Nicodemus - Angry Jewish God Comes to Jesus’ God of Forgiveness
Seeking wisdom, Nicodemus came to this lowly carpenter’s son by night, for he feared to be seen entering his abode, and asked, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God. No one could do these signs that thou doest, except God be with him.”
Then they talked for some time about Jesus’ work and his mission among men. In the course of the conversation, Jesus said, “Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven.” Nicodemus could not fathom the meaning of this statement. “How can a man be born when he is old?” he asked, “Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” (Hindus have called this Dvij, the ‘second-born’).
Jesus saw at once that Nicodemus lacked the spiritual insight necessary to understand his mission. To help him, he began a careful and lengthy explanation of what to him was central in all his teaching.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you,” he began, “except one be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Marvel not that I said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born anew.’ The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.” (The Upanishads say, ‘you are not the body, but the Ātman’, so do not identify yourself with it, you are the soul’).
Nicodemus was mystified. “How can these things be?” he asked Jesus.
His inability to understand spiritual things surprised Jesus. “Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?” he asked, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that which we know and bear witness of that which we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one hath ascended into heaven, but descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” (This descent the Hindus call avataran, and Jesus, like Krishna, is an avatār, the descendant).
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life.” (urdvagaman, being lifted up).
Then Jesus gave Nicodemus a new view of God, one that showed him that God was more than a lawgiver and ruler. “For God so loved the world,” he said, “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Long into the night these two men talked. One the teacher, and the other earnest and devout but hearing for the first time things which taxed his understanding. God sent his son, Jesus explained, not as a judge to call man to task for his minute sins, “but that the world might be saved through him.” Judgment comes not from the divine bench nor according to a set and inexorable law, but because men refuse to follow the light that is in the world. (‘Being of the Spirit, you are untouched by sins,’ assert the Vedās).
Jesus sought to show Nicodemus a new kind of God, one that he had never dreamed of before. It was hard for him to understand a God of love and forgiveness (the Jewish God is an angry God), for he was a ruler who knew law and law only. He had been too long steeped in the legal tradition.
As they talked, Nicodemus’ inner eyes were opened and he began to understand more clearly than before the God of Jesus. He went out from there as the dawn was lighting the skies, and in his heart the dawn of understanding was lighting the dark recesses and driving out the shadows. Nicodemus saw the light that night.
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