We’ll hear about Nicodemus again. He’s the one who, along with Joseph of Arimathea, helps to put Jesus in the tomb. What needs be understood about Nicodemus is that not only is he a man of prestige, rank, and influence, Nicodemus, also, is a good man. We know lots of good people. Some are even Christian. We know people who don’t claim Christianity, don’t attend church, don’t read the Bible, whom we regard as good people: they don’t harm others, they mind their own business, they’re kind, helpful, patient. Nicodemus comes to Jesus. That sounds promising. Would that all the Nicodemuses would come to Jesus! I wish I knew the secret to that, the trick. Too many people don’t have Jesus and don’t want him. They aren’t mean or insulting in their rejection, they just don’t see what more Jesus could add to their lives. Jesus comes to everybody, and people must come to Jesus: there’s the paradox. Until a man, a woman, a youth, a child comes to Jesus, all that can be said is that Jesus came and they didn’t want him. Well, that’s an old, old story, too. Zach was raised Methodist. Around his teenage years he told his mother, one Sunday, that he wasn’t going to church. It bored him. His mother protested, feebly. Zach told her he would go to church when his father went. They both knew what that meant. So, Zach didn’t go to church. Zach is a generous man; he loves his children. He’s helpful, minds his own business. By and large, people would say he’s a good man, at least, he isn’t a bad man. Tiffany grew up Baptist. She was very involved in her church: she taught Sunday school for the children; she was the church musician. You could count on her; she was a good person: kind, upbeat, helpful, minding her own business, and patient. And she was miserable. She was in a miserable marriage. Her father had been miserable to her. And she grew up believing, wanting to believe, that church was the place where you could be happy, where you would be happy. Church was the place where good people gathered. Tiffany’s marriage finally fell apart, and her church told her she was no good, and they didn’t have much to do with her, after that. So Tiffany had misery in every dimension of her life. Fast forward about five years. Zach and Tiffany met, moved in together. They complemented each other well, well enough, anyway. They didn’t attend church; the thought never occurred to them. Why would it? They didn’t see what more that would add to what they already had. Church would be just as boring to Zach. What didn’t bore him was spending time on his computer, browsing things, and driving places to get things. Tiffany sold and managed investments. She would even go to churches to sell investments, though she was no longer interested in making an investment in church. I suspect you know Zachs and Tiffanys: no vital connection to faith, to Christ, to God. That’s not where their interests are. What interests them is their home, their careers, their family, their plans for doing things and getting things. They have pain and baggage that they hope to leave behind. They want to be future-oriented, not past-bound. They go to work. They go out to eat. They buy things to make home more pleasant or to explore their latest interest. They keep appointments, spend time with family and friends. So, what’s missing? They’ll talk about it. They will agree that there’s still something, some piece of the puzzle they haven’t gotten their hands on, yet. Yes, they may wonder, they may even ask in seriousness. We have the answer, but it’s not an answer they seem to want. And it leaves us sad. What does Nicodemus want? He comes to Jesus not with a specific question so much as a vague longing. He knows Jesus has done some impressive things, at least others say he has. People he knows who aren’t fools say Jesus is a teacher from God. So, Nicodemus comes to Jesus, curious, and more than curious, because, despite being a good man—everyone said he was a good man—despite that, Nicodemus didn’t feel like a good man. He wasn’t sure. Something was missing. Surely there was something more than what he had already. Being good wasn’t quite enough. It didn’t make him feel complete, didn’t make him happy. Maybe Jesus could tell him why. It doesn’t take long. Jesus at once directs the conversation to rebirth, transformation. “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (3:3). No one can see. That’s not just in the hereafter, the goal and destination. It sounds like Jesus is also saying that no one can see, even now, without that rebirth, that mysterious, unfathomable change that comes from God because it is for God. Zach and Tiffany have heard. They know about Jesus, what people say about Jesus. They can’t see it, can’t see what that would add to what they have already. They’re good people enjoying a good life: nice home, financial stability, children and grandchildren, interesting plans for the next project, the next chapter of what they will do and how they will do it. New things to buy, new things to look at buying. And there’s something from God that breaks us out of all that, that changes us. Then, we begin to regard all that we had and all that we were as so much trash, compared to what we have in God. And why us? Why given to us? How have I earned it? How have I deserved it? Because of my good life? Because I’ve been a good person? Because, at least, I didn’t willfully harm anyone—at least, not seriously, or at least, not seriously, physically, or, at least, because at least I didn’t know the person whom I may have seriously harmed, physically? I mean, if you don’t know the person, they don’t really have any claim on you, do they? Well, enough of that. Nicodemus, hearing Jesus say there must be rebirth, dismisses that. He’s thought about that, too: change, transformation, to become a different person, have a different life. He concluded a long time ago that it was impossible. The best a man could do in this life was to be a good person, and, as everyone told him, assured him, he was: well to do, respected, influential, patient, law-abiding. Like Zach and Tiffany, Nicodemus just couldn’t see why he would need anything more than what he already had. And Nicodemus wonders, still, and isn’t just sure why he wonders. Where does the wondering come from? Why was his heart still restless despite having every good thing life had to offer? Without saying so outright (he didn’t want to be rude), Nicodemus is at heart asking Jesus a simple question: What are you offering that I don’t already have? The basic answer Jesus gives is that Nicodemus needs Jesus: the one answer Nicodemus didn’t want to hear, that his heart cannot hear. That answer tells him he isn’t enough, isn’t sufficient: all his work, all his goodness, all his sacrifices won’t, can’t make him good, won’t, can’t make him enough. No one likes to be told they aren’t good enough. Would you ever say that to your child? We say you are! You are good enough: that’s what we’re supposed to say; that’s what love says, right? What does God say? What is Jesus saying? Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he isn’t good enough. Oh, he’s so superior! Can’t you just hear people saying that about Jesus? So much better than the rest of us! Can’t you just hear people saying that about Christians? A rich young man comes to Jesus saying, “Good teacher  [. . .] what must I do to inherit eternal life?” How does Jesus reply? This is crucial for us. Jesus replies, “Why do you call me good? [. . . .] No one is good—except God alone” (Mk 10:17-18). People ask Jesus all sorts of questions. I wonder if, at heart, they aren’t the same question: “What are you offering that I don’t already have?” We ask because, despite all we already have and despite all we seem likely to acquire, something is missing. We have a hunch, an intuition, a whisper (from where?) that, when once we do get what has been missing, we’ll somehow perceive, see, that now we do have all we ever really needed, and we’ll have a fullness we had not known, a joy that endures all the mishaps of happiness. What was must go. That’s a process, and it takes a lifetime. We can’t make ourselves alive; we aren’t enough, no matter how “good” others say we are, no matter how “good” we think we are. Like Nicodemus, like Zach and Tiffany, we were dead in our trespasses, without the power in ourselves to make ourselves alive. Then “God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins” (Col 2:13). Alive. Forgiven. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). To have the gift, to receive it, we must be born again. “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit” (3:5). Confession, cleansing, ending and beginning, and the power of God, at work in us for His own sacred, merciful, loving purposes. But good people don’t sin. Nicodemus was a good man. He was scrupulous in making sure he didn’t hurt others, by word or deed. He liked being good and couldn’t imagine being otherwise. He enjoyed his goodness and couldn’t imagine living any other way. He had nothing to do with sin. Sin, sin—that ugly little word. We’ve been trying to do away with it since forever and haven’t shaken it, yet. And what is it? Hurtful words? Hurtful deeds? Life without regard for God, without concern about God, just like Zach and Tiffany, and the Zach and Tiffany still in us, too. Sinful words and sinful deeds are the result of this disposition. The consequence of sin is death. Sin leads to death and produces deathly works all along the way. If Jesus declines to let himself be called good, how much less should anyone else regard themselves as good, whether a rich young man or an old man of prestige, acclaim, influence, and rank. The good life, the blessed life, doesn’t come by being a hard worker, or someone who lives to please others or to please themselves, it doesn’t even come through being a good person. What God tells us, shows us, is that the blessed life comes through faith: what some can’t seem to get; what some don’t seem to want. Faith more and more reveals to us our own incompleteness and insufficiency, in ways we hadn’t imagined and hadn’t wanted to know. Faith reveals to us that we are not good people. And faith reveals God, more and more, for blessing, for life. We may not be god people, beloved, but we are God people. The good news, the freeing news, is that God isn’t asking us to be good people; He wants something else. God is asking us to be holy, consecrated, His own people. Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good (or good people better). He came to make dead people come alive.[1] “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (3:16-17). By water and the Spirit, God changes the heart: not what we live for but who, not our standard of living but our standard for living. Christ comes, to us, to everyone. By water and the Spirit we come to Christ. That’s the secret that is no secret to us, the secret that remains so elusive to those who just don’t see what Jesus would add to what they already have, to those who somehow, somehow sense, that there has to be more. But who can show them? And who will? Worthy is the lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!                [1] As evangelist and apologist Ravi Zacharias has memorably said.