In chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, an influential, highly-placed Israelite, named Nicodemus, came by night to visit Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth. Nicodemus was a member of Israel’s national ruling body, the Sanhedrin – an appointed, highly respected spiritual leader whose vast head-knowledge concerning Moses, the prophets and Israel’s sages impressed his Jewish contemporaries and would most certainly have amazed modern day Christians.
But the Gospel reveals that what Nicodemus was and what he thought he knew, were not enough to enable him to discern this awesome truth: that Yeshua was, and is, the incarnate living Word of God, and the promised Messiah of Israel!
John 5:39-40
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have Life!”
This learned man had a highly-accomplished intellect. But his spirit was not yet equipped by the Holy Spirit to discern anything that went beyond fallen humanity’s natural way of understanding – the worldly, purely soulish, intellectual way of ‘knowing’. No doubt, in his own estimation, he was sure that he had ‘arrived’ and had all the answers. But what he thought he knew about God and His written Word failed him. It did not equip him to recognize Yeshua for who He really was in the spiritual realm. Before him sat the living Word of God made flesh, the Promised One whose coming Moses had prophesied centuries before! But Nicodemas wasn’t equipped to be able to discern what was before him.
Yeshua was the same living Word that had created the universe and that had interacted with Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph! He had appeared to Moses and Joshua and was the one the prophets of Israel had proclaimed! He was the living Word through whom God had sustained all of Israel in the brutal, barren wilderness for forty years! But all Nicodemus could see was a mere man, a Godly rabbi – just another Jewish Torah teacher, among many. Nicodemus did not yet have ‘spiritual eyes’ . So he wasn’t able to discern accurately who was before him. And so Yeshua immediately began the training of this man. In the future, Nicodemus would become one of the Lord’s disciples. But at this time, Yeshua ignored his polite introductory remarks and got right to the point. This is how John described it:
John 3:1-3
“Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’
What a shocking response! It was on a completely different ‘wave length’. It was as if Nicodemus had said: ‘Rabbi, I’ve got you pretty well figured out.’ And Yeshua’s response was: ‘You can’t even hear the sound of one hand clapping, can you?’
At first glance, the Lord seemed to be lacking in social grace. He completely changed the subject and was utterly disconnected from Nicodemus and what he just said. And apparently that was exactly the point He wanted to make. He showed Nicodemus that despite his considerable religiosity and status in Israel…spiritually speaking…he was still disconnected from the living Word of God!
God did not send His Word to Earth to please and accommodate the fallen flesh of men, or to cater to their ethnic pride or religious arrogance. He was sent to do His Father’s will, at all times, no more and no less! And His Father’s will is for His living Word to make a brand new spiritual creation out of every Sin-corrupted, fallen child of Adam, Jews and Gentiles alike!
Isaiah 55:10-11
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
God’s living Word responded to Nicodemus on the same basis and from the same stance by which He had, centuries before, rejected the initiative of Cain as he attempted to present his so-called ‘offering’ to God in Genesis 4:
Genesis 4:3-7
“So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the (Word of the) LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
…you must master it…”
And there is the rub: how do you ‘master’ Sin? What will it take before God is free to regard and receive any of us and what we offer Him, in a positive light? How can we approach God free of Sin? What was it that Cain and Nicodemus forgot and failed to take into account? Genesis 3 gives a slight hint:
Genesis 2:21
“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.”
Why weren’t the fig leaves that Adam and Eve used to cover themselves, acceptable in God’s sight? They did the job, didn’t they? So why did God disallow what they came up with for themselves? Was He making a fashion statement…or was He revealing something incredibly profound and earth-shaking?
He didn’t accept the fig leaf covering because it came from a Godless source! The independent ideas and initiatives of Adam and Eve were the problem. God had created human beings to be His image and likeness. But now, in their Sin-corrupted state, Adam and Eve were acting just like the Serpent…operating in the delusion that they could be radically independent from their Creator and free to rely on themselves and other created things, to be their sources, instead of looking to and drawing from God and His Word for everything.
Exodus 20:2-6
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”
Radically independent initiatives are the essence of the Serpent-induced, Sin-corrupted self-life that God always rejects. Anything produced in that state of radical independence does not come from God…through His living Word…and His Holy Spirit. So God will reject it, every time. The spiritual nakedness of our first parents was not something they could have taken care of by themselves by any means. It required a spiritual covering and restoration that could have only come from God. That’s why their self-devised fig leaf covering was wrong. Radical independence from God prevents us from being His image and likeness. An image and likeness receives and does only what it first receives from its true source. We are designed and created to be God’s image and likeness, so He and He alone must be our Source for everything. When we operate in that true, original receiving-from-God authenticity, we abide in God’s Reality and Truth. We are reflecting back to Him what His Word first gives to us. That keeps us in line with our Creator’s nature and activity and with our own God-given nature as well.
So when we pull away from God’s Word, we twist and disfigure our nature beyond recognition. We disconnect from our true Life and Power Source and no longer coincide with God’s nature and His ways. Thus we become deviant mutations of what God originally created and violate the laws governing our nature by rebelliously taking matters into our own hands. When we do as we think best, we are no longer God’s image and likeness. We are no longer following His Word. We degenerate into something that is independently wicked, dark, self-serving…something that morphs us into the image and likeness of the Serpent!
Adam and his wife fell into that radically independent state of Sin because they rejected and disobeyed God’s living Word. Thus they cut themselves off from their Life Source. They were like beautiful lamps whose power cords were ripped out, leaving them in total spiritual Darkness. In the sense of no longer being able to receive the fruit and ability that comes from being one with God’s perfect Presence, they died. And as long as they remained in that dead disobedient state, anything they tried to produce or offer to God would also be dead and therefore unacceptable to…Life Himself.
So unless we truly repent of our radical independence from God and die to it, even if we try to come across as supremely religious, God will not be impressed. He will see us ignoring and bypassing His beloved Word and rejecting what He was sent to be to us and for us. And that is what Psalm 1 is describing:
Psalm 1
“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.
“The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
Self-life is what the Cross of our Redeemer is meant to strip away from us. We must die to being separated from our Life Source. And once the Cross has done its work, God spiritually regenerates and reconnects us to Himself; and we are ‘born again’ and free of the living death we all inherited from Adam. We must all die to our radical independence and live only to God and from God. We were made to embody what He sends to us through His Word and His Spirit. Even Nicodemus, that exalted teacher of Israel, for all of his Jewishness and intense traditional training and religiosity, did not yet understand this…although Israel’s Scriptures, that he was supposed to know and teach, are filled throughout with this basic essential and inescapable Truth. Many, like Nicodemus, had come to idolize the teachings of their revered Jewish sages concerning God’s written Word and had given them a level of authority equal to that of the Word of God Himself!
So without realizing it, men like Nicodemus had allowed the living Word of God that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had learned to abide with and obey, to get lost in the shuffle of religious rituals, traditions and regulations that generations of sages and rabbis had been adding and disputing over the centuries. Men like Nicodemus had created the enormous ‘menu’ that Israel now had to offer…but did not recognize The Living Feast to whom the menu was supposed to lead all of mankind. The Feast Himself was there…standing right before Nicodemus…but poor Nicodemus did not ‘get it’.
No man can comprehend or control the uncreated, living Word of God. But men keep trying to do it nevertheless. And they always try to control whatever is created as well, such as the Scriptures and religious rites and customs and practices they develop over time. But in God’s Reality and plan, men control nothing. They are meant to be led…always…by the living, active, creative, redemptive Word of God and His Holy Spirit (for an example of the continuous interaction God requires men to have with His Word and Spirit in their own hearts and in their own homes, see Deut. 6:4-9 and Jn. 15:1-11).
The Lord Yeshua began to explain the enormous difference between what it is to be led by one’s own natural devices as opposed to being filled, fueled, guided and directed by God’s indwelling, abiding Presence:
John 3:9-15
“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.’
“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our Testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into Heaven, but He who descended from Heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes, will in Him, have Eternal Life. (Emphasis added.)
Whoever believes, obeys and relies exclusively upon God’s Messiah…lives in and from God’s supernatural Light. God’s Son is His living Word and He contains all of His Father’s Fullness. Whoever believes in, relies on and draws from Him no longer lives out of worldly humanism and its lifestyle of radical independence. Disciples are commissioned to demonstrate the difference between those that live apart from the Word of our Creator, doing as they please and those that are filled and led by the indwelling Perfection of His fruit-producing Presence.
James 4:4
“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Disciples of God’s Word realize that the term, ‘living Word of God’ and ‘Messiah’ are both speaking of Yeshua. He is both of those realities. So to follow Yeshua, is to follow the leading of the risen, Spirit-given Word of God. And because they are always following Him, they do not initiate anything or take preeminence. They always depend on and follow His lead. He gives them God’s empowerment, guidance and direction. And the Holy Spirit makes Him alive and real to them and active within them. That’s why they do not try to come up with ‘five year plans’ or agendas of their own. They never know what lies ahead because it is not up to them to decide what is to be done. They are always following their Lord and Master, and He directs them on a ‘need to know’ basis. This is the heart and soul of what disciple-life with the Lord Yeshua is all about. And this is how He described this vital point to Nicodemus:
John 3:16-21
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the Judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the Darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the Truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” (Emphasis added.)
Later on in John’s Gospel, the Lord comes back to this all-important lesson. He reiterates what He said to Nicodemus, to some of His other disciples in these terms:
John 15:4-11
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am The Vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” (Emphasis added.)
God’s living Word created humanity from the dust of the earth. He is the one that breathes life into that dust and maintains it and keeps it going. He gives each one of us our every breath, heart beat and brain wave. He sustains, maintains, provides for and protects us from moment to moment. If He should decide to stop, we will blink off and disappear into oblivion. That is how desperately we really need and depend on God’s Word at all times. Even when we rebel and refuse to believe and obey and labor under the demonic delusion that we can live apart from God’s Word and ignore and defy His Authority…the fact remains: He is our one and only Source and we cannot do a thing without Him. That’s why we will be answerable to God for every thought, word, choice, action, reaction and interaction we try to commandeer for our independent use. God will judge whether we are His image and likeness or whether we are the image and likeness of the Serpent by one criterion:
“How much of My Son, My living Word, is in you? How much is He responsible for what is going on in you and for what is coming out of you?”
Our commission as disciples can only be fulfilled when we are sufficiently and adequately trained to embody, reveal, reflect and act out from our Messiah’s perpetual indwelling Presence throughout every moment we live on this earth. In this sense, we have to operate from the wisdom of Lazarus, realizing that in ourselves, we are always as needy and helpless as dust lying in a tomb. And only by and through our union with our Messiah can we live. He must summon us to ‘come forth’ by His Authority and by the power of His Holy Spirit. Then we can embody and express His Life and Activity flowing into us and out of us. Only the Son of God can produce fruit in which the Father is well pleased. Our job is to bear His fruit for Him…just like a vine’s branches bear its fruit. We are to bear what comes to us from Him…in every thought, word and deed of our life…to the eternal Glory of our Heavenly Father.
This is what Yeshua was referring to when He warned His disciples about how He would respond to radically independent, self-driven religious people that are able to fool the world. He warns that in the end, they will not fool God. God’s living Word will respond to them the way He did to Cain and Nicodemus. And so He told His disciples:
Matthew 7:13-23
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and in Your Name cast out demons, and in Your Name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I NEVER KNEW YOU; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS!’ (Emphasis added.)
We are to adjust our thinking and living to the fact that Christ lives in us. And our job is to bear the real fruit He produces as He obeys His Father from within our flesh. His is the only ‘Fruit’ that will pass God’s judgment and be accepted. Only His visible Fruit proves conclusively that God’s Word and Spirit live and operate within us. Until that is true in us, it is pointless for us to look, self-righteously, down our noses at others and preach, moralize and pontificate about how wicked the world is and how much it needs to change. If we ourselves have not repented and changed, we are hypocrites…hiding behind religious disguises. We may look spiritual, but in our hearts, we will be just as much a part of this fallen world’s system as anyone could possibly be. And that, most certainly, is not the way to overcome Sin!