So what've we got?

T.S. Eliot said, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." That's how I feel about the concept of being 'born again' (or better, 'born from above' as I explored in an earlier post).

Jesus made clear to Nicodemus that being safe in God's grace (Filled with his goodness, lost in his love, as hymn-writer Fanny Crosby so beautifully put it) has nothing to do with birthright, ethnic derivation, human attainments--it is all God's work, and his alone. In fact, it is as it has always been with God's people from the earliest passages of the Old Testament: God made a covenant, took all the initiative in doing so, was constantly faithful in keeping it, and made it clear that the covenantal people had two choices: stay in or opt out. But there was nothing that could make God opt out. St. Paul said confidently, Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

[A study of Old Testament covenants would be useful here. I'll leave this to your research.]

The Israelites of the Old Testament, and the Jews of the New, had made the mistake of thinking that God's love and providential care applied only to them. Rather than seeing their status as God's people as a means to God's end (see Galatians chap. 3, especially verses 8-9: Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.), they somehow concluded that they deserved that special status as theirs and theirs alone, and that there was nothing more to be discussed (see my last post regarding complacency and Jesus' rather decisive negation of that notion). 

Being born from above is what God does in addressing the gap ("the great gulf fixed" of Luke 16) between God's glorious being and standards, and our human condition. Were it not for God's mending of our tattered spirits, we would be left completely to our own devices--not a good place to be.

Becoming a Christian is a whole other matter. We aren't born Christians, but rather as members of God's kingdom. Christianity is a religion, a belief system. It requires a conscious choice in my view (my baptismal regeneration and Calvinist friends' beliefs to the contrary notwithstanding). It's a choice that I have made. I have posted elsewhere that Christianity (for all the unfortunate baggage associated with that name) is the clearest expression of God's nature, will, and ways that we have. I would press my faith upon anyone. There's no better way to understand and to appreciate God, learn how and what to do right, and to protect oneself from "opting out" than to become a follower of Christ. It is a privilege without parallel. But it's not the same as being born again.

Now if I can just figure out who the elect are!

The 8th deadly sin

If I were to expand the traditional seven cardinal sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride) to eight, I would add complacency. It could be argued, I suppose, that sloth would include the idea of being complacent, but I'm digging out a nuanced difference. 

From the religious point of view, a slothful person is one who is spiritually lazy, who doesn't utilize the gifts with which s/he is bestowed by God. In Dante's Inferno, the penance for sloth was running continuously at high speed.

But I think of complacency more as obliviousness than laziness. Here is a typical dictionary definition: a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

Complacent people might still work very hard. Their problem is not inaction. The difficulty is that their minds are closed to new and better information. They have the world figured out to their satisfaction, and either reject out of hand, or don't even recognize, any disquieting facts to the contrary. Many influential people and organizations have floundered on the shoals of complacency (or, more crudely, have merrily circled the bowl until they sank out of sight for good).

No one was more complacent than a first-century Pharisee. He knew his place (a rather lofty one) in God's order, had appropriate belief and lifestyle worked out perfectly, and was quick to criticize anyone who moved off the blueprint. 

In Luke chap. 7 Jesus is being entertained, somewhat reluctantly, by a Pharisee named Simon. Jesus allowed a woman whom Simon immediately wrote off as “a sinner” to anoint him with expensive ointment, and even to kiss his feet.

Now when Pharisees were out and about among the regular Jewish folk, there was no telling whom they might encounter who was sufficiently in God’s bad books that they might defile a holy man by brushing up against him, making him ritually impure and unable to observe the Temple rituals. So the Pharisees, upon returning home, would have themselves baptized; i.e., a servant would pour purifying water over them to wash off anyone else’s sin. My goodness, just to be on the safe side they would baptize their eating utensils, even their beds. You can read about this in Mark chap. 7.

But Jesus was making no effort to avoid this official sinner in Simon’s home—quite the opposite. Simon’s attitude was that if Jesus were really a prophet of God as many alleged, he would know with whom he was dealing and behave in a much more acceptable manner.

Jesus just couldn’t catch a break with the Pharisees. He accepted the friendship of all the wrong people—tax collectors, drinkers, gluttons, Samaritans, women. He criticized the rich, whom most Jews believed, on the basis of their understanding of Deuteronomy, must be blessed by God. He worked on days he shouldn’t have, even if he was healing people at the time, such as we see in Luke chaps. 13 and 14. He ate when he shouldn’t. He spurned the popular leaders. In addition, he was a bad influence on his followers, who violated all the agreed norms constituting appropriate religious behaviour. 

As for who was in and who was out, from the point of view of Pharisees and most other Jews, one was surely in God's grace if one were born a Jew. A key biblical passage for the rabbis was Isaiah 60:21: Then all your people will be righteous and they will possess the land forever. They are the shoot I have planted, the work of my hands, for the display of my splendor.

That's not to say that the Pharisees were all bad--quite to the contrary.  The Pharisees were brotherhoods of laypeople with a good deal of education, a theology much like Jesus’s own, and a worldview that we might do well to emulate. For instance: 

1.  They were very popular with the common people because of their strong opposition to their Roman political and military masters, as well as to what they considered the corrupting influence of the prevailing Greek culture. Rather, they urged a unique Jewish ethic and lifestyle in keeping with their faith. As such, they were the spiritual heirs of Old Testament heroes like Ezra and Nehemiah.

2.  They were not nearly as literalistic in their handling of the scriptures as their priestly rivals, the Sadducees. They believed not only in the Law of Moses—the first five books of our Old Testament—but a system of traditional interpretations, passed down orally and forming a set of scholarly applications. In other words, they thought about the implications of their faith for daily living.

3.  The Pharisees took messianic prophecy very seriously, anxiously awaiting a coming deliverer who would usher in an era of world peace.

4.  Consistent with Jesus’ preaching, they believed in an afterlife, God’s assessment of our earthly choices, as well as in angels and demons--beliefs the Sadducees considered Persian perversions of the true faith.

5.  Rather than certain rituals and observances being restricted to the priests alone, Pharisees saw the Jews as a community of priests who could all participate in such practices as prayer, fasting, personal purity, and tithing.

6.  Finally, they believed in the importance of social justice. 

At their best, such as we see in Mark chap. 12, they earned Jesus’ warm approval. Nicodemus, a follower of Jesus who helped prepare his crucified body for burial, was a Pharisee. So was the great apostle Paul. There was, nevertheless, a rigidity about many of them, coupled with a great deal of judgmentalism, that constrained their potential for good.

Jesus, both in his conversation with Nicodemus that we have been considering for these last many posts and with others, is determined to knock these Jewish leaders out of their complacency. Consider his strong (and to his listeners, highly upsetting and even blasphemous) words recorded in John chapter 8:

³¹Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. ³² Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

³³ They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

³⁴ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. ³⁵ Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. ³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. ³⁷ I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. ³⁸ I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”

³⁹ “Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. ⁴⁰ As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. ⁴¹ You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

⁴² Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. ⁴³ Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. ⁴⁴ You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.

Now Jesus was being hyperbolic here as he often was in his preaching, to attempt to knock down the walls of complacency and open up his listeners' minds to much greater vistas of belief and opportunity.  

Thus, when Nicodemus comes to him with built in assumptions about the basis for God's favour, Jesus cuts straight to the chase: Nicodemus, you must be born again.

What I think he meant comes next.