Second Sunday of Lent: Unarmed - Love Without Leverage

 

It's the Second Sunday of Lent

The season of Lent offers us a time to consider how best to identify with Jesus during the forty days from the Cross to Easter.  

This series will teach us what it means to face injustice, evil, and suffering by laying down everything but love.  

Today, we are going to be studying a passage from John’s Gospel that contains one of the most famous verses in the Bible, as we learn what it means to surrender to the transforming power of the Spirit.  

It's time we took a long, hard look inside ourselves to see what is truly motivating us.  Are we being led by the Spirit, or our own ideas of what it means to be a follower of Jesus?

GRACE DOESN’T COME WITH LEVERAGE, IT COMES WITH SURRENDER.

John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus[a] by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” 

• Nicodemus and the Pharisees—something is definitely going on.  

3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 

• He’s smart enough to know that Jesus is using metaphors.  

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

• Jesus reframes the conversation into an introspective one.  

9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

• It doesn’t matter how much you do; grace only comes with surrender.  

11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you[f] do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can 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. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

• The image of Moses and the serpent speaks to surrender and trust. 

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

• We can’t leverage our own ideas of what it means to follow Jesus as a means of grace; we simply have to surrender them and follow.  

When we are willing to lay down our arms and armor, we create space for the Spirit to move and work within us and without us, driven by love, not ambition. 

Nicodemus' Trajectory: Disquiet, Questioning, Declaration 

John 7:48-52

48 “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? 49 No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

50 Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, 51 “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

52 They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

John 19:38-40

38 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.[e] 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen.

Some Important Questions

• What makes us work so hard to be deserving of grace?
• How might working on your own inner life be transformative?
• What would it mean for the world if we got this?

GRACE DOESN’T COME WITH LEVERAGE, IT COMES WITH SURRENDER.