Resisting Darkness

A Pharisee meets Jesus at night.

Nicodemus was a Pharisaic leader of the Jews, part of the ruling council, the Sanhedrin.

Other Pharisees made public condemnations against Jesus, so Nicodemus may have feared their response toward him as well.

Nicodemus came to him in the secrecy of night.

Throughout the Gospel of John, darkness is associated with spiritual blindness.

Nicodemus’ belief didn’t go much past the cleansing nature of water.

Even though he was a leader and teacher of the Jews, Nicodemus doesn’t grasp the cleansing that comes through repentance or transformation of the whole person by the Spirit of God.

Water and Spirit often refer symbolically in the Old Testament to spiritual renewal and cleansing (cf. Num. 19:17–19; Isa. 4:4; 32:15; 44:3; 55:1; Joel 2:28–29; Zech. 13:1).

Nicodemus missed how the Scriptures point toward Nicodemus’ present, the coming of Jesus, and His message of God’s gracious salvation.

Some Pharisees believed that God was with Jesus. Still, like Nicodemus, they did not believe the testimony of John the Baptist and Jesus, that Jesus had a special relationship with God.

The Scriptures never say that Nicodemus came to believe in Jesus, though he respected him.

Sometimes, we dwell so long in the dark that we lose a sense of the light.

We get accustomed to the dark.

No one can see us in the dark.

It’s all too easy to become lost or fall by accident in the dark.

Jesus meets us in the dark, walks alongside us, and brings us to the light of the morning.

Jesus meets with Nicodemus and reveals himself.

Nicodemus and Pharisees like him rejected the prophetic witness of John and Jesus.

John preached on God’s light coming into the world, and Jesus bore witness to himself and the kingdom of God, with which he was intimately familiar.

Both were solidly grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures and witness of God.

Here, Jesus pointed to a complete cleansing and change of heart and life was necessary for salvation, and that could only happen by the power and mercy of God.

God’s mercy and grace came by way of Jesus being lifted up on the cross.

Loving God, the Father, sent Jesus, the Son, to open the way of salvation to everyone.

Does that sound like God condemns the entire world?

Jesus presents belief in him as the sole condition for salvation.

“Everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

Only the one who was born both in heaven and on earth,

who was the only one given the opportunity to die in another’s place,

who alone fully pleased the Father,

only could open the way of salvation for heavenly things to be made real on earth.

God reveals his light, and we begin to resist the dark.

God loves us too much to leave us in the dark.

As Paul said in Romans chapter 4, if Abraham and David, the two prime examples of Judaism, were not justified in their obedience but had to implore to receive God’s mercy because they were sinful, then we must do the same.

Paul lays out the plan of salvation:

The sinner is convinced of their sin and the danger of just judgment by the Spirit of God and understands the fear of God.

And, that to continue in sin is to invite the judgment of God.

The sinner recognizes only the merits of Christ their mediator, to make all things right with God.

At that moment, Christ intervenes, justice is satisfied, and the guilt of sin is removed by the pardoning work of God by the Holy Spirit, who begins the work of sanctification.

It is in our inability to save ourselves, no matter how much good we might do, that we find the way of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Then, we not only receive “eternal life” in the end, we receive the divine, Spirit-filled life of Christ today.

Being born of the Spirit, we take on divine nature.

The totality of who we are is changed, body, mind, and soul.

And we are empowered to continue to resist darkness in all its forms by increasing the light of God in and through us.

Let us resist the darkness and spread the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world; remember his love.