KNOWING HIM, NOT JUST KNOWING ABOUT HIM
The Text, St. John 3:9-21 (v. 9-10). Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. Let us know You, O You who know us; then shall we know You as we are known by You. O strength of our souls, enter into our souls and shape them unto Yourself, that our souls may be Yours to have and to hold, free from stain or wrinkle. You desire truth in our inward parts, because You say that anyone who “does the truth” has “come to the Light,” that is: to You, Jesus Christ. We pray You, make the Truth to be what we want to do in our hearts by confession in Your presence and before many witnesses. We speak because this is our hope, and whenever our joy springs from that hope, it is joy well founded. Amen. (Prayer by St. Augustine, Confessions, X,I.1)
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ, who makes us known to the Father: Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Nicodemus thought he knew a lot when he came to see Jesus. By the time he left he was more aware of all that he didn’t know. He went away probably scratching his head. At the end Jesus spoke to him about “knowing,” in terms of “coming to the light.” It’s clear that this is a different way of knowing, another kind of knowledge, than Nicodemus was used to.
But when we see Nicodemus again, what is he doing? Helping Joseph of Arimathea to embalm Jesus’ body after the crucifixion, risking the scorn of his peers, treating Jesus’ body lovingly, in that final act of love for a dear departed. Imagine his joy when he heard that Jesus rose from death! “To us no harm shall now come nigh, the strife at last is ended!” Obviously Nicodemus did come out of the darkness and to the Light, Jesus, in a more real sense than he came to Him on this night, he came to risk all rather than be disconnected from Christ, he knows it in the truest sense, Nicodemus knows Him.
We imagine Nicodemus’ great struggles. Picture his fellow Pharisees, his peers whose respect he wanted, trying to keep him from pursuing what Jesus taught. They would encourage him to stay with the religion of the Law, being obsessed with performance of laws, rather than listen to Jesus’ message message of the cross and God’s approval not based on man’s performance but for Jesus’ sake. When the time came they pressured him to condemn the Jesus, which he would not do. It wasn’t good for his career to do otherwise. As far as they thought, they were the enlightened ones, the respectable ones. The way Jesus was leading was bound to end in shame, loss and rejection.
You have the same struggle in front of you, trying to make your way in a world that thinks it is so enlightened and that if you really believe these truths that we confess, then you are in the dark. It’s a world in which, increasingly, people believe that you must find your own truth. They say what is true for one person is not true for another person. They deny or doubt that Scripture teaches the truth and that what contradicts it is false.
This is what Jesus is speaking about at the end of His speech, about people who “loved darkness rather than the light,” and about the person who “hates the light, and does not come to the light.” But who is He speaking of?
Certainly it applies to those who are caught up in atheism, who reject miracles and that sort of thing. But it’s also true of what we call the “natural knowledge of God.” This is what you know about God by looking at nature, or from your conscience.
As we look at nature, and what happens in the world, we see storms, earthquakes and tornados. We see sickness, decay and death. We see that bullies win and cheaters get away with it. It isn’t a happy scene.
What you can know of God is even worse by examining your conscience, looking within. Your conscience tells you how little you’ve done that’s right and good, compared all the wrong you do. What will your conscience tell you about God? Only that He’s angry with you because of your sin. The natural knowledge of God will never tell you that God loves you. At the most it will tell you that God will love conditionally – if you do what’s good and right. It will leave you ignorant of God’s true nature and how He loves. As long as the true picture of God’s love is hidden from you, you’re in darkness.
We return to this natural knowledge of God more often than we like to admit. Whenever Christ isn’t in the picture as you think of God, as long as this is hidden from you – which the devil loves to do – it’s dark for you.
In contrast to the natural knowledge of God, the only true knowledge of God – what He’s really like – is found in what He reveals to us in the Bible, His inspired and written Word. And yet there can be some confusion here too. You can think of the Bible as giving you knowledge about God. But the Christian religion isn’t just about knowing Bible verses, knowing Bible facts and history, even though this religion is unique for being factual and historical. The heart of it is not knowing all about God, but knowing Him.
Many, many Christians know Bible verses and Bible facts, know that the Bible teaches creation and against evolution, know that the Bible teaches chastity, know that the Bible teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman, know the Bible verse that says “Baptism saves you,”know what the Bible says about heaven and hell, who agree that the Bible is true and inerrant, and that the Bible is God’s Word – yet don’t bother to read the Bible, or to come to church to hear God’s Word spoken, don’t actually love the words that God wants to speak to them, think they know enough already and don’t need to come to Bible Class, who act as if they don’t miss anything if they are not hearing God’s Word since they know it already. To them it’s information, learning aboutGod. This is a kind of darkness too, a distance that develops between God and themselves, where intellect and reason matter more.
So knowing the true God isn’t just knowing about Him. It isn’t just knowing the answers, knowing the Bible verses, having this stored away in your head. One verse that many people have filed away is right here in front of us today: John 3:16. You could probably all say it with me: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Everyone knows that one. Yet how is it that people can then be unsure that God loves them, uncertain that God forgives them, feeling aimless or alone in the world, staying in fear and doubt, afraid to face death and the judgment?
It is the difference between knowing the verse, and knowing Him. This is a verse about the Triune God:
· “God so loved the world” says God the Father loved everyone in the world before He made it, and still loves everyone even after all they’ve done against Him.
· “That He gave His only-begotten Son” speaks about Jesus, the Son of God, willingly becoming man to suffer for us in order to save us.
· “That whoever believes in Him should not perish but have ever-lasting life,” speaks about the Holy Spirit creating faith in Jesus, and preserving this faith, so when you die you enter into life everlasting.
In this verse the true God comes to you. He comes into the darkness where you are and brings you into the light. He, Jesus, is the Light. As John 1 says, He is “the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world,” and He, “the Light, shines in the darkness.” Instead of leaving this knowledge, this light, hidden in darkness, He uncovers it for you.
What the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit see and know – as Jesus says to Nicodemus, “We speak what We know” – is being spoken to you. Jesus is speaking in this verse, John 3:16. As soon as you hear this verse or even recite it, Jesus is speaking. As He speaks, the Father, Son, and Spirit are with you, before you, in your ear and your mouth and your whole self.
This is love. Incarnate – in-the-flesh – love. The love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is what Jesus describes. Yet they are not three loves, but one love. Don’t we need to know this love? This love has everything to do with the Truth. The Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ, as He said: “I Am the Truth” (Jn 14:6).
He shows Nicodemus, if you want to see the Truth, you look at the cross. Right before verse 16, Jesus gets specific about this love, where you see it, how you know if God loves you: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Just as looking at the bronze serpent took the deadly poison out of the serpent bites, Jesus’ death takes away the deadly poison of your sins. He took your sin and all its poison into His own body, He died for you so you would live. Jesus’ death on the cross took place in an unnatural darkness – a picture that the cross is the light in all darkness. He comes into the darkness to shatter it in His death.
This is how you know God loves you. He doesn’t keep it a secret, what He sees and knows. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, He speaks it to you, He speaks it into you, His Word creates this faith. “Man does not find the truth. The Truth – Jesus Christ – finds the man” (quoted in the St. Augustine movie “Restless Heart”).
His Word, which is the vehicle for the great God and Savior to come right to you, is not just informational; it is powerful. It contains the greatest love – Love Himself, the Divine Love, the Triune God. This love is the greatest power. His love. His love for you is revealed in His Word and comes into you – just as, when He comes in the Lord’s Supper, you eat His body and drink His blood with faith, your Savior – Love Incarnate – dwells within you now.
What you need is not more information. What you need is more Love. More of Him. This is what it means to do the truth and to know the true God: not to do, but to receive; not to know about Him, but to know Him. Amen!