John 3 - Tuesday 22nd October
Today’s chapter is John 3
Tom writes:
You could scarcely get a more impressive witness than John the baptizer. But, as John himself said, he is not the focus here. John, the first among men, the most-desired conference speaker of his day, the dynamic Elijah-prophet of God... is a mere side-show, a meagre warm-up act compared to the One Who Came From Above. What does this mean? Well, look at Nicodemus. Jesus takes every human concept of greatness, he pulls perceptions of prowess to his person and he chops them off at the knee. Now that Jesus has come, the discernment of rabbis is not enough. Appreciation of miraculous signs just will not cut it. Re-tweeting a touted teachers talks falls tantalisingly short. Jesus suggests that all our measures of what it means to be “spiritual” mean diddlysquat unless we climb back up the birth canal and hook ourselves onto a whole new placenta. This gospel isn’t about life improvement. It is life replacement. You have to be born again. You have to rearrange and reorganise your life to draw life and sustenance from a totally different place.
I still find it staggering how hard and how rare it is to really be born again. Over and over again we think the Christian life is about tweaks and two-steps. We meet Jesus under the cover of darkness and hear that God so loved the world. And we go away encouraged. Maybe we tweak our schedule a little bit. And the rest remains unchanged. But John doesn’t do that. Crazy John. What a hero. He saw the lamb, he pondered his words and then he changed-up everything. “He must become greater; I must become less” he said. It’s like an entire company rebranding around a new logo, throwing away the old things that defined it and putting this new identity at the centre of its communications, its properties and its workforce. Sounds OK, until you realise that the old logo is you. Your face, your reputation, your “image” is the one being “binned” and replaced with the face of Jesus. But. Of course. The new life is so much better than the old one. It’s a beautiful life now lived around a sure and certain truth. It’s a truly free life that tastes of eternity and lasts as long. It’s a life knowing you were loved so much that the King died for you and would do so again if he could. “It’s my joy” said John. I want it to be my joy too. I want it to be yours. Will you really be born again today?
Question for reflection
How would you know if you’ve been born again or just tweaked a few things and not really found life in Jesus Christ?
