Everything about it, pretty nearly, is wrong. 'He came to Jesus by
night,' half-ashamed and wholly afraid of speaking out the conviction
that was working in him. He was a man in position. He could not
compromise himself in the eyes of his co-Sanhedrists. 'It would be a
grave thing for a man like me to be found in converse with this new
Rabbi and apparent Prophet. I must go cautiously, and have regard to my
reputation and my standing in the world; and shall steal to Him by
night.' There is something wrong with any convictions about Jesus
Christ which let themselves be huddled up in secret. The true
apprehension of Him is like a fire in a man's bones, that makes him
'weary of forbearing' when he locks his lips, and forces him to speak.
If Christians can be dumb, there is something dreadfully wrong with
their Christianity. If they do not regard Jesus Christ in such an
aspect as to oblige them to stand out in the world and say, 'Whatever
anybody says or thinks about it, I am Christ's man,' then be sure that
they do not yet know Him as they ought to do.
Nicodemus 'came to Jesus by night,' and therein condemned himself. He
said, 'Rabbi, we know.' There is more than a _soupcon_ of patronage in
that. He is giving Jesus Christ a certificate, duly signed and sealed
by Rabbinical authority. He evidently thinks that it is no small matter
that he and some of his fellows should have been disposed to look with
favour upon this new Teacher. And so he comes, if not patronising the
young man, at all events extremely conscious of his own condescension
in recognising Him with his 'We know.'
Had he the right to speak for any of his colleagues? If so, then at
that very early stage of our Lord's ministry there was a conviction
beginning to work in that body of ecclesiastics which casts a very
lurid light on their subsequent proceedings. It was a good long while
after, when Jesus Christ's attitude towards them had been a little more
clearly made out than it was at the beginning, that they said
officially, 'As for this fellow, we know not whence He is.' They 'knew'
when He did not seem to be trenching on their prerogatives, or driving
His Ithuriel-spear through their traditional professions of orthodoxy
and punctilious casuistries. But when He trod on their toes, when He
ripped up their pretensions, when He began to show His antagonism to
their formalism and traditionalism, _then_ they did not know where He
came from. And there are many of us who are very polite to Jesus Christ
as long as He does not interfere with us, and who begin to doubt His
authority when He begins to rebuke our sins.
The man that said 'We know,' and then proceeded to tell Christ the
grounds upon which He was accepted by him, was not in the position
which becomes sinful men drawing near to their Saviour. 'We know that
Thou art a Teacher'—contrast that, with its ring of complacency, and,
if not superior, at least co-ordinate, authority, with 'Jesus! Master!
have mercy on me,' or with 'Lord! save or I perish,' and you get the
difference between the way in which a formalist, conceited of his
knowledge, and a poor, perishing sinner, conscious of his ignorance and
need, go to the Saviour.
Further, this imperfect confession was of secondary value, because it
was built altogether upon miraculous evidence. Now, there has been a
great deal of exaggeration about the value of the evidence of miracle.
The undue elevation to which it was lifted in the apologetic literature
of the eighteenth century, when it was almost made out as if there was
no other proof that Jesus came from God than that He wrought miracles,
has naturally led, in this generation and in the last one, to an
equally exaggerated undervaluing of its worth. Jesus Christ did appeal
to signs; He did also most distinctly place faith that rested merely
upon miracle as second best; when He said, for instance, 'If ye believe
not Me, yet believe the works.' Nicodemus says, 'We know that Thou art
a Teacher sent from God, because no man can do these miracles except
God be with him.' Ah! Nicodemus! did not the substance of the teaching
reveal the source of the teaching even more completely than the
miracles that accompanied it? Surely, if I may use an old illustration,
the bell that rings in to the sermon (which is the miracles) is less
conclusive as to the divine source of the teaching than is the sermon
itself. Christ Himself is His own best evidence, and His words shine in
their own light, and need no signs in order to authenticate their
source. The signs are there, and are precious in my eyes less as
credentials of His authority than as revelations of His character and
His work. They are wonders; that is much. They are proofs; as I
believe. But, high above both of these characteristics, they are signs
of the spiritual work that He does, and manifestations of His redeeming
power. And so a faith that had no ears for the ring of the divine voice
in the words, and no eyes for the beauty and perfection of the
character, was vulgar and low and unreliable, inasmuch as it could give
no better reason for itself than that Jesus had wrought miracles,
I need not remind you of how noticeable it is that at this very early
stage in our Lord's ministry there were a sufficient number of miracles
done to be qualified by the Evangelist as 'many,' and to have been a
very powerful factor in bringing about this real, though imperfect,
faith. John has only told us of one miracle prior to this; and the
other Evangelists do not touch upon these early days of our Lord's
ministry at all. So that we are to think of a whole series of works of
power and supernatural grace which have found no record in these short
narratives. How much more Jesus Christ was, and did, and said, than any
book can ever tell! These are but parts of His ways; a whisper of His
power. The fulness of it remains unrevealed after all revelation.
But the central deficiency of this confession lies in the altogether
inadequate conception of Jesus Christ and His work which it embodies.
'We know that Thou art a Teacher, a miracle-worker, a man sent from
God, and in communion with Him.' These are large recognitions, far too
large to be spoken of any but a select few of the sons of men. But they
fall miserably beneath the grandeur, and do not even approach within
sight of the central characteristic, of Christ and of His work.
Nicodemus is the type of large numbers of men nowadays. All the people
that have a kind of loose, superficial connection with Christianity
re-echo substantially his words. They compliment Jesus Christ out of
His divinity and out of His redeeming work, and seem to think that they
are rather conferring an honour upon Christianity when they condescend
to say, 'We, the learned pundits of literature; we, the arbiters of
taste; we, the guides of opinion; we, the writers in newspapers and
magazines and periodicals; we, the leaders in social and philanthropic
movements—we recognise that Thou art a Teacher.' Yes, brethren, and the
recognition is utterly inadequate to the facts of the case, and is
insult, and not recognition.
II. Let me ask you to look now, in the next place, at the way in which
Jesus Christ deals with this imperfect confession.
It was a great thing for a young Rabbi from Nazareth, who had no
certificate from the authorities, to find an opening thus into the very
centre of the Sanhedrim. There is nothing in life, to an ardent young
soul, at the beginning of his career—especially if he feels that he has
a burden laid upon him to deliver to his fellows—half so sweet as the
early recognition by some man of wisdom and weight and influence, that
he too is a messenger from God. In later years praise and
acknowledgment cloy. And one might have expected some passing word from
the Master that would have expressed such a feeling as that, if He had
been only a young Teacher seeking for recognition. I remember that in
that strange medley of beauty and absurdity, the Koran, somewhere or
other, there is an outpouring of Mahomet's heart about the blessedness
of his first finding a soul that would believe in him. And it is
strange that Jesus Christ had no more welcome for this man than the
story tells that He had. For He meets him without a word of
encouragement; without a word that seemed to recognise even a growing
and a groping confidence, and yet He would not 'quench the smoking
flax.' Yes! sometimes the kindest way to deal with an imperfect
conception is to show unsparingly why it is imperfect; and sometimes
the apparent repelling of a partial faith is truly the drawing to
Himself by the Christ of the man, though his faith be not approved.
So, notice how our Lord meets the imperfections of this acknowledgment.
He begins by pointing out what is the deepest and universal need of
men. Nicodemus had said, 'Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come
from God.' And Christ says, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must be
born again.' What has that to do with Nicodemus's acknowledgment?
Apparently nothing; really everything. For, if you will think for a
moment, you will see how it meets it precisely, and forces the Rabbi to
deepen his conception of the Lord. The first thing that you and I want,
for our participation in the Kingdom of God, is a radical out-and-out
change in our whole character and nature. 'Ye must be born again'; now,
whatever more that means, it means, at all events, this—a
thorough-going renovation and metamorphosis of a man's nature, as the
sorest need that the world and all the individuals that make up the
world have.
The deepest ground of that necessity lies in the fact of sin. Brother,
we can only verify our Lord's assertion by honestly searching the
depths of our own hearts, and looking at ourselves in the light of God.
Think what is meant when we say, 'He is Light, and in Him is no
darkness at all.' Think of that absolute purity, that, to us, awful
aversion from all that is evil, from all that is sinful. Think of what
sort of men they must be who can see the Lord. And then look at
yourself. Are we fit to pass that threshold? Are we fit to gaze into
that Face? Is it possible that we should have fellowship with Him? Oh,
brethren, if we rightly meditate upon two facts, the holiness of God
and our own characters, I think we shall feel that Jesus Christ has
truly stated the case when He says, 'Ye must be born again.' Unless you
and I can get ourselves radically changed, there is no Heaven for us;
there is no fellowship with God for us. We must stand before Him, and
feel that a great gulf is fixed between us and Him.
And so when a man comes with his poor little 'Thou art a Teacher,' no
words are wanted in order to set in glaring light the utter inadequacy
of such a conception as that. What the world wants is not a Teacher, it
is a Life-giver. What men want is not to be told the truth; they know
it already. What they want is not to be told their duty; they know that
too. What they want is some power that shall turn them clean round. And
what each of us wants before we can see the Lord is that, if it may be,
something shall lay hold of us, and utterly change our natures, and
express from our hearts the black drop that lies there tainting
everything.
Now, this necessity is met in Jesus Christ. For there were two 'musts'
in His talk with Nicodemus, and both of them bore directly on the one
purpose of deepening Nicodemus's inadequate conception of what He was
and what He did. He said, 'Ye must be born again,' in order that his
hearer, and we, might lay to heart this, that we need something more
than a Teacher, even a Life-giver; and He said, 'The Son of Man must be
lifted up,' in order that we might all know that in Him the necessity
is met, and that the Son of Man, who came down from Heaven, and is in
Heaven, even whilst He is on earth, is the sole ladder by which men can
ascend into Heaven and gaze upon God.
Thus it is Christ's work as Redeemer, Christ's sacrifice on the Cross,
Christ's power as bringing to the world a new and holy life, and
breathing it into all that trust in Him, which make the very centre of
His work. Set by the side of that this other, 'Thou art a Teacher sent
from God.' Ah, brethren, that will not do; it will not do for you and
me! We want something a great deal deeper than that. The secret of
Jesus is not disclosed until we have passed into the inner shrine,
where we learn that He is the Sacrifice for the world, and the Source
and Fountain of a new life. I beseech you, take Christ's way of dealing
with this certificate of His character given by the Rabbi who did not
know his own necessities, and ponder it.
Mark the underlying principle which is here—viz. if you want to
understand Christ you must understand sin; and whoever thinks lightly
of it will think meanly of Him. An underestimate of the reality, the
universality, the gravity of the fact of sin lands men in the
superficial and wholly impotent conception, 'Rabbi! Thou art a Teacher
sent from God.' A true knowledge of myself as a sinful man, of my need
of pardon, of my need of cleansing, of my need of a new nature, which
must be given from above, and cannot be evolved from within, leads me,
and I pray it may lead you, to cast yourself down before Him, with no
complaisant words of intellectual recognition upon your lips, but with
the old cry, 'Lord! be merciful to me a sinner.'
III. And now, dear friends, one last word. Notice when and where this
imperfect disciple was transformed into a courageous confessor.
We do not know what came immediately of this conversation. We only know
that some considerable time after, Nicodemus had not screwed himself up
to the point of acknowledging out and out, like a brave man, that he
was Christ's follower; but that he timidly ventured in the Sanhedrim to
slip in a remonstrance ingeniously devised to conceal his own opinions,
and yet to do some benefit to Christ, when he said, 'Does our law judge
any man before it hear him?' And, of course, the timid remonstrance was
swept aside, as it deserved to be, by the ferocious antagonism of his
co-Sanhedrists.
But when the Cross came, and it had become more dangerous to avow
discipleship, he plucked up courage, or rather courage flowed into him
from that Cross, and he went boldly and 'craved the body of Jesus,' and
got it, and buried it. No doubt when he looked at Jesus hanging on the
Cross, he remembered that night in Jerusalem when the Lord had said,
'The Son of Man must be lifted up,' and he remembered how He had spoken
about the serpent lifted in the wilderness, and a great light blazed in
upon him, which for ever ended all hesitation and timidity for him. And
so he was ready to be a martyr, or anything else, for the sake of Him
whom he now found to be far more than a 'Teacher,' even the Sacrifice
by whose stripes he was healed.
Dear brethren, I bring that Cross to you now, and pray you to see there
Christ's real work for us, and for the world. He has taught us, but He
has done more. He has not only spoken, He has died. He has not only
shown us the path on which to walk, He has made it possible for us to
walk in it. He is not merely one amongst the noble band that have
guided and inspired and instructed humanity, but He stands alone—not
_a_ Teacher, but _the_ Redeemer, 'the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sins of the world.'
If He is a Teacher, take His teachings, and what are they? These, that
He is the Son of God; that 'He came from God'; that He 'went to God';
that He 'gives His life a ransom for many'; that He is to be the Judge
of mankind; that if we trust in Him, our sins are forgiven and our
nature is renewed. Do not go picking and choosing amongst His
teachings, for these which I have named are as surely His as
'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,'
or any other of the moral teachings which the world professes to
admire. Take the whole teachings of the whole Christ, and you will
confess Him to be the Redeemer of your souls, and the Life-giver by
whom, and by whom alone, we enter the Kingdom of God.