Nicodemus Comes to Christ
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development of a righteous and symmetrical character. “Out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts,
false witness, blasphemies.” This fountain of the heart being purified,
the stream thereof becomes pure.
This new birth looks mysterious to Nicodemus. He asks, “How
can these things be?” Jesus, bidding him marvel not, uses the wind as
an illustration of his meaning. It is heard among the branches of the
trees, and rustling the leaves and flowers, yet it is invisible to the eye,
and from whence it comes and whither it goeth, no man knoweth. So
is the experience of every one who is born of the Spirit. The mind is
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an invisible agent of God to produce tangible results. Its influence is
powerful, and governs the actions of men. If purified from all evil, it
is the motive power of good. The regenerating Spirit of God, taking
possession of the mind, transforms the life; wicked thoughts are away,
evil deeds are renounced, love, peace, and humility take the place of
anger, envy, and strife. That power which no human eye can see, has
created a new being in the image of God.
The necessity of the new birth was not so strongly impressed upon
Nicodemus as the manner of its accomplishment. Jesus reproves
him, asking if he, a master and teacher in Israel, an expounder of the
prophecies, can be ignorant of these things. Has he read those sacred
writings in vain, that he has failed to understand from them that the
heart must be cleansed from its natural defilement by the Spirit of
God before it can be fit for the kingdom of Heaven? Christ made no
reference here to the resurrection of the body from the grave, when
a nation shall be born in a day, but he was speaking in regard to the
inward work of grace upon the unregenerate heart.
He had just been engaged in cleansing the temple, by driving
from its sacred courts those who had degraded it to a place of traffic
and extortion. Not one who had fled that day from the presence of
Jesus was fitted by the grace of God to be connected with the sacred
services of the temple. True, there were some honorable men among
the Pharisees, who deeply regretted the evils that were corrupting the
Jewish nation and desecrating its religious rites. They also saw that
traditions and useless forms had taken the place of true holiness, but
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they were powerless to prevent these growing evils.
Jesus had commenced his work by striking directly at the selfish,
avaricious spirit of the Jews, showing that while professing to be