9 “How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.
10 “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied. 11 “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven—the Son of Man.

Nicodemus’s question expresses disbelief at the “earthly things” Jesus has said, that is, about the basic biblical teaching on new birth being required of earthly people if they are to experience “heavenly things” regarding the kingdom of God. Jesus points out to Nicodemus that he is speaking in ignorance because no one has “ascended into heaven” to discover heavenly truth. He is confronted, however, with the only one who can be a source of heavenly truth, the Son of Man, who has “descended from heaven.”

Nicodemus began the conversation with Jesus by admitting that Jesus was “a teacher who has come from God” and that “God [was] with him.” And this was not just a tentative hypothesis that was subject to confirmation or refutation. This, said Nicodemus, was something “we know” to be true (v. 2; this is probably why Jesus somewhat sarcastically uses the plural in v. 11 when he says “we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen” and when he addresses Nicodemus in the plural “you/y’all”). It amounted to a conclusion based on the belief that it would be impossible for anyone to do the things Jesus was doing if this were not the case. So the matter of Jesus’s identity was settled. Or was it? Did Nicodemus really believe this? His response to the first thing Jesus tried to teach him, that a person needed to be reborn to see God’s kingdom, was that this was impossible. Then Jesus elaborated on the new birth with instruction on the divine work of water and Spirit and Nicodemus’s need for it. In 3:7 Jesus explicitly applies the principle to Nicodemus by using the word you. Again, Nicodemus responded in v. 9 that it was impossible for “these things” to happen. The verb “be” translates the verb ginomai that has occurred 13 times before in John with the meaning “come into being” or “become” or in 1:28 and 2:1 to “happen.”

Evidently, Nicodemus, like many biblical skeptics throughout history, thought he was an authority on what was possible and what was impossible. Even many Bible scholars have expressed disbelief at the “possibility” of God flooding the earth, Sarah giving birth and nursing a child at age 90, God parting the Red Sea, feeding three million people in the Wilderness, making a donkey talk and an ax head float, and so forth. I guess Nicodemus had forgotten God’s question to Abraham in Gen 18:14, “Is anything impossible for the Lord?”[1] He had also forgotten God’s promise to the Jewish exiles in Zech 8:6 that he would return to Jerusalem and dwell there: “The Lord of Armies says this: ‘Though it may seem impossible to the remnant of this people in those days, should it also seem impossible to me?’—this is the declaration of the Lord of Armies.” Of course he hadn’t heard what the angel Gabriel had told Jesus’s mother when she asked him how she could have a child without having had sexual relations with a man[2] (Luke 1:36–37): “Consider your relative Elizabeth—even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Nicodemus could not have heard Jesus later telling his disciples regarding the salvation of a rich person, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26//Mark 10:27//Luke 18:27).

So Nicodemus, an avowed expert in what is possible, had let his reasoning lead him into a contradiction. If God really was with Jesus and had sent him to teach, how could he teach things that were impossible? Someone might suggest that Nicodemus was not really expressing disbelief but rather wonder. For example, we use the word incredible in two senses. One is the equivalent of “impossible to believe,” but the other is “extraordinary” or “amazing,” as in the 2004 movie The Incredibles. Could Nicodemus have just been asking for further information, like Mary? That he was at this point expressing his refusal to accept what Jesus was saying is clear from the parallel between him and those at the Passover who had phony faith (2:24–25). But Jesus makes it explicit in 3:11–12: “you do not accept our testimony” and “you don’t believe.” Nicodemus was clearly refusing to accept the teaching of this One he “knew” had “come from God.”

I’m reminded of one of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek TV show. When the Enterprise encounters a life-destroying space probe calling itself “Nomad.” It thinks Captain Kirk is its “Creator” and that its mission is to seek out and eliminate imperfection, including any life forms it considers imperfect. On the verge of killing everyone on board the Enterprise, Captain Kirk confronts the probe and demonstrates to it that its behavior is based on contradictory “beliefs.” By mistakenly identifying Kirk as its Creator, it shows itself to be imperfect. Its failure to follow through with its mission by eliminating itself compounds its imperfection. Eventually the satellite must deal with the contradictory situation by destroying itself. How does this apply to Nicodemus? His statement of disbelief in v. 9 is the last thing he said to Jesus. If this was all we knew of him, we’d have to say he never saw God’s kingdom. If he did come to faith and experience a rebirth by the Spirit, the Nicodemus we find in John chap. 3 had to destroy himself in order to be rebuilt from the ground up. He had to be reborn and become a new creature. As we’ve seen, there is evidence from John 7:50–52 and especially 19:38–42 that this is in fact what happened.

Can we learn anything, though, from the Nicodemus of chap. 3? Those of us who’ve come to believe that Jesus is the divine Son and who have fallen at his feet in repentance and faith and pledged our loyalty to him and our desire to follow him wherever he leads—are there any teachings of Jesus we find it hard to accept, or obey? How about the teachings of his divinely chosen apostles and others who wrote the New Testament? How about the divinely chosen prophets and other spokesmen who wrote the Old Testament? Are there any biblical teachings that we meet and say, “That’s impossible. I can’t accept that.” A preacher once asked his congregation how many people believed John 3:16. Everyone’s hand went up. Then he asked how many people believed Psalm 23. Everyone’s hand went up again. Then he asked how many believed Nahum 1:7. This time only about half the hands went up. The rest weren’t going to commit to it without reading what it said. Of course, some of those people may have been unsure there was a book of Nahum in the Bible. But if all Scripture is not only “inspired by God” but is also “profitable” (2 Tim 3:16), isn’t the Christian obligated not only to accept and obey all of it but also to study all of it, and even to like it (see Psalm 119)? All of us have favorite Bible books and those that we don’t give much attention to. “The Old Testament Prophets are always so negative!” More to the point, are there any passages or teachings or commands in Scripture that you have trouble accepting and obeying? Are we sometimes like the three-year old “cupcake kid” who stole cupcakes at his grandmother’s and won’t listen to his mother or even let her talk to him. He keeps saying, “Linda, Linda, lookit! You’re not listening to me!”[3] There’s Jesus’s command, for example, to “love your enemies” (Matt 5:44), “don’t worry about your life” (Matt 6:25), and self-denial as a requirement for discipleship (Luke 9:23). What about church discipline? In 1 Cor 5:11, for example, Paul tells the Corinthian Christians,

I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person.

This is a difficult teaching, and one that has to be handled carefully. Perhaps you have trouble with other biblical teachings, such as Paul’s command to avoid lying but to “speak the truth,” or to keep from sinning when you get angry, to avoid taking anything that isn’t yours, or using foul language but rather only “what is good for building up someone in need” and giving “grace to those who hear” (Eph 4:25–29). What about his command to wives to “submit to your husbands as to the Lord” because he is “the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church”? Or his command to husbands to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church” and “as their own bodies”? (Eph 5:22–28). Even Peter admitted that there are some things in Paul’s writings that are “hard to understand” (2 Pet 3:16). Yet, as a friend of mine, Andy Naselli, recently tweeted, “It’s not okay to say, ‘The Bible teaches x, but I don’t like it.”

As we’ve seen, Jesus rebuked Nicodemus for considering himself to be “a teacher of Israel” and yet failing to understand, to apply to himself, and to teach everything found in the Scriptures, in his case those passages dealing with spiritual transformation. As Carson suggests,

Doubtless he himself had for years taught others the conditions of entrance to the kingdom of God, conditions cast in terms of obedience to God’s commands, devotion to God, happy submission to his will; but here he is facing a condition he has never heard expressed, the absolute requirement of birth from above. Even after Jesus’ explanation, he is frankly sceptical that such a birth can take place.[4]

Are there any teachings in Scripture that we are failing to give proper attention to or just ignoring? Perhaps even the necessity of dropping everything we’ve been clinging to and reaching for Jesus? Or perhaps God is even trying to speak into my life in other ways, and I am coming up with excuses not to listen to him.

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[1] Of course, Elihu was probably correct in Job 34:10 when he said, “It is impossible for God to do wrong, and for the Almighty to act unjustly.” And as the author of Hebrews declared, “It is impossible for God to lie” (Heb 6:18).

[2] Interestingly, Mary does not use the verb dunamai, “it is possible,” in Luke 1:34 but says (literally), “How will this be?”

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFYsJYPye94.

[4] Carson, 198.