What does it mean to be “born again”?

In John 3:1-17, a respected religious leader named Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night and hears words that puzzle him: “You must be born again.” In this study, Dr. Toby Holt explains the new birth — and why we cannot do without it.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, yet Jesus tells even him that he must be “born again.” Dr. Holt explains that we are born spiritually dead and cannot give ourselves new life any more than we chose our first birth — the new birth is God’s own work in the heart. Out of this conversation comes the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Later, Nicodemus would help bury Jesus, a quiet sign that the new birth had taken hold.

Questions this study answers:

1. Who was Nicodemus? A Pharisee and respected member of the ruling council, who came to Jesus by night with sincere questions.

2. What does it mean to be “born again”? It is a new spiritual birth that only God can give — a heart made alive, not a self-improvement project.

3. Why can’t we save ourselves? Because we are born spiritually dead and cannot give ourselves new life. Salvation is God’s gift, received by faith in Christ.

“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.” — John 3:16 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This sermon is part of the John Explained study from New Geneva Theological Seminary. Find more verse-by-verse teaching across the Bible at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

In Christian circles, we often hear of the term born again. But what does this term mean? In John 2, a man named Nicodemus will have the same question. He'll ask Jesus how one can be born again. In today's study, we'll consider Christ's response, as well as the theological implications of regeneration.

This morning's text centered around two words, and those words are born again. Specifically, Jesus is going to tell Nicodemus that he must be born again, which is only going to confuse poor Nicodemus. Now, have you ever had a computer or phone that comes out of the box, and initially, when it comes out of the box, it has what you would call factory settings, default settings. Usually, the factory settings or the default status that the phone or the computer is in, that has to then be optimized somewhere down the road. Well, in a similar way,

mankind, when we came out of the box, so to speak, mankind, when we are born into this world, mankind comes into this world with default settings. The problem is this, that our default settings are bad. When we are born, when we come into this world, we come with certain inclinations, a certain disposition, a certain nature, the nature of the flesh. And the nature of the flesh is uniformly presented negatively, bad throughout scripture. We see that he is born simply and only of the flesh, is prone to doing that which the flesh does, which is reject against the spirit or rebel against the spirit. Ephesians 2 put it this way. It says that we're born dead. We came into this world dead in our sins and trespasses. In fact, it says that we came into this world as children of wrath.

When you first came to this world, you came into this world physically alive, absolutely. I was at the hospital. I did a visitation. It was actually last Sunday. All of a sudden, this lullaby came over the speakers there at Memorial Hospital, and it was the oddest thing. It only lasted about eight seconds. But the gentleman that I was visiting with, he says they do that, they play that every time someone's born. There's this sound, this lullaby, that occurs every time a child is born there. Now, it's very cool, and it's very encouraging, and it's exciting to know that the Kingdom is still growing and that God is still bringing new sons and daughters in the creation, and yet the fact remains that when any child comes into this world, he comes into this world, as Ephesians 2 says, born dead in his sins and trespasses. Now, Jesus knew that. In today's text, he's going to be talking to Nicodemus, who does not know that. And he's going to be teaching Nicodemus, and he's going to use a phrase that Nicodemus was unfamiliar with, but which we take for granted, and that is the phrase born again. You must be born again. You and I, we know what that means. At least we think we do. Nicodemus didn't have a clue. And so in today's text, Jesus is going to explain that, and he's going to then springboard into a presentation of the gospel, culminating in John 3:16. All right, let me reread verses one through four, and let's just work our way through this passage. Verse one. "So there was a man of the Pharisees." Immediately, we get a bit of his bio right there, and it's negative. Pharisees are not regarded highly in the New Testament. "But there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews." This means he was also part of the Sanhedrin. He's like a senator, is the best way to present it. So as a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, he was a ruler of the Jews. Now this man came to Jesus by night, verse two, and said to him, "Rabbi, we know." It's almost like he's speaking for some others. "We know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him." As a side note, the suggestion is here is that Jesus has been doing a lot of signs. In John, chapter two, we saw one sign, water into wine. It was the first major sign he did, and yet John didn't record everything that Jesus did, but Nicodemus is aware of other things that have occurred. We know that you're a teacher who has come from God because no one can do the things that you are doing. No one can do these things. Unless, he says then in verse two, unless God's with him. And Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly. Amen. Absolutely. I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." Verse four, Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born once again?" All right. At the outset of today's text, in verses one through four, we see this man. He comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness. With that said, again, we know a few things about this man. Number one, we know that he's a Pharisee. Number two, we know that he is part of the Sanhedrin. He's part of the upper crust. He's the religious elite. And number three, we know that because he is all those things, men of his ilk usually fell into the camp that was opposed to Christ. When you read these things, Pharisee, and member of the Sanhedrin, and the religious elite, and the like, usually, almost uniformly, those who met those criterias are villains in the New Testament context. However, Nicodemus is different. Nicodemus is different in at least one key respect. Initially, when he comes to Jesus, he may have been coming on behalf of others. He may have been doing it just by himself, which is why maybe it was at night, under the cover of darkness, he comes to see Jesus. It's all possible. We don't really know for sure. Whatever the case is, while his peers and his contemporaries were threatened by Jesus, because Jesus shows up, he starts teaching, doing signs and miracles, and the religious elite were like, "Ah! We can't have this. Who is that guy?" So this guy, Nicodemus, was either coming to Jesus on behalf of others or by himself, but the question remained the same in either case. Who are you? You're doing things no one has ever seen before. You're teaching things no one has ever heard before. Who are you? We know this much. Jesus, we got this. Rabbi. We know you must be sent from God. You have to be sent by God because no one can just do this stuffUnless he is sent by God himself, an emissary. So we don't know his entire motivation. It's possible he just wanted to see if Jesus was going to play ball with the rest of the religious leadership. Whatever the case, he does seem sure that Jesus is some sort of divine emissary in some sort of capacity. Now, if you're Jesus, he actually has just complimented you in a sense. The guy comes to you and says, "You are doing just amazing work, knockout work. Unless God was on your side, you couldn't do what you do." Imagine if you're an elder, a deacon, a pastor even, you're in some role where you're teaching and preaching, and someone comes up to you and says, "That was amazing. Man alive. God must be with you, otherwise you couldn't do what you do." If you ever hear those words, you go, "Well, thank you. Very kind of you." But that's not what Jesus does, not in the least. He doesn't say, "Thanks" or "Very kind of you, Nicodemus," or take it as a compliment. That's not his intention. The end of chapter 2, which we didn't read today, but the end of chapter 2 said Jesus knows what's in the heart of men. He knows what's in the heart. He sees to the heart. He knows the motivations, and he knows something about Nicodemus in the same way he's going to know something about the woman in the well next week in chapter 4. He knows what they're thinking. He knows why they do what they do. And so here, instead of engaging in the way that Nicodemus wants him to engage on the topic that Nicodemus has set forth, Jesus cuts to the heart of a different matter. And you see there in verse three that Jesus answers and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God."

So he answers Nicodemus in a way that Nicodemus couldn't possibly have understood. Now, let me stop for a moment. You and I, when we hear the phrase born again, we hear it through 21st-century North American evangelical Christian ears. If someone says, "I'm a born again Christian," it's like a three-sided triangle. They mean the same thing. If you've been born again, you are what? You're a Christian. There's no category for born again Christians in the sense that there's Christians who are not born again. With that said, to Nicodemus, it didn't mean anything at all. You understand that? You and I, we hear these words through all sorts of presuppositions we have. Nicodemus had no frame of reference at all for the phrase born again. In fact, to him, the minute it comes out of Jesus' mouth, Nicodemus says, "That's preposterous." Right? And we know it because of what he responds. He responds in the most crude, crass way. He's talking to a rabbi, someone he respects, but he says, "Come on, Jesus. Let's get real here. Born again? As an old man, do I climb up mother's womb and then born once more?" You see that, how crude and crass that would be? It was preposterous. The phrase not only meant nothing to Nicodemus, but it kind of got under his skin a little bit, so he throws out this ridiculous question. Now, let's see what Jesus responds. Let's look at verses five through eight, and we'll see Jesus is going to unpack this for Nicodemus. Verse five, Jesus answered and said, "Most assuredly." This is a way, again, amen, amen, truly, truly, verily, verily. This is like you can take this to the bank, Nicodemus. "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God." This is interesting to Nicodemus because he was of the idea that just by being an Israelite, he was guaranteed, his ticket was stamped, right? But Jesus says, "Unless you're born of the water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God." Verse six, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel." He can see the look on Nicodemus' face. Nicodemus' eyes are getting big at all this [chuckles]. He says, "Don't marvel. Don't marvel that I said to you, you have to be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from. You cannot tell where it goes." It might have been a dark and stormy night that night there when they met in the cover of darkness, and he uses the wind as an illustration. But he says, "The wind blows where it wishes. You hear the sound of it. You can't tell where it comes from, where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

All right. We said a few moments ago, you and I come into this world with factory settings, and our factory settings are, at least spiritually speaking, are bad. In fact, they're not just bad, we're born dead. We're dead in our sins and trespasses. We have what's called a fallen nature. We're not sinners because we've sinned. We sin because we're sinners, is another way to put it. So we come into this world with a fallen nature, a fallen disposition, and fallen sinful desires. Romans 3 puts it this way, "There's none who's righteous. No, not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. They've all turned aside. There's none who does good. No, not one." Who's included in that?

Everybody, and that's the purpose. There's some folks who believe like you have to get to a certain age, like the age of accountability. Have you ever heard that? People look at little cute infants and say, "Oh, how adorable. Boy, at some point, I hope he doesn't become a sinner." Have you been a parent? [laughs]

[laughs]

It doesn't work that way. It's not like you have to wait till the age of accountability strikes, and then once you knowingly sin, then we can call you a sinner. You're a sinner from jump street. You're a sinner from the word go. And scripture doesn't hide that. It's just your nature is this way. You were born of Adam. He is your federal head. Because of Adam's sin, we all come into this world sinful. Read Romans 5. It's not hidden. That's not something in the dust jacket of scripture. This is not something you have to strain to see the theology in these passages here. It's repeatedly clear time and time and time and time again. You and I come into this world as sinners. There's none who are righteous. No, not one. None who understands. None who seeks after God. They've all turned aside. There's none who does good. No, not one. Left to our own devices,

born only of the flesh, we're like spiritual zombies. We walk about the world. There's no spiritual life in us.

That's the condition of those who are unregenerated, whose hearts have not been changed. Spiritual zombies without any spiritual life within them. So Jesus identifies that in verse five. He says, "This is the problem. Unless you're born of the water and the Spirit, this is the problem. You can't enter the Kingdom of God, and you can't enter the Kingdom of God because your heart hasn't been changed. You remain dead in your sins and trespasses. You remain every part of the bit of Romans 3:10, where there's none who are righteous, no, not one." You are them, apart from something happening. So he gives the problem, he identifies the problem in verse five, but then he identifies the solution in verse seven. He says that spiritually dead people must be candidates then for spiritual rebirth. And he says specifically, and this is something that theologians have strained at for a long, long time. He says you have to be born of two things. Number one, you have to be born of water.And number two, you have to be born of the Spirit. Now, what does that mean? Born of water and born of the Spirit. I'm not going to go into all the permutations, but I'll identify at least a couple that you might have heard of. That idea of being born of water, what does that imply? Well, it can imply everything from the relatively crass, the idea that this is the amniotic fluid, or someone's water breaks, that this is the idea that when you're born, when you come to this world, you're born of water, right? That's one idea. You must be born of water. That's just my physical birth. I'm born of water. I was born once, and I have to be born again in some spiritual sense. So some people interpret it that way. Others, their understanding of being born of water is this, that there's something magical that happens when you're baptized. Roman Catholics and others believe in this idea of baptismal regeneration. That some way, some wonderful, magical way, you are regenerated when you are baptized. You're born of water. For reasons I don't have time to go into today, that is not correct, nor biblical. Others, and I'm persuaded to this opinion or this approach, others believe that be born of water speaks to what water did in that context. There's two things you used water for, really, in the first century context. Number one was literally life-giving nourishment. You and your crops and your animals and everything, water was the source of life. But secondarily, water was utilized in that culture for purification. If you read about water throughout the New Testament, from Matthew through Revelation, what you see is purification. You see cleansing, and I think that's what it speaks to. You have to be born in the sense that you're cleansed. There's a repentance, a washing away of your sinfulness. Beyond that, there's this idea that we have to be born of the Spirit. Now, before we look at the next verses, I want to linger on that because that's probably the most important part of today's text. What does it mean to be born again? What does it mean to be born of the Spirit? We've already labored over the point that we come into this world factory settings dead. That's our condition, that we are dead in our sins and trespasses. Now, if that's true, what has to happen? Do you have to just be walking along, encounter Bible verse and go, "Oh, I see now. I get it. Now I think I'm going to choose to believe that which I rejected for all my days." Is that how you were born again? Were you born again because you reasoned your way into the kingdom? Absolutely, definitively not. No one has ever become a Christian because they just volitionally argued their way into a new nature. Whenever scripture talks about being born again, it talks about as new creation. We're new creatures in Christ. We're born again. We used to be dead, and now we're alive. Let me ask you, did you have any choice in your first birth? Why do you think you'd have any choice in your second birth? I've used the analogy before and I'm going to use it again because I find it very helpful. If you go out to the cemetery, any cemetery in Gulfport, and you get out your lawn chair and your lemonade, and you sit there and you look out, what's going to happen? What are you going to see? Well, God willing, not much. You're going to look out and there's going to be gravestones and flagstones and the like, and there is not going to be any movement unless it's the birds or other visitors. The last thing you expect is that a grave is going to open and someone's going to pop out and do a dance, right? Now, why would you not expect that? For the obvious reason that that which is there is dead. That which is underneath the flagstones and the headstones and the tombstones and the like is dead. We don't expect physically dead people or things to come to new life. Why would you think if you're spiritually dead that you can do that of your own any more than the corpse in the graveyard can do it? You cannot.

So what has to happen? If that's your condition, if you came to this world dead, spiritually flatlining, you know, the EKG, if that's who you were, what had to happen in order for you to become a born again Christian? Well, what had to happen is what we call the doctrine of regeneration. God, of His own volition, His own choice, had to look down upon you and say, "I choose you, and I will turn this heart of stone, which is within you, into a heart of flesh that is able and desirous of embracing me."

God says, "I choose for reasons that are my own volition." Saul of Tarsus, last guy on planet Earth at that time you would have thought God would choose. He was out there killing Christians, persecuting Christians, murdering Christians. Acts 9 says he's literally on the road to where? Damascus, and he's doing what? He's breathing out threats and murder towards the church, towards Christians. He's not sitting there contemplating reasoning his way into the kingdom. He's not going, "You know, I think I'll become a Christian today." He's not going, "You know, those Christians make a good case. Gosh, I think I'll choose to become a Christian." He's not doing that at all. He's breathing out threats and murder. And because of God's own choice, for God's own volition, God knocks him off the horse in Acts 9. There's a light, there's a voice, there's all these different things, and his heart is changed. Now, in your own life, it may have been less sensational, less voices and lights and the like, nothing quite like that, but the context is the same thing. At one point, you were not embracing Christ. At one point,

you were not faithful to Him. At one point, you were rejecting and rebelling consistently by virtue of your nature. You were rejecting your God and your creator. You might not have felt like you were doing that, and you might not have said, "Oh, I think I'm this bad guy." You might have thought you were just fine, but God looked down upon you and He saw a rebel. However, He saw a rebel He desired to make a child, and so at some point, He entered your life, He took your heart, and He changed it.

You were regenerated. That's when you were born again. It's not the day that you walked the sawdust trail to the front of the church somewhere and said, "I choose to believe." I mean, if you did that, God bless you, but that's not necessarily the time when God changed your heart. In fact, you might not even know when it was. But you know this much, that it was after that event, at such time, whenever He did it, it was at that time that you were enabled to do that which you didn't previously do, and that is turn to Him. Maybe it was a slow process, but at one point, your heart was turned and you were able to see in these elements on the cross someone different than you previously saw. At one point, you may have heard about Jesus a whole lot. Maybe you were even in church for years, maybe even decades, but it never really took, and at some point, God willing, He changed your heart and you were enabled and persuaded to see Him through new eyes.Remember we talked about that on the cross. There was two thieves that were crucified to either side of Jesus, and initially, they both mocked him. Initially, they were both lost balls in the high weeds. Initially, they both rejected, they mocked him, they accused him. They said, "Jesus, hop down off the cross if you really are this savior guy, and while you're doing it, save us." At some point, we don't know what happened, but we know this much occurred. At some point, the thief that we believe to be Jesus' right hand, this thief came to a recognition to the man to his left that he didn't previously had. He looked at him, and he saw him through eyes of faith that he, even moments earlier, had not had. And as the other thief continues to mock, this guy, he's suddenly able to see Jesus properly, and he says, "Stop that." He says, "You. You over there. You stop that. This man is innocent. You and me, we got what we deserve. We deserve to be here. This man doesn't." Then he looks at him, looks at him directly, looks at Jesus eyeball, says, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

And Jesus responds and looks back at him, says, "Truly, this day you will be with me

in paradise." On the cross, this man's heart was regenerated, and it was towards the end. If there's people you've been praying for, you say, "Oh, dear God, save such and such or so and so. Dear heavens, that person really needs to be saved, and the clock is running late." If there's anyone in your life who falls in that category, have some comfort to know that God is perfectly willing to save people that you least expect at the moment you wouldn't expect it at all. It's like the wind. What does Jesus say in these verses? He says, "The Spirit is like this wind. It moves around. You can't see where it's going. You don't know who it's landing upon." That's how this works, Nicodemus. You're not saved simply by virtue of the fact that you're born an Israelite, because that's what they believed. I'm an Israelite, therefore I'm in. My passport is stamped, right? I get to walk in because I'm an Israelite. Eh. That is 100% not the case. That's what Jesus tells the Pharisees. They thought they were in by virtue of their relationship with Abraham. Jesus looks at them and say, "No, you're not of Abraham. You're not of God, the Father, Jehovah. You're of your father all right, but your father is who? The devil," right? And he was talking to the religious elite at that time, to the Pharisees. How bold was that? The point is, we're not saved on the basis of our ancestry, that we're born to a certain people, that we look a certain way. That's not the basis by which we're saved. You're also not saved on the basis of the things that you do, because that's the other mistake that Nicodemus and his peers made. There's a reason he's so shocked at all this, because everything Jesus said just upset his apple cart. I'm an Israelite, and you're saying I have to have this other thing, too? The Spirit has to do something? Don't you know I'm a Pharisee? I'm not just a Pharisee. I'm on the Sanhedrin, right? Look at what I do. Look at the things I've accomplished. Surely, that is the basis of my acceptance before God. And of course, God says no. Jesus says, "No, not at all. Not in the least." That's not the way this works. In fact, he tells a parable elsewhere. He tells a parable, and the parable is of two men that are standing before God, and one is a Pharisee, and the other, I think, is a tax collector. Now, the Pharisee, you remember what he does? He sits there before God. "Thank God I'm not like this guy, this tax collector here. Thank God I'm not like him." What is the tax collector doing? Tax collector can't even look up. He beats his breast, and he feels entirely unworthy to stand before his God, entirely unworthy of the favor of God. You're not saved on the basis of where you were born, who your family members are, what your ancestry is, and you're not saved on the basis of the works you do. You're saved on the basis that God has chosen you, elected you, changed your heart, enabled and persuaded you to come to Christ, and in due time, like Saul of Tarsus, in due time, like the thief on the cross, you profess faith. Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. That's a profession of faith that we're all called to have. All right. Let's look at verses nine through 12. So Nicodemus answered and said, "How can these things be?" His mind has been blown. His entire paradigm, frame of reference for understanding the way things work, pshew, got blown up. So he answered and said, "How can these things be?" In verse 10, Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you

the teacher of Israel, and you don't know this? You don't know these things? Most assuredly," again, this is take it to the bank, "most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know." Listen to the plural. "We speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness." This is a reference to the Trinity. Verse 12, "If I have told you earthly things you don't believe, how would you believe if I was to tell you the heavenly things?" All right, so verses nine and 10, Jesus has to teach the teacher, a man who should've known better. Nicodemus represented the upper crust of Israel's religious and political leadership, but the truth is he was clueless, as was all the other religious leaders at his time. There's a reason why the priests are dragged through the mud throughout the New Testament. It's because they didn't know what they were doing. The priests, the religious elite, the scribes, the Pharisees, the elders of Israel, these were guys who should've known better because they had the Old Testament. They should've known better if they'd studied it, and yet they didn't know better. And because of that, they taught people the wrong things, and because of that, they led people off a cliff. It was the blind leading the blind, and that's what Jesus says to Nicodemus. "Oh, Nicodemus, you call yourself a teacher of Israel. How can you be a teacher of Israel, and you don't have this right? How can you be a teacher of Israel?" And you ever encountered Ezekiel 36, it talks about the nature of the new life and how it's granted. Remember, all they had to study was the Old Testament. You and I have the Old Testament and the New Testament. We've got more to study and review. They had less to study and review. They didn't even know that. How can you present yourself as a teacher, oh Nicodemus, and you don't even understand these things? They put all the emphasis on the wrong things, on being an ancestor of Abraham, and on the works they do. Nothing on God's sovereign choice, nothing on grace and the election and the like. The Pharisees had forgotten all about how God saves worthless people, how he plugs in Rahab into his community of faith, and then even into the lineage of Jesus Christ himself. They forgot about a Ruth, the old Moabitess who comes in, who would seemingly be just unworthy. They forgot about the Ninevites, that God, Yahweh, Jehovah, had extended grace to. They just didn't have a filter to understand how to plug those things and those people in. All they knew is their habits and their customs and their traditionsAnd the traditions in the first century were largely predicated on this idea that we are going to protect and preserve our power, which is why he came to this rabbi and said, "We know. We know about you. We know about you, oh, Jesus."

And isn't it fascinating that Jesus chooses to respond to him with a phrase that includes the words, "Well, we know about you, Nicodemus"? Remember, what did that verse say? Verse 11, "We speak..." He's talking on behalf of the Trinity, the Triune God. "We speak what we know to you, oh, Nicodemus. We speak what we know, and we testify what we've seen, and you do not receive our witness." If Nicodemus thought he was representing some establishment, Jesus says, "I represent a better establishment, and we know things, too. Listen up, oh, Nicodemus." All right. Let's look at our remaining verses for this morning. Let's look at verses 13 through 17. He says this. He says, "No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." He's talking about his crucifixion, which is still ways off at this point. "But even so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life." And there's no reference to working, earning, meriting the salvation. Rather, he who believes. "He who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." Verse 17, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved." All right. In the Old Testament, there were a number of things that pointed to Jesus, not just in terms of who he was by nature, but also what he would accomplish. And the verses, like the text that deals with the Passover. We talked about this a few weeks ago. The Passover pointed to Jesus. The people took the perfect lamb. They put the blood of a perfect lamb on their door, and the angel of death passed over, and their house was spared. And this pointed forward to Jesus' person, but also his work. His person, that he was the Lamb of God, but his work, that he would die, he would atone. His blood, so to speak, would be the means by which the people would be spared. So, the Passover looked ahead. Isaac's sacrifice. You remember Abraham took Isaac up the mountain, and Isaac is anticipating he's going to be sacrificed. Abraham is anticipating Isaac's going to be sacrificed. And then God provides a substitute, a ram that's found in the thicket. Isaac is spared, and this ram is sacrificed. It's a picture of propitiation. It's a picture of atonement. It's a picture of Jesus. Jesus would come along and do these things. The reference he gives specifically in this text, he refers to the serpent. Moses. The people are sick. The people are having just the worst health crisis they could imagine. And Moses lifts up the serpent on a pole, and then when they look at this, they are healed. In the same way, Jesus says here that the Son of Man, when he comes, he too must be lifted up and men must look to him

if they are to be healed, not only of what ravages their body, but their soul.

Now, why would he do all that?

Why? Do you deserve it?

No. Dear heavens, look in the mirror. Identify the things you've done this past week and say, "Do I pass the smell test of someone that God should let into his kingdom?" And if you answer that by saying yes, let's talk, because that's not the teaching of scripture. What does scripture say? Romans 3, "There's none who are righteous. No, not one." Now, if you're thinking, man, that's a problem, because the wages of sin is death. If you're a sinner, what are you going to do about it?

Well, John 3:16 says what God does about it. You can do nothing about it, but God did this. "For God so loved the world." He so loved you despite what he knows about you, which is a lot. He so loved you. He so loved his people. He so loved the bride. He so loved the church. He so loved sons and daughters, that he said, "I'm going to give that which is most precious to myself, my only begotten Son. He will die that they might live." And he did it not out of compulsion. This is not transactional. You don't do enough stuff that you trip the wire that he has to then save you. Anyone who buys into works-based theology, that's what they're telling God. They're saying, "God, I did enough, I did enough, I did enough. I did all the things you expected. I did at least as well as humanly possible. I deserve to get in." If that were true, what does salvation become? It becomes a debt that God owes you. If you ever find yourself drifting, if you ever know anyone who drifts into works-based theology, works-based theology is not only just stupid, but it guts the gospel itself because it deprives it, it neuters it of grace. It neuters it of mercy. It neuters it of love. For God so loved the world that he sought you out when you weren't seeking him. For God so loved Saul of Tarsus that he changed his heart and made him Paul. For God so loved the thief on the cross that he literally hung and died next to him, bearing this man's sins. For God so loved you that he did the same thing. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever should believe in him," not earn it, not deserve it, not merit it, "whoever should believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

This is the message that the world around us needs to hear.

It's the only message that matters.

The newspapers are filled with all sorts of trials and tribulation, and a lot of it's scary, no doubt about it. But the message that people need to hear more than any other message is this, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever should believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.

That's the message that we get, not deserve, but we get reconciliation. Our peace is made through the blood of the Lamb on Calvary, that this is provided to us. And what is incumbent upon us then to do? What do we need to do then, if anything?

Well, we're called to faith, and even that is a gift. In closing this morning, I'll tell you something cool. Nicodemus got it. He came to Jesus with faulty theology, faulty presuppositions. He had more wrong than he had right, to the point he was confused with everything Jesus said. But in time, Nicodemus got itSome of us might be confused by some of this, what we're talking about. Like, "What is all this about? Regeneration, that's an $8 word. What is all this stuff?" Initially, Nicodemus was in that same boat, but it's okay. Nicodemus got there because he who starts a good work, finishes it. And Nicodemus didn't even realize it, but he was a benefactor of this very same heart change that Jesus was telling him everyone needs to undergo if they're going to enter into the kingdom. Now, how do we know that? How do we know that Nicodemus is saved? How do we know that Nicodemus had hope beyond this encounter? Well, we know because this isn't the last time he shows up in John's Gospel. In John chapter 19, he's back. Nicodemus is back. But what's he doing? Nicodemus was one of the many who sacrificed in front of all those who were aware of it, sacrificed all his credibility with the religious leaders. He sacrificed his standing with others in order to be part of the burial team. Nicodemus was part and parcel to the efforts undertaken after the crucifixion to bury our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He's presented as one who came to faith. This morning, we have some idea, some hope, that that's how he responded. But the question for us, 2,000 some odd years later, is how are you going to respond?

God has presented to you the Gospel. If at no other time in your life, you've heard at least in some small portion this morning.

How do you respond to it?

The road forward is not a road paved by your own efforts. The ladder, such as it is, that will ascend to His golden shores is not created rung by rung by rung by you.

The ladder is singularly this, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. His Son came down as the ladder that if we are to have any hope, we must ascend through faith in Him. Let's pray.

[outro music] To search through an archive of Dr. Holt's previous sermons, please visit us at fpcgulfport.org, or you can look us up at sermonaudio.com. [outro music]