Make It Public
“There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.”
John 3:1-6 NLT
How would you feel if your significant other dated you for decades but always found a way to change the subject when the idea of marriage was brought up? Or maybe they say they’re for you, but they refuse to acknowledge you in public or tell anyone that they choose you? Would that be ok? Would it feel real if it was only in private?
What if your husband or wife took off their wedding ring whenever they left the house, refused to tell their family or friends about your relationship, and refused to have any type of wedding ceremony, because they deemed the idea of making it public unnecessary? Even worse, what if your significant other took everything you provided, accepted all the love you gave, was blessed by you, received the benefits of a relationship with you, and had you carry all their burdens but never publicly claimed you? You pay their bills privately but never get claimed publicly. You put up with their mess privately but never get chosen publicly. They say they love you privately but never show it publicly. If we or any of our friends had a relationship like this, we’d consider it problematic, but this is how we treat God.
God describes His love for us through the analogy of how a perfect husband loves His wife. He’s claimed us, called us, chosen us, and promised to provide exceeding peace and prosperity for us if we accept His proposal. I love how the story of Hosea and Gomer depicts how extreme and extraordinary this message is. Hosea, representing God, is told to go and marry a prostitute, representing us. It’s not like Gomer the prostitute was a loyal and innocent girl who just messed up; she was known for this life. She was expected to be a prostitute. She was known as a prostitute and wasn’t just expected to have all of the baggage, burdens, trauma, and brokenness that came with her lifestyle; she was expected to keep going back to it. And Hosea kept going. Hosea kept chasing. Gomer left and went back to her pimp and life of prostitution, just like we kept going to other sources of sustenance and provision. But Hosea paid a price to win her back. He paid a price for someone he already should’ve had a legal connection to. It’s assumed that Gomer even has children by other men, but Hosea keeps fighting. If this sounds insane, it’s because it is, and this is how Jesus is describing His relationship with us. This is what God did and does for you.
He married someone, us, that He knew would be a piece of work. He married someone who He knew wouldn’t appreciate or accept Him. But because of love, He still made a covenant. He gave them an opportunity to be fully known, fully loved, fully accepted, and fully covered.
This is big because a covenant is different from a contract. In a contract, when one party breaches the agreement, the contract is null and void. But in a covenant, you’re saying that you’ll uphold your end of the bargain even when the other person doesn’t. It sounds insane, but this is what God has done for us.
The Bible argues that God knew everything about you. He knows the future and the past and how you’d turn away, but He continued to stay in line with His covenant to accept you if and when you came back home. Like the Father in the story of the prodigal son, you left, but He is at the door ready to run after you as soon as you are ready to come home and be loved! Isn’t that good news? While God is longsuffering and patient, He is asking us to accept this gift of love by choosing Him back.
A Private Pharisee Made Public
This is the good news that would’ve intrigued Nicodemus, but there’s a certain point where you can’t just keep benefiting from God without choosing Him back. In a world where rabbis and religious leaders wouldn’t be caught dead with a sinner, Jesus was seeking them out. As a student of the scriptures, Nicodemus knew that Jesus was more than special. He may even be the long-awaited Messiah who would save them from everything they couldn’t fight on their own. But Nicodemus was a Pharisee.
Now the Pharisees are often painted as villains in the Bible, but they may not have started off so bad. I actually think they’re more similar to us than we may realize. Many believe that during times of exile and rebuilding, there was a strong push to cling to the word of God among some of the Jewish people. The combination of seeing how ignoring God's instructions led to injury and the pressure from other nations and oppressors to forget their customs and culture led to a special seriousness about the law of God. Ezra even pushed for a revival centered on careful obedience to the word of God. This isn’t a bad thing. It makes sense to cling to what worked in the past, especially when you see other methods failing. It makes sense to cling to God when you see others abandoning Him. But it is believed that the seriousness and rigidness of these scribes, professional writers or history keepers, led to the Pharisees, a group that was so serious about holding on to a time when God felt near that they missed Him coming closer. Imagine that. The people who studied God didn’t recognize Him when He came. Have you seen this in our communities? It’s so easy for us to miss the point.
The Pharisees may have once started as a group that was serious about seeking God, but they lost the plot as an institution. They may have started off wanting to help but eventually became disgusted with the very communities they were called to care for. Their name literally means separated ones. Can you sense the elitism and pride?
Jesus described the Pharisees with this same selfish mentality when He said they had the keys to the kingdom but shut the door behind them so no one else could find it. How many of us find liberation, then can’t be bothered to help others get the same thing? They’re like the people who vote and fight solely to prosper themselves instead of voting and fighting to ease the burdens of others. Jesus said that the people who thought they’d find help with the Pharisees left carrying more burdens, shame, and expectation than they came with. How many of us have been selfish and self-serving in the same way?
Read what Jesus says about them in Matthew 23. They may have taught well, but they didn’t practice what they preached. There was no fruit. They cared so much about the policies that were supposed to help people that they forgot the people. They cared so much about the details of the law that they would tithe on the tiniest income, like the growth of spices from their herb garden, but ignored the important aspects of the law like love, mercy, faith, and justice. Jesus said that everything they did was for show. He said they were like beautiful tombs with ornate designs on the outside and death on the inside. They cared more about looking religious than being like Jesus and building relationships. They cared more about how they looked in church and what titles they held instead of actually loving the people who didn’t have the right clothes or title. They cared more about studying the law than showcasing the love that the law required.
They cared more about holding on to power, control, and order than they did about living out the message of the God they claimed to follow. They cared more about looking good than being good. They cared more about protecting the institution than prospering the individual. They cared more about helping themselves than healing others. Does this sound familiar?
While this is what Nichodemus comes from, it’s not what he is destined to. While he’s been trained to only look out for himself, Jesus’ other-centered message is intriguing. He’s been taught that his strict obedience and perfection protect him, but Jesus is preaching that faith is his covering. While he has been guilty of protecting the institution at the cost of individuals, Jesus makes an audience with him. And this is good news for us too. Many of us have held some pharisaical views. We’ve judged others who sin differently and gossiped about those who were caught doing what we hid just in time. We demonize gay people when we’ve slept around more than them. We damn porn stars when we’re the ones watching it.
The good news is that God is a good and accepting God for all of us. While He may not agree with what Nichodemus has done or believed, He doesn’t abandon him. We’ve been elitist. We’ve been judgmental. We’ve been hard-hearted, mean, and selfish, but Jesus showing up for Nicodemus is proof that He will continue to show up for us!
A Talk with Jesus
I don’t know why Nicodemus came at night. Some argue that this meant that Nicodemus was afraid of being seen with Jesus. He wanted a private and safe place where he could seek and ask questions without being accused. Maybe Nicodemus sent someone to secretly ask Jesus for a meeting so that no one else would know. Maybe he knew where Jesus would hang out and waited until the crowds left. I don’t know, but I do know and love that Jesus gives him space to tiptoe closer as he asks more questions, even if he’s embarrassed, scared, or not yet fully sure of how serious he wants to be about this. Do we create spaces for people to ask questions without fear of embarrassment or broadcast of their vulnerability?
Jesus and Nicodemus meet, and Nicodemus says something interesting. He says we all know you’re sent from God and that God is with you. We all? The other Pharisees? Were they asking the same questions but also afraid to be seen asking? Notice Nichodemus doesn’t say, we know you are God. He still isn’t sure, or at least willing to admit it. Maybe he and the others were afraid to listen or acknowledge Jesus because the stakes were too high. They’d have to give up power if this Jesus guy really was right about what he was saying. So much would change that it may have felt too risky to admit or acknowledge who Jesus was. But Nicodemus, while beating around the bush, is still seeking, and I love that Jesus allows him to.
Have you ever been afraid to admit what you don’t know or so lost on a subject that you don’t even know what to ask? This was serious, and Nicodemus didn’t know how to approach it, so he simply started the conversation, hoping that he’d maybe get some clarity. Nicodemus is obviously seeking more of what Jesus has to offer, but doesn’t know how to ask for more. He doesn’t know how to take the next steps. But while Nicodemus is secretly feeling Jesus out, Jesus takes a step further by answering the question Nicodemus is afraid to ask.
That’s good news too because even when you don’t really know what you want or how to say it, the Spirit interprets your moans and groans and can give you the answer you are looking for. Jesus responds to the question Nicodemus wants answers for but doesn’t know how to articulate by telling him how Nicodemus can accept the good news he heard Him preaching. Jesus says, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, you have to be born again.
Nicodemus pushes back with some sarcasm, as we often do in vulnerable conversations, but under the jokes is still a genuine desire to seek. How can a man go back into his mother's womb and be born again, he asks. But Jesus dives below the jokes and continues to target the heart of the matter. He doubles down and says, you must be born of water and spirit, for humans can produce human life, but the Spirit produces spiritual life.
A Public Profession
This may have taken Nicodemus’ mind back to the words of John the Baptist. The text tells us in Matthew 3 that news of John was spreading. People in Jerusalem, Judea, and the region around the Jordan River were all going out to be baptized by him. Even the Pharisees were coming. Maybe Nicodemus and his friends were in that number. But John even said that while he would baptize with water, someone else is coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit, talking about Jesus.
Maybe Nicodemus was there when this happened. Maybe Jesus is reminding him of a moment he witnessed but didn’t understand or tried to ignore. Here’s the issue. While Jesus allowed Nicodemus to come to Him in private, a call for baptism as a next step was public. You couldn’t hide baptism. Everyone watched it. Everyone saw it.
Baptism was a symbol that you were dying to your old selfish way of living and being reborn or resurrected into new life with Christ. It was a public admission that you turned from, changed your mind about, and repented from your old way of living and were committed to allowing God to lead you. While it wasn’t to say you were perfect, it was a public declaration that you were committed to progressing.
This is a challenge for Nicodemus. He wants to keep his public persona while developing a private relationship. To admit that he was repenting would force him to admit that he didn’t have it all together as a “perfect” and separated Pharisee. He’d have to be publicly humbled.
John the Baptist said this to the other Pharisees when they came to get baptized by him. Maybe Nicodemus was in that number. But John told them his baptism was about repentance, which means a changed mind and direction. They couldn’t be baptized and keep living life without new fruit. They’d have to let go of the oppressive structures that they benefited from. They’d have to accept a new teavhong and new way of life. They’d have to throw away their cold elitism and, instead of being the separated ones, become the surrendered ones. This is hard when you’ve built your entire life of having it all together. It’s hard to change course. It’s hard to let God be God when you’ve built a life off of being your own God. It’s hard to walk towards love when you’ve spent decades only studying the law. It’s hard to be like Jesus in others' lives when you’ve spent your life trying to become and replace Him.
Jesus is presenting Nichodemus and us with a similar fork in the road. He is a loving husband who gave us more than enough chances to choose Him back. He will pour and bless us even when we only show up when no one else will see. But there’s a point where we need to make a public decision. That public decision isn’t to be perfect but to let the Spirit do the work of progressing us.
Some of you have been the spouse who received the benefits of a relationship with God without actually accepting Him publicly, and He is calling you to make it public. That’s what baptism is. Have you publicly chosen Jesus, or is it just private benefits and conversations?
God is calling you to choose Him. He’s calling you to start anew. He’s calling you to go from just private conversations to public witness. But some of us are like Nicodemus and the other Pharisees. You’ve been in church for decades, and you think people will think you did something heinous or don’t have your life together if you get baptized. Public repentance can feel like reputational suicide. I understand that. But Jesus is calling you to be public, and your decision may be what others need to make theirs. You too need to be born again!
If God has put it on your heart to be baptized as a public declaration of your new life in Christ, feel free to contact me on my website, PaceFordham.com. I can connect you with a Bible-believing church in your area so that you have community, or you can sign up to be baptized at one of our next ROAR events.
Now, remember, baptism is enrollment, not graduation. It’s not a profession of perfection calling you to redo it every time you're imperfect. Some of us would get baptized in water every day if we could because we keep sinning. But baptism isn’t something you do a bunch of times because you think you need it. If baptism is being born again, no one is expecting a baby to make no mistakes right after they’re born. God has grace and is covering you. But maybe you got baptized when you were young just because the church was clapping for everyone else who went up and you wanted to be clapped for too, but it didn’t really mean anything to you (true story of someone I know, lol). Maybe someone sprinkled water on you as a baby, but it wasn’t really your decision. Acts 19 tells the story of believers being rebaptized because they didn't truly understand the first time. They got baptized to repent but didn’t recognize the truth of who Jesus was or what the Holy Spirit would do in their lives to cover and convict them, so they were rebaptized after they understood. Maybe you need the same thing. You didn’t know Jesus the first time or truly understand the gospel, but now you’re making a decision to be public about your faith. Will you be baptized?
Will you make a public declaration of your marriage to and rebirth in Christ? Will you ask for the Holy Spirit to cover you and baptize you in fire so that you’ll begin to desire like Jesus and move like Jesus? I believe there are some reading this who desire to be baptized. Don’t put it off. Don’t run away. Make the decision to choose God back.
Again, contact me, and I can help make that happen. Reach out, and we can plug you into a loving church community. Why is church necessary? Because life with God is like a rose. Yes, it’s beautiful, and its scent and essence will waft out to impact everyone around it like your life and love impacts the world around you, but it still has thorns. There will still be pain and rain and problems. And you’ll need a community to walk with you.
Connect with Community
My wife, who is a chemist, texted me something this morning while she was at work. “Total entropy or disorder of an ISOLATED system ALWAYS increases over time. Even the laws of thermodynamics point to the IMPORTANCE of community. It also states that heat naturally flows from hotter to colder bodies. If you are lukewarm, if your faith is dwindling, if you feel like you cannot hang on, get around someone ON FIRE! Science, man. So beautiful. It explains so much about how the world works.”
Now that may have gone over your head, but can I try to explain it in layman’s terms? Simply put, things and people lean towards brokenness and disorder, especially when isolated and not connected to community and something greater. You will naturally move away from your stated goal if you aren’t around other people going towards that goal. Things naturally move towards being colder, but if you want to stay warm, you have to stay connected to other warm things or people. A piece of charcoal by itself gets cold quickly, but a pile of warm charcoal will stay warm for a while.
Baptism is public for a reason. It’s being born into a new family or community because without intimate relationships with others seeking the same goal of growth, you won’t get very far. You won’t win in isolation. This is why you need a church, and I don’t mean just the building. This is why you need a good, honest community that is going towards the same thing. You don’t just need friends; you need people you can cry with and be turned back to God. You need people who will be honest enough to tell you when you’re wrong and can do better. You need people who are equally committed to holistic growth in their lives as they are in yours. Yes, church people are annoying. Yes, people are annoying. Yes, vulnerability is scary, and everyone isn’t trustworthy. But you have to trust God enough to be vulnerable and be committed enough to join the team He tells you to join for your own good.
Your marriage will fail if you don’t have safe places to talk to and be real with other Spirit-filled and committed married people. All the statistics point to this. You will go back to your addiction if you aren’t honest and vulnerable with other people who are also committed to fighting. You need to be around other people committed to eating right and working out if you want to see success. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, at times there is friction. But there’s a reason God says not to forsake the assembly, especially in hard times. Because you need people. Don’t just have a primary relationship with God. Live it out publicly with others who are committed to the same thing. Do you need to get baptized? Do you need to seek community?
