This week’s kids’ Bible lesson

Nicodemus talks with Jesus

John 3:1-16

The pharisees were religious leaders in Israel when Jesus was there. Most of them were against Jesus, not believing they needed His salvation. But they saw Him do many miracles, making it clear that He was the Messiah to come from God. One of them, a man named Nicodemus, wanted to talk to Jesus about these things; but he was embarrassed and didn’t want the others to know. So Nicodemus went to Jesus late at night when most people were in bed.

“Teacher,” Nicodemus said to Jesus, “We all know that you came from God. Because all the signs you do are miracles no one could do unless God was with them.”

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” By this Jesus was letting Nicodemus know that even though he did many good works, he couldn’t go to heaven as he was, because of sin.

Nicodemus didn’t understand Jesus’ metaphor about being born again as a child of God. So he said, “How am I supposed to be born again when I’m old? How can someone go back into his mother’s belly and be born a second time?”

So Jesus explained that this second birth was a completely different one from the first. “Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter God’s kingdom,” Jesus said. Being born of water means being physically born from our mother’s the way we all were born as babies. Being born of the Spirit means becoming a child of God by faith in Christ, so that the Spirit of God gives us new life. Jesus was saying the first birth isn’t enough; we must have the second birth–the one that comes by our believing on Jesus.

Nicodemus was confused. “How can these things be?” he asked Jesus.

Jesus told Nicodemus that he must believe on the One Who had come down from heaven, because only that One could tell the way to heaven. Jesus is that One Who came down from heaven to earth. Many people say, “There are so many religions. There is no way for us to know which one is true.” They are wrong. We can know which one is the true way to life in heaven because Jesus came to earth from heaven to make a way for us to go there. Christianity is the one religion that we can know is true, because it tells us to look to Jesus the Son of God for salvation.

Jesus then explained to Nicodemus this salvation by saying, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so I must be lifted up that whoever believes in Me will have eternal life.” Remember last week’s story about that? When the Israelites were bitten by the deadly snakes because of their sin, they could look, believing, at the snake on the pole Moses made for God, and they would live by their faith. Jesus was revealing that He would save people from dying in their sins the same way.

He would represent the curse of sin when He hung on the cross, the same way the bronze snake represented that in Moses’ day. And everyone who looks to Jesus, who died for us on the cross, and trusts in Him to save, will be saved from sins and have eternal life in the kingdom of God. Nicodemus eventually believed this and was saved, the same way we are saved if we believe on Jesus today.

Here’s what Jesus then promised to Nicodemus, and to us, in the Bible’s most famous verse: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)