Jesus to Nicodemus: Baptism Saves You

For sinners to have life with God, rebirth must happen. But YOU can't decide to be reborn. What are we to do? Nothing. God has a plan.

“The Law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this,' and everything is already done.”

With these words, Martin Luther describes the two ways in which God speaks and interacts with you and me.

First, God speaks His Law to condemn us in our sin. God’s Law shows us that we are sinners who merit eternal condemnation for our sinful natures and the sinful actions we commit because of our natures.

God’s Word says of us, “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:29-32)

Of course, we all know God’s Law. We’re to love God and neighbor, worship God alone, love God’s Word, do and think only good things about our parents, presidents, and neighbors, and build others up, not tear them down.

We do know God’s Law, His will for us. But people like us and everyone else who has ever walked on this planet–except for One–could be taught God’s Law continuously from dawn to dusk every day and still not do God’s Law. In His Law, God says, “Do this” and because of who we are, it never gets done.

And that’s a problem because, as the apostle Paul reminds us: “...wrongdoers [literally, he says here, “unrighteous ones”] will not inherit the kingdom of God…” (1 Corinthians 6:9) To be righteous means to obey God’s Law perfectly. And righteousness is just the baseline requirement for having life with God, now and in eternity. Yet, when God tells us to obey His righteous Law, we don’t do it. 

What are we to do?

That was a question that occupied a man named Nicodemus a lot.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees lived under the misplaced confidence that they could behave righteously, do God’s Law, and so deserve life with God, life beyond the grave. 

Nicodemus, with his confidence in his own righteous capacity to obey God’s Law was, in some ways, no closer to God than the modern-day atheist who thinks he can be a good person without reference to God.

But anyone who thinks they can rise above their sinful nature or if they’re inclined to believe in God, make themselves acceptable to heaven, is deluding themselves.

For some reason, Nicodemus visited Jesus one night. Almost immediately, Jesus tells him, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (John 3:3)

Nicodemus should have heard these words of Jesus as the second of the two ways God speaks and interacts with us. Nicodemus should have heard that God saves us from sin, death, and darkness not by the things we do, but solely by what God does for us. “There is a way to righteousness–to acceptability to God,” Jesus is saying, “that has nothing to do with rules or laws.” Instead, it’s about being born again–or born from above.

The image of birth which Jesus uses should tell Nicodemus (and us) that being ‘born again” has nothing to do with what we do or what we decide. Being right with God is nothing like what a high school classmate of mine described to me decades ago when she told me, “I decided to be born again.”

Now, that's a silly statement on the face of it when you consider that when we are born is not a decision made by children when they are born. We are born when we are born.

In just the same way, we are born again (or born from above) ONLY when God’s Word comes to claim us.

And it’s only by the power of that Word that we come to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

But Nicodemus, like my high school classmate, hears Jesus’ words and wonders what he can do, what he must do, to be born again, listen: as though he could be both the baby and the obstetrician at his rebirth. 

Nicodemus wants Jesus to give him a guidebook so that he can get busy obeying a new law. “How can someone be born when they are old?” he asks. (John 3:4)

Jesus clarifies things for Nicodemus. Referencing Holy Baptism, the Christian sacrament that infants and children have undoubtedly undergone since the first Christian Pentecost two-thousand years ago, Jesus says, “...no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:5) Baptism, the apostle Paul tells us elsewhere in the Bible, is like circumcision, the rite every eight-day-old Jewish boy underwent to initiate his life with God. Our lives with Christ are meant to be initiated in Baptism.

The apostle Peter, who may have overheard Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, talks about Holy Baptism as the means by which God gives the righteousness of Jesus to us sinners when he writes: “Baptism…now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21)

Even if, as sometimes happens, God’s grace comes to us before we’re baptized–like the thief on the cross, we are still not saved by what WE do or what WE decide. Our salvation is all God’s doing.

That’s why The Small Catechism tells us: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel…”

We apprehend Christ’s victory over sin and death for us and given to us through Baptism, by faith alone.

And even our faith is His gift to us!

The Bible tells us: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8) 

Our call from day to day is to turn away from our sin, including our sinful reliance on our own goodness or good deeds, and turn instead to Christ Who died and rose to shield us with His righteousness. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus are His words to you again today: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)

Today is the only day on the Church calendar devoted to a doctrine of the Church, the Holy Trinity. And here, in Jesus’ words to Nicodemus (and to you), we are ushered into the very heart of God, the mysterious one God in three Persons:

God the Father so loved you that He sent God the Son so that whoever, by the power of God the Holy Spirit, given to you in Holy Baptism, believes in Jesus will not share in the condemnation to hell that whole human race deserves, but will be set free from sin and death and live with God forever. All this, the Holy Trinity–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–gives us. This is why I can tell you, as I love to tell people whenever I preach, in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven; you can turn to Him and He will give you and renew in you saving faith in Him every single day, every single moment.

“The Law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this,' and everything is already done.”

God’s Law condemns us.

But God’s grace, His Gospel, His Promise, saves us.

Friends, you can trust in what Christ has already done for you from the cross and the empty tomb to make you righteous, fit for life with God, now and forever.

And, as sometimes happens in churches on Sunday mornings, if there is anyone here who hasn’t yet been baptized and wants the Trinity’s free gift to you, we can take care of that as soon as this morning. I’m more than willing to get a little wet so that God can set you free to be His child now and forever. Amen

[This message was shared today with the people and friends of First Lutheran Church in Troy, Ohio.]