GraceLife Thoughts: Love and Wrath (Part 4)

Grace Thoughts

GraceLife Thoughts: Love and Wrath (Part 4)

Nicodemus answered and said to Him, How can these things be? John 3:9

That question from the Pharisee and Sanhedrin member led to one of the most powerful private discourses we have recorded from Jesus Christ. While it includes the world-famous John 3:16 about God’s love for the world, that’s not how Jesus began in answering Nicodemus’ question.

Teaching the Teacher

Jesus Christ is the Master Teacher. He is the Eternal Son of God and has all knowledge. That fact makes His response to Nicodemus even more interesting and important –

Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? John 3:10

The Lord’s answer probably caught Nicodemus off guard – again. I can’t imagine that a Pharisee of the Sanhedrin expected to hear what Jesus had already said to him about being ‘born again.’ The way Nicodemus responded to Jesus verifies that –

How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? John 3:4

Nicodemus viewed entrance into the Kingdom of God based on physical relationship to Abraham and Moses. Jesus had to help Nicodemus understand that entrance into God’s Kingdom is not based on a physical relationship, but on a spiritual relationship. Now Jesus was telling Nicodemus that as ‘the teacher of Israel’ he should have known this truth. We have nothing more from Nicodemus in John 3. It’s time to hear from the Master Teacher, the Messiah of Israel, the Anointed One, the Eternal Son of Almighty God.

First, Jesus presented Nicodemus with His Heavenly Credentials as the Master Teacher –

Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. John 3:11-13

The Lord’s use of the term ‘Son of Man’ would not have been lost on Nicodemus. Neither would the phrase ‘who is in heaven.’ Nicodemus would have been fully aware of the prophecies concerning the ‘Son of Man’ from the Old Testament prophets.

Next, Jesus reminded Nicodemus of God’s wrath toward the children of Israel when they sinned against Him in the wilderness. You can read the full account in Numbers 21:4-9. It was only as the people of Israel who were bitten by a serpent believed God and looked upon the bronze serpent on the pole that they would live. God was angry with His people, but they lived because He loved them and gave them a way to be forgiven. Jesus said the same was true in His day –

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:14-15

Jesus told Nicodemus that He was the ‘Son of Man from Heaven,’ and that He would be ‘lifted up’ so that ‘whoever believes in Him’ should not perish but have eternal life. Then, Jesus said this –

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3:16-17

Jesus said that God loved the world did not send His son into the world to ‘condemn the world,’ but that the world would be ‘saved’ through Him. Does that mean the world is not ‘condemned’ because Jesus came from Heaven to earth? Is God no longer angry (wrath) with people? More about that in Part Five of our study.