Late Night Exchange With Jesus Changed Nicodemus

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God’.” (John 3:3)

He appeared three times in the Bible. The first, of course, was that fateful night when under the cloak of darkness, he heard that he must be born again to go to heaven. That exchange with Jesus changed his life forever. I believe it because at the end of our Savior’s life, it was Nicodemus who accompanied Joseph of Arimathea and attended to His burial, bringing along “a mixture of myrrh and aloes.” (John 19:39) Clearly, Jesus was more than his friend. Why else would he risk his life to see to it that Jesus had a fitting burial?

The qualities we saw in Nicodemus that night are qualities that we as Christians see all the time in unbelievers. First, he was obviously afraid to be seen associating with Jesus. He had too much to risk for anyone to think that he could believe in a man that made the claims that Jesus made. How many unbelievers refuse to come to Jesus out of fear of what the world will think of them? Fortunately, Nicodemus did come to Jesus and it was more than simple curiosity. He knew that something was different about Jesus – something Godly – which is why he said, “We know that you are a teacher come from God for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” (John 3:2)

Nicodemus knew that Jesus had been sent by God, but he had no idea why because he was blind, spiritually blind. Just after Jesus told him that one must be born again to go to heaven, Nicodemus said to Jesus, “How can these things be?” (John 3:9) While we need to be willing to testify about that in which we believe, we should never lose sight of the fact that unbelievers are blind to kingdom principles. Like Nicodemus, many do not understand the language that Christians sometime use.

Finally, Nicodemus was too smart to accept at face value what Jesus had just told him. He saw life through earthly eyes and used his worldly brain to sort things out. “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” he asked Jesus. (John 3:4) His questions are not unlike the questions we hear unbelievers ask today. The Gospel is hard to understand, especially hard as the unbeliever gets older and wiser and tries to intellectualize spiritual principles. It is a major reason why only fifteen percent of the salvation decisions made today are made by adults.

We know that night changed Nicodemus’ life, but we don’t know when he decided to accept Christ for whom he said he was. I believe Nicodemus continued to stand on the sidelines and watch Jesus as he traveled through the region, teaching and performing miracles. But between that night and the late afternoon that he showed up with Joseph of Arimathea to claim the body of Jesus, Nicodemus ultimately made the decision that all of us must make if we want to see heaven: To forsake what the world says and step out in faith, believing that which we cannot see. Jesus said it this way: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)