Faith and Eternal Life

 John 3:1-17, Second Sunday in Lent, March 5, 2023

In today's sermon text, Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin in Judea. The Sanhedrin was the public representative body of Judea during the time of Roman colonial rule. It was roughly equivalent to today's Congress and Supreme Court combined. Nicodemus came to Jesus. It's not clear whether he came in an individual capacity or on behalf of the council. We're told he came at night, which might have made him feel uncomfortable to come in the daytime. He opens by saying to Jesus in John 3:2, "Rabbi, we know that you are from God.

"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

At this point, Jesus was already on the radar of those in power in Judaism. Just before our text, John 2:13 and following, we read of Jesus causing a ruckus in the temple in Jerusalem. He made whips out of cords, drove out the merchants, overturned the money changers' statues, and sternly rebuked them, saying, "Do not make a house of my Father's house a house of trade." What authority did Jesus have to do this? The Jews demanded that Jesus show them by what authority He was doing this: by showing signs (John 2:18). According to 1 Corinthians 1:22, the Jews were originally a people who valued signs (miracles). John 2:23 says that people saw the signs Jesus performed at the Passover and believed in him.

Signs and conversion

Not only then, but even today, people are interested in such signs. A high school that produces a high number of students admitted to top universities, a venture that grows its revenue 500 times in one year, a movie that reaches 5 million viewers, a church that reaches 1,000 attendees in five years of planting, etc. It's inevitable that individuals and nations alike are most interested in things that have concrete, tangible results. It's true that these targets make our lives exciting. We don't have to deny it, and we can't deny it; it's natural. The reason Nicodemus comes to Jesus and asks for signs is because he wants Jesus to do more powerful signs and miracles. But Jesus gives him an answer that Nicodemus doesn't expect, verse 3.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus was interested in signs, and Jesus said "born again," meaning that the kingdom of God could only be experienced by being born again, by becoming a new person, not through a sign that would get people's attention. It's a completely different view of the kingdom of God, a different view of ultimate happiness, so to speak.

After hearing Jesus' words, Nicodemus asks if being born again means going back into the womb and coming out again. It's a silly question, like a child's. Nicodemus was an intellectual of his day, a Jewish theologian, so it's not like he couldn't understand what Jesus was saying about being born again. It's the same today. Being informed and actually knowing are two completely different things. Even if you're an intellectual, a wealthy person, a leader in the world, and even if you're old enough to know a lot of the "know-how" of the world and to be respected by others, it doesn't mean you actually know life. The fact that you've been in church for a long time is no proof that you know the gospel. Like Nicodemus, who questioned Jesus' statement that you have to be born again to experience the kingdom of God, asking if it meant you had to go back into the womb and come out.

The conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus follows. In a way, it sounds like a cross-examination. Jesus calls being born again a work of the spirit (πνεῦμά): that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. The reason people don't recognize the work of the Spirit is because the Spirit blows "at will," like the wind. To the ancients, the wind was a frightening phenomenon. It could blow strong enough to uproot a tree, and then go quiet, and you couldn't find the source. Where did the wind go, and where did it come from? Why does the wind feel different every time? What is the nature of the wind? Listen to what verse 8 says.

The wind blows arbitrarily, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or where it goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Someone like Nicodemus, who only thought of going into his mother's womb and coming out again, couldn't understand Jesus' statement about being born of the Spirit. A miscommunication ensued, and while the text leaves out the details, the key to this whole story is found in verse 16, which encapsulates the faith of the disciples and early Christians. It's the most famous verse in the Gospel of John.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

This is the "secret of the new birth" that Jesus gave to Nicodemus earlier. Only a born-again person - a spiritual person - can actually know that they have eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. That's called being 'born of the Spirit'. Listen to verse 11.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak what we know, and testify what we have seen; but ye receive not our testimony.

The Jews of that day would not accept the testimony of the Christians about Jesus because they had not been born again by the spirit given from above. The Christians turn to the Jews and say, 'We tell you what we know and testify what we have seen.' The same is true of our situation today. Putting that aside, it's important to know why our testimony is sure: what it really means to say that whoever believes in Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, should not perish but have eternal life.

He who believes in the only begotten Son

First, consider what the word "believe" means. People outside the church often misunderstand Christian faith. They think it's religious fervor, a lack of confidence in one's own life and a desire to rely on an absolute to get you through it. They see it as blind faith or fanaticism that has no rational basis. The village where I live, Wondang, is not far from the 'Donhalmae-ro'. If you follow the stone hag road, you will come to the 'Donhalmae village', where there is a 'Donhalmae' that the villagers have worshiped as a guardian spirit for generations. It's a granite boulder that weighs about 10 kilograms, and depending on how you feel when you hold it, your wishes may or may not be granted. It's so popular that sometimes people come in groups on tour buses. From what I hear, there are 100,000 visitors a year. Palgongsan God Rock functions similarly. It's shamanism in a big way. People are existentially weak, so it's cognitive to want to rely on something in that way.

There are many stories in the Bible where faith can be read as a wish-fulfillment device, including just three in the Synoptic Gospels. In Matthew 9:18 and following, Jesus raises the daughter of a ruler from the dead. On the way to the ruler's house, the woman, who had suffered from hemorrhages for 12 years, touches Jesus' cloak. Jesus says to her, "Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has saved you." Mark 10:25 and following. In Mark 10:25 and following, we read about the healing of the blind man, Bartimaeus. When Bartimaeus asked to see, Jesus said, "Go. Luke 17:11 and following tells the story of the healing of the leper. When the man returned to express his gratitude for being healed, Jesus said, "Go, your faith has saved you." Based on these stories, people think that faith is the means to being healed and blessed. If we were to link faith to healing and good fortune, we would be saying that Christians who have bad luck don't have faith. Furthermore, since we are believers in the crucified man as Christ, we would be denying our own existence by linking good fortune and bad fortune to matters of faith. These healing stories are an explanation of who Jesus Christ is.

Faith in the New Testament is the willingness and determination to make Jesus' teachings, his faith, his hope, and his love the center of our lives. So before we say we believe in Jesus, it's important to know who Jesus is-who he is. If you think you know it all, that's great, but you might be getting it wrong. To know who Jesus was, you need to know specifically what he believed. Have you ever really thought about what Jesus, who lived in the Jewish faith tradition, might have believed about God?

Jesus believed that God's reign had already begun; he believed that God was with him; and he told the people of his day about God, his kingdom, and his righteousness from a completely different perspective than Judaism, which was centered around the law and the temple. He proclaimed that God didn't look at how faithful you were to the law and the temple, but how much you trusted in God. That's why he didn't mind being close to the tax collectors and sinners the law forbade: he ate and drank with them and mingled with them. He could call out for those who dragged a woman caught in adultery in the field to let the innocent cast the first stone. Through the eyes of such faith, the scribes and Pharisees, the highest echelons of Judaism, were the hypocrites. They were the ones who undermined the very spirit of the Sabbath, not enhanced it. They were the ones who sifted the wheat from the chaff and swallowed the camels. They were the ones who called Jesus a "plastered tomb." After all, he was crucified. The only begotten son we believe in is not the Jesus who had a good life and made it big, but the Jesus who trusted God completely and fell to the fate of the cross. Does this make sense? Does it mean that we all actually deserve to fall to the fate of the cross? It can't, because He promised that those who believe have eternal life.

Eternal life

The dictionary definition of the word eternal life is eternal life, or life without end. When the Bible talks about eternal life, it doesn't refer to an infinite stretch of time. It refers to a qualitative change in time. A qualitatively transformed life is eternal life. Think of it this way metaphorically. Here are two equally terminally ill people. One dies after 20 years of constant hospitalization and reliance on life-prolonging treatments, and the other dies 10 years earlier by living a normal life with minimal medical assistance. The second person decides that it's more important to live a quality life than to extend his life by 10 years. The early Christians believed that through Jesus Christ, they could have a whole new kind of life. This is not to say that it's a good idea to die quickly or to refuse medical treatment, but the point is that they experienced a new kind of life, eternal life, through Jesus Christ.

There are two books by Moltmann that I've enjoyed reading recently. One is New Beginnings at the End of Despair (Im Ende- der Anfang, 2003) and the other is I Believe in Eternal Life (Auferstanden in das ewige Leben, 2020). Both books are on the topic of eternal life, and their content can be summarized in two ways. 1) Eternal life after death does not take place somewhere in heaven, but on earth, called earth. Earth is the world that God created as holy, and it is the place where Jesus was crucified. In the Lord's Prayer, we read, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We cannot speak of eternal life apart from this earth. 2) A person does not fall into a kind of 'sleep' (1 Thess. 4:13 et seq.) for a period of time after death and then gain eternal life at the beginning of the final judgment; he gains eternal life immediately upon death, because at the end of that time when eternal life is manifested as a reality, the time of 'sleep' after death, the interim period between death and eternal life, is expunged.

This theological conception of death and eternal life is deeply intertwined with the "kingdom of God" that Jesus proclaimed. The kingdom of God is said to be 'not yet' complete, but 'already' begun. While Jesus was alive, he fully embraced the reign of that very same God; he believed in God fully; he lived in the fullness of God's love; and to his disciples, who were bound by his faith and his love, he reappeared after his death as 'the living one'. For the disciples, the power of death was now broken. They were no longer afraid of death. They were not afraid of the violence of the Roman Empire, nor did they crumble in the face of the loneliness, sorrow, and self-limitations of human existence. Through Jesus, they had experienced the eternal light of life, and that is eternal life, so that they could confess that whoever believes in his only begotten Son should not perish but have eternal life.

I'm sure there are some of you who find this confession trivial or unrealistic, because you've believed in Jesus all your life, but you're still worried about the things of this world, you're still anxious about life itself, you're still afraid of death, you're still unable to set your soul free in your daily life, and you're still sweating the small stuff just like the rest of the world, let alone eternal life. I can't solve that problem for you, as a preacher. It's like when you're learning to swim and you're told to put your whole body in the water, but you're not doing it. All I can do is fill in the blanks about what the experience of eternal life is like, and leave the rest to you to figure out on your own.

For John, eternal life is an event of union with the love of God revealed through Jesus Christ. It's not about extending your life to a hundred, or two hundred, or increasing the total amount of luxuries in your life, it's about entering into the love of God. If you experience the fullness of God's love revealed through Jesus in the "now," like a baby in its mother's arms, this is the moment of eternal life for you.