Nicodemus Visits Jesus
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Nicodemus Visits Jesus
Herb Montgomery | February 27, 2026
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus 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 apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 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?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 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.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“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.
“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. (John 3:1-17)
Nicodemus’s visit to Jesus in John 3 is one of this Gospel’s most intimate and arresting narratives. A Pharisee and member of the Jewish ruling council, Nicodemus slips to Jesus under cover of darkness, seeking understanding, recognition, or perhaps safety in the shadows. The conversation that follows begins with questions about Jesus’ signs in John’s gospel to the Jesus’ famous statements about being “born again” and that “God so loved the world.”
This encounter also, in the context of Nicodemus’ power and privilege and his desire to meet Jesus in secrecy, carries urgent social and ethical implications for contemporary concerns. The nighttime setting suggests fear, vulnerability, and the cost of being seen publicly as standing in solidarity with Jesus. The scene is quite familiar for those today in justice work who take up the risk of confronting unjust systems. Jesus was standing on the side of those being harmed by the very system Nicodemus held power in and benefitted from. He had much to lose if he became associated with Jesus publicly.
Reading John 3 through a lens shaped by our justice work today invites contemporary Nicodemuses to consider how transformation begins in risky dialogues across difference. Nicodemus, with all his fear, still takes a step toward Jesus, even if it is a tentative one. And Jesus, taking all of this in, reframes Nicodemus’ identity not in terms of his privilege and power but through starting over and being born again. This story challenges Nicodemuses today to stand in solidarity with contemporary movements for structural change, movements rooted in, as Jesus stated, a love that encompasses the whole world and doesn’t just preserve the in-group for a privileged few. Jesus frames any advocacy by Nicodemus as a kind of rebirth: it requires humility, willingness to be unsettled, and courage to reimagine institutions. Even though Nicodemus is coming to him “at night” as an attempt to save his privilege and status, Jesus knows that it is not possible for Nicodemus to tell the truth without reprisals. Allyship for Nicodemus will cost him something, and this helps me interpret Jesus’ language about being born again in a more life-giving way. Jesus is not saying to Nicodemus that we are all somehow broken as humans and must be born again, as the traditional interpretation states. Rather he is saying that Nicodemus has ascended a professional ladder , and now that he is reaching the top, Jesus tells him the ladder’s leaning up against the wrong wall. Nicodemus must start over. Our reading this week gives us an opportunity to interpret John’s theological vision, not as anti-world escapism, but as a sustained, justice-rooted practice in our churches and public life today, together.
Next, Jesus draws on a troubling and paradoxical image: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The reference here is to Numbers 21, where a bronze serpent, an image of the very thing causing the people death, is raised so that the wounded Israelites may be miraculously healed and live. John’s gospel’s use of this imager is curious, because it reframes salvation not as escape from suffering, but as confrontation with it.
In the wilderness story, the people are not healed by their denial or moral purity, but by looking directly at the symbol of what is causing their affliction. Healing comes when the community is forced to face what is killing them. Jesus applies this logic to himself: liberation emerges through public exposure to the violence of unjust power as demonstrated in his own death.
In our context today, John’s gospel suggests that transformation requires lifting up the truth about injustice rather than hiding it. Jesus on the cross becomes a mirror held up to empire, revealing Rome’s brutality, the religious collaboration of those in power in Jerusalem, and the cost imposed on the poor and marginalized. The cross, rather than being “redemptive” because Jesus’ suffering satisfies some Divine requirement, instead unmasks the systems that produce suffering.
Also, in Numbers, the serpent was lifted up for everyone to see. Healing was communal, not private, and no one was saved through private contemplation alone. Everyone was saved, together, collectively. In the same way, this calls communities to collective awareness and responsibility. Our justice work today follows this pattern when we name injustices such as racism, economic exploitation, patriarchy, xenophobia, transphobia, and state violence. Naming them forces society to look at what it has normalized.
John’s Jesus insists that life comes not through avoiding discomfort, but through truth-telling that leads to transformation. The serpent in the wilderness reminds us that healing begins when we dare to look honestly at the systems that wound us and when those truths are lifted up where they can no longer be ignored.
The last portion of our reading this week (John 3:16) is most likely the most famous Bible passage. Too often, though, this passage is reduced to a private promise of personal salvation. Yet it can also carry profound social and political implications. “For God so loved the world” begins not with an individual soul but with the world, the kosmos: the whole created order and the human systems that shape it. God’s love is expansive, public, and concerned with collective life, not merely private piety.
The gift of the Son in this Johnannine passage is an act of divine solidarity. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is not given to endorse the world as it is, but to confront it, expose its injustice, and heal it. This gift is costly, involving vulnerability to state violence, political, economic and religious exclusion, and imperial power. Read in the context of our justice work today, John 3:16 reminds us that God’s love does not bypass suffering peoples or oppressive structures but enters them to heal them. Salvation, therefore, cannot be separated from liberation, restoration, and the reordering of relationships here in our world presently. Rome wasn’t threatened by early Christians’ personal, private, or individual religious beliefs. Rome did become threatened when early Jesus followers collectively tried to make the world a more just, compassionate and safe home for everyone.
Let’s address also this passages emphasis on “believing.” This language is also frequently misunderstood. In John’s Gospel, belief is not mere intellectual assent but embodied allegiance. It’s referred to as “following Jesus.” To follow Jesus or “believe” in the Son is to align oneself with his way of life, his table fellowship with the marginalized, his challenge to exploitative power and systemic harm, and his insistence that love of God is inseparable from love of neighbor. Belief becomes visible in action. As Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes says, “When you begin with the belief that God loves everyone, justice isn’t far behind.”
Finally, the promise in John 3:16 that people “may not perish but have eternal life” speaks to more than life after death. Eternal life in John begins now, as a quality of life rooted in justice, mutual care, and truth. Social systems that crush the poor, that gender or racialize worth, or that sanctify violence are forms of “perishing” already at work. John 3:16 proclaims that God’s response to such perishing is not abandonment but love made flesh in our concrete, material world. In this light, the last portion of our reading this week is a statement of hope and responsibility: because God loves the world, those who follow Jesus are called to participate in that love too, by resisting injustice and nurturing life, here and now.
“For God so loved the world” is more than a passive declaration. It invites us to learn how to love our world, with all our beautifully rich diversity, too.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. What risks have you taken in standing up for justice? Which ones led to better things? Which risks did end up costing you something? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.
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If you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast
A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.
This week:
Season 3 Episode 10: Nicodemus Visits Jesus
John 3:1-17
Even though Nicodemus is coming to him “at night” as an attempt to save his privilege and status, Jesus knows that it is not possible for Nicodemus to tell the truth without reprisals. Allyship for Nicodemus will cost him something, and this helps us interpret Jesus’ language about being born again in a more life-giving way. Jesus is not saying to Nicodemus that we are all somehow broken as humans and must be born again, as the traditional interpretation states. Rather he is saying that Nicodemus has ascended a professional ladder, and now that he is reaching the top, Jesus tells him the ladder’s leaning up against the wrong wall. Nicodemus must start over. Our reading this week gives us an opportunity to interpret John’s theological vision, not as anti-world escapism, but as a sustained, justice-rooted practice in our churches and public life today, together.
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/nicodemus-visits-jesus
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.
Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.
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A Spiritual Awakening that Establishes Justice
Herb Montgomery | March 3, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
I would use the language of being “born again” differently than those early believers did, but I do believe we also need to experience a type of epiphany, a paradigm shift, an awakening that helps us understand we’ve been programmed by the systems of injustice we are living under in this beautiful world. It doesn’t matter whether we call it being born again, becoming “woke,” or just coming to view the world differently than those benefiting from the status quo would have us operate within.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
“Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
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 3:1-17; Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™)
This story is a narrative that the author of the gospel of John creates where Nicodemus and Jesus symbolize their respective communities: the Johannine community of Jesus-followers and the school of the Pharisees.
Before we try and extract something life-giving from this for our justice work today, there are a few things about the setting worth mentioning.
First, the setting of the story is at night. This story element characterizes the Pharisees as “in the dark,” grasping to understand what the Johannine communities believed was the truth about Jesus. By contrast, the next exchange with Jesus in the very next chapter happens at noon, when the sun is at its highest point. The woman of that story fully discerns whom the Johannine community claim Jesus to be. They understand his truth.
As I’ve mentioned before, given how White supremacists have characterized darkness and light, we must be careful with this imagery in our sacred text. We don’t have to villainize darkness or blackness. Both light and dark are needed. Life is fostered when an egalitarian balance exists between the darkness and the light. Too much of one or the other is harmful and destructive.
The binary of darkness and light also has a particular history in the context of the Gospel of John. To understand it better, we need to consider early Christian and non-rabbinic Gnosticism, proto-Gnosticism, and 1st Century Jewish apocalypticism. These are the soils out of which the gospel of John grew. From each of these, narrative symbols and elements are artfully combined to create this unique version of the Jesus story.
In Jewish apocalypticism, proto-Christian Gnosticism, and Christian Gnosticism, dualistic cosmology explains why our world looks the way it does. This dualistic cosmology is often expressed in binary contrasts between good and evil, darkness and light, the flesh and the spirit, earthy forces and celestial “powers,” and so on.
The gospel of John is believed to be written during the time of proto-Christian gnosticism, and was the canonical gospel that later Gnostics favored. Early church father Irenaeus wrote in his book Against Heresies that the Ebionites favored Matthew only, while Marcionites favored Luke. A third group that questioned how humanity and divinity combined in Jesus favored Mark’s gospel, and according to Irenaeus, some Gnostics favored the gospel of John (Against Heresies, chapter 11, paragraph 7).
Scholars debate the connection between the gospel of John and early Christian Gnosticism. Those who have a high view of scripture and its authority say that John was written in the language of Christian Gnosticism so that it could address and combat Christian Gnosticism. But this claim fails to explain why a gospel that was meant as a response to Gnosticism predates that Gnosticism. Even the latest possible dates for the writing of John’s gospel place it in the era of proto-Gnosticism, late Jewish apocalypticism, and early Christian apocalypticism.
I side instead with those who view the author of John as sharing many of the explanations of our world that would later develop into Gnosticism. This idea explains for me why John’s version of the Jesus story is so unique and why the language used to tell this version of the story is so vastly different from the other canonical gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke).
There is a second binary in our reading this week between the flesh versus the spirit. Certain sectors of Christianity today teach that we need to born again because we are born as human beings either evil (at worst) or at least broken (at best). This is not the reason John’s gospel gives. For the Johannine community out of which the gospel was written, the reason is the binary of flesh and spirit. It’s an example of proto-Gnosticism. In this way of explaining our world, the material universe is negative and keeps our good souls or spirits trapped in our physical bodies. Our spirits are imprisoned within this material world that’s characterized by pain and suffering. Salvation, then, is when our spirits are at last liberated from our fleshy housing to live eternally in a state free from pain and suffering. A lot of Christianity today still teaches this way of looking at the world.
In our story for this week, the Johannine community makes the ritual of baptism, being born of water and spirit, a way to show that the one being baptized has experienced a paradigm shift. This person will now live according to the spirit in the hope of being liberated from the flesh in the future, and no longer live “according to the flesh.” If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because the New Testament scriptures are chock-full of this way of explaining the world.
And yet this way of understanding our world has not historically birthed good fruit. It tends to create humans who have less regard for people’s concrete, material, bodily experiences than for either experiencing a spiritual high now, or their soul’s salvation in the future. This helps us understand why so many sectors of Christianity focus much more on “saving souls” than working to save people from the concrete suffering and systems of injustice they are enduring in the present. I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve had a Christian say to me that as Jesus followers we are to be about saving souls not social justice. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t follow that rule at all!
The Jesus of the synoptic gospels is all about liberating people from what they are suffering bodily, materially, and concretely in the here and now. His focus is never on liberating the soul from the body in the afterlife or leaving the body to go on suffering while the spirit longs to be free. The Jesus of the synoptics focuses instead on liberating people from injustice, violence, oppression and marginalization in the present.
The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is very enfleshed. And the work of the spirit is to establish justice for those being presently harmed by whatever system they find themselves trying to survive.
Lastly, we encounter in this Johannine version of the Jesus story Jesus being likened to the serpent in the wilderness. In early Jewish and Christian Gnosticism and in later Gnosticism, the serpent was praised and thanked for bringing knowledge (gnosis) to those trapped in the material existence of suffering. The serpent was the liberating savior and bestower of this knowledge (gnosis). The serpent also became a symbol of healing and appears around the Rod of Asclepius, the symbol of medicine. Many in Jewish Gnostic, non-rabbinic circles interpreted the story of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness through these lenses.
This is the context in which our reading this week was written. Like the healing serpent, Jesus comes to the Johannine community bringing knowledge (gnosis) to those of us who are trapped in our material suffering. Jesus, like that serpent, is the liberating savior pointing toward a salvation of our souls from our bodies through obtaining knowledge (gnosis) (see John 17:3).
Like those early believers, I also argue for a Jesus who liberates—but through teachings that enable us to establish justice in the here and now, not by demonizing our flesh and then offering a post-mortem liberation of our souls from our bodies.
Lastly, in these Jewish and Christian ways of interpreting the serpent in the wilderness, there is nothing substitutionary about the serpent on the bronze pole or Jesus being lifted up on a Roman cross. The Roman cross merely lifted Jesus up or brought attention to him so that many could discover the knowledge (gnosis) he came to give to liberate their spirits from material captivity.
Honestly, I find all of this deeply problematic. The binary contrast of flesh and spirit quickly becomes an opiate for our world’s injustice and does not inspire us to get to work creating change. For proto-Gnostics, Jesus’ crucifixion was the moment his spirit was liberated from his body, not the state-sponsored injustice that it actually was. In that tradition, the resurrection has to be interpreted in some other way than as God’s reversing, overcoming, and undoing everything accomplished through Jesus death and causing Jesus teaching to live on.
A more life-giving definition of atonement for me is making something that has fragmented whole or one again. This is where the teaching of Jesus come in: they call listeners to practice justice, compassion, and inclusion, and to speak against marginalization.
I would use the language of being “born again” differently than those early believers did, but I do believe we also need to experience a type of epiphany, a paradigm shift, an awakening that helps us understand we’ve been programmed by the systems of injustice we are living under in this beautiful world. It doesn’t matter whether we call it being born again, becoming “woke,” or just coming to view the world differently than those benefiting from the status quo would have us operate within. To quote Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, “Without a moral or spiritual awakening, we will remain forever trapped in political games fueled by fear, greed and the hunger for power.” (via RadicalDiscipleship.net, September 18, 2016)
I believe the teachings of Jesus still offer us a path toward that spiritual awakening, even today.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does the Johannine version of the Jesus story (the Gospel of John) inspire you to lean into choices that are more inline with societal justice? Share with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
You can find Renewed Heart Ministries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast thro ugh the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. Todd is brilliant in his discernment of how the Jesus story can speak into our lives today as we work together toward shaping our world into a just, safe and compassionate home for everyone. He’s worth listening to. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!
Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.
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