Sucking up won’t help.

A Pharisee named Nicodemus seemed intrigued by the moxy that Jesus showed the first time He cleared the money changers out of the Temple. When he heard Jesus refer to the Temple as “MY Fathers’s house,” questions arose in Nic’s mind that needed to be resolved.

Of course Nicodemus was no fool. He knew the power that his brother Pharisees held. He could get into a lot of trouble just for appearing to be taking sides with Jesus. Regardless, Nic wanted to talk to Jesus to find out what made Him tick, so he went to where Jesus was staying under the cover of darkness. When Jesus opened the door and invited Nic inside, the Pharisee greeted Jesus with,

“Rabbi.”

Wow! That’s no small thing that just happened. Nic, who was himself a Rabbi, was referring to Jesus as an equal. For a Pharisee, that was huge. After they were seated by the fire and Jesus had filled their glasses with the best wine in the house, Nic began, “We know (he’s been talking about Jesus with other Pharisees) that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Nicodemus knew how to work the public. First addressing Jesus as an equal (if Nic only knew who he was talking to), now this compliment about coming from God. He did his best to get Jesus in the mood for talking about Himself. And Jesus reaction?

“Dude, you are so spiritually blind you wouldn’t know someone sent from God if he walked up to you and kicked you in the butt.” That’s my paraphrase but Jesus really was that blunt with Nic. But here’s the thing. Nic didn’t get up and leave. He continued to show Jesus respect. He even tried to find out what Jesus meant by, “No one can see the kingdom of God (You’re so spiritually blind) unless he is born again.” Here was a religious LEADER in the community and Jesus told him that he’s not even in the spiritual starting gate.

That’s the thing about Jesus. Out of love, He tells us what we need to hear. And when the Holy Spirit is doing the leading, we stick around to find out what Jesus has to say about our spiritual condition.

This was a big deal for Nicodemus to hear. He and the other Pharisees, more than the average person on the street, really believed that being good and keeping all the rules would cause them to find favour with God. To be told to throw out any such notion, to be told that everything that you’ve worked for is rubbish (Philippians 3:7-11) and that you need to start again (born again) would have been quite a shock. Yet, Nic stuck around to hear more.

The pattern of Jesus ministry, at least regarding the corrupt religious system (and it’s always corrupt to varying degrees) is flat out confrontation. This encounter with the Nicodemus is the only semi friendly dealing that Jesus had with any Pharisee. And even this one begins and ends with Jesus challenging and pushing the religious teacher relentlessly toward a recognition of the lost spiritual state in which he lives. And Nic listened.

That’s what happens when the Holy Spirit comes calling. The blunt force truth quickens your soul. You realise that you are in the presence of Truth and it instills in you the desire to ask, so that you can find out more. It causes you to knock so that more is opened up to you. You begin to seek so that the location of the treasure can be made known to you.

Sucking up won’t do. Pretending that you’re good enough won’t do. We come to God empty handed, with nothing of value to offer, and He, at His own discretion brings us on a journey the quality of which we’d never dreamed possible.

We see Nicodemus only two more times in the Gospels. The next time is when he is defending Jesus to the rest of the Sanhedrin who were looking for a way to get rid of Jesus. When Nic said, “Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?” (John 7:50, 51), they turned on Nicodemus as well. The last time we hear about Nicodemus, he and the only other Pharisee that we know of who were secret followers of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea were preparing Jesus’ body for burial. The courage, through the Holy Spirit, that would later indwell the disciples was with these two Pharisees on the evening of His death.

They were no longing sucking up to their Saviour. They were serving Him.