When I hear the name “Nicodemus” the first thing that comes to mind is a cartoon rat. I think back to when I was little and my sister and I would watch “The Secret of NIMH”. He was a wise old prophet in this community of rats and mice that the movie centers around. He knows everything.
Nicodemus from the scriptures, while not a cartoon rat, was a learned man. He is called a “man of the Pharisees”, a “ruler of Jews” and a “teacher of Israel.” He was someone respected in the community, someone who knew what he was talking about when he was in conversation with Jesus. And even though he had studied the Hebrew scriptures and was committed to the Jewish faith, he still had struggles understanding how this new life and rebirth could happen.
What the Jews had been waiting for in their Messiah, their Savior, wassomeone who would conquer the Roman oppressors and restore Israel to its former glory. But Jesus is talking with Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a well-informed man, and he is telling Nicodemus that in order to see the Kingdom of God, people must be born again from above.
Nicodemus is confused and confounded by this news. And Jesus returns his confusion by asking him how he could possibly NOT understand. Jesus says, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not know these things?”
We don’t know how Nicodemus reacted to what Jesus said to him. We don’t know if he was ashamed or hurt, if he was angry or upset, or if he was able to accept Jesus’ critique and realize that even with all he knew, or thought he knew, that Jesus still had insight to teach him.
I hope that he stuck around to hear what Jesus had to say next, the nugget that Jesus shared, because it’s really important. But even though that little nugget of truth is important, it’s also confusing, something that people have been trying to figure out and fully understand for the last 2000 years. It’s a verse that most of you could probably say from memory, and even if you can’t, you know that many people hold it up as the summary of the Gospel and Christ’s purpose on Earth.
That little nugget, the “Gospel in a nutshell” as some like to call it, is John 3:16, and it says, “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.” And the next verse is, I believe, equally important and impactful. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
It seems like a simple enough idea. There aren’t a lot of confusing words, but when we start to think about it and try to dissect it, we can start to become confused. If you break it down, it goes like this:
- God Loves the world
- God loves the world so much that God gave us His ONLY Son, Jesus. The greatest gift that God has was given to the world.
- Anyone, and everyone, who believes in Jesus, that He is God’s Son, won’t perish, but instead they will have eternal life.
God loves us, and loves us so much that we were given the greatest gift in the history of Creation, the Son of God, so that we would be able to have eternal life. All that is asked of us is that we believe in Jesus Christ, that we believe He is God’s only Son, and that He was given to the world to save the world. That is the Gospel in a nutshell.
So often we try to make our faith out to be more complicated than it is, than it has to be. Especially nowadays when we have so many complex ideas in our world.
We can look at the building blocks of life, look right down to our DNA and determine what makes our bodies function the way they do, why a tree grows the way it does, how food is converted into energy. And those realizations are wonderful. They help us to cure disease, to save lives, to protect and care for the earth and the environment.
And so we don’t really know what to do with simple ideas anymore. We look at those two verses from John and we say, “It can’t really be that simple, can it? There have to be more steps. There has to be more to the process.”
We just can’t wrap our minds around the possibility that God would’ve given us a simple and direct way to be restored to our relationships with Him. It’s like we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t value something or believe it can produce a good result if it’s simple or has very few steps.
I recently discovered the TV show “The Great British Bake Off”. Every season they have 12 or 13 amateur bakers come together to show off their skills in different ways. There are 3 rounds each week: The Signature Dish, The Technical, and the Showstopper.
During the technical round, each baker is given the same ingredients and recipe. The instructions are direct and clear, but not always as detailed or as complicated as the bakers would like.
For example, the recipe might say combine the flour, sugar, eggs, and butter together. For someone like me, I’m going to read that, take all those ingredients and dump them in a bowl to mix together. But then again, I have a VERY limited knowledge of baking.
But the bakers on the show look at the recipe and say things like, “There’s no way you do it like that. Why wouldn’t you add them one at a time? Do you mix them together or fold them together or beat them together?”
I’m sure that there are reasons that they are asking these questions, because they all have lots of experience and understand the intricate techniques and processes of baking. But they might have an easier time of it if they just took the recipe at its word. They wouldn’t have to spend time stressing about whether they are doing it exactly right and just make the cake or scones or bread.
Accepting the Gospel message of God and following the simple instructions that we are given is much like that. We are told that God loves us, God loves the world, and because of that, Jesus Christ was sent to us, given to us so that we could believe in Him and have eternal life. Christ wasn’t sent to earth to condemn humanity, but to save the world. But we don’t like it being that simple.
Adults in particular struggle with this. There is good reason that Scripture tells us to have faith like a child, to take God at His word, accept His promises. When a child is told “I love you” by their parents, the child doesn’t look at them and say, “But why do you love me? That makes no sense. It can’t be that easy. It can’t be that simple. There must be some catch to you telling me you love me.”
Childlike faith and trust is often dismissed as “not knowing any better”. Love is turned down or questioned because there isn’t an answer to the question “Why do you love me?” We miss out on the eternal life given by God because we can’t accept something so simple for the answer to the question “How can I be saved?”
We even go so far as to outright reject or ridicule people who have that child-like faith. They are deemed to be simpletons or people who have been duped. “They just heard that once and accepted it as truth? That’s so dumb and naïve. They can’t be trusted if they were so easily taken in by those ridiculous ideas.” And sometimes it can even become dangerous for those who believe.
I finished a novel last week called The Sin Eater. I had read it before when I was in college, mostly because the title intrigued me, as did the concept of a sin eater. Now this novel is purely fictional, but centuries ago, the practice of a sin eater was observed in areas of Scotland, Wales, and England.
The story is set in the 1850’s in rural Appalachia. This community of first and second generation Scottish immigrants have settled in this valley nestled deep in the mountains, very cut off from outsiders. They believe in God and Jesus, but their understanding is more that God and Christ will judge us harshly for our sins, and the idea of forgiveness or salvation through Christ isn’t really a core part of their beliefs.
Instead of the idea that Christ is the Savior, Christ is seen as the judge. So if these people don’t want to spend eternity wandering the hills of the valley, unable to be welcomed by God after they died, their sins must be taken away by the Sin Eater.
When someone dies, the sin eater is summoned to take on their sins through a ceremony where he eats bread and drinks wine, and then takes the person’s sins upon himself and will suffer the consequences of those sins with his own soul. He is regarded as a cursed man, that his soul has been condemned. He is the scapegoat of the community, the one offered up for everyone else and for their sins.
When the novel begins, this process has been taking place for decades in this little mountain valley, and it is accepted because it makes sense. To their understanding, people are sinners, we do wrong, and if we have any hope of being in the presence of God come Judgement Day, we have to have our sins paid for, and they have to be taken away.
Those ideas were all accepted, and so the solution of performing a ritual to take them away makes sense. And because they can’t just simply disappear, there has to be some sort of sacrifice or payment made. In this case, the soul of the Sin Eater.
The main character of the story is a young girl named Cadi. She is intensely curious about the Sin Eater and does everything within her power to find him and understandhow he takes people’s sins away. To her, it doesn’t make sense as to why he has to be the one to take the sins of everyone upon his own soul, or why no one else is allowed to interact with him, touch him, or even look at him.
As she searches for more information for the reasoning behind the Sin Eater, she comes across a stranger who has entered their valley. When she gets closer to the man, she can hear him talking. At first she thinks that he’s having a fit or that he’s crazy, but she listens closer and becomes curious about him and what he’s saying.
She doesn’t know it yet, but he is praising God, quoting scriptures, and praying aloud, and that he has come to the valley to share the Gospel with the people who live there.
Eventually, Cadi and her friend Fagan sit down with the stranger and hear the saving message of the Gospel. They are changed in their hearts and souls, and they accept the message that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that Christ came to save the world, not condemn it. They believe and are both baptized, and they go back to the valley to share the Good News with everyone they know.
But they are just children, 10 and 15, and since the message came from “the stranger”, the leaders of the clan don’t welcome the message that Cadi and Fagan have accepted as truth, as salvation, as the actual way to remove sins and have reconciliation with God.
The clan leaders are convinced that they know what’s best and want to continue on with the ways of man, the ways that they understand. I won’t tell you anymore and ruin the story for you, but I recommend you read the book for yourself.
This type of situation happens all over the world, all the time. People hear the Gospel, they hear the simple promise given by God, shared by Jesus Christ and His followers, and they believe and are saved. But others, often those who are in control and benefit from people relying on human power, don’t want to accept the message of the Gospel or have others follow it.
There are many excuses that are used to discredit the Gospel or reject it. “It’s too simple to be effective or life-changing. It’s not complex enough to be powerful or influential. When you dig further into it, it’s weird or confusing. There have been too many people who have taken the Good News and distorted it for vengeful, hurtful, or oppressive purposes.”
How can we possibly believe something so simple and yet outlandish, something so clear and direct yet also contradictory and confusing? Strangely enough, I’ve got an answer to that question. And it’s probably the answer you’re thinking of.
Faith. Faith is the answer. Have faith that God loves the world. Have faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Have faith that God desires for EVERYONE to not perish but to have eternal life. Have faith that Christ’s purpose and the point of following Christ, of embracing Jesus as your savior, is not to protect our souls from condemnation, but to be saved and to celebrate eternal life andreconciliation with God.
Salvation is not meant to be complicated. It isn’t meant to confuse us. It is meant to be accepted and appreciated, meant to be shared with everyone in the world. But many of us simply can’t accept it outright.
Because of our human nature or our resistance to depending on anything other than ourselves, we question and dissect and search for more complex understanding before we are willing to believe.
Some people might say that to question salvation or Christ’s sacrifice or God’s love is to demean God or reject Christ. But questioning is good. It helps us to understand, to stand firm in our faith, to share with others what we have received through faith.
In the story I mentioned, Cadi is intrigued as soon as she talks to the stranger. But it takes her a few nights of returning and listening before she comes to a fuller understanding and is able to share her faith with other people.
I hope that Nicodemus was able to go through a similar process in his conversation with Christ. I hope he was able hear the Good News of Jesus Christ and accept it, but that he also wanted to know more in order to have a fuller faith and be able to share it with others.
We have the nutshell, which is where it all starts. We have been told that God loves the world, and loves the world enough that He gave His Only Son, who was Jesus Christ, so that everyone who believes in Jesus would not be judged but be saved and receive eternal life, because Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, but to save the world.
That’s the seed that all other parts of faith and understanding come from. It’s what we take and plant and nurture so that it can grow and benefit not only ourselves, but also everyone around us.
So take that message of the Good News, trust in the words of Christ and message of the Gospel. With the faith of a child accept the salvation that is freely offered to all. Ask questions to learn more so that we can stand up for our faith in a world that doesn’t always want to accept the miracle that comes from a simple little nutshell.
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