English Standard Version
What do you think someone from Jesus' time would have thought of the automobile or the airplane? Imagine if you told them that you'd inject them with a needle and they'd be safe from a disease. Or point at the moon and tell them that one day, a man would play golf there. They'd look at you like you were crazy, the same way people do when I tell them that one day, the Cincinnati Reds will actually try and be competitive. It just doesn't compute.
Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, and yet he saw something in Jesus that made him curious. He was compelled to come to Jesus, and yet he wasn't certain that Jesus was free of scandal, so he came by night. (Little did he know how much scandal Jesus would one day bring, and yet how that scandal would free all of humanity from sin and death! What a stumbling block the cross will be, as Paul phrases it!) Jesus was explaining that Nicodemus would need to be born again, and yet Nicodemus cannot wrap his mind around the concept -- it's as foreign to him as a gas station would be.
And yet Jesus patiently explains to him that Nicodemus needs to accept that there are things he cannot comprehend, and yet that doesn't mean that his faith is flawed, but rather that God is simply at work in ways and levels Nicodemus cannot fully understand. Like an infant before a parent, there is a level of trust required -- we turn to God, and we accept that God is wiser than we are, and that perhaps we will one day understand in full, but for now, we see in part, and there is enough evidence to lead us to understand that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has done what he has said he has done, and that helps us believe that he will do what he has said that he will do.
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