Learning to Receive

A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. (John 3:27)

This looks to me like maybe it is one of those principles that govern reality that I come across every once in awhile. At first glance it looks rather simple and plain until one begins to compare various other verses and concepts with it. Then it begins to take on a much deeper significance.

One thing that comes to my attention is something I learned a few years ago. It was pointed out that the brain is designed in such a way that as it is maturing it needs to learn certain principles or concepts before it is ready to properly learn others. If someone is forced to learn certain lessons without first absorbing the prerequisite principles and lessons and internalizing them, the more advanced concepts may appear to be incorporated into the life but there will be important missing foundational pieces that cause internal weaknesses even though the externals may appear to be correct.

This verse reminds me of just such a situation. It is the duty of an infant to first learn to receive everything with joy. This is far more important than most people realize, particularly in the Christian community because of our strong emphasis on unselfishness and giving to others. This sets us up to try to rush young children into lessons of giving and sharing sometimes too quickly because we don't understand the importance of first making sure they have learned the foundational principle of receiving gladly and experiencing joy with those around them.

When a person is pushed too early to give selflessly before they learn to receive with joy it forces them to start learning hypocrisy. Christian children are very often trained emphatically to give and share but more from a sense of duty instead of from a basis of joy and satisfaction. When this is done what is produced are adults who may be apparently generous, who faithfully support the church and missions and who are eager to pressure others to do the same. But too often these people who appear generous on the outside are motivated more from a sense of trying to avoid guilt or condemnation or shame than they are from a sense of fullness and joy and resting in the blessings and presence of a loving Father.

A person who has failed to learn to first receive with joy will find it difficult at best to give with joy and with cheerfulness. They may try to appear cheerful while giving but even this is from a sense of duty and obligation more than from a genuine gladness that springs spontaneously from the heart. I am one of those people and it was not until I learned this truth a few years ago that I could begin to understand what my real problem was. When this became more clear to me I began to see very clearly my inability to receive with joy and experience peace whenever someone wanted to bless me or affirm me or compliment me.

The symptoms of this dysfunction are seen often in my struggle to know how to relate to compliments from others. I have struggled with this in various ways for all of my life. I evidently had a catastrophic failure very early on learning to receive with joy and I certainly can remember the many times I was pressured to pretend appreciation for gifts received. This forced me to demonstrate appreciation on strictly a superficial level without any regard for being truthful about what my heart was feeling. The same thing went for dealing with offenses. I was repeatedly forced to say “I'm sorry” without any genuine heart condition to support that claim. Appearances were far more important in my culture than any attention paid to the real condition of the heart. Thus I learned to conform on the outside while trying very hard to suppress any conflicting feelings and frustrations that continued to increase on the inside.

Because I still have a gap in that area of my character foundation I continue to find it difficult to both receive and to give without resistance. Maybe that is why I find this text so compelling to me. Instead of focusing on giving which is the more advanced lesson of maturity, John here spells out very clearly that everything we receive comes from God. It is so important to have this view of reality clear in our minds. Everything proceeds from God – all life, all matter, everything that exists is created and sustained by the power of His word.

Immediately we begin to wonder about all the bad things that come to us and how that fits into this principle. The problem is not that God sends bad things our way but that the good things sent by Him in our direction get twisted, perverted distorted and hijacked by sin and sinners before they reach us. Sin has wreaked havoc in God's universe and salvation is the grand plan to repair and restore us from all of this damage. This includes the repairs needed to rectify the dysfunction of trying to give without first learning to receive with joy.

As I think about this more thoroughly I realize that one reason I have a hard time receiving with joy is that it was early on improperly linked to selfishness in my thinking. It became connected inside my mind that to receive anything nice, especially compliments was considered self-indulgence and was at least a little sinful. Over time this resulted in a feeling of guilt and condemnation each time I was the recipient of a compliment and I felt compelled to discount that compliment or affirmation to avoid the internal discomfort and guilt that would surely result if I accepted it freely.

This of course had the effect of dampening anyone's desire to offer me good things since I was so unappreciative. The result was that I lived largely in isolation feeling discouraged in my attempts to offer my talents and gifts to others since I could not receive anything positive in return. This pattern of thinking now seems to me to be clearly designed in the mind of the prince of hell himself. All of Satan's schemes are designed to diminish life and happiness and joy and to slowly destroy God's image in our hearts.

I believe that as I learn the remedial lessons of how to receive with grace and with joy that I will then be more free to move on to being much more able to give with cheerfulness and joy as well. Instead of discounting what others do for me or diminishing their compliments I will be able to engage and encourage them in acknowledging the privileges God has given me to share with them.

As I learn to live life receiving everything as from heaven and trusting my heavenly Father to work all things together for good even when they initially may be very bad, I believe that I will better be able to give without grudging. I feel I need to learn these lessons soon so that I can get unstuck in this area of my dwarfed maturity. It will likely have dramatic effects on all my relationships as well as my outlook on life. But I have to rest in God's plans for my rehabilitation and cooperate with His methods.

A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. And that even includes my own healing.

Living as a Receiver

John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven." (John 3:27)

John's disciples had just come to him and informed him that Jesus was attracting everyone to him which meant that John's popularity was on a fast decline. This situation caused them to start to feel a little jealous for their leader. What did they want John to do? What did they expect could happen by telling John about this apparent problem?

It is human nature to want people to like you, to seek to be popular and well-liked. It makes us feel good, feel valuable, even feel fulfilled. But herein lies the problem. Anytime I use the affirmations of others as a source of my value or importance I am starting to literally follow after false gods. For anything or anyone other than the only Source of life and value from which I try to receive life for myself is a false source. This is extremely subtle and much of the time is never even noticed. But worshiping false gods is far more than just bowing down to graven images or delving into demonic activities. It is any way in which we attempt to receive life for our soul outside of a vital connection with the one and only Life-giver.

John pointed out to his disciples that he understood the kind of relationship that needed to exist for one to be right with God. It was not John's responsibility to get popularity for himself; it was his only to receive whatever his heavenly Father provided for him whether that was physical needs or emotional support. John understood that he was to live as a receiver in relationship to God, not a grasper. It was not his job to go looking for popularity or affirmations or anything else. It was his to simply receive and obey whatever God had asked him to do. In doing this he would find genuine fulfillment and experience real peace which is the only way to find real satisfaction at the deepest level of the soul.

His disciples tended to believe that popularity was an important part of being a good leader. They had joined themselves to John partly because he was so popular, at least among the people who were not so false-hearted and self-righteous that they could not easily discern God's ways. John had been a fast-rising star among the common people but now that he seemed to be in an equally fast decline his disciples assumed that something must be going wrong. After all, popularity is often the index that we assume must be watched to indicate whether we are doing the right thing or not.

But John pointed out to his disciples that he had not come seeking popularity, fame or even control over others. The center of his life and motivation revolved around a close connection and a humble submission to the will of the One who had sent him in the first place. John demonstrated in his life the way all of us should live in relation to God – the relationship of a receiver, one who depended totally on the ways and will of God each moment. He waited on God to lead him instead of going about trying to figure out ways to accomplish things for God and then asking God to bless his plans.

But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. (James 3:14 NIV)

For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. (James 3:16 NKJV)

John's disciples were in danger of becoming infected with the wrong kind of wisdom as described in James 3:13-16. This is the most common wisdom seen all around us today but it is not the kind of wisdom that comes from heaven. John understood and lived with the right kind of wisdom as described in the following two verses in James. John was not at all envious of Jesus and His growing popularity at the expense of his own. The wisdom that he lived in was first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17 NKJV)

I am right now under heavy conviction of my desperate need for this right kind of wisdom. It is becoming more and more clear to me that some of the wisdom that I have immersed myself in is tainted with the wrong spirit no matter how factually correct it has been. I am beginning to see rather painfully how much self-seeking permeates my deep motivations. God has been revealing to me how deep my bitterness really is and how pervasive is my secret envy of the power that evil-doers have to abuse me or take advantage of me.

I am also starting to see more clearly how much I try to get value from all sorts of things – from people's opinions of me, from my “good” performance and achievements, from skills or accumulated resources or even supposed accomplishments in God's name. I thought that I was not nearly so deceived in these areas but the more God has exposed the deeper recesses of my heart lately the more painful and ugly the revelations are that emerge from the darkness.

I have to admit that my perception of reality is more reflective of John's disciples rather than that of John the Baptist. I am tempted to become easily upset when my ideas are not adopted or my plans for God are snubbed. Frequently I find God reminding me that the current of my thoughts at a given moment are based on self-seeking instead of submission to His will and His ways. This has been a very painful revelation for me after years of believing that I was much farther along than this. I know that this is God's discipline and that it is a sign of His love and care for me, but it is still both humiliating and painful.

I am in need of much prayer and intercession by others who are truly part of the body of Christ. I am realizing more than ever before my need for community, accountability and nurturing by others, particularly those more mature than I am. I often find it very hard to receive but I need to experience healing for this problem. I have long been very independent, a loner fiercely trying to experience God myself but with little connection to the rest of His body. I know that God is determined to remedy this situation and I want to cooperate with His plans for my life.

I want to have much more of the spirit that was seen in John the Baptist. I am a long ways from that right now but where sin abounds grace much more abounds. I am choosing to submit to God's discipline even though it is very painful right now. I have been asking Him for a long time to come in and transform my character so in a way I am not surprised. But that does little to allay the emotional pain of that discipline right now.

I cling to the Word of God and cling to a belief in the goodness of God and His ultimate plans for me. I know that later when I look back I will deeply appreciate what is happening right now, but during this time that is difficult to remember very easily. For a number of days now I have felt a conscious heaviness inside that demands relief but never goes away. I believe that it is at least partly linked to some resistance that I am still holding onto inside along with a level of unbelief and I plead with God to get me through this and cause me to let go of whatever it is I am hanging onto in place of Him.

What I crave right now is the peace of God to completely fill my heart and mind and fill me with assurance and rest. I sense that God has allowed this uneasiness to continue to prompt me to keep seeking Him until I can live in full surrender to His will for me. Pray for me and do whatever else God prompts you to do. I am learning to trust His heart at levels never before experienced in my life.

Divided Loyalties

Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John's disciples with a Jew about purification. And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him." (John 3:25-26)

What is coming out this morning as I look at this is the contrast between the tension caused by John's baptizing activities in conflict with the mainstream Jewish religious people, and the unity and peace that was felt between John's ministry and the ministry of Jesus. John's disciples noted this even in their complaint to John. As disciples of one who was at odds with the mainstream religion and was the target of attack and discrediting by religious leaders, these disciples had become embroiled in the arguments put forth by religious leaders to diffuse the effectiveness of John's ministry.

Becoming a disciple of a teacher aligns you with what that teacher stands for. As a result, you will also find yourself out of sorts with all those who strongly oppose those teachings or that lifestyle. John was sent by God to disrupt the status quo of society and religion. He did not fit the mold and was not reinforcing most of the religious assumptions and expectations about the coming Messiah. There was certainly no lack of enthusiasm and interest in the doctrine of Messiah in John's day; it was not a neglected teaching by any means. But the popular desires for power, control, revenge and the prevalence of pride in the hearts of religious people had fatally distorted their ability to properly understand Scriptures about this subject and caused them to misrepresent God.

Although John was a very bold and unique preacher and prophet, he did not share in the pride and self-seeking attitudes of the popular religious teachers of his day. John had a vital connection with heaven and an extremely humble heart. It was his intimate connection with heaven and his perspective of seeing things from a completely different angle that gave him the ability to speak strong truths with such great boldness and yet maintain a humble spirit at the same time.

The world and counterfeit religion always depends on fear to control and manipulate others into compliance with their ways of thinking and living. John lived outside the atmosphere of this fear for several reasons. First of all he was filled with the Holy Spirit from the time even before he was born, and God's Spirit is never a spirit of fear. Secondly, he was raised in an environment mostly free of the strong influences of the religious leaders and the deceptive philosophies designed to neutralize everyone who might rock the boat. John grew up out in the isolated places, the wilderness where he cultivated his close relationship with God and lived an extremely simple life free from many of the temptations that compromised nearly everyone else. Thus he developed a perspective of reality that was mostly foreign to everyone else, a perspective that viewed reality in ways that were startling to the average person.

John lived in the atmosphere of heaven's perspective and filled his mind with the Word of God. As his character and personality firmed up in this unique environment he was fitted to preach with confidence and boldness things that would confront the deceptions of counterfeit religion and expose its weaknesses. Counterfeit religion is not necessarily always based on false doctrines. People can have intellectual truth and can prove all of their teachings from the Bible but still be trapped in a false view of reality that results in a subtle counterfeit to the real plan of salvation as viewed by heaven. That is because true religion must be aligned properly from two different directions – intellectual truth and a right condition of the spirit or heart. In the next chapter of John Jesus makes this very clear in His words to the woman at the well in Samaria.

Because John was largely not infected with the spirit of selfishness, pride and human value systems like the rest of the religious leaders had become, he was empowered by God to be a striking contrast to the philosophical religion, the self-serving religion, the fear and control-oriented religion that had taken overGod's chosen nation. Many people had become very disillusioned with the emptiness of religion as it was promoted and imposed by the religious elite and were disgusted with the selfishness, greed and abuses promoted by those claiming to represent God. They were hungry for something better, for a real religion that would speak to the heart and bring life and hope and healing to their souls.

So when John showed up on the scene exposing the hypocrisies of the religious establishment, while he was not making many friends among the brokers of religion he was addressing a deep and intense need in the hearts of thousands of listeners hungry for a word from the real God. His words brought conviction of people's misalignment with God's ways and offered a way to repent and turn to a more effective religion, a religion of the heart that promised to meet the real, deep hunger of the soul that the religious leaders had failed to address. John was offering people true spirituality.

When Jesus came onto the scene after John had gotten the attention of the whole nation, the attitude and message and spirit of Jesus was seen to be in alignment with John rather than with the rest of the religious establishment. John's disciples could not help but notice this alignment and John himself threw all of his credibility and support behind the ministry of Jesus. John declared that this was the whole reason for his life and his own ministry – to prepare the path into people's hearts for the true Messiah to come in and accomplish His desires and His plans.

This was in stark contrast to the ever-present conflict, arguments and tension that his disciples had encountered as they had aligned themselves with John the Baptist. This commonness of purpose and spirit between John and Jesus was so noticeable that a number of John's disciples were moved to began following Jesus themselves instead of John. But others decided to stick with John from a sense of loyalty and felt reluctant to abandon him for someone else. They may have felt that since John had introduced them to the real truth about God and had opened their eyes and their hearts in ways that no one else had ever done before that it would be wrong to turn away from him now.

But it was also obvious to them that the spirit of Jesus was very similar to the spirit of John. Like John, Jesus also found His ministry to be the target of attacks by the religious establishment. Jesus' attitudes and methods were very similar to John's though His personality seemed to be quite different. There was a sense of fellowship between the two groups of disciples that was not combative like what they experienced with all the other religious people. In the words of John's disciples quoted above, they noted that Jesus was with John and that John had testified in favor of Jesus.

This phrase about being with John was much more than simply a reference to a physical proximity with John. This clearly refers to their ministry, their attitudes, their shared goals and their views of reality. John and Jesus both viewed life and religion from radically different perspectives from what was taught and practiced by the pervasive religion of the day. And the same is still true today. Popular religion always becomes infected with the contamination of pride, the desires for power and control over others and a lack of true humility and a vital connection with heaven.

The problem that shows up in this verse is the fact that John's disciples were themselves already becoming infected a little bit with some of the contaminants that had ruined the religion of the Jews. They were starting to feel that loyalty to a particular religious leader was more important than complete devotion to a relationship with God directly. They were starting to depend on John as their primary source for truth in their lives instead of heeding his message to turn their hearts toward God and to embrace the new revelation of God that was about to be exposed in the person of God's own Son. John's disciples were already becoming infected with a spirit of jealousy instead of allowing the repentance and grace and truth from God promoted by John to continue its work of transformation in their own hearts.

But that is what John addresses in the following verses. He makes it very clear that the sole purpose of his life was to amplify the attraction of people to the One who was to follow up after him. While it was important for people to listen to John's calls for repentance and to respond to the convictions from God as a result of his preaching, this was not enough. People are never to stop at the places where their leaders take them. God sends reformers to His people to awaken them, to challenge their assumptions, to alert them to their darkness and to introduce more light and grace to them. But if people start to focus more on the person than on the God who sent the person then what will be seen is the same thing we see today – thousands of denominations all claiming to have the truth.

One reason that so many denominations exist today is because people who were challenged to think outside their existing ideas of God failed to continue on that path of progression. They chose instead to settle down on the teachings of their initial leaders and became afraid to follow the example of their founders by continuing to search out and experience more truth in the ever-increasing light and revelations about God. They allow fear to dominate their belief system and try to synthesize truth into neat intellectual packages that can then be enforced and promoted instead of pursuing an ever-deepening heart relationship with the real God of heaven.

John the Baptist refused to have his message be reduced to a set of doctrines and intellectual beliefs to be followed. The main focus of his message was that people needed to base their whole life and their reason for existence on a personal relationship with the coming Lamb of God that was the only hope to take away sin from this world. The same truth is just as much needed today as it was in John's day. It is very dangerous to look to any denomination or any teacher as the source of our beliefs instead of a vital and personal connection with God. That is not to say that we cannot learn and grow under the teachings of effective leaders sent by God. God is ready to use all sorts of resources to grow us in grace and a knowledge of Him. But we must not allow a sense of allegiance to some person or some denomination to eclipse our need to absolute allegiance and loyalty to a deepening and intimate heart connection with our Savior and our God.

Purification and Authority

I am reading about Jesus and His disciples and John and his disciples both baptizing people who are coming to them. As I want to see more clearly the reason this is written and how it is interlinked with what I have been reading before, I spent some time going back over the first three chapters to look for threads and important repeating ideas and words.

What I am seeing is several threads emerging. John chapter one talks about John the Baptist baptizing during the time when Jesus first shows up on the scene. He is confronted by the Pharisee's demands for him to show his papers so to speak, to give an accounting of why he thinks he has authority to administer a rite that they reserved for their own use. The Pharisees had developed the idea of baptism as an initiation ceremony for proselytes that they had converted to Judaism from outside the culture. They used this as a symbol of cleansing to bring someone into the Jewish religion. They viewed the history of their ancestors passing through the Red Sea as an initiation of the birth of their nation so baptism was never considered as something to be administered to a person who was a naturally born Jew.

So when John came along and started baptizing Jews or anyone at all who wanted to repent and turn to God irregardless of their background or nationality the Pharisees became very concerned that he was ruining their ceremonial rite by using it improperly. Obviously to them this was happening because John had not first obtained proper permission and authorization from God's appointed authorities, the Jewish leaders. Instead of being properly licensed he had just started baptizing people helter skelter. It was obvious to them that to maintain proper respect and control over this important rite that not just any old Joe who might come along should be allowed to start baptizing. But even more importantly no one should ever be allowed to go around baptizing Jews, because to do so would create the implication that Jews were not already the chosen people of God by nature of their birth and that idea was simply unthinkable.

What I find interesting is that when John was demanded to account for his lack of authorization by the Pharisees, he did not answer their question directly as they wanted. Instead he diverted attention to some idea of another person for which he was waiting to come into view who would be even more radical than he was in administering cleansing and purification. This next person was supposed to baptize with much more than water – He would use fire to baptize people. This was certainly an attention getter.

John also made it very clear that he believed he had been sent by some other authority, a higher authority Who had commissioned him to preach and baptize. But his authority that he refused to argue about was not the recognized leadership of the current religious establishment. Furthermore, the person he was sent to highlight and amplify who would come after him had even greater authority than the Jewish leaders could ever hope to be able to confer – this One would be none other than the very Son of the God they claimed to represent, the Lamb of God as represented by the symbol at the very center of all their religious ceremonies and their own sacrificial system of worship.

Over the centuries the Jews had devolved their whole system of representative religion into the object of their worship itself and had almost completely lost sight of the much greater realities which it was originally designed to represent. They had come to view themselves as the source of all spiritual authority on earth by merit of their lineage and traditions while failing to recognize the true authority of the God who gave them these symbols. While they claimed to be God's representatives and carried on the systems and ceremonies and Scriptures that He had given them, they had taken all of these things and turned them into objects of worship and thus had developed a counterfeit religion based on externals while failing to pursue a personal relationship and accountability of the heart with the God behind those externals.

As a result, their concept of authority had become very human oriented. And we have done the very same thing today. Authority is viewed as having to do with licenses, ordinations, degrees from universities, union cards, denominational affiliations, conformity to governmental regulations etc. We, like the Jews of old, have lost sight of the truth about real authority and as a result find it difficult to comprehend what the underlying issues are under discussion in these passages. Like the Jews, we find it confusing and disturbing if anyone comes along without the right credentials and begins to speak or administer religious rites to others without “proper authorization” according to our standards.

Baptism in the minds of the Jews was closely associated with ceremonial purification. They had quite a number of ceremonies connected with purification rites and many of these revolved around the use of water. The stone jars that Jesus employed during the wedding in Cana in chapter two were designed for just such purification. These were supposed to be containers for purification rites very similar to baptism. So when Jesus instructed the servants to fill up the water jars during the wedding these good Jews were likely quite confident they knew what He intended to do next, especially since He was rumored to be the Messiah for their nation. It was clear in their minds that before the Messiah could set up His kingdom that He would have to purify the people who were going to participate in that kingdom. So when He told them to fill up the purification jars with water they became very excited that the kingdom really was about to be initiated big time.

But of course, Jesus was often messing up people's assumptions. Instead of using the water for purification rites He did something radically unexpected with the water jars, possibly even contaminating them in the opinion of the Jews. The following story shows Jesus again upsetting quite literally things at the very center of the Jewish religion where symbolic purification should have been taking place. Instead of supporting and endorsing the system of organized religion in the temple, Jesus came in and caused such a disturbance that once again the leaders felt compelled to challenge yet another disturber of the peace about this issue of proper authority and who is allowed to represent God and truth to the common people.

The main topic of importance for the Jews revolved around how to bring about the kingdom of God on earth. It was generally believed that what was needed most was for God's chosen people to be purified so that the Messiah could come and find people acceptable for Him to bless and empower and put in control over their enemies. People longed for power very intensely. They resented being under the control of foreign occupying forces and they deeply resented even more that their religion was not the dominant one since obviously from their perspective it was the only true one. They believed that God would enforce the true religion on earth and force all to comply with His laws if only His chosen people would just make enough effort to purify themselves in preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

This issue of purification had become the very center of the religion of the Jews. Nearly everything they did, talked about and thought about revolved around how to become and remain pure. Ritual and physical cleansings abounded throughout their ceremonies and all their activities. The issue of who had authority to determine the correct way to be pure was also very much a part of this. When John the Baptist appeared on the scene and began making vivid announcements about the soon coming kingdom of heaven everyone sat up and listened. He was talking their language in a time when everyone was eager to hear. Religion had become oppressive and life was bitter under the Romans. John spoke of things like cleansing and purification with vivid words that put a completely different light on it than the teachings of the religious leaders.

All of this attention being drawn away from the recognized leaders to a new exciting preacher produced jealousy in the Pharisees and elders. John the Baptist had not been taught in their schools and seemed to have no interest in soliciting their endorsements or earning their accreditations. He simply made a claim that Someone greater had commissioned him to preach and he would preach and baptize whether they liked it or not.

Now here comes along another young upstart teacher making waves in the public arena which was causing even more concern for the religious establishment. This one too, seemed unwilling to acknowledge the assumed jurisdiction of the established authorities and was becoming possibly an even greater threat to undermine the influence of the established leadership. It was rumored that He could perform miraculous signs which was more than John had done and this could present a real problem for the established church. This man like John also seemed unconcerned about acknowledging the proper chain of command, of submitting to licensing through appointed authorities and conforming to receive the approbation of the religious establishment.

At this point in the book of John, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent Pharisees decided to do a little private investigation of his own. Maybe he felt that he might be able to assert some influence through quiet diplomacy if he could just conduct a private interview with this new teacher. He also felt that maybe this teacher might listen to the concerns of the leadership if they were presented in a proper way and Jesus might be willing to be a little less combative or confrontational. So Nicodemus conducted his late night foray into the camp of a suspected enemy of the nation to see what he might accomplish. But he was totally unprepared for the response that he received.

Instead of having a good animated discussion about how to respect proper authority and clarify in this new teacher's thinking the right way to carry on the expected works of the Messiah, Nicodemus found himself very quickly drawn out of his own comfort zone as this teacher confronted him with disturbing issues of the heart which had seldom been addressed in his lifelong training in religion. Instead of haggling over fine points of purification or exploring how to further the ambitions of the Jews, this man seemed ready to challenge the accepted tenants of religion and insisted that even good, upright religious people like Nicodemus were clueless when it came to embracing the true work of the Messiah and introducing the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Immediately following this story we are told about Jesus and John with their disciples baptizing people who were coming expecting to be purified. Baptism was an invention of the Pharisees who wanted to convert gentiles into being good Jews according to their standards. The Jews believed that by right of ancestry every Jew had already been baptized into becoming the chosen people of God when their forefathers passed through the Red Sea under the leadership of Moses. So as a sign of joining this chosen people, anyone who was not born a Jew was baptized in water as a symbolic way of passing through the waters of the Red Sea so they could join God's chosen people.

This is why the religious leaders found John's baptism of Jews so highly offensive. Baptism was supposed to only be used for outsiders, gentiles, never for Jews. To baptize a Jew was to imply that maybe it was not enough to be physically born into the chosen nation of God and that was intolerable heresy in their minds. Their whole life was centered around the strong belief that God's chosen people were the Jews alone and to question that foundational assumption was out of the question. Baptism thus became a point of contention between the Jewish leaders and John for the leaders believed that what was really needed to prepare for the Messiah was ceremonial purification, but not baptism of Jews. That was simply taking things too far.

But when questioned on this issue, instead of acquiescing to their traditions John asserted that the One who was to follow him would conduct baptism and purification in more radical ways than even he was doing. John declared that the Messiah would come and use fire to baptize people to purify them, not just water. This vivid language did nothing to quell the apprehension of the leadership but it certainly caught the imagination of the common people longing for something more meaningful than the heavy burden of external regulations imposed on them by their religion and their leaders.

With this context it becomes clearer what is meant by the next story. Now a discussion about purification arose between John's disciples and a Jew. (John 3:25 NRSV) Nothing further seems to be said in the story about this comment so it is assumed that the reader is aware that purification was the hot topic of the day under widespread discussion. It becomes easier to understand when it is used in reference to John baptizing since the Jews were likely very offended by John baptizing people who in their opinion were already part of God's chosen people. Baptism of Jews implied that it was not enough to be born into the right nationality but that real purification was an issue of the heart rather than the externals. All of this threatened to unravel centuries of carefully accumulated traditions and teachings of the elders and the whole religious establishment. Now it was emerging that Jesus too was getting involved in this “renegade baptizing” of Jews and so it finally came to a head when some patriotic Jew insisted on trying to straighten out some of John's disciples on their theology.