It’s hard to teach people whose minds are made up.

by K.W. Leslie, 18 March 2024

John 3.9-13.

When Nicodemus came by night to suss out Jesus, our Lord began their discussion by talking about getting born again. Because we gotta be born again. Flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s kingdom. 1Co 15.50

Evangelical Christians tend to claim “being born again” is purely a spiritual transformation. Not a radical change of character into one which produces good fruit. Not a resurrection into eternal life. It’s how they avoid both trying to develop good fruit, and adopting a proper view of the second coming instead of the End Times bloodbath they’re kinda fantasizing about in which Jesus smites all their political foes.

Being born again is a deep, challenging idea. Which Nicodemus balked at… as people will do when they’re confronted with something which demands real, transformative change of them. He began with the typical skeptic’s joke of “What, you mean that literally?” Jn 3.4 No; you misunderstand how new life works. But now Nicodemus went with a different skeptic’s tack: “Okay, explain how this is gonna happen.” In other words, explain it so I can critique it.

But Jesus, who’s far wiser than most people realize, didn’t take the bait.

John 3.9-13 KWL
9 In reply Nicodemus tells him, “How can these things happen?”
10 In reply Jesus tells him, “You’re Israel’s teacher.
You don’t already know these things?
11 Amen amen! I promise you:
We’ve known what we’re talking about.
We’ve seen what we’re testifying about.
You people don’t receive our testimony.
12 If you don’t trust me when I tell you earthly things,
how will you trust me when I tell you heavenly things?
13 Nobody’s risen up to heaven
except the one who comes down from heaven:
The Son of Man.” {Who’s in heaven.}

Text that was added to the New Testament by the Textus Receptus (and therefore found in the King James Version and NKJV) are in braces: John didn’t actually write it, and Jesus didn’t actually say it. Wouldn’t make any sense if he did. If Jesus had told Nicodemus the Son of Man is in heaven, it’d imply Jesus isn’t the Son of Man, because Jesus was right there, on earth, teaching the Pharisee senator about himself. He’d have to give Nicodemus a whole extra lesson about how the Son of Man was on both heaven and earth at the same time. Which he wasn’t; the whole point of verse 13 is to tell him the Son of Man came down from heaven.

And yet we have Christians who think the Textus and KJV have it right; that somehow Jesus was in heaven at the same time he told Nicodemus he’d come down from there. Somehow he was in two places at once, ’cause despite being in a human body, he’s God and omnipresent at the same time. But this is a heresy which turns Jesus into the remote-control avatar of the heavenly Son of God, instead of being fully God. Nope; not going there! If “Who’s in heaven” is to be seriously considered part of the text of John (and it’s probably best we don’t), it’d have to be an additional comment of the author of John—reminding us the Son of Man is in heaven now, but at the time he was talking to Nicodemus, he wasn’t yet.

Anyway. There’s a regular theme we see throughout John where Jesus tries to teach people something, but they can’t handle his teaching. This’d be one of those times.

Not because it’s impossible to understand Jesus! We give newbies the gospel of John, and they read it, and understand Jesus just fine. He’s deep, but he’s intelligible. John wrote most of his gospel in pretty basic Greek too, so most of the time it’s really easy to translate. Jesus uses tons of metaphors, but big deal; every culture has metaphors, and the ancient Hebrews were thoroughly familiar with metaphor; read Psalms and the Prophets sometime. Metaphor-a-rama.

The issue isn’t that Jesus goes over people’s heads. He doesn’t. The issue is people don’t want him in their heads. He’s too challenging! Too antithetical to the stuff people prefer to believe. Too contradictory to the stuff they grow up with, and take for granted. Too convicting.

And there’s another theme seen throughout John, which we also see right here in this passage: Jesus finds this rampant closed-mindedness really annoying.

Back to the idea Nicodemus was dumb.

As I said, Christians read this passage and understand the basics of it right away. If you wanna experience God’s kingdom, you gotta become a new person. Not a complicated idea! But Nicodemus appears to struggle with it… so we presume Nicodemus is an idiot.

Or sometimes we claim it’s because Nicodemus didn’t have the Holy Spirit. When we turn to Jesus, he sends us the Spirit, who now lives within us, and helps us understand deep, challenging God-ideas. So we understand what being born again means… but Nicodemus didn’t have the Spirit, so all of this went right over his head. And what a dummy he must be. He’s one of the top Pharisees in the province, Israel’s teacher, Jn 3.10 but he can’t understand something so simple? Was he inbred or something?

But here’s what’s really happening. Whenever you show John 3 to a pagan, do they respond like Nicodemus does? Well it entirely depends on how open-minded they are. If they’re honestly curious about God-stuff, this totally makes sense to them. And if they’re entirely sure they have God and the universe all figured out… they object. They have their doubts. They’re deliberately trying to not get it.

Because it’s painfully clear what Jesus is getting at: If we wanna see God’s kingdom, something in us has to change. We gotta have some sort of “born again” experience. We gotta start from the top, and become very different people. And if we’re mighty comfortable with the people we currently are, we don’t wanna do that. We will fight doing that.

So no, skeptics aren’t dumb; Nicodemus wasn’t dumb. These guys are only playing dumb.

But man alive, do certain Christians love to imagine they’re dumb! And love to imagine we’re so smart. It’s a pride thing! We like to think we’re smarter, we’re special, we have supernatural insight, we have secret knowledge. Whatever form it takes, we wanna think we’re better than skeptics and pagans: We can understand Jesus just fine, but somehow they just can’t.

It’s not the humility we oughta see in Christians. It’s why we have to fight this interpretation of the scriptures, and any interpretation makes us out to be better or wiser or smarter than we are. Jesus is better, wiser, and smarter. We are his students, who need to stick to following him, and not inflate ourselves any, lest we forget to constantly keep our eyes on Jesus.

Clever, but thick.

Remember when the LORD told Isaiah he was gonna preach to morons?

Isaiah 6.9-10 KJV
9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. 10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

By “the heart of this people,” God meant their minds. Hearts were what the ancients believed they thought with; not their brains. Their minds were gonna be fat, heavy, closed, and dense.

And no, it’s not because God was making them stupid. He sent them Isaiah, after all. The problem is the people didn’t wanna repent and be saved and get healed. They didn’t want knowledge and understanding. They chose to be unthinking and apathetic. People choose this behavior.

Jesus quotes this bit of Isaiah when he explained to his students why he used parables. Mk 4.10-13 No, it’s not that he’s trying to hide his kingdom from people! His parables constantly began with “Here’s what God’s kingdom is like!” Anyone with hearing ears could listen. The problem was people didn’t wanna listen. They figured they already knew what the kingdom’s like. Really, if Jesus flat-out point-blank hardcore taught the kingdom’s details, it’d land him in trouble way faster than it already landed him in trouble.

Nicodemus was a smart guy. But when he met with Jesus, he only brought one insight with him: Jesus came from God. It’s a start! But it’s all Nicodemus had, and I don’t think he expected Jesus to actually teach him stuff. It’s why he struggled with Jesus’s teaching. Likely he still had an attitude of “Wait, I’m the teacher, and Jesus is just some miracle-worker.” In fact Nicodemus, thanks to a lifetime of flawed Pharisee traditions, had to start over from scratch under a new Master. It’s not at all what he was expecting. He was used to his old ideas, the stuff the Pharisee elders taught. He was used to being right—something none of us are.

Hence Jesus’s quick diagnosis of Nicodemus: “I know what I’m talking about. I was there. Yet none of you accept it. And I have so much more to teach you!”

Yeah, Jesus has infinite patience. It’s why he didn’t give up on Pharisees altogether, didn’t quit teaching in synagogue, didn’t decide not to die for their sins, and didn’t instruct his students before he ascended, “Don’t bother with Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. They wouldn’t listen to me, so they can all go to hell.” Ac 1.8 But he did vent from time to time: “Why won’t you people listen?”

In this passage Jesus uses the plural—“we’ve known what we’re talking about.” No, this isn’t a reference to the trinity. Jesus is speaking of all the other prophets who legitimately hear God. Like John the baptist—whom Pharisees didn’t believe either. Mk 11.30-33 Pharisees were too busy listening to their great rabbis to listen to God’s prophets. And they were gonna utterly miss God’s coming kingdom through their willful nearsightedness.

Yep, exactly like American Christians. Too often we’re too busy listening to the more famous preachers, authors, bloggers, even politicians. Not so much the bona fide prophets, who are trying to get us to repent and follow Jesus. Who are, like their Master, too challenging, too contrary, too convicting.

Some things never do change.