- THE ESSENCE OF FAITH

”How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. (John 3:9)
We have every indication in the Scriptures that the account of Nicodemus seeking out our Lord Jesus Christ prior to His death and resurrection is of great importance in the realm of the Christian faith.
Out of the billions of people who have lived in the world, out of the millions of Jews who have lived in the world, and out of the tens of thousands who were part of the tradition of the Pharisees, the Holy Spirit has seen fit to let a penetrating pencil of light fall upon the head of one man—Nicodemus, the Pharisee of Israel.
We have come to understand that the Holy Spirit of God is rigidly economical in the use of words in the divine revelation. Through John, the Holy Spirit has devoted a total of twenty one verses to this story of Nicodemus visiting Jesus; we learn what he said to Christ and what Christ said to him.
This, without any other consideration, would lead us to believe that this is a story of great importance. If it were not important, God would never have put it in the record at all. Therefore, we want to approach it respectfully, reverently, and with an inquiring mind.
Let us consider this man Nicodemus within the context of his own day and time. He was a Pharisee. He was a member of the strictest sect in the religious life of Israel. He was a fundamentalist par excellence, following Judaism in its strictest and straightest interpretations of the letter of the law.
Also, we are made aware that Nicodemus was a ruler in Israel, being one of the seventy members of the powerful Sanhedrin, a tribunal not quite equivalent to our own Supreme Court, but very much like it, with some executive as well as judicial authority.
Members of the Sanhedrin were from the privileged families of Israel. The high priest was the president. Former high priests still living were members. Some elders and legal assessors were members, along with powerful scribes of the day. It is interesting, too, that members of the Sanhedrin could be either Pharisees or Sadducees, which coincides in a sense with the fact that Supreme Court justices in our own day may be either Republican or Democrat.
The Bible record plainly tells us that only one of the seventy members of the Sanhedrin at that time bothered to seek an interview with Jesus of Nazareth, and that was Nicodemus. He crossed over the great gulf that separated them in that day.
Does this tell us anything about the essence of faith?
Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, evidently feeling his way. He surely knew something about what it would cost him to show any serious interest in the person or the ministry of this Jesus of Nazareth.
He knew that the disciples of Jesus had abandoned all, left all behind. Their faith in His cause did not come without costing each of them something.
”It will cost you nothing!”
In our day, there is a tendency for enthusiastic Christian promoters to teach that the essence of faith is this: “Come to Jesus—it will cost you nothing! The price has all been paid—it will cost you nothing!”
Brethren, that is a dangerous half-truth. There is always a price connected with salvation and with discipleship.
But some will say: “Isn’t that what the missionaries teach all around the world? Don’t they say, `Come! Everything is free. Jesus paid it all’?”
God’s grace is free, no doubt about that. No one in the wide world can make any human payment towards the plea of salvation or the forgiveness of sins.
But I know the missionaries well enough to know that they would never go to people anywhere in the world and simply teach: “You do not have to do a thing. Your faith in Jesus Christ will never cost you anything.”
I have been receiving a magazine in the mail—someone sends it to me in a plain wrapper with no return address. I wish he or she would stop sending it.
The man who edits this paper also preaches on the radio and the philosophy he spreads is this: “Everybody in the world has faith. All you have to do is turn your faith loose in the right direction. Turn it towards Christ and everything is all fixed up!”
Now, that is truly a misconception of what the Bible says about man and about God and about faith. It is a misconception fostered by the devil himself.
The Apostle Paul told believers plainly and clearly that “not everyone has faith.”
Actually, faith is a rare plant. Faith is not a plant that grows everywhere by the way. It is not a common plant that belongs to everyone. Faith is a rare and wonderful plant that lives and grows only in the penitent soul.
The teaching that everyone has faith and all you have to do is use it is simply a form of humanism in the guise of Christianity. I warn you that any faith that belongs to everybody is a humanistic faith and it is not the faith that saves. It is not that faith which is a gift of God to a broken heart.
I think it must be apparent to us that Nicodemus, a ruler in Israel, would have known what it might cost him to inquire of Jesus about the things of faith and of God’s plan and of eternal life. He was feeling his way.
What the scholars say
I share with you here some of the research and some of the speculations which scholars and writers have given us concerning those years in history following the death and resurrection of Christ.
You should understand that there is a question mark after these historical speculations, but we should know what scholars suggest.
Some scholars believe that this Nicodemus was Nicodemus Ben Gorian, a brother of the celebrated Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus. This Nicodemus was said to be one of the three richest men in Jerusalem at that time.
Whether history or legend, the story passed down through the centuries tells us that the daughter of Nicodemus Ben Gorian was reduced to picking up corn or grain off the streets of Jerusalem, where it had been thrown from the feed bags of horses as they traveled down the street. She picked up what she could in order to roast it and have something to eat.
Why was the daughter of one of Jerusalem’s most wealthy men reduced to such a state of hunger?
The historians suggest at least that when Nicodemus finally threw in his lot with Jesus the Christ, he was stripped by the ruling society of all that he had. His property was confiscated and he was turned out as if he were the scum of the earth.
It is plain enough that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night—and that has resulted in a great deal of abuse being heaped on his memory throughout the centuries. But he came feeling his way. He came inquiring. He came asking questions. From our vantage point in time, we believe that he was spiritually sensitive and that he was seeking answers about the things of God which he himself did not know.
Let me tell you what his coming to Jesus suggests to me. It suggests that the soul of man is too nobly conceived and too highly born and too mighty and mysterious a universe in itself ever to be satisfied with anything less than Jesus the Christ, the eternal Son of God.
His coming to Jesus suggests that only Jesus Christ is enough; only in Jesus Christ are there adequate answers to the questions men have always asked about God and eternity, of life, forgiveness and blessing.
I can stand and assure you without any embarrassment that no matter who you are, either now or later in your life or at death or in the world to come, you will find that only Jesus Christ is enough.
Now, as far as we know, of the total of seventy ruling men in the Sanhedrin at the time we are speaking of, only one crossed over and came to Jesus asking questions about eternal life and the kingdom of God.
Why was Nicodemus that one? He was separated from Jesus Christ by the same wide gulf of religious tradition and practice that separated Jesus from the other sixty nine rulers in Israel.
Nicodemus was in a high ruling position and Jesus was a common carpenter turned teacher.
By their very nature, men of the Sanhedrin majored in religious bigotry while Jesus surely was anything but a straight-laced bigot. The religious philosophy of Jesus was as broad as all of Palestine and to that you could add the Mediterranean also.
Beside the pride of high position, Nicodemus would have inherited the sharp prejudice that every educated Jewish member of the ruling Sanhedrin would feel for lowly carpenters and unschooled fishermen.
Why would Nicodemus knowingly seek to cross that gulf?
What mysterious power could lay hold of the mind and conscience of the man Nicodemus and none of the other sixty nine?
Could it be that as a man, he was simply more sensitive to the voice of God and the inner strivings of God in his being?
You have heard me speak quite often about the prevenient grace of God—that mysterious, secret working of God in the souls of men; turning them toward Himself, influencing them toward Himself and magnetically attracting them to Himself.
It is surely true that if it were not for the prevenient work that God does within the hearts of men and women there could never be a conversion. So I wonder if this man Nicodemus was simply more sensitive to this operation of God than the other seventy.
Oh, you think that God picked out Nicodemus, selected him alone and let the other seventy go?
No one, not even in 1,000 years of jumping up and down on the family Bible, could ever make me believe that God showed anything like partiality. The heart of God that yearned over Nicodemus yearned over the rest of those men in the Sanhedrin.
Sensitivity to God’s voice
But only Nicodemus came—and I think it was because he was more sensitive to God’s voice and God’s Spirit.
We have the same conditions in our churches today. I am talking to some of you right now who have been reared in Christian homes. You have been brought up in the Sunday school. You cut your first baby tooth on the back of a hymnal when your mother was not watching.
Still, to this day, you are not right with God. Some of you have made a kind of halfway profession but you have never been able to delight yourself in the Lord. The reason is that you lack sensitivity to the voice of God and you could not care less about the will of God. If the voice and the concern of the Spirit of God does not move something within your own spirit every day, you are not going to be much of a Christian—if you are a Christian at all!
I think Nicodemus had a sensitivity within his own spirit that caused him to move and to act and to inquire. I think he must have been more receptive to spiritual impulses than other leaders among the Jews in their day.
Consider this man: although he was a strict Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, cursed we might say with the pride of high position and religious prejudice and bigotry, he still revealed a receptivity to spiritual impulses.
Brethren, I don’t mind telling you that I want to keep that kind of spiritual receptivity alive within my own soul.
I would rather lose a leg and hobble along throughout the rest of my life than to lose my sensitivity to God and to His voice and to spiritual things. Oh, I want to keep that within me, within my soul!
I believe something else about this man Nicodemus: he must have possessed a basic humility that others did not have.
I caution you that there are many people among us who are not ever going to get right with God, and the reason is that they simply will not humble themselves, ever!
Some cannot even humble themselves enough to go to church where the preaching is plain and the gospel is narrow. We know about that here—in this particular church. We have a good reputation—we pay our bills on time and we help people who are in need, and not many go to jail from this church.
But in spite of that, many on the outside think that we are eccentric, a little bit off center, too dogmatic where the things of God are concerned. You know, it takes some humility to cast in your lot with people who are serious enough about spiritual priorities that it causes those on the outside to feel that we must be in need of psychiatric help.
Well, I remind you that our Lord Jesus had that kind of a crowd around Him all the time. He was considered to be a very strange kind of man in His time—so those who gave up all to follow Him were also thought to be very strange.
I think Nicodemus must have had some gracious sense of humility to come to Jesus.
Human pride
Actually, pride is an awesome quality in mankind; not only in Jesus’ day but in ours as well.
As an example, I heard a newscast in which one of India’s highest officials was trying to apologize to the world about an international report that Christian missionaries were being hindered in their work in India.
“I want you to know that the report is not true,” he said. “We are not hindering the propagation of the Christian doctrine in India. In fact, we understand that there have actually been a few people of low caste who have believed the Christian teaching.”
Oh, the rising pride that must have been in that official’s voice as he made his statement. The helpless and the hopeless in the lowest caste of his country—he was not going to get in their way if they wanted to believe in Jesus Christ.
The bigotry of human pride—you will find it everywhere in the world. It feasts on almost anything that will make it fat!
Against this background of the visit by Nicodemus, I would like to consider with you the example of several others who came to Jesus from various levels of life and culture.
There was the rich young ruler and everyone who has read the Bible will remember him, for he is considered by so many to have been an example of the model man. He had four things going for him, things that everyone might want to emulate and possess. He had wealth and morality, position and youth.
I can just hear the mothers in Israel holding up this man as an example for their own children: “If you want to be like someone in particular, choose this rich young fellow as your example!”
In the minds of most people, they are sure that they would be enjoying peace of mind if only they were young, wealthy, of high position and living with good moral standards.
But when this young ruler came to Jesus, his very first question gave the clue to his own dissatisfaction in life: “What good thing must I do to get eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16).
He was young but he knew that he looked forward to a day when he would be withered and palsied and shaking with age, and that ultimately he would lie down stiffly on the bed from which he would never rise again.
He knew also that his wealth could not help him then. He knew that he would lose his position and his place would be filled by another. Even his morality was not sufficient answer for the life to come.
He realized that he had to discover and find out about something with eternity in it.
Brethren, let me say that until we are really converted to Christ and the holiness of Christ enters our hearts and lives, we are all part and parcel of a mighty deception: we are called upon to pretend that we can have peace of mind within and that we can be relatively happy and make a big success of our human lives if we have youth and wealth and morality and high position.
In that sense of what is going on all around us, David never had to apologize for writing that “all men are liars.”
This whole human concept of success and happiness and inner peace based upon who we are and what we have is completely false, just as the rich young ruler found out.
The word eternal
The one important word is missing from it all, and that is the word eternal.
That young ruler knew, just as we all know, that there is not a person alive who has eternal youth, or eternal wealth; who has an eternal righteousness or an everlasting position or dominion.
The word eternal is not there. The rich young ruler found that within the will God had given him, he had to make a choice between things that pass away and those things that are of eternal value.
Think with me also of the Ethiopian chancellor whose story is in the eighth chapter of Acts.
Notice the things he could offer on the human side. He had great authority, plenty of prestige and an acquired religion. He had power and authority because of his position under the queen of Ethiopia. He was a Jewish proselyte, having gone through the religious rites that brought him into the Jewish religion.
He had come to Jerusalem to take part in one of the religious festivals of his new-found religion.
But he was a discriminating man, a thoughtful man, an unfulfilled man.
The swinging of the censers in ritual, the chanting of the priests, the majesty of the forms of worship—none of these made his own heart sing, none of these brought him to the point of rejoicing and gladness.
But when the evangelist Philip had preached Jesus to him, when he had met Jesus through active and saving faith, the Bible record tells us that he went on his way rejoicing.
Only Jesus, the Christ, the eternal Son of God, is enough. Man has to face up to the fact that religion is not enough—and it never will be.
Oh, it is amazing how many things religious people want to do to you. They can start when you are eight days old with circumcision and end up with the last rites when you are 108 years old—and all of that time they will be rubbing something on you, or putting something around your neck, or making you eat something or insisting that you should not eat something. They will manipulate you, maul you, and sweetly massage your soul all the time—and when it is all done you are just what you were. You are just a decorated and massaged sinner—a sinner who did not eat meat or on the other hand, a sinner who did eat fish.
When religion has done all it can, you are still a sinner who either went to the temple or did not go to the temple. If you attended church you are still a sinner who attended church. If you did not go to church you are still a sinner who did not go to church.
Measured in any direction and approached from any point of view, we are still sinners if all we have is that which religion has offered and tried to do for us. Religion can put us on the roll and educate us and train us and instruct us and discipline us; and when it is all over there is still something within our being that cries, “Eternity is in my heart and I have not found anything to satisfy it.”
So, you will be searching and searching forever until you find Christ, for only Christ is enough to satisfy the eternal longing in our souls.
Now think with me, too, of Lydia, in Acts, chapter 16.
A career woman
Lydia was a career woman in her own right. I would say she was born out of due time, long before there were laws and amendments to set women free.
I have to tell the women of our day that we have set them free to be just as bad as the men—and just as miserable! We have set them free to curse and swear and tell dirty stories and smoke cigarettes. We have made them free to set their own morals, to make nasty political speeches and, of course, to vote as blindly as men do.
God knows that I cannot do anything about it, ladies. You just look at me and shrug; push past me and take my seat in the bus!
Well, Lydia was a woman who surely thought she had found freedom and satisfaction in that era when they did not count women at all; they just counted the men. She was a seller of purple. She traveled in the nations of that day. She should have been the happiest woman in all of Asia Minor.
In the city of Philippi, by the riverside where some women met on the Sabbath to pray, Lydia heard the Apostle Paul tell of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the record shows that the Lord opened her heart. She gladly put her faith in Christ and was baptized.
She said humbly to Paul: “If you think that I am a believer, come to my house and make it your headquarters.”
That was Lydia. She had found that her career and her freedom and her abilities lacked the word eternal. Now she had found the answer and the only answer in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, the Savior.
Nathanael came to Jesus and he was an interesting case. The Bible record does not tell us too much about him—but I think it could well be said that he was a fellow full of prejudice like any other man on the street.
When Philip told him that the disciples had found the Messiah of whom the Old Testament had spoken, Nathanael gave his cynical reply: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46).
You see, Nathanael was a plain and simple man living from day to day, but he lived under the shadow of his humanness and he just could not get the sun to come out.
But when he came to Jesus and found that Jesus already knew him better than he knew himself, he was suddenly in the radiant sunlight and he confessed to Jesus, “You are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel” (John 1:49).
Truly, the way of man is not in himself, and that is what the Holy Ghost has said. Only Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, is enough.
We have asked why it was only Nicodemus who came. We could ask why Lydia’s heart responded while many other women of her day felt no response to Christ’s claims. Why did Nathanael respond to the appeal of Jesus on that day when so many others were either indifferent or filled with hatred?
I do believe in that secret and mysterious working of God in the human breast, deep within the beings of men and women.
I think the same questions could be raised of my testimony of finding the forgiving and converting grace of God in the Savior, Jesus Christ.
There was something in the line from which I came that was almost antireligion. Morality to a certain level—but not religious. Attitudes that were cold, earthy, profane. This I must say of both my father and my mother. High human standards, morality—but completely without any thought of God. God might as well not have existed. My parents appeared to be without a spark of desire after God.
Can you tell me why, then, at the age of 17, as a boy surrounded by unbelief, 100 percent, I could find my way to my mother’s attic, kneel on my knees and give my heart and life in committal to Jesus Christ? Can you tell me how I could be thoroughly and completely converted without help from anyone on the outside? In my case when I came in faith to Jesus Christ there was not a single human being to help. There was nobody with a marked New Testament showing me how easy it is. There was no friend placing an arm over my shoulder to pray beside me.
I cannot answer the questions of “Why?” I can only testify that my conversion to Jesus Christ was as real as any man’s conversion has ever been. You tell me why. I do not know why. I can only say that I know there is such a thing as the secret working of God in the human being who has a sensitivity to hear the call of God.
Oh, man—if you feel the tug of God in your breast, what a happy man you should be. What a marvelous and mysterious privilege if you feel the inner tug of God in your bosom and hear the secret whisper that not many men hear; to be on God’s prospect list, to be on God’s active list for inner working.
My fellow man, do something about it. Remember, a thousand men work where you work—and perhaps you are the only one that feels that tug. God yearns over them all, but they do not listen. They will not hear and they kill it within them.
If it is still alive and tugging at your heart, thank God, and follow the light—”Come every soul by sin oppressed, there’s mercy with the Lord.”