John 3:9

THE PUZZLED INQUIRER

‘How can these things be?’

John 3:9

In the interview between our Lord and Nicodemus, we have an early instance of difficulties of belief in a candid and thoughtful mind. The question contained in the text has often been repeated since with the same cautious timidity, and the same hesitating acquiescence with respect to the Christian verities.

I. There is a striking resemblance between the methods of religious inquiry of Nicodemus and the people of the twentieth century.—With him the difficulties of faith were prospective; with us they are retrospective. But then, as now, unworthy compromise in the place of courage leads to much vacillating uncertainty in religious thought, and this produces a want of thoroughness and completeness in the religious life; for unsteady conduct is almost sure to follow on infirm convictions. Unless a radical change takes place by Divine influence in the modes of thinking and feeling on religious subjects, the standpoint of seekers after God will remain to be that of fruitless questioning, ‘How can these things be?’ when no answer is expected where a negative is implied, when, from want of energy and earnest persistence, the true answer is never found. Discovery of truth is impossible when prejudice in favour of uncertainty prevents further search in the inquirer.

II. But the hesitation of Nicodemus forms another instructive aspect of his personality.—He is ready to make some admissions favourable to religion, but he does so with considerable reserve. To gain time, he asks questions which savour after intentional misapprehension. For example, ‘How can a man be born when he is old?’ etc. He will not see the spiritual and deeper significance of the words of Christ, and accepts them only in their bare literal import. Just so ‘candid unbelievers in the present day are but too often satisfied in attacking the weak outworks of the Christian system’ (as Christian apologists often think they have proved ‘the truth’ when they have merely upset a false theory of their opponents), and thereby feel themselves justified in remaining in a condition of mental suspense, leaving the ultimate decision as to the acceptance or rejection of the Christian scheme in abeyance, whilst waiting for a less faulty presentation of it on the part of its official advocates. In this way much of precious time and mental tissue are wasted in frivolous wrangling and sophistical hair-splitting concerning terms and phrases.

III. We may imagine the strange transformation in modes of thought and feeling wrought in Nicodemus during that night interview with our Lord, and the mingled feelings of satisfied wonder and discontent with self with which he left at break of day with a new light dawning on his soul. The master in Israel had changed much, even then when began, unconscious to himself, the career of his discipleship of Him Whom he acknowledged as the great Master sent from God. So the presence of Christ in modern life, constant intercourse with Christ in His teaching, may now lead men by degrees from uncertainty to knowledge in Divine things.

Rev. M. Kaufmann.

Illustration

‘After all the claims of scepticism are acknowledged, a wide margin is left for provisional belief (as opposed to provisional unbelief on principle).

“There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds,”

says the author of the “In Memoriam”; hut describing in the same stanza the experience of one “perplexed in faith,” he adds—

“He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,

He would not make his judgment blind,

He faced the spectres of the mind,

And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own:

And power was with him in the night,

Which makes the darkness and the light,

And dwells not in the light alone.”

This, too, we think, is the experience of every honest doubter who will not rest satisfied until he has arrived at some conclusion. The danger lies in inconclusive debate, which leads nowhither. If we are not afraid of the light of truth, it will come to us in broken rays—perhaps, as Lord Bacon says, all human truth is arrived at—or we shall turn to it, dazzled or dazed, though it be sooner or later, as the case may be. Purity of motive is the best equipment for this voyage of discovery.’