Missing the Gospel in John 3 | Theocast

In listening to a lot of preaching today, it's clear that it's possible to talk about the gospel or to even talk about the work of God, but not actually ever get around to preaching the gospel itself, preaching Jesus Christ for sinners.

John 3 and the Missing Gospel in Nicodemus’s Encounter

Now this can happen from any number of passages, but today John and I are gonna have a conversation about a well-known text, and that is the interchange between Jesus and Nicodemus from John chapter three.

There's a lot of really epic stuff in there, the sovereign grace of God, the work of God and regeneration and the new birth, and there is a lot of gospel in this passage that sadly is often not talked about enough, and that message is the Son of Man being lifted up for us.

We hope that this is encouraging and clarifying for you.

Stay tuned.

If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. You ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy, that you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you?

It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done,.

But what they're doing,.

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We want you to download it, and we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism. Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like?

You can download it on our website. Just go to theocast .org.

Welcome to Theocast. Encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ because he is sufficient and able to save you and to save me. We're great sinners, but he's a greater savior. We wanna have a conversation today about the Christian life from a confessional, reformed, and pastoral perspective, and one of the things we're aiming to do, or a couple of the things, I should say, we're meaning to do here at Theocast is to take the clutter off of the gospel, to clarify it, and also to reclaim the purpose of the kingdom of Christ, and to do that, to help me have that conversation, I've got my friend, Pastor John Moffitt from Spring Hill, Tennessee, the pastor of Grace Reformed Church behind the microphone today, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

John, it's good to be together. Good to sit down and record with you. Couple of announcements before we get off and running. Everybody always loves the announcements section. A very important event, at least for you and for me, and for some other confessional Baptist folk coming up at the end of July.

You and I are privileged and honored to be a part of something called the Grace Reformed Network, which is a network of confessional Baptist churches that was started last year, and we have our first annual general assembly this year, and that will take place in Nashville, Tennessee, July 30 through August the 1st, and the first two days of that, the reason we're announcing it here on Theocast is the first two days, July 30th and July 31st, that's a Tuesday and a Wednesday, will be open for anybody to attend, and so it'll be a conference kind of feel of sorts.

We'll be giving talks centered around the ordinary means of grace and reclaiming the means of grace, so if that's of interest to you, maybe you wanna come hear those messages, and then each evening, we'll have a service of sorts with singing and a sermon and singing in all the sessions.

That was one of the best parts of our charter meeting last year was getting to sing together, so if you'd like to come and hang out, John and I would love to meet you, but then in addition, you would get to meet a number of like-minded believers and hear some encouraging things and probably eat some good food and drink some good drink and all that kind of stuff.

That sounds like something you would be down to do. We would love to see you, July 30th, July 31st in Nashville. You can go to gracereformnetwork .org or theocast .org, and you can find all the information that you need regarding how to register for that event.

You know, Justin, a lot of times people come to us and they're really excited about seeing this message grow, the reform message, and they're like, how do we get more churches planted? Well, you know what, to be honest with you, show up for GRN.

Come hear about what we're doing. Come hear about what we're doing. Learn how you can participate and donate. Yeah, but come see the vision. I mean, these pastors are from not only around the country, but we have pastors from around the world that are going to be joining.

They're passionate about this theology. And the conference is small, which I love. Justin, we got to meet every single person there. Yeah, I got to meet every single person that was there. I got to have conversations, because there's breaks in between the sessions.

It's just a wonderful time. I don't think it'll be a waste of your time and energy if you can make it. And it's $20 to come. I mean, it's like, and it's suggested donation. So it's not like, we're not trying to make money on this.

We're definitely just trying to bring encouragement. So that was my two cents.

So we'd love to meet a number of you. The other announcement, and if you're watching on the YouTubes right now, you'll notice that John and I, unplanned, kind of have very coordinated. This is like navy blue and Carolina blue.

Steel cast t-shirts on. And so if you are thinking, man, I'd love to have some steel cast merch or some steel cast swag, then just head over to our website. There's a very clear tab that says store. And so you can go in there and get yourself all kinds of good things.

Hats, shirts, mugs, hoodies, things like this. If that's interesting to you.

And then if you got some, put it on social media and tag us. We'd love to see it.

Sure. There you go.

Yeah, I mean, that's a kind of dislike sort of thing, but people like swag and merch. All right, so John, as we pivot towards the conversation for today, I get this question a lot. You might too. People will ask me, how do you guys come up with what you're going to talk about on theocast?

And I think they're usually looking for some kind of really either spiritual answer or like a, man, you guys have really thought a ton about this and have mapped this out. And my goodness, I'm just struck by the thoughtfulness.

And so I would say one third to maybe like 40 of the episodes that John and I do are mapped out well in advance. Like John and I will meet once or twice a year for the purpose of brainstorming and mapping out future episodes and kind of a structured systematic approach to certain things that we want to cover in the next year to year and a half, whatever.

But then I would say, John, well over half of the episodes that we do are arrived at like this. We get on the phone before we record, we catch up personally, we catch up pastorally. And then we say, all right, what do we want to talk about today?

What are you thinking through? What have you been learning? What's on your mind? What are you preaching? That kind of stuff. And then out of that, it's like, okay, well this is what we're going to record today.

And typically we record two episodes each time we get together. And so today is no exception. We're going to be looking at the Bible today for extended periods of time. And I will let you tell the listener precisely what we're going to be considering in this installment.

Yeah.

The New Birth, the Spirit, and Ezekiel 36–37

Well, truth be told, this is a conversation you and I had a while ago. I heard a young man preach a sermon that was sent to me from John 3. And I preached through John 3. It was the first book I ever preached through with my church that we started.

And John 3 is just such an affectionate, passionate, unbelievably powerful. I mean, the world knows this verse, man. It's probably the only verse the world knows, that and maybe Psalm 23, you know what I mean?

So John 3 is such just a famous passage for so many reasons. But as I was listening to the sermon and it really broke my heart because I kept waiting, Justin. I kept waiting for the moment that we stopped, excuse me, talking about the gospel.

And we actually got to the gospel that Jesus is presenting to Nicodemus. So today we're going to talk about missing the gospel in the most probably famous passage of scripture that is about the gospel and how this happens, why this happens, and then work through what is the text actually saying.

So just to, we'll throw a little bit of a caveat or a little bit of an advertisement out there. Justin and I are kicking around the idea of putting together a series of podcasts on complicated passages that people typically struggle with like a law gospel distinction.

So this might be like a little bit of an intro to that.

Well, now you've publicly obligated us to that.

No, I said, we're thinking about it. I said, we're thinking about it.

Anyway.

All right. So Justin, John three.

And John, we're going to be spending most of our time in verses one to 15, to be clear.

Yeah, today. Yep, so Jesus's ministry has begun and his message is starting to become relevant amongst the religious because they're hearing him say things that contradict their teaching and it's making them extremely nervous.

And if not nervous, upset because Jesus has a massive following. People can understand that this man is not like any other man. This man does not speak like other men. And though his words are truth in life.

And so Nicodemus being one of the leaders.

And he's doing marvelous signs alongside that.

To prove his message.

Exactly.

That's right, that's right. So Nicodemus comes at night to talk to him because he doesn't want to be seen talking with the enemy and ask Jesus these famous questions. And what's interesting about the dialogue that's happening here is that Nicodemus is wrestling with really a law-based salvation.

And I would say a salvation based upon ethnicity. There we go. Basically Jews versus the world, right? Which is why this John 3 16 is so powerful because Jesus is busting the paradigm that one is not rescued from their unrighteousness by the law and one is not rescued to a kingdom by their birth.

Which is Nicodemus just cannot, he cannot understand this. Which Jesus rebukes him and says, you should have already known this based upon your research of the Old Testament.

Right.

Your tutelage in the Old Testament.

Yeah, because you're a Pharisee, you're an expert on the law.

You should know.

So he works through these different illustrations. Now the illustrations are extremely powerful and we're aware of them where he says the phrase, you must be born again, right? Which we're all, you know, this is a little bit of a side note, but I'm going to go ahead and go here now, Justin.

I love my, we call them Calvangelicals, my Calvinistic brothers who believe in Calvinism and believe that we are elect. But sometimes when we start hearing this passage preached, you must be born again, it's like they misinterpret the very, they do the same thing Nicodemus does.

Jesus is saying you must be born again and the whole illustration is you didn't birth yourself the first time, you weren't, you were literally not involved the first time. And the same thing that you need to be, have new life is you can't be involved the second time.

And then they proceed to preach a sermon on how to basically rebirth yourself. They preach a sermon on regeneration and this is what people need to hear is the fruit of salvation, which we would say the outcome of one's new birth is regeneration.

But this is where this particular pastor ended up preaching this entire section was on regeneration and the new birth and missed verse 16 all together and the whole point of it being the work of the Holy Spirit.

And verses 14 and 15, which we're gonna get to. I think you're right, I think what happens for a number of well-intentioned serious minded people when they come to this passage, there are true things said about God's sovereign grace and about the Lord's work in regeneration.

So we'll talk about that as a, almost like a theological treatise on predestination and sovereign grace and God's regenerating work. And then what often happens when you go to actually apply this to people, it becomes, all right, now here are all the ways that you can test yourself to see if you have been born again.

And so it becomes a message, like it's a theological lecture over here and then it becomes a law heavy, here are all the ways that you can measure yourself kind of message. And like you have said, at least to me and you maybe have already said it on the podcast today, you get a lot of people talking about the gospel from John three, one to 15, but you don't really get a lot of actual heralding of Jesus for sinners, which is the message of the gospel.

And we're hoping to maybe bring some clarity to that today because it's not just verse 16 that everybody knows. Verses 14 and 15 prior to that are really important to this text. And the reason I say that, this is maybe more of an exegetical observation, there is debate amongst people as to whether Jesus is still the one speaking, if this is still Jesus speaking to Nicodemus by the time you get to verse 16, but there is no debate whatsoever that Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus through the end of verse 15.

And Jesus speaks gospel to him at the end of this entire interchange and you and I are gonna get there. So what do you wanna do, John? Do you wanna maybe make our way through the passage, make some observations, connect it to the Old Testament a little bit and then talk about the good news?

Yeah, a little bit. I just wanted to go back to the statement. So, Justin, this happens a lot. So I just wanna set people up for what they're gonna hear. And I need to be, I wanna be very careful. I love my brothers, okay?

And I pray that maybe some of them can hear what we're saying. If the Lord chooses to use us, I don't know, he may not. He may just squash this whole thing. It doesn't matter. We're gonna just try to do our best.

But Justin, I have noticed lately the gospel-centered movement, the Christ-centered movement in that we will talk about what the gospel can do. We will talk about the effects of the gospel, which I am so thankful and glad to talk about.

I'm glad to talk about sanctification and mortification and how regeneration has a new birth and all of that. I am really excited to talk about the effects of the gospel, but that is not the gospel. And this is why, Justin, the reason why you and I get a little bit excited about this is that if you do not preach the gospel, you do not have power.

And if you do not have power, you remain without faith, without hope, and you remain in your sins, okay? Now, not only for the sinner, but the believer. If the believer isn't hearing the unadulterated, clear gospel preaching from the scripture, not the results of the gospel, not the fruit of the gospel, and not talking about the gospel, you also don't have the power.

So I'm trying to make sure we don't fall into the same trap that we are accusing of, of saying, well, the gospel is the power of God, great, but if you never tell me the gospel, then I don't get the power.

Telling me that the gospel has power is not the same, is not the same as the gospel. So that's kind of a little bit about where I've heard this passage preached or alluded to a lot, and I'm like, you talked about it, but you never delivered it.

So let's deliver the gospel, Justin.

No, let's do.

All right, let's work through it. I'll let you start, and I'll hop in.

Well, you already gave the context, verses one to three. Really, I mean, one and two, you already said. I mean, Nicodemus, he's a Pharisee, and he comes to Jesus by night because Jesus is not looked upon very favorably by the Pharisees.

And so Nicodemus can't talk to him in front of God and everyone, right? So he needs to do this covertly. And he leads off in verse two by saying, we know that you're a teacher who's come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

So you already set that up well for us. Jesus is teaching in the way he speaks. No one ever spoke like this man. He teaches with authority. That's a piece of this. But then he's also doing these signs that accompany that teaching, that validate his ministry and even point to who he is, right?

Then Jesus answers Nicodemus in a very interesting way as Jesus is so prone to do. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And then Nicodemus

Which Nicodemus never even asked a question. He just said a statement.

Well, it's so funny. Like he made a statement and then Jesus responds with a question. And even when people ask Jesus questions, Jesus has a way of responding to the question we ask with the question we should have asked.

That's right.

He's like Did you mean to ask this?

Right.

Let me just go ahead and

I know why you're here.

Point you to where we need to go. Yeah, let's steer this thing to where we really need to go. And I'm gonna say it to you.

Can I just interject here, Justin?

Yeah, please.

Can I just say, you and I have been at lunches with church members like this and you're like about 15 minutes in. You're like, okay, so why did you really wanna meet?

Sure.

Like we can stop with the niceties at this point. Anyways, go ahead.

Well, I mean, and we'll talk a little bit maybe here verses three and following. So Jesus says, unless one is born again, he can't see the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus responds in a way that is understandable at a human level, because he doesn't have the categories, right?

He's not thinking, like you said, he's thinking law-based or he's thinking about natural birth, right? He says, well, how can a man be born when he's old? Obviously he can't, right? And can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Well, the answer to that is of course, no. And a dead giveaway, he's not tracking with Jesus. And then Jesus answers in verse five, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

So real quick, I'll do this, John, and then you can riff however you would like on this. This is a clear, clear allusion to the prophet Ezekiel.

That's right.

So Ezekiel chapter 36 is a relatively well-known new covenant passage, right? It's a promise of what the Lord is gonna do for his people in this new covenant. And so in that chapter, Ezekiel 36, this is verse 24.

I'll start there. He says, the Lord does, I will take you, he's talking to his people, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. And then he says this, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols, I will cleanse you.

So that water piece there is pointing clearly to the cleansing work that God is gonna do on behalf of his people. Then verse 26, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So when Jesus says in John chapter three, that you must be born of water and of the spirit, this is what he's talking about.

This is a work of God. This is something that the Lord is going to do for his people. He is going to clean you and cleanse you from all of your sins and he is going to regenerate you. He's gonna take out your heart of stone, he's gonna give you a new heart and he's gonna put his own spirit within you.

So this is what needs to happen for a person. If you're going to see the kingdom of God. And then he says that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. So again, a pointer to, this is supernatural.

This is not something that is earthly. This is not something that human beings can achieve or do. This is something that God has to do for his people if they're ever gonna see the kingdom of God.

Yeah, and the imagery, I think it's just beautiful how Christ uses the concept of a birth. Because it is, and Nicodemus fell right into the word trap and he did, and it's beautiful and I'm thankful the Holy Spirit gave John this because it's so clarifying for us because Nicodemus goes, one can't be born again.

This is what we always do. We always immediately think physical, physical application, right? So Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says, without even asking the question, Jesus knows why he's there. I wanna be in the kingdom with you.

Well, he sees him as a rabbi. I don't know if he sees him as Lord yet. I wanna be in the kingdom of the Lord. And Jesus says, you have to have a whole new life. In other words, you have to be reborn again.

And immediately, which is what always we do, excuse me, I'm still wrestling with a little bit of a sickness. We think about the obligations we need to meet. And that's exactly what Nicodemus says. So he's like, all right, Jesus, are you playing games with me?

Because I can't go back into my mom's womb and start over again. And Justin, this is a great example of law gospel where Nicodemus tried to do what we call a relevantizing of the gospel. We'll do it with the law too.

We'll try and make the law achievable. Because new birth is not necessarily a law. New birth is the gospel. But what Jesus is trying to help Nicodemus understand is the absolute supernatural nature of the kingdom life.

Exactly.

And Nicodemus is thinking entrance into the kingdom is based on the law. And Jesus says, entrance into the kingdom is based on supernatural powers by the means of the spirit. Hey guys, real quick, some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the Theocast Community. And we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like-minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there.

And you can share it and ask questions. You can go check it out. The link is in the description below.

I just wanna talk a little bit about these observations that you're making. I think 100 agreement. When Jesus talks the way that he does, Nicodemus is floored by it because he's just like you and me in that he only has the category of, okay, well, tell me what I need to do.

Tell me what I need to do to be a part of the kingdom of God. And when Jesus says you need to be born again, Nicodemus is rightly like, well, I can't do that. And it's like, exactly, that's the point, right?

You can't do this. I mean, so like even from a law and gospel framework, the Lord commands in post-fall as we've inherited Adam's corruption, right? And have a nature that's inclined toward evil and is actually bent away from God.

The Lord commands all kinds of things that we can't do in our own strength. He has to do it. It has to be supernaturally achieved. That's true. I'm gonna go ahead and make this observation now and maybe riff on this more in a minute.

It's very interesting. Jesus, I mean, he does speak the words to Nicodemus, you must be born again. And that is a command. I mean, that in and of itself is not the gospel. You must be born again. That is a message of command and even a word of law in one sense, telling Nicodemus this is what needs to happen.

It's funny to me how, again, I mean, brothers and sisters in the faith who agree with us on many things, they're well-intentioned, we trust. But in particular, I'm thinking about preacher-type brothers who will say, you know, well, George Whitefield in the first great awakening would tell people, you must be born again.

And so what I need to do is I need to go, if I'm encountering a situation where there's a bunch of unregenerate people that are hearing me, I need to just, this is my message. You must be born again. It's like, okay, I understand, I think, where you're coming from, but let me ask this question.

How exactly does the new birth occur?

Right?

So don't just tell people that you need to be born again. How does the Lord do that? Now, it's God's work. It is supernatural. It is something that God alone can do for a person. The way I like to, you know, God shows up and does a thing, right, in the lives of his people.

But what is the means that the Lord uses to bring people from death to life? It is precisely and exactly the preaching of Jesus Christ for sinners. And so I don't understand how we can just look at people and say, you must be born again and never go to where Jesus is gonna go.

And he is going to then preach himself. So if you're ever, if you're out there and you're ever talking with a group of people where you suspect that many of them are not born again, you crush them with the law, you tell them all the things that they need to do and can't, and then you hold Christ out to them as their atonement, the atonement for their sins, right, the propitiation for the wrath they deserve, and as the one who has achieved righteousness for them, who has conquered the devil, who has the power of death, right, who has set them free.

And then the Lord uses that, the preaching of Christ to bring people from death to life. So that's really important. Don't just say be born again, because Jesus doesn't stop there. He doesn't just say, Nicodemus, you gotta be born again, which you can't do, true, but he's going to preach the gospel to him.

Well, Justin, many of the listeners have reached out to us, had personal conversations or sent us a message. And what they describe is that most of the time when they hear preaching, like this particular section, it is more of an examination passage instead of a proclamation passage, for instance.

If I truly believed everyone in the congregation was under the impression that they were being saved by obedience to the law, well, then that's going to change the way in which I preach this passage to these people.

I'm like, this is perfect, because this is exactly what Nicodemus was doing, right? Like context supreme. Or let's say I had a bunch of people in the congregation who were definitely believers, they profess that, but they were wayward in their ways, right?

They have wandered from their ways. Well, Justin, I'm going to continue to preach the same passage, right? But I'm not going to then preach it as an examination, because what ends up happening is that this passage has its purpose, and the purpose of this passage is to present the gospel.

So therefore, I'm going to trust in the fact that the gospel not only saves, but it renews, it strengthens, and it sanctifies. So I'm going to continue to preach the power of the gospel, calling people to remember, because what does Peter say?

2 Peter says, when we're not obeying, when the fruits of the gospel are not evident in our life, it's because we forgot we've been cleansed from our former sins. Jesus just talked about cleansing here by the means of the Spirit, right?

Washed by the water and the Spirit. And that word there is wind, which is interesting. And it's interesting that I point that out, because the next thing he does is talk about the wind,.

Right?

But Justin, I mention this because what ends up happening is instead of preaching, believe in the sufficiency of Christ, the end of the sermon, it is examine yourself to see if you really have believed the gospel.

That's what it becomes. It's more about, do you see the evidences of the gospel in your life? If not, then you should be born again. I'm just kind of like.

Or if you don't see enough evidence. Yeah, if you don't see enough evidence, you probably have not been born again and you're illegitimate, you're a faker. And so now you need to be born again. But then again, you don't herald Christ to them that they may be.

It's wild. At the end of the sermon, that's what it was. It was basically, everybody in this room needs to examine themselves.

Well, let me just, I'll go ahead and say, sorry. I'll go ahead and say this, better paradigm is, we're gonna finish our comments. I know we're getting excited here, but we're gonna finish our comments on the supernatural nature of the new birth and how the Lord alone does it.

And so you preach that, but then you preach, and Nicodemus is befuddled. How can this be? And then Jesus effectively is, he rebukes him on the one hand, that you're a teacher in Israel and you don't understand this, right?

And then makes a statement about himself being the son of man and how effectively he's come from heaven, right? To accomplish these things. And then he's gonna refer to the serpent in the wilderness, Numbers 21, and he's gonna demonstrate how God's plan all along has been for him, God the son, the son of man, to be the savior of his people.

And we'll talk about that more in a moment. But a better paradigm for preaching this text would be preach the supernatural nature of the new birth and God's sovereign grace, amen, and how he does that for his people.

But then preach the gospel as the means through which that happens. And then if we wanna get to the place of, all right, let's apply this. And let's talk about, in particular, let's talk about how we live as Christians.

Don't hold it up as now. Here are the tests, here's the standard, and you evaluate whether or not you've been born again. No, you do like the apostles do throughout their writings where you say, look at the Lord's sovereign grace and how marvelous is Christ.

He's our only hope and we've trusted him. And so now let's live like who we are.

That's right.

We have a new identity. We've got a new heart. We got all this. Live like that now, right? That's the way you would then exhort the saints toward godliness and love of neighbor, right? All right, so why don't we pick up in verse eight, seven and eight, because Jesus says, don't marvel that I've said to you you must be born again.