The problems which Job and Nicodemus express in today's reading are the same. See how Job doesn't understand what is happening to him in this world. Nor does Nicodemus, though Nicodemus doesn't precisely express his question to Jesus. Both are dealing with suffering and confusion. We're here in this world. On one level it seems o be a wonderful place. On another level things just aren't so great here. What do we do about it? What can we do about it? It's all so complicated and confusing.
Jesus' tone with Nicodemus is remarkably gentle. It's the same tone he adopts when dealing with other sinners genuinely looking for God's answer to their struggles. And Jesus understands that just because Nicodemus has five doctoral degrees and an IQ of 150 he won't necessarily understand God's provision. In fact, the mercy which God has shown in Christ is not something that an intelligent and learned person can understand any better than someone with an intelligence barely great enough to comprehend that you can turn the doorknob either direction to open the door. We even have lots of examples in modern American Christianity demonstrating that we don't understand what Jesus is telling Nicodemus.
"You must be born again." What is this being born again? It's something I do? No, not at all. It's something God applies to you. But I have to do something, right? That's the Gospel - don't drink, don't smoke, don't chew, don't go with girls who do. No, that's not the Gospel. The Gospel is that Jesus Christ has taken upon himself all your sin and sorrow, that he has died as the penalty for your sin, and that he lives to bring new life and righteousness in eternity, applied to all who believe he has done that. It's not about us. It's about what Jesus has done on our behalf. But how can that be? Nicodemus asks the same question. How can I enter that new life? Jesus' answer to us is the same as his answer to Nicodemus. By all your efforts, by all your desires, by all your striving you will never do it. It is something that you simply cannot do. It is something that God does. And that's what is so Gospelish about the Gospel. It is nothing we can do. It is something God does. He and he alone is the one who makes sense of this troubled world. He does it on his own terms. He does it without our participation. And all the geniuses in the world have no more hope of understanding it or accomplishing it than all the idiots in the world. Salvation is of the Lord. It is not of our own design. Like Job and Nicodemus, we simply have to leave it as God has revealed it.
"Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World, is the heart and center of the Scripture" (Luther's Small Catechism with Explanation, answer #4).
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