Born Again to an Abundant Life

Transcript

And I have the immense privilege of preaching God’s word this morning. Wanted to wish a very, very happy Mother’s Day to all the moms. We are grateful for you. We’re encouraged by you. And for me personally, it’s incredibly sweet to see you loving your children, investing into them, caring for them. And I said this to my mom this morning, and I think it’s really true. You all have the unique privilege of, in a very real way, putting on display God’s love for your children. Teaching them what it looks like to care for their souls, to care for them, to provide for them, to invest into them, and to help shape them. So very happy Mother’s Day to you all. We’re grateful for you all, and we love you all. We’re happy you’re a part of our church body. Friends, if you have a Bible, I want to invite you to open to John chapter 3.

We’re going to be looking at the first 21 verses of John 3. And if you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be one in the chair in front of you. It’s normally called a pew Bible, but we don’t have pews, so a chair Bible here at Trinity. And if you don’t have a Bible at home, I want to invite you to take that pew Bible, that chair Bible home with you, and it’ll be our gift to you. We want to invite you to encourage you to read it, to study it, and to come to love God’s word. I see some of you have moved around a little bit. You’re not sitting in your normal seats. Usually when I’m preaching, there’s like some key spots that I go where, you know, I get like a smile and a nod, and now I have to look at different places.

The Word of God

So if you could all just smile and nod for me just over the course of the sermon, that would be great. If you’ve opened your Bibles to John 3, I’d like to invite you to stand for the reading of God’s word. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you’re a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he’s old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit,

he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. Nicodemus said to him, how can these things be? Jesus answered him, are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who has descended from heaven, the son of

man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 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. 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. And this is the judgment, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. This is the word of the Lord, saints. Please be seated. Pray with me. Father, would you speak to us from your word? Would you make it abundantly clear that Jesus, your son, is worthy of all praise and glory and honor and it is only through him that we can have life and have it in abundance. It’s in his name we pray, amen. Surveys spanning the last five years show that roughly 60 to 64 percent of Americans currently call themselves a Christian. That’s quite a decrease over the last 50 years or so, but roughly 60 to 64 percent of Americans would consider themselves to be Christian. Within those 60 to 64 percent, roughly 60 percent consider themselves to be born again.

What that remaining 40 percent considers to be a Christian, it’s unclear. Now looking at a variety of surveys from the last couple of years of Christian life to try to understand who these people are, what they believe, we see that over 50 percent of American Protestants believe that abortion should be legal. Over 40 percent of evangelicals don’t believe that Jesus was God. Nearly 60 percent believe that homosexuality is not a sin. Over 50 percent don’t believe the Bible to be literally true. Over 50 percent believe that the God they worship also accepts the worship of Jews and Muslims and the list goes on and on and on with horrible statistic after horrible statistic. So what is a born-again Christian? What does it mean to be born again? What does Jesus mean when he says, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God?

This is shocking because that means that those 40 percent or so of people who consider themselves Christians by their own admission cannot see the kingdom of God. Why are they Christian? What does that even mean for them? Is being born again just a religious identifier? Does it actually mean something? Does being born again make the Christian man or woman something different than what they were before they were born again? Spoiler alert, it most certainly does. I would dare to say that the way the born-again Christian thinks about themselves, the way they think about and relate to Jesus, what their battle with sin, what their striving for holiness looks like is a night and day, no, a life and death difference between the old man and the new man, the unregenerate and the regenerate self. Last Sunday when we were studying God’s word from John 2, verses 12 through 25, we looked

at the topic of worship. And here in 3, 1 through 21, that topic continues and follow the flow. Defiled religion and impure worship as was seen in the temple, which stemmed out of man’s heart which Jesus could see and said it was all bad, wickedness and sin in man’s heart requires a new birth, an all-new person. And that’s what Jesus is trying to explain to Nicodemus in our text. There’s a connection between the last verses of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3. There’s this flow. And I would encourage you, by the way, I was chatting with Pastor Samuel the other day and he kind of mentioned how really it was super, super helpful for him to read the gospel of John in its entirety, from chapter 1 through to the end. And I would encourage you, if you have a chance, just sit down.

It’ll take you a couple hours, but sit down and just read through the whole gospel of John in its entirety. Hear it in one continuous flow and just make those connections in the text from one chapter to the next, from half of a chapter to the end of that chapter. It’ll be super helpful for you. But notice that flow from the end of chapter 2 into chapter 3. Here we’re told that Jesus knows what’s in man’s heart. We see him having these various encounters beginning in chapter 3 with people where his conversations and his interactions with them, it pierces the heart. It goes right for the essence of who they are and what they’re asking, what they’re talking about, what they want from this teacher. And it all begins right here with this conversation with Nicodemus. The one who knows what is in man goes beyond this religious leader’s question to point

Man’s Greatest Need

him to what it is that he really, really needs. What it is that all of us truly needs. And so as we look at our text, we’re going to look at it in two sections. In verses 1 through 13, we’re going to look at man’s greatest need. And in verses 14 through 21, we’ll see God’s gracious provision. Let’s take a look first at verses 1 through 13. In the beginning of our chapter, we meet Nicodemus, this incredibly interesting figure in the New Testament. Nicodemus was no ordinary religious leader. The text says he was of the Pharisees. He was a ruler of the Jews. And this would have meant that this person was incredibly important. Like in that time, in that culture, this was not just like some dude. This was not just some religious guy that kind of like strolls up and has a conversation

with Jesus because he’s curious about faith. This was a very, very important influential person. When it says that he’s a ruler of the Jews, this would have meant that he was one of the highly regarded 70 Jewish leaders who, along with the high priest, would have composed the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin is essentially like the Jewish equivalent to the Supreme Court, the ruling body, the governing body of Israel. This is who determines what’s right, what’s wrong, what you can or can’t do, who’s allowed to teach, who isn’t, who’s in, who’s out. He was very authoritative. And to be considered a part of the Sanhedrin, to be considered a teacher of that caliber, he would have been trained from the time that he was a child to know the scriptures in and out. Excuse me. Note to self, do not gesticulate wildly. He would have known everything in the scriptures.

He would have been well-versed with these things that Jesus is talking about, with these illusions that Jesus is making to the Old Testament scriptures, to what the people should know, to how they should be worshiping. Nicodemus is a very important person. He doesn’t have to answer to a lot of people. There’s not really many people that these 70 have to answer to. They kind of just roll through life doing what they know to be best, knowing what they know to be right. Why did he come to Jesus? And more importantly, why did he come to Jesus under the cover of darkness? Was he just busy? He didn’t have enough time during the day? Was he maybe embarrassed to be seen with Jesus, to be talking with this subversive religious leader? It’s not clear from the text, but it seems that this may have been a covert interrogation

because he uses the word we. He’s coming on behalf of somebody. It seems like he wanted to know something about Jesus, but not be seen with him. He wanted to have a chance to poke some holes in this new teacher’s ministry, if there were some holes to be poked. And so he starts with this very interesting introduction to this conversation, Rabbi, teacher, we know you are a teacher come from God. Now, this is a significant statement. This is a weighty, weighty statement. He’s essentially speaking for the ruling class over the Jewish people, the people of God, the people who have the scriptures, who have everything that they need. And he says, we know you’re from God. They recognize Jesus as something special. They recognize Jesus as something unique. This is not just an itinerant preacher. When he acknowledges that Jesus is a rabbi or a teacher, it’s almost as if he’s saying,

hey, we’re prepared to welcome you into this little thing we’re doing here. You’re kind of a big deal. We see that you’re having an impact. You’re moving things around. Fill us in. What’s going on? Are you one of us? Are you with us? Are you against us? This is a huge honor for a Jew of that time. Any teacher would have killed to have one of the Sanhedrin come to him and say, we recognize that you are special. Jesus, we know what you’re doing. We hear what you’re saying. We’re intrigued. The affirmation of Jesus is both theological and personal. We know who you are and we know what you’re teaching. And when Nicodemus offers Jesus this great compliment, when he offers him this honor of being recognized as a rabbi sent by God, Jesus doesn’t even acknowledge what’s being said. Instead, he goes straight for the heart of Nicodemus.

Remember, he knows what is in man. He says, truly, truly, in essence, what he’s saying is as surely as something can be said as true as something can be, no one sees the kingdom of God apart from being born again. An objective truth claim, matter of fact, doesn’t address the compliment, doesn’t address the other things Nicodemus is saying. And when Nicodemus asks his clarifying question in verse four, you have to remember this isn’t like some dumb man that doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This isn’t a person who’s lacking in intelligence to wrap his head around the argument. What he’s saying isn’t a question of not understanding. He’s highly educated. He’s well-versed in the word of God and yes, yet he asks a silly question and then he does it in a mocking tone. He does it in a joking tone. I mean, read it again.

Verse four, how can a man be born when he’s old? What is he going to go back into the womb? He makes a joke here, but Jesus responds to him as dead serious. Jesus tells Nicodemus, Nicodemus, you know, no one is born right. No one is born a Christian. No one is born standing before God right and ready to enter heaven. Being born into a Christian family doesn’t offer a person salvation. Just like being born a Jew at the time of Jesus would have brought you into the community, but it didn’t save you. It didn’t make you righteous. Born of the flesh means headed for death. Born of the flesh means born dying in need of new birth, in need of new life. And we see this in the scriptures, Romans three, citing Psalm 14 and Psalm 53, none is righteous. They are not one.

No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Kids, I want to speak to you for a second. If you were born into a Christian family, this is an incredible gift. It’s such a gift to be born into a Christian family, to be born to Christian parents. This is, I mean, we rejoice seeing kids. We rejoice hearing kids in our church. I love seeing you all here. I love seeing that you’re listening. This is a massive gift that your parents love Jesus, but it doesn’t make you a Christian. The Lord has been very kind to you. The Lord has pushed you along the way. He’s given you what you need to know. He’s putting you in the context of hearing the gospel at home and at church and interacting with other Christians.

This is such a gift. But just like your parents needed to be born again, so do you. Jesus says very clearly, by birth, none of us attain it. None of us have it. None of us are right. We all need salvation. We all need to be born again. Me, your parents, and you. And then in verse five, when Jesus continues this argument, when he fleshes this out further, he says, one must be born of water and the spirit. What’s he talking about here? Theologians and Bible scholars disagree on what this could mean with some saying that he’s referring to water baptism, some saying that this wouldn’t be the case because the Jewish religious leader wouldn’t understand that, and it seems like he’s saying something that Nicodemus should have understood. Some say they just don’t know. Others, generally in kind of the theologically liberal crowd, would say that the mention

of water here likely wasn’t even mentioned in the original context or in the original text. It was added at a later date after Christian teaching had been developed, some years later. By the way, there’s no good evidence of this. If you come across this argument or if you read this in a commentary, get a new commentary. This is just terrible exegesis. This is terrible church history. This is not what happened. What seems to make the most sense and what would be in line with what Nicodemus could understand, and remember, Jesus is saying to him and he’s asking, aren’t you the teacher that should get these things? He’s saying it in this context. What Nicodemus would understand is that essentially Jesus is talking about the need for purification, the need to be cleansed, the need to be made pure. He says in order for a person to see the kingdom of God, this person needs to be cleansed of

their impurity, cleansed of their sin. They must receive a new spirit. They must receive a new nature. And this is what would have been spoken of by the Old Testament prophets who regularly spoke of Israel’s rebellion, who regularly spoke of Israel’s hard-heartedness, their empty worship. And the most obvious reference in Nicodemus’ mind should have gone straight to Ezekiel chapter 36. And in Ezekiel 36 verses 24 through 27, we read the following, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone and your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. He’s showing that the promises of God from the prophets that he sent to his people are coming to pass in the person of Jesus. The time for their fulfillment is now. Nicodemus, this is what you’ve been waiting for. Nicodemus, this is what you’ve been reading about. This is what you’ve been studying. Jesus is saying he will cleanse his people. He will make them new. He will give them his spirit. This was always the plan, saints, for God to make a new people for himself. Jeremiah 31 verses 31 through 34, behold, the days are coming. This is the new covenant declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers

on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke though I was their husband declares the Lord for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the Lord for they shall all know me. From the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. God’s plan was always to make for himself a new people, to save them, to give them new hearts, to give them his spirit. Do you see friends?

Jesus is pointing this out to the religious leader who knew the scriptures and who should have seen what God was doing and when he heard Jesus, he should have recognized him because his mind should have just been shooting in every direction through the scriptures like he said this, he’s doing this, these are the miracles, it’s him, he’s come, he’s arrived. But he missed it. What this section isn’t saying and what Jesus isn’t teaching is baptismal regeneration, which in short is being saved by water baptism. The one way, the way that one is saved is not by doing this or that. It’s not by attaining salvation but rather by placing their faith in Jesus, the faith which itself is a gift from God, which we read in Ephesians 2.8. They are then saved through his efficacious work on the cross. That’s how a person is saved.

It’s not by doing something, it’s not by attaining something, it’s not by accomplishing or reaching, it’s by grace through faith in Jesus. Jesus then speaking of the wind blowing wherever it wants is kind of a play on words. In Greek, the word for spirit is pneuma, it also means breath or wind and in Hebrew, that word is ruach. I wanted to show off a little bit in my pronunciation, that’s all I got. Also meaning spirit but also meaning wind or breath. He’s saying there’s nothing you can do, Nicodemus, to make yourself born again. It has to happen to you. Just like you can’t control or even really predict the blowing of the wind. Just like Lazarus couldn’t raise himself from the dead, how could any of us? If we’re dead in our trespasses and sins, how do we stop being that? God has to do it for us.

When we’re born again, it’s not that we’re improved, we’re made completely new from dead to alive. Each of us, dear saints, needs more than forgiveness, more than cleansing. We need to be made new. Jesus is saying in this portion of Scripture that there’s a requirement for those of us who would be called children of God and that requirement is from outside of you. He has to change you. He has to make you alive. He has to call you. He has to give you a new heart. R.C. Sproul says this wonderful thing, I just loved reading it, when he’s talking about God coming to the funeral of your soul and raising you from the dead. This was what the entry of the Christian life looked like when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus and it’s what it looks like now. This is the only way. This is the only way into God.

It’s worth noting that this new person, it doesn’t happen all at once and if you’re hearing this and you’re feeling a little bit discouraged, like oh man, if I’m supposed to be brand new, why is there still sin? Why am I still struggling? Why am I still, you know, spinning my wheels at times? Why am I repeating some of those sin patterns? Why did I get angry at my kids this morning? Why did I, whatever, I’m right there with you. I hate my sin. I do. It doesn’t happen all at once, positionally, legally, you are made right before God at the point of salvation, saved and secure in God’s hands forever. But the process of being made more and more into the image of Christ is just that. It’s a process. If you think it happens all at once and you don’t see that happening, you’re going to

God’s Gracious Provision

feel discouraged. You’re going to feel like you’re messing up and you might well be, but it’s not because you’re not born again, necessarily. There’s this beautiful thing for you to consider and it’s the doctrine of progressive sanctification. God, through the regular means of grace, through the church, through other people, through his word, the Spirit’s work in your heart makes you more and more and more like Jesus. But it all begins with a new birth. So beloved, what’s man’s greatest need? To be born again. To be given a new heart, to be made brand new, to be brought back to life. Without this, each of us will perish. You will. But thanks be to God for he is gracious. He abounds in love and he has provided for our greatest need. So look with me to verses 14 and 21 where we see God’s gracious provision.

Let’s reread these verses. These are phenomenally powerful, potent portion of scripture, beginning from verse 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 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. 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. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest

his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. As we consider God’s gracious, abundant provision for us, we consider it in light of the fact that we didn’t ask for it. We didn’t seek it out. We didn’t want him. We didn’t want his kindness. It’s not like we were chasing after him and finally he’s just like, all right, fine. You’ve asked enough. Here you go. He pursued us. He sought us out. We were running from him. We wanted death and darkness and he pursued us. It’s one thing to be kind to someone. It’s another thing altogether to pursue someone with kindness as they actively reject you, reject what you have to offer and hate you for doing the good thing to them. God pursued us.

How do we know this to be true? We’ll look again at verses 18 through 20. How is the unbeliever described in our passage? How do we see the unbeliever, the non-Christian, the one who’s hasn’t been born again, condemned, not believing in the son, already judged, loving the darkness, doing evil, seeking to hide the wickedness we do. We’re not only doing evil, but we’re also seeking to make it look like we’re good in the process. This is the group from which God saves people. This is the group from which God makes his people brand new and a picture of his son to a world that needs salvation. We were all doomed, friends. Apart from the work of God, apart from his saving grace, apart from his intervention, apart from his plucking us off the path to hell, we’re doomed. Every single one of us, none is righteous.

And that’s what we see in this latter section in the verses 14 through 21. We see a kind God, a merciful God, relentlessly pursuing sinners, showing love like we could never imagine. Verse 14 is referencing Numbers chapter 21, verses 4 through 9, and you might be wondering to yourself as we read through this section, well, why is Jesus talking about the serpent and the lifting up and all of that? What was happening in Numbers 21, verses 4 through 9 is when the Israelites, while wandering through the wilderness, started grumbling again and rebelling against God, God sent fiery serpents among the people, and many got bit and died. And so they get tired of their rebellion real quick, and they go to Moses and they plead with him, hey, okay, we’re sorry. We messed up. We get it. We shouldn’t have done that. Can you please just ask God to take the serpents away?

Can you just fix this whole situation? This is bad. This is scary. This is dangerous. And so Moses goes to God and he prays and God tells him, make a bronze serpent and put it up on a pole. And if anybody in Israel is bitten by one of these serpents and is dying, all they have to do is look to the bronze serpent on the pole. Believe that life is available and they’ll be saved. They won’t die. Jesus is saying, do you remember what happened to the people in the wilderness? Do you remember the ones who were bitten by snakes and who all they had to do was look to the serpent to live? Do you remember the story of the salvation that God offered to the Israelites? And then he uses this language that can be understood in a couple of different ways.

He uses the term lifted up, which can mean literally physically lifted up like the serpent was propped up on this pole, but it can also mean exalted or elevated. And so Jesus is saying, just like the lifting up of the serpent gave life to the perishing Israelites, so will my exaltation. So will me being glorified, offer eternal life to those who come to me in faith. And how does this happen? When I’m lifted up on the cross to die in the place of sinners, the bronze serpent was placed upon a pole likely made of wood and all the Israelites had to do was believe that God would save them and look, look to the serpent. And so the son of man must be placed upon a cross of wood and those who look to him and believe that God will save them from their sins.

If they would just put their trust in him, not in themselves, they’ll be saved. The poison of sin, which is killing each and every person born of the flesh, as we saw in verse six, it needs a solution. It needs healing and the hope of healing and life is in the cross of Christ. This all happens by God having to do something, by getting the process underway, and that is to send his one and only son into a world of sinners. And why? Love. Look, we can theologize and I’ve been around a lot of theological debates, and it can get complicated real quick. You can’t escape the fact that in this verse, God loved sinners. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. God loved. At the center of this love of God for sinners, at the center of this salvation that’s offered

to rebels is God, holy and perfect. No one other than Jesus has ever lived the kind of life that it would take to see and know and relate to God in the right way, because the demand is perfection. To miss this is to miss God’s love. If we don’t see a holy and a righteous God, that’s very, very different from us. You miss the fact that he sent his son to die for you. You miss the fact that his love is well beyond what we can wrap our heads around. To miss this is to miss our need for God’s love, to miss our need for his salvation. He abounds in love. Without that love and mercy and grace, there’s no way we could ever get to know him. There’s no way we could ever understand this message. There’s no way that we could ever see our need of him.

In love, this holy God found a way. He went beyond space and time. He worked through all circumstances. He made it happen. Why? Because of love. The world in our text is all the perishing people on our planet, all those in need of salvation. And to be clear, this isn’t speaking of universal salvation. This isn’t saying that everybody’s going to be saved. This isn’t saying the whole world doesn’t really matter. God just kind of swipes them all up and saves them all. Not everyone will be saved. Rather, God loved the world so much that he sent his son to save his people from all over the world, from every people and tribe and tongue, a deep, profound love. Do you understand, friend, the profundity of God’s love? Don’t get so used to John 3.16 that you just kind of blankly recite it, just rote memorization,

and for some reason we all recite it in the King James Version, whosoever. We get old English real quick when reciting this verse, but it’s so easy to miss the love of God and how massive and overwhelming it is. Because we’ve gotten used to this verse, God creates a people in his image. He gives them life and joy and fellowship with him. And what do those people do? They rebel against him. They choose sin. They choose autonomy. And then God, in pursuing these people, calls a pagan idolater to himself named Abram. He shows him grace. He makes a nation from that pagan to be the people of God through whom the whole world would be blessed. And those people, what do they do? They regularly disobey. They regularly pull away from God. They regularly rebel. They regularly worship false deities. And so he sends them prophets to call them back, to tell them the truth.

He sends them leaders. He gives them a way to come back. He doesn’t let them go. And what do they do? They kill the prophets. They don’t want the message of God. They don’t want the love of God. They want to keep doing what they’re doing. They want their own gods. And he extends even more mercy. He extends even more patience by sending his son, his one and only son, to be killed by these rebellious and these hard-hearted people so that, through his death, these people that just keep running from him might have life. And these people, do they finally look to the son and they say, oh, I get it? No. They viciously murder him. And innocent. They beat him and murder him and say that the goodness he’s extending to us is the work of the devil. Kill him. Crucify him. They want their own religion.

And while they were killing him, what was happening up on that cross? He was dying for them. The sins that they were committing. The very sin of murdering God was being paid for with him on the cross. God’s love is shown not only in Jesus dying on the cross in the place of sinner friends, but also in his faithfulness of what it took to get to that point. Look at the persistence of God. I will save my people. I’ll even send my son to die for them, if that’s what it takes. That’s what’s meant by verse 16 when we read that God so loved the world that he sent his only son. This is the picture of God’s continued faithfulness and his patience and his commitment and mercy. It’s staggeringly beautiful. God gave his son. Do you still think about that? He gave his son to his enemies so that he could save them, so that he could suffer and

die in their place. As we’re celebrating Mother’s Day, moms, can you imagine this? Can you imagine giving up your child, that protective instinct that you feel as a parent, that desire to keep your child free from harm, to save them, to shelter them, to shield them? That’s put in you by God because that’s what he does. That’s what he feels. And he gave him up so that his enemies could be saved. We see in verse 17 that not only did Jesus come into the world to save the world because of love, but it’s also reiterated that he didn’t come into the world to condemn it. He wants to save sinners. He’s here to save sinners. When Jesus came, remember, saints, he wasn’t coming into a neutral place. It says that people were already condemned. They were already perishing, as our text says. The way that we might understand perishing is actually seen in some of the other parts

of chapter 3. In verses 17 and 18, we see condemnation. In verse 19, we see judgment. Later on in the chapter, in verse 36, we see that the wrath of God remains on him, on the sinner. Continual wrath, suffering, eternal separation from God. This is the world that Jesus comes into, and these are the people that he says, mine. I’m going to die for them. There’s one thing that fixes every single thing in your life, saints. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s son who came to save sinners. It resolves your primary issue, that is your standing before God, and it secures you eternal life. It makes you new. It makes you able to live in a way that’s different from how the world lives. It makes you able to do good. It makes you able to honor God with your life. The gospel makes sense of your trials and your suffering.

It gives you the framework for raising kids, for pursuing success, for the way that you approach your job, everything in your life. Without the gospel, you’re untethered. You’re lost. In the gospel, he brings you out of darkness, as 1 Peter 2.9 says, into his marvelous light. He saves us. He cleanses us. He gives us his spirit. He enables us to live lives that honor him and bless others, live the lives that we were created to live. This is a part of his gracious provision. This is something that we could never, ever do on our own. The man or woman of God, when they are in Jesus, the text tells us they come to the light. Why? Verse 21, so that it may be clearly seen. Note that. Look at the contrast. Nicodemus coming at night so as not to be seen, hiding sins, running from others, creating

lives that are secluded and separated now so that it may be seen. No longer hiding, no longer scurrying in the dark, working to have our own religion, no longer building our own way of life, finally living out in the open, unashamed. Why? Because God has taken our guilt and shame up on the cross. And the new man, the new woman, no longer afraid of the light because they want everyone to see Christ through them so that he could be glorified. When we understand what it costs for us to be loved by God, saints, it changes everything about how we understand ourselves and how we are then to live our lives. The love that God extends to his people, the bride of Christ, the church, goes well beyond what we see in verse 16 of chapter 3. God’s love seen in verse 16 is that he extends the offer to believe in his son and be saved

Living the New Life

from their sins to everyone who would hear this wonderful message, who would repent of their sins and put their trust in Jesus. But his faithful covenant to his people, working in them, shaping them, working all things in their lives for good, giving them a family, that’s a special kind of love. And so God’s love doesn’t stop when he saves us. It continues in his faithfulness, in his investment. If you are in Christ, dear brother, dear sister, you are loved beyond what you can ever wrap your head around. Fully known and fully loved. And friend, if you’re here today and you don’t know Jesus as Lord and Savior and you’re listening to this and you’re saying, that sounds nice, but I don’t know, I don’t know where I stand, I don’t know where my life is headed. If you’re unsure, he sees you as you are, friend.

You can’t hide from him. You can’t cover up your life from him. You can hide from other people, for sure. But God sees you as you really are and you shouldn’t want to hide from him. Why? Because the offer for salvation, whoever believes, means you as well. Considering what we see in John 3, 16, after years, and maybe in some cases decades of walking with the Lord, maybe being somewhat used to what the text says, having heard it hundreds if not thousands of times in our lives, friend, I want to ask you, do you actually live with the freedom that a forgiven people have? I’m not talking about the kind of freedom where you can just kind of do whatever you want. I’m talking about freedom from sin. I’m talking about freedom from shame and from weight and from guilt. Do you embrace the newness of life that we have been graciously given in Jesus?

Or are we still waking up every morning, putting on old shackles daily, carrying on as if we aren’t a new creation? Are we holding on to sins and patterns that we’ve developed over the course of our lives? If so, you may need to do a deep dive into what’s going on in your heart that you don’t see that you’ve been made free and you can live for God. This isn’t legalism. This isn’t just doing more stuff. This isn’t just obeying for the sake of obeying, but this is truly embracing who we are in Christ and in light of that reality, living as a holy people, free from sin, free from the baggage of the old man, motivated by love. Don’t you want for who and what you are in Christ to show the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth of the one who saved you?

Don’t you want to point others to him so that they too can experience what you’ve experienced? The Christian life isn’t just about being saved from punishment for the sins that we do deserve for our rebellion. It’s also about seeing and beholding and enjoying and living for Christ while pointing others to him. It’s about saying as the people of God, look to him, look to him and live, look up. He’s so wonderful. He’s so beautiful. He’s my whole life and I want so badly for him to be yours as well. That’s the Christian life, friends. Michael Reeves wrote a book called Evangelical Pharisees and when writing about fleeing from a blind hypocritical religion, living a new life for Jesus, he writes the following, it is this sight of the son of man lifted up in his strange glory, proving the love of his father that turns hearts from delight in self and dread of God to delight in God

and dread of sin. There we taste the goodness and kindness of God and as John Calvin put it, once we have tasted his mutual love which he reserves for us, then we will be motivated to love him as our father. We love because he first loved us. What then is at the center of this new life, of this new birth, of this new heart? What’s the point of this new life? What motivates love and ministry and a walk that flees from sin and wants to be different than we once were? What are we born unto? It’s Jesus. He is the new life. He is the point of everything. He is the motivation. He is the joy. He is the treasure. As we read in Romans 11, 36, for from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever.

Amen. Amen? Amen. Pray with me.