency. Jesus said to them

Mark 7:6ff …”Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ”’ These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”

So it is with interest that we read in John 3 of one of their number, a man named Nicodemus, coming to meet with Jesus one night. Why did he come? Was it because he wanted to offer Jesus some bargain with the Pharisees’ party - a way of reaching some accord with this strange and powerful new teacher who didn’t seem to belong to any of the political parties. Or was it because he as a man was interested in Jesus’ message? We don’t know. All we know is that he came at night, perhaps to avoid detection.

John 3:2 He 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.”

Isn’t it interesting that Nicodemus acknowledged that Jesus really performed miracles? Some people today, 2000 years later and several thousand miles removed from the scene deny that Jesus did miracles. But not even the Pharisees, who were Jesus’ enemies denied it !

John 3:3 In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

Perhaps Nicodemus had come to talk to Jesus about the kingdom of God. Perhaps there is a part of that discussion that is omitted by John here. But whatever the reason for this abrupt response by Jesus, it cuts to the heart of Nicodemus’ own spiritual condition. Remember, the Pharisees felt that God’s kingdom would come if they all tried hard to obey the Law, and they had set themselves to do just that. They had been born right - they had been born Jews and they had been born men. And now all that remained for them to see the kingdom of God was for them to keep the Law. Nicodemus, a man who seems to have been one of the leading Pharisees, was a man who was religious from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. And Jesus said that he wouldn’t see the kingdom of God unless he was born again.

Jesus was saying to Nicodemus “You’re in the wrong family. You weren’t born right after all. It doesn’t matter that you were born a male Jew. Doesn’t even matter that you are a Pharisee, and a religious man. You’ve got to be born again. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be born again.

This is an expression which has come in today’s world to mean almost anything and thus almost nothing. I remember reading an interview with a famous basketball player for the Boston Celtics who later became a tv commentator. He was describing a recent visit he had made to his old high school. As he walked through those halls, reminiscing about his youth and the many good memories that were there, he said that an overpowering religious experience came over him and that he was born again. We hear the testimonies of Hollywood celebrities who have an emotional catharsis, a sense of new beginnings, and they claim that they have been born again. This is not what the Bible means when it talks about being born again. Let’s see how the Bible itself explains it.

John 1:12-14 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The issue in being born again is not how you feel. It is not an emotional experience that you have had. It is whether or not you receive Jesus Christ. These verses say as clearly and simply as it is possible to put into words that when you receive Jesus Christ and believe in him, you become a child of God. You are born of God, you are born into God’s family. That’s a spiritual birth - that’s being born again.

Nicodemus was confused. He didn’t understand. He thought that Jesus was talking about physical birth. So Jesus elaborated…

John 3:5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.

So being born again, and thus being able to enter the kingdom of God involves being born of water and the Spirit. But what does that mean?

The part about being born of the Spirit is fairly clear. One of the works of the Holy Spirit is to give believers spiritual life and to bring them into the family of God. Jesus says as much in the following verses…

John 3:6-8 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The 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.”

A few years ago, Long Island felt the brunt of Hurricane Gloria. All over the Island, the effects of that big wind storm were felt in very real, very tangible ways. Trees were knocked down. Power blackouts occurred. Huge waves rolled in from the ocean, washing out beaches and roads. Even though the wind itself was invisible, it produced obvious effects.

In the same way, when we are born of the Spirit of God, we have a real change take place in our lives, even though the workings of the Spirit are not something we can see. The Spirit makes us alive to God, gives us a new desire to know God and to obey God - a new hunger for God. The Spirit begins to make changes in our behavior, taking away old habits and sins and replacing them with the fruit of the Spirit. This is what it means to be regenerated. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is the agent of spiritual regeneration:

Titus 3:5-6 God saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit

and we learn in 1 Cor. 12:13 that it is by the Spirit’s work that we gain entrance into the Church, the Body of Christ

1 Corinthians 12:13 For we were all baptized (that is, placed) `by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

So it is clear that we need to be born of the Spirit to be truly born again. But what does Jesus mean when he says in v.5 that we must also be born of water? Well this is something that theologians have been discussing for centuries, and there are many viewpoints.

Some say that it refers to the waters of physical birth - the waters which break when a baby is about to be born. In other words, Jesus is saying that just as you are born physically, so you must also be born spiritually in order to enter the kingdom. But that seems too obvious - it goes without saying that if you want to see the kingdom of God, you must first be born physically.

Others say that it refers to the rite of Christian baptism, and they would make water baptism a necessary ingredient of salvation. Now as important as water baptism is, the Scripture clearly does not teach that it is necessary to a person’s salvation. If it did teach it, then every place in the Bible you read about how to get saved would have to mention baptism. Like John 1:12 and 3:16 and Acts16:31 and Romans 10:9 and all the other verses that tell us how to get saved. None of them say you have to be baptized. Because baptism is a sign of discipleship - a way of telling the world that you belong to Jesus. But you belong to Jesus because you place your trust in him and his work on the Cross to save you. You receive him by faith and are saved. So your salvation is his doing - it doesn’t depend on your observing a ritual like baptism. If it does, then that makes your salvation dependent on your doing the right thing and that would be a salvation based on human works.

Let me tell you what I think the water refers to in John 3:5. I believe that it refers to the Word of God, the Scriptures. And I believe that because elsewhere in Scripture, the Bible refers to itself as water - water which cleanses us and purifies us.

Ephesians 5:25-26 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,

Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.

The blood with which our hearts are sprinkled is the blood of Jesus Christ and the water that our bodies are washed with is the Word of God. But the verse which really clinches it for me is a verse which states that the Word of God is one of the agents in our being born again.

1 Peter 1:23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

So there are two things necessary to our being born again: the Spirit of God and the Word of God. Without the Word of God, there is no Good News to respond to, and without the Spirit of God, we have no power to respond. Both are necessary.

We do not know what happened to Nicodemus on this night he spoke with Jesus. However we do know what happened to him eventually. We see him again in John 7, where we read about a controversy among the Pharisees over what to do about Jesus. Some wanted to arrest him and lock him up, or worse. But we read that Nicodemus stands up and says that, according to the Law, Jesus should be given a hearing before being condemned. His colleagues turn on him and say “What? Are you from Galilee too?” Had Nicodemus decided to be a follower of Jesus at this point? We don’t know.

But we see him in Scripture one more time. It is at the Cross.

John 19:39ff Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

So Nicodemus had become a follower of Jesus! How else to explain the fact that a leading Pharisee got involved in the burial of a man who had been executed as a common criminal?

There are early church traditions about Nicodemus, and an apocryphal gospel bears his name. Legend has it that he was persecuted for being a Christian and ultimately banished from Jerusalem. Though you never hear much about it, you would think that he would have been one of the key witnesses concerning the facts of the Resurrection, since along with Joseph, he helped bury Jesus. Wouldn’t the Pharisees have been interested in interviewing him to establish just how and where this missing body had been buried?

Whatever Nicodemus’ ultimate fate, I believe that we’ll meet him in heaven - a Pharisee who had been born again. But the important question this morning is “Will you be there?”