CHAPS. 2:23-3
THE four disciples gathered to Jesus as described in chapter 1, set before us a pattern of those whom divine grace and purpose associate with Him in all His grace and glory. The chapters which we will now consider (3-6) show the process by which sovereign grace divers such from their ruined natural condition.
The first introduced is Nicodemus, specimen of a man who, with every good intention and desire for divine things, has nevertheless completely lost his way in the world, and would fain have guidance, and indeed seeks it from the Lord. The scene was Jerusalem; the occasion, the feast of the passover. The signs Jesus had wrought forced upon many the conviction of His divine mission. But, far more than intellectual conclusions, Nicodemus had soul-needs, and sought, though by night, some spiritual instruction from a trustworthy and authoritative source.
A Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, the teacher of Israel, instinctively it was a fear of being seen that prompted him to come to the discredited prophet of Nazareth (2:18-20) by night. Such is the unmanly dread that shakes the feeble heart where the holy fear of God does not hold sway. Such is the subtle power which the world wields over man terrorized by its prince.
But Jesus meets his inquiries in a way quite unexpected. Not human power or man’s responsibility, as he had thought, can enter here. By these indeed man might lose himself; but if lost there was no longer hope or help, save in God alone. And if He act in grace for such, it cannot be to merely remedy or restore that which was ruined and spoiled, but to introduce a new source of life and a new realm — the kingdom of God — the heavenly things and eternal life. In fact it is man’s needs that have to be met by grace; for human power to do good, there is none. And as for God’s requirements, another must answer to them (for the sinner can only heap up transgression), and none can witness of the heavenly things nor have gone up thither, save He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven.
Thus the two great marks of the path of blessing are exclusively divine in conception and execution, namely, the new birth and the cross, the latter leading directly into the heavenly things, so that eternal life is his who believes on the lifted-up Son of man. Well might Nicodemus, thinking of power in the flesh, say, “How can a man be born when he is old?” But through God’s grace he may be born anew, of water (by the Word) and of the Spirit, so that that which is born is spirit, and by a power purely divine.
How blessed a revelation for this poor lost and wandering soul, and for ours also, of the sovereign and impartial love of God! — such love that He gave His only-begotten Son that whoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life!
Remark here the contrasted way in which the Scripture treats the question of life and light. We have already seen in chapter 1 That the entrance of the divine light into the scene of man’s moral darkness did not enlighten the darkness, but only exposed its incapacity to receive the light. Now, in chapter 3:19, the coming into the world of light is to man the occasion of judgment. Life, on the contrary, even eternal life, is that which sovereign grace bestows on whosoever believes on the only-begotten Son; for God has not sent His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through Him. In a word, Light touches the question of man’s responsibility; Life, that of the grace of God.
The incident of the reasoning of John’s disciples with a Jew about purification is introduced in order to show the transition from the earthly dispensation, in which the law and the prophets had their part, to the heavenly things, the testimony to which was rendered by a Divine Person. In connection with the earthly things, John was the greatest. He was sent from God, and was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb; but the special grandeur and dignity of his mission arose from the fact that he bore witness to the Light, and was sent before the Christ to announce and introduce Him to Israel. He was but as the friend of the bridegroom, and has only to withdraw, for his joy is fulfilled when the bridegroom appears.
John’s testimony is the great dividing line between the heavenly and the earthly; that of Christ being not merely heavenly, but purely divine (3:32-34), and no one receives it.
But observe again the difference of light and life. Where eternal life is the point, it is seen to be the gift of sovereign grace. “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He that believes on the Son has life eternal” (vers. 34, 35). To have life one must receive it from Christ; but “the light” never attracts the natural man, but is judgment to him; for coming into the world, as it did in the person of the Word, man preferred darkness (vers. 19, 20). Men only come to the light when God has already wrought livingly in grace (ver. 21). Life is one thing and the conditions of life quite another, though intimately connected. Life is of necessity first, and coming to the light is an equally necessary consequence. Life was in the Word; Light was the condition of its existence for men. We live divinely, through grace, by faith, but we do not become life. Light is the condition in which we live and walk, and we become it in the Lord (Eph. 5:88For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (Ephesians 5:8)). Life and condition are thus in contrast though divinely associated.
A path wholly of God, foreign to human power entirely; and one not merely in or through the world, but which goes entirely out of it, is that which the Lord Jesus sets before this notable man. Pattern of Israel whom he professed to teach, he was in religious and responsible relations with God, and started thus on the road to possession of the promises; but he had wandered and became lost in the darkness. Nicodemus receives indeed the instruction he desires, but it casts him wholly upon God’s power and grace, and the work and worth of the Son of man who is Son of God.