from WL Worcester (H Blackmer, ed.), 
The Sower.  Helps to the Study of the Bible in Home and Sunday School
 
(Boston: Massachusetts New-Church Union, n.d.)

Table of Contents
 

 

Lesson 6

John 3: 1-17  The Lesson to Nicodemus

The Story

Primary

It was at that same visit to Jerusalem that the Lord talked with Nicodemus, a man in high position among the Jews, a teacher and a member of their high council. Nicodemus came to the Lord by night, for he feared to have others know that he was interested in Jesus, with whom the priests were angry because He interfered with their trading in the temple, and because He was followed by the common people. But Nicodemus saw the miracles that Jesus did and believed that He was a teacher come from God. Later we hear more of Nicodemus and find him bolder in his love for the Lord. On this night in Jerusalem the Lord spoke words which you often hear read in church when a person is baptized. Read verses 5-8. Then come the words which some of us are learning. (Verses 14-17)

This visit of the Lord in Jerusalem began at the Passover in the spring, and after the feast the Lord and the disciples stayed in Judea, the country near Jerusalem, through the summer and autumn, teaching and baptizing. This was a long visit in Judea.

Junior

You remember that it was said in the last lesson that He did miracles while He was in Jerusalem, and that many seeing Him, believed on Him. One of these was a man named Nicodemus, one of the "rulers of the Jews." He seems to have been one of the three officers of the great council of the church, the Sanhedrin. For him, the master or teacher of Israel, to be willing to come to learn of the Lord meant a great deal. The other rulers and great men of the church were angry with the Lord for cleansing the temple. They were angry and jealous of Him because many believed on Him, and because He taught from His own authority, or what He knew Himself to be true, and not what they had taught Him. They would have been very angry with Nicodemus if they had known that he believed on Him.

So Nicodemus came to the Lord by night, and told Him of his belief in Him. But the Lord said that a man must be born again or from above, before he could see the kingdom of God. This Nicodemus did not understand. He did not see how a grown man could be born again. The Lord did not mean that a man's body must be born again, but that as we learn to do right as the Heavenly Father has taught us, He will give us a new and heavenly spirit with which we can enter the kingdom of God. Read, or better still repeat the first eight verses of this chapter. "Born of water and of the spirit." Have you ever heard these words before? Do you know when? Yes, when anyone is baptized; when your minister takes a little baby up in his arms, dips his hand in the water, and touches the baby's head. In that same holy service he reads these verses, and this touching the head with water is a sign that the parents and the angels will help the baby to lead a heavenly life. Or if it is a grown person that is baptized, that he will try and put away his wrong habits, and with the Lord's help do right as He has taught him. Then the Lord's spirit comes and helps him, and makes him happy, though he may not realize where the strength and gladness come from.

Nicodemus found it hard to understand this. The Lord had told Nicodemus only simple things concerning a life here in this world, and he found it hard to believe. "How shall ye believe," He asked, "if I tell you of heavenly things?"

Then the Lord spoke of the time when the children of Israel were traveling in the wilderness (this Nicodemus knew about), and they complained against the Lord and against Moses, and of what the Lord was doing for them. Then came poisonous serpents into their camp and bit the people and many of them died. And the Lord told Moses to make a fiery serpent and to set it upon a pole, and as many as were bitten and looked upon the serpent of brass lived. (Numbers 21:5-9) So now Jesus likened Himself to this brazen serpent, but said that as many as believed on Him should have eternal life. For the Heavenly Father loved the world so much that He Himself had come into it in a body such as ours, not to show us how evil we are, but to help us to lead a heavenly and everlasting life.

The Lord probably said many more things to Nicodemus at this time, but by the Lord's guidance these only have been recorded by John to help us live the heavenly life.

We learn of Nicodemus twice after this: John 7:50-51 and 19:39.


1. Who was Nicodemus? What three things are told us about him in the Gospels?

2. To what processes of the natural world and natural life is the spiritual process of regeneration compared?

3. Why is the influence of the Lord and heaven likened to the wind?

4. What is the story of the serpent in the wilderness?

5. What has God done for men because He loves them?

Spiritual Study

Intermediate

In Genesis the process of regeneration is described as a process of creation, accomplished in a series of steps by the power of the Lord. Now we have a still more wonderful lesson about regeneration. It is a re-birth, a gradual process, and involving all the wonderful stages of development which belong to natural birth. We shall not think of regeneration as some change which makes us heavenly in a moment. It is not the transforming of the old selfishness into heavenliness. It is the gift of a new life from above, which develops and is born and grows by processes as wonderful as those of natural development. (A. 8043, 9042)

Often in the Scriptures the wind is a symbol of powerful but unseen spiritual influences, either good or bad. Remember the stormy winds which the Lord rebuked and calmed on the Sea of Galilee, types of the exciting evil influences of hell. On the other hand the strong east wind which opened a way for the children of Israel through the Red Sea was a type of the protecting influence of heaven. The Lord even made a breath a type of His own Divine Spirit, for He breathed on the disciples and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." What influences are likened to the wind in this lesson to Nicodemus? The influence of heaven and of the Lord's own Spirit which accomplish the work of regeneration in us. We may perceive a very little of their present operation, but we cannot know the Divine and heavenly sources from which they come, and we cannot know the Divinely wise and loving purposes that they are working to accomplish for us in this world and in the eternity of heaven. We hear the sound of the wind, but cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. (N. 173-182; A. 10240)

"Born of water and of the spirit." The words remind us of what John the Baptist said about his baptism and the Lord's. Water is the type of repentance in obedience to the Lord's commandments. This more external and negative work of reformation must come before the more internal and positive work of regeneration, the birth and development of the new life from the Lord. (T. 571; P. 83)

That we cannot make ourselves heavenly, but that the new life is only from the Lord, is taught by the words, "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." (Compare Psalm 33:6 and Luke 12:25.) There is absolutely nothing in us that is heavenly, but what is from the Lord - first His truth in our minds, then His strength in our lives and His love in our hearts. (T.576)

You know that the serpent lying full length on the ground corresponds to that part of a man's life which is nearest to the world, which has to do with his senses and the pleasures and temptations of the senses. The biting of the people of Israel by the fiery serpents in the wilderness represented the temptations of sense and appetite which, if yielded to, are so numbing and fatal to spiritual life. The lifting up of the serpent of brass represented the overcoming of all such temptations by the Lord, and the glorification of this plane of life in Him. The healing of the people as they looked upon the serpent of brass represented victory over such temptations in the Lord's strength, and the gift of a strong, pure life from Him. (E. 581; A. 8624; R. 49)

Do verses 16 and 17 gain or lose in tenderness and power, when we know that the "only begotten Son" who came into the world to live with men, was not a Being distinct from God, but was God Himself who came in a human nature all His own, and glorified it that He might be near to men forever with His saving power? (T. 23; A. 3161)

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