If a gardener wishes to test the good of the apples on a given tree, he does not gather for a sample a withered apple nor a worm-eaten one. He picks the largest, the ripest and the best! Then when he has tasted it, if he has found it to be sour and unacceptable, he rightly judges the whole crop of that tree to be sour and worthless.
So has He who is the Truth, the blessed Son of God, judged and condemned what is in man. This we learn when He said to law-keeping, religious Nicodemus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 3:77Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. (John 3:7)).
Not one bad thing do we hear of Nicodemus in the Bible. He was not a sinner of the Gentiles, like the wicked Corinthians, neither was he a Samaritan, like the sinful woman of Sychar. He was a teacher of Israel, the chosen nation of pure creed and strict orthodoxy. Moreover, being a circumcised man, Nicodemus was outwardly separated to God in his flesh.
More than this, Nicodemus believed that Jesus was a teacher come from God, and he came to learn of Him. And yet the only teaching this model man received from the lips of the Lord Jesus is his own exclusion from the kingdom of God because of his sinful nature.
This excellent specimen of Adam’s fruit is pronounced worthless, unfit for God. There must be a new nature, another life altogether distinct from that which man receives from his natural parents, or man cannot enter the kingdom of God. Adam and his race are flesh, of the earth. God will only have in His kingdom what is born of His Spirit-born from above.
And where is this new nature to be found? It is from that very Man who says to Nicodemus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”
How can that Holy One give His life to sinful man? Hear Him as He unfolds the wonderful news of love to dying souls:
He Himself, God’s Son, will bear the judgment of God that is due to man. He Himself must be nailed to the cross-LIFTED UP-in order that He may give His own eternal life to whosoever believes in Him.
Man is born of God by acceptance of and faith in His crucified Son. And by this he lives to God, a new man in Christ.
Have you found life in the Lord Jesus Christ, who as Son of Man was lifted up on the cross, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life?