Truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.
John 3:3
In her book, To Believe in Jesus, the Carmelite Abbess Ruth Burrows identifies three stages of nearness to God. Using the story of Nicodemus’ night time visit with Jesus (Jn. 3) she speaks of our first coming to the Lord in the darkness of our own self-understanding. We are then led through a period of disorientation that the Lord’s higher truth produces in us. And finally, we come to a new orientation, the result of our now adopting God’s perspective more than our own.
Burrows describes the first stage as that of someone who, like Nicodemus, only knows Jesus from afar. She writes,
- To begin with we have not yet ‘come’ to Jesus even though we are in His company and want to learn from Him. Like Nicodemus we draw near to Jesus in our night of ignorance. We make an act of faith that says, “We know that you are a teacher come from God.”
We want to go deeper with Jesus, but we have no idea how to approach Him, nor what to expect from this path. We come in our night of ignorance and find that our encounter with Jesus only baffles us more. As Burrows describes it,
- Jesus, in mysterious language, tries to make Nicodemus understand what must happen if he is to go further. If he is to enter the kingdom, that sphere where God, not man, is in supreme control, where God gives and man receives, Nicodemus, must lay aside his own ideas and consent to become a child. In other words, he must be born again, this time however from above.
Implied in the invitation to be born “from above” rather than “from below” is an exchange of creatorship—from the life we have made for ourselves to the one we can only receive from God. And our willingness to enter this process of exchange is made more difficult the more we see the “self” that we have created as an accomplished one. As Burrows notes,
- Nicodemus considers himself a virtuous, wise man and Jesus is telling him that his own wisdom and virtue will get him nowhere. He is trapped in the flesh of his own creation, and such flesh, born “from below,” can never know the higher ways of God.
Nicodemus, in other words, has to let go of the limitations of his own self-understanding, which includes his limited understanding of God. He has been trying to fit Jesus into the wineskin of his old preconceptions, and is not allowing God to reveal Himself afresh to him. Before Nicodemus can enter the more mysterious creativity of God he needs to look beyond his own certainties. As Burrows puts it,
- Jesus impresses on this great man his complete helplessness in the things of God. You cannot control the wind nor predict its movements, neither are you in control of the Spirit. If you are to be born “from above” you have to surrender to God’s Creatorship.
This is the path that leads to the third stage of nearness to God, and there are few who find it, few who will submit to its humbling. As Burrows recognizes, “The gate is narrow, and to pass through it we must become small and unencumbered.” She adds,
- For one who accepts this way of surrender, there follows a long and arduous discipleship. Perfect transformation into Jesus does not take place all at once. We must co-operate each day with the action of the Holy Spirit who now operates from within.
This is the third stage of nearness—the re-orientation whereby we now receive our lives more directly from God, who now operates more freely within us the more child-like we become. Such has always been the intent for the creature’s relationship to the Creator. For it is only from this submissive posture that we can know the light burden of a life received directly from God
Rom. 8:14
Rob Des Cotes
Imago Dei Christian Communities
FOR GROUP DISCUSSION:
- In what ways do you identify with these three stages of nearness? Are you in the “night of ignorance,” approaching Jesus according to your own preconceptions? Are you in a phase of disorientation, knowing that the spiritual understanding and means you once used no longer seem to apply? Or are you in a process of re-orientation where you find yourself more accepting of God’s direct creativity in your life?
- What is required of you in order to be born “from above?”
- How is trust related to our capacity to receive life more directly from God? And how is humility related to our willingness to let God “create” us?
FOR PRAYER: In your prayer offer yourself, child-like, to Jesus so that He can operate more freely in you the more trust you give Him to do so.