27th May 2026

We are told that Jesus had done many miracles during the Passover celebration, and that because of this, many people had begun to trust in him and began to believe that God had sent him. Jesus was able to look into everyone’s heart and discern their true intentions. He knew how easy it was for them to love someone one day and betray them the next, and so he did not trust them. How easy it was for the people to shout praises to him as he entered Jerusalem and then turn around and demand his death a short while later. Can God trust us?

Jesus had been well noticed by the religious leaders. They knew by the miracles he did that God was with him, God sent him, but he did not fit the picture they had in their mind of the coming Messiah. Simply put, they did not like him, and he was a threat to their nice comfortable safe world they had made with their rules and regulations. But some, such as Nicodemus, wanted to know more about him. It was obvious to him that God was with Jesus, and he wanted to know more. Could he really be the Messiah?

It is noted that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. We all are or were at one time or another in the darkness of our sin. It is where we hide in our shame, but Jesus came to bring us out of our darkness and into his glorious light. Nicodemus was searching for God, wanting to please him by his righteousness. This is why Jesus said to him that he had to be born again, because man alone cannot obtain righteousness, it is only God who can give us a new life, a new beginning by removing our sin and forgiving us. Only God can save, and Jesus came to be the Saviour of the world.

Alone we cannot even understand that we need God. It is when our sin and brokenness become visible to us by God’s revelation that we realise our helpless condition. God in his mercy will not allow us to remain in our darkness. We are reminded in verses 16-17 of John 3 that: ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’

We are drawn to the light of God, drawn to the Son of God, and when we believe in him, trust in him, God removes the darkness of sin in our lives. Nicodemus wanted to believe Jesus was the Messiah, wanted to do good, and to know that he was on that journey to Jesus that would open his heart and mind to God, and God’s healing salvation. Nicodemus came out of the darkness and came to the ‘light of the world’, Jesus (John 3:21). God was with him, and God is with us. How wrong it is to think that God is so repulsed by our sin that he has to turn away. It is we who run in shame and hide ourselves from God. God comes running to us in our darkness and draws us out by the hand and into his glorious light.

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