“Seeing Through Our New Eyes”

Scripture: John 3:14-21

Last week, we met Nicodemus as he was sneaking in to see Jesus and then began to discover the truth behind this itinerant rabbi. He came, as do all who come seeking Jesus, with preconceived notions as to who and what he may be, and, as with all who begin to discover the truth of the Lord, his ideas regarding the Christ would soon be shattered.

God can never be easily defined, he can never be put in a box. And whenever we begin to think that we finally have a good understanding of the Lord, he seems to have a way of showing us just how wrong we can be. The truth is that we can never fully know who Jesus is and how he works – we can only consider his words and their meaning for our lives. That’s what Nicodemus was beginning to understand that night.

“You must be born again.” These are words that both the church and world are still trying to come to grips with. And the fact is that Christianity is the only religion in the world that requires faith as the basis for ever lasting life. Every other religion is either founded in “good works” for life beyond this plane, or else it offers no concept or hope at all for eternity. Being born anew is solely a Christian concept – so why shouldn’t a “second birth”, a new beginning in life, be hard to grasp? Its a foreign concept to us! But Jesus doesn’t just leave Nicodemus, or us, to stew over this concept of being “born again”. In our passage for today, he gives us an explanation.

Read John 3:16-18

Last week, we ended with the thought that “everyone who believes in [Christ] may have eternal life.” And now Jesus tells us why – why it is faith that brings us to life, why God would even want this new life for us, why the world needs this new beginning.
Why can faith bring us to new life? Because God has willed it. Now this is also a hang up with the world’s people. No one wants to be dependent on someone else’s benevolence! After all, they might change their mind – they might change the rules – they might decide that this was a bad idea after all – and they just might have intended this to be a grand joke all along.
We want to judge God by the same standards that we use to judge people. But the Lord exists in a completely different way, and human standards and ideals just can’t apply. Almighty God wants us to live with him forever, and he gives us his Son to accomplish that!
And why has God willed this gift? Because his love goes beyond all human measure. “For God so loved the world” is not a throw away phrase. Jesus didn’t say that God will love those who believe in the Son – he said that God loves everyone! Not just the righteous, not just the perfect, not just those who are worthy – and praise the Lord for that, because that list would be an extremely short one and not one of us would be on it! He never said that sinners need not apply, he never said that he had no use for the deformed and crippled and ignorant, he never said that if our parents and grandparents had never come to him then there was no use in our seeking him, either. Praise the Lord again!
“For God so loved the world” means just what it says, and that is the basis for our great hope – the Almighty’s love.
And why do we need to place our hope in Christ? Because he is the only way to life. Now listen carefully – Jesus didn’t come to condemn those who don’t agree with him, because there is no need for that - we already stand condemned. Without God’s grace and mercy, without the salvation gift that Jesus offers to the world, this life would be all that there is. Last week we read that “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven.” (v. 13) No one has ever gone into heaven, and no one ever will go into heaven, without Jesus Christ in their life. We are already condemned, and there is no need for the Lord to offer judgment and condemnation – it already exists. The one and only purpose of Jesus’ human existence was to bring the way of salvation to the world – a complete and total pardon from condemnation – and it is for all who would simply believe and trust in him as the Son of God and in his great redemptive act on Calvary.

But people have always hesitated and fought and chafed against this concept. And it’s not because the world doesn’t want to live in eternity – I think everyone would like to. For some, though, it just looks too easy, for others, it makes no sense, and for still others, they want some personal control of their eternity.
They don’t trust God enough to put their destiny in his hands. And that is the crux of the matter – giving God our complete trust. He is the only true certainty, and yet we still look to the things that we know, or at least think we know, as our reality.

Read John 3:19-21

The light of Christ has been given for all of the world – the problem is, though, that God has also given each of us the option of either looking into the light to see the reality of our lives, or that of shielding our eyes from its revealing glare. And the word tells us that some prefer to remain in the darkness, and not only that, but they love to live in the dark. And the reason is that they – we – are afraid to confront our failure to live as God would have us live. And that failure is, by definition, sin.
Sin isn’t just an act that hurts other people or even that which does damage to our own selves. Sin is the act of disobedience to God and is the very source of great pain for the Almighty. For the nonbeliever, this is an absolute, and there is no way out. But for the one who believes in Christ, who has put their faith in Christ, they have access to the gift of forgiveness. But we have to be in the light if we are to first, recognize our sinful ways, and second, to know that they are not of God. And then we reject the sin – we repent – and forgiveness can begin the healing that we need for both ourselves and for our relationship with the Lord.

The country and folk singer Buell Kazee wrote:
"The difference between a lost man and a saved man is, the lost man sins and loves it, the saved man sins and hates it."
--Buell H. Kazee, Faith Is the Victory (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1951).

My friends, we have to begin hating our own sin instead of only hating the sin of others. And it is by walking in the Light of heaven that allows us to do this. But the world “loved the darkness” more than they love the light.

David Kinnaman, President of the Barna Group, commented on the findings of a survey on the attitudes of young adults toward the Church. He wrote:
"They want to do what Jesus did and to get into peoples’ lives and figure out what makes them tick – figure out where they are broken. [But] they’re not offended by sin."
Adam Hamilton, When Christians Get it Wrong, Abington Press, pg 80-81, 2010

The world wants Jesus, but on their terms, not on God’s. We want to earn our salvation, we want to be the ones who define what is right and wrong, we want God to make sense to us. But it doesn’t work that way.

A theologian giving a lecture was asked, “When were you saved?” “When was I saved?” he asked rhetorically. “I was saved two thousand years ago.”
-Hal Brady, 19 January 1992, Dallas Texas.

Salvation is for us, not by us. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Are you walking in the light of Christ?
Have you given him, not only your best, but your all?
Have you discovered the love of God for your own life?

Note: At this point in the service, an altar call was offered for first time commitments, renewals in faith, and for loved ones who have not yet received Jesus as Lord and Savior. Several responded.