Life in Relationship

Intro: Do you know the feeling you get when you talk with someone you don’t know and the conversation is super boring? You can’t get them to engage, you guys end up talking about nothing, and the whole time, you’re just thinking, “when is this going to end?”

On the flip side of things, how many of you have ended up talking to your best friend WAY longer than you expected to because you were so interested in the conversation?

Why is that? Why can we talk to one person for five minutes and feel like it’s been hours, and also talk to a different person for hours and it feel like minutes?

It’s because we have a relationship with them.

John 2:23-3:15.

God isn’t found in religion, He’s found in relationship

Nicodemus started this conversation with a compliment and a theology question.

But, in that question, it’s pretty clear that he has no clue who Jesus is, nor does he even really want to know.

He calls Jesus a teacher, even though Jesus is so much more than a teacher, and Jesus, even at this point, has done much more than a teacher.

Nicodemus isn’t ready to deal with Jesus as Lord, so he just deals with Jesus as an equal.

Life will not be found in trying to know God from far away.

I’ve read a lot of theology, and the most confusing theology that I’ve ever read is always from people who don’t have a relationship with God personally.

That’s because they don’t look at God as the living and loving Creator, and so, they don’t understand Him.

It would be like reading a biography of your best friend if it was written by someone who didn’t know them at all. They might get some facts right, but they are never going to be able to explain who it is that they’re writing about.

That’s why some of your friends say that they can’t believe in God, because they’re looking at Him as a concept instead of a reality.

God is found in relationship

When your relationship with God becomes more about rules than relationship, you have a problem.

And, knowing more about God isn’t the issue! I love theology, and some of my favorite times in life have been when I’ve gotten to have life-giving conversations about God, but those conversations would have been worthless if they were just for the sake of talking about a God I don’t love.

We need a New Self

If we want to have a real relationship with God, then we need to be completely new.

Jesus tells Nicodemus, John 3:6 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

We’re all “born of the flesh” in that we’ve all been born, right?

but, if you want to be with God, then you need something more, which Jesus calls being born of the Spirit or being born again.

Why this language though?

by the word ‘born again’ he means not the amendment of a part but the renewal of the whole nature. Hence it follows that there is nothing in us that is not defective - Calvin

We need a completely new person to have a right relationship with God.

This is very different from a religion system. A religion system tells you that you just have to do what you’re told and you and God will be good.

Christianity tells you that you need to come to the foot of the cross and surrender yourself to Him. When you do that, you are given a new identity. You don’t do the work, God does, and He brings you into the relationship.

We need to be born again.

Jesus says that the way that we are “born again” is through being born “of water and the Spirit,” but what does that mean?

We are in need of a new birth, not a physical birth (which wouldn’t make sense), but a spiritual one.

We need the grace of God to pour on us like water to give us a new spirit.

This also seems to point to the value of baptism

Note, this isn’t saying that you HAVE to be baptized in order to be saved (only belief in Jesus can do that). But, baptism is a symbol of your commitment to Jesus.

In baptism, you are symbolically aligning yourself with Jesus’ death and resurrection. When you go down into the water, you are like Jesus in His death, and when you are brought up from the water, you are symbolically aligned with His resurrection.

All that to say, if you want to have a relationship with God, you need a new self.

A Relationship with God can only happen through Christ

Nicodemus sees all of the information that Jesus is saying and asks, “How?” How is he to get there, how can we be born again, how are we supposed to tell people that they need to be born of water?

Jesus begins with responding by how Nicodemus should know this because he’s a teacher of the Law. He’s already supposed to know the answer because it’s been communicated in the Bible from the beginning, We need a Saviour! We need Someone who can change us, who can give us a new heart, who can make us new. And the whole time, Jesus is pointing to Himself, just like He does in the rest of the Bible!

We can’t ascend to heaven to get to God, so He comes down to live with us.

And then, Jesus mentions a story that happened thousands of years ago in Numbers 21.

The Israelites were wandering in the dessert, and they sinned against God, so that God sent snakes to live among them. Whenever they bit them, the Jews died pretty quickly afterward. Finally, the Israelites realized their failure to God and asked Moses to help them. So, because of God’s instruction, Moses made a bronze snake on a standard and put it in the middle of the camp, so that if anyone was bitten by a snake, they could look at the standard and be saved.

It’s an interesting story, but it can seem a little strange at first glance; until Jesus mentions it again in John 3.

Jesus says that He is the better bronze snake. When the Israelites were sentenced to death by the venom of the snake, they could put their trust in God through the bronze serpent being lifted up and be saved. When we were sentenced to death by the venom of sin, we can put our trust in God through Christ being lifted up on the cross and be saved. Jesus is the better bronze serpent in that He saves from the eternal death of punishment for our sin.

That’s how I’m able to say that we must have a relationship with God that can only happen through new life. It’s not that you work hard enough and then God loves you, it’s not that you do the right stuff and don’t do the wrong stuff and then God has to forgive you, it’s that God loves you enough to lift Himself up on the cross and takes our sin, our venom, upon His shoulders so that we can have new life and new relationship in Him.

Questions.

Would you rather have a dog-sized cat or a cat-sized dog?

What is the difference between knowing about God and having a relationship with Him?

Read vs. 8. What does this verse mean to you?

Why do we need Jesus in order to have a relationship with God?