John 3:9-21 God so loved the world
Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?” He doesn’t understand. As Paul tells us in 1Corinthians 2:14, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” It is not surprising when people without God’s Spirit in them don’t apprehend the things of God. Nicodemus had read Ezekiel 36:25,26 but had not understood it.
But here Nicodemus is not speaking to another man trained in religion or even a prophet but the only eyewitness of heavenly things. Jesus emphasizes the point with his next statement. These matters are earthly things, that God tried to explain through the Law and the Prophets, not heavenly things that are beyond understanding.
Proverbs 30:4 asks the question that Jesus now answers. Jesus came down from heaven to us because no one could go up to heaven without him. Daniel 7:13 tells of the Son of Man. Here Jesus is claiming the title making his claim to be the messiah absolutely clear.
In Numbers chapter 21 Moses makes a bronze serpent that served to save the people from a plague of poisonous snakes. It was by looking to the serpent for healing that the people were healed. It is by looking to Jesus that we are healed from sin. The serpent was raised on a pole just as Jesus was lifted up on the cross. Those who looked to the bronze serpent were saved from dying from snake venom but still had to deal with sin. As we look to the cross of Christ we are saved into eternal life, set free from the debilitating effects of sin’s poison and exempted from the real death, separation from God, that sin inflicts upon sinners.
More than being excused from death we are invited into life with God. John 3:2 says, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
God was pleased to make a gift/sacrifice of his one and only Son for the purpose of removing from sin and death unto eternal life anyone and everyone who believes in Jesus. Justice, and God is just, demands that sin be judged but before God judges the world he provided us a way of escape.
Judgment is unavoidable but Jesus took the penalty of sin on himself at the cross. The requirement for participation in this change from death to life is trust/belief/faith that what Jesus told Nicodemus is true.
Why isn’t everyone saved? Some people prefer darkness to light, death over life. They trust themselves not Jesus and they will not admit their sin to be cleansed of it. Trusting God enough to let him take our sin and replace it with his righteousness brings us into the light where God’s work is plainly visible.
1Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
brotherpayne 