John 3:1Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: 2the same came unto him by night, and said to him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that thou doest, except God be with him. 3Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 4Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? 5Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew. 8The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. 9Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 10Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things? 11Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. 12If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13And no one hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven.

Jesus and the new birth.

He says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

“This is what we see, we do.” Jesus says, I tell you the truth, my dear Nicodemus, you don’t see a blessed thing. You don’t see the kingdom. You’re claiming to see it, but you can’t see it. You can’t really see it unless you’re born again.”

Nicodemus is acting as if he has discerned something profound because he has seen the miracles, but Jesus is saying, “You might have seen the miracles, but you haven’t really seen the kingdom yet.”

It’s a bit like what happens in the previous chapter and the wedding at Cana.
He says, You claim to see the kingdom of God. You’ve seen the miracles, but Nicodemus, you can’t see the kingdom unless you’re born again. There’s an ambiguity in the word again. It can mean again or from above. The same word is used both ways, and Jesus could be meaning it both ways. There’s an ambiguity built right into the text.

Nicodemus comes back and he says, “How can a man be born when he is old?

He knows it’s some sort of metaphor but he doesn’t have a clue just exactly what kind it is. It sounds as if Jesus is promising a brand new beginning, but how can you have a new beginning? The one thing you can’t do is turn back the clock. You can’t do that.

Lord Alfred Tennyson understood that. “Ah for a man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be!”

The poet John Clare understood that when he wrote, “If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.”

He’s saying, “How do you start over in that sense? How do you have a fresh origin? How do you begin all over again? You can’t do it. You’re promising too much, Rabbi Jesus.”

Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”

How Salvation Works

On what basis should Nicodemus have understood? He should have understood on the basis of the area where he was, in fact, a renowned scholar. Namely, his reading of the Old Testament and Jewish theology.

Where does the Old Testament speak of being born again? Nowhere directly, but, regularly when water and Spirit are linked in the Old Testament, it’s in anticipation of what is coming on the last day.

Then, Jesus explains with a couple of metaphors. He says, “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.’ ” What he means by this is that pigs give birth to pigs and elephants give birth to elephants and hummingbirds lie their eggs and gender more hummingbirds.

Like produces like. Kind produces kind. So human beings (flesh) produce human beings.

That’s what we produce, we produce sinners, not saints.

We human beings are a sinful, rebellious lot, and sinners produce sinners.

We’re a lost lot, so how are we going to produce saints? How are we going to produce people who are sons of God in some sense such that we know God and walk with him and are conformed to him and live by his life and under his rule and in his light and delight in holiness?

How on earth is that going to happen? “Nicodemus, don’t you see you shouldn’t be surprised when I tell you that you must be born again because natural birth sure isn’t going to do it.

Natural birth plus all your erudite education and all of your detailed knowledge of the Lord still doesn’t transform your heart.

You’re a good man by all the social structures of this world, Nicodemus, but I have to tell you, you cannot see and you cannot enter the kingdom because what you have to have (what anyone has to have) is being cleaned up by God and empowered to live differently, to live in a different sphere, a different way, a transformation that comes from a new nature that only God himself can give you by his Spirit. That’s what you must have.”

Look at that sycamore tree whose leaves were swaying in the wind. He says is, “Nicodemus, you can’t see the wind and you can’t explain its origins.”

You don’t deny the wind is operating. You see its power. The question of origin or whatever doesn’t enter your head. You don’t actually see the wind.

You don’t see the wind, but you see its effects. You can’t deny the effects.

“So it is,” Jesus says, “with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Do you hear that? You may not be able to unpack in great explanatory detail exactly what the new birth is, but you see its effects. It is unthinkable, according to this teaching of Jesus, that someone is born again and you don’t see any effects, as unthinkable as there should be wind without seeing its effects. It’s unthinkable.

Where the Spirit of God comes, where people’s lives are cleaned up, where they are empowered to live differently, you see the effects. Vocabulary changes. Priorities change. Your goals change. Your loves change. What you dislike changes. When you’re born again, life changes. The promise of the gospel includes not only justification in which God declares us to be just because of what Christ has borne in our behalf on the cross, but it includes also regeneration, rebirth, renewal.

There is transformation. It’s not just that we have a new legal standing before God. We are empowered by the Spirit of God to change.

You can claim new legal standing before God till the cows come home, but where is the evidence of the wind? “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit, Nicodemus. That’s why I have to tell you, you may be the teacher of Israel, but you can’t see the kingdom and you can’t enter the kingdom unless you, too, are born again.”

“How can these things be?”

The Old Testament New Birth

There are some passages in the Old Testament Scripture that speak of water and the Spirit precisely in line with the thought that people must start over. It must be generated anew. Six centuries earlier, the prophet Ezekiel 36:25 who spoke for God and said that on the last days God would sprinkle the hearts of his people with water and they would be clean.

He would pour out his Spirit upon them, and they would all know him. He would take away their hearts of stone, and his people would know him, from the least to the greatest. What has Jesus added to that sort of language? All he has added is the metaphor of new birth. In that earlier period, God regularly visited his people through mediators, intermediaries, go-betweens.

Ezekiel 36:25 God says, “In those days, I will sprinkle them with clean water,” which is a way of ceremoniously making them clean, “… and I will pour out my Spirit upon them.”

They will not only be cleaned up, but they will be empowered. This linkage of water and Spirit is pretty common in the Old Testament. They will be cleaned up and they will be empowered.

All that Jesus has added to that is a metaphor of new birth. The essential symbolism in this new birth is a new origin that cleans you up and empowers you to live differently and unless you are cleaned up and empowered by the Spirit of God to live differently, I tell you, you cannot see and you cannot enter the kingdom of God. That’s what the text says.

But the prophets looked forward to a time when God would pour out his Spirit upon all of his people, when God would pour out his Spirit and clean their hearts (the water) and give them a real knowledge of the living God (the Spirit), a changed mind brought about by something God poured out upon them.

It is so radical a revolution that the only adequate analogy is new birth, starting over. Not starting over with merely our human resources but starting over with God’s Spirit poured out upon you, so that the things you used to like, look different now. Jesus calls that new birth.

Born of Water and Spirit

This presupposes a certain metaphor always functions on a certain word, but in fact, metaphors can be used in a lot of different ways. Take the word lion, for example. Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He’s royal. On the other hand, the Devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, which means he’s savage.

Verse 3: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Verse 5: “… unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” Because those verses are so close, this suggests that born again is parallel to born of water and the Spirit. It suggests you don’t have two births here yet. You just have one born again, and it’s born of water and the Spirit. It’s some sort of metaphor (born of water and the Spirit) that is parallel to born again.

Being born of water and the Spirit is not two births. The parallelism between the two verses shows that you have one birth, a birth of water and Spirit.

How do we go about resolving this sort of thing? The fact of the matter is water clearly is tied to baptism in some contexts regardless of your views of baptism.

There have been a lot of different suggestions what his means. Some have thought that water refers to baptism, so unless you are baptized and somehow endued with the Spirit, you can’t get in. But Christian baptism has not really been instituted at this stage.

At the beginning of John 4 Jesus distances himself just a wee bit from baptism. Although people were being baptized in Jesus’ name, it wasn’t Jesus doing it. By and large, it was his disciples.

Others think this is talking about two births. You have to be born of water (the first birth), and then you have to be born of Spirit (the second birth).

In the Old and New Testament Scripture, the water symbolism is bound up with cleansing.

The talk of the Spirit is bound up with power for transformation. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “You will be cleaned up and transformed. That’s the kind of new birth I’m talking about. Nicodemus, you should have understood that because these are your Scriptures.”

The promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31, six centuries before Jesus, promises a time when God will write his law on their hearts, and “they will all know me from the least to the greatest.” This is a transformation from within, a notion of inbreaking power that transforms men and women, not just breaks in a new political order, a new Davidic king.

“Nicodemus, you haven’t been focusing on the right things. You cannot really see the kingdom, you cannot really enter it unless you yourself are transformed by this new birth, which is characterized by water and Spirit.” That is, a cleaning up and a powerful, internal transformation. Then Jesus gives two illustrations to unpack it.

“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.’ ” (Verses 6 and 7) That is, if you really are going to transform people, they must have a new origin.

So to transform us, we must have power from God. We must have something from the Spirit. It’s what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 2, where he says, “The natural human being does not understand the things of God.” It’s another world, It’s another order. We just don’t grasp those things until the Spirit of God opens our minds and hearts so that we are enabled to see them. “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.” (Verse 8) the word for wind in both Greek and Hebrew is also the word for Spirit: “The wind [the Spirit] blows …”

When people start talking today about conversion, what do they mean?

Conversion entails genuine, God-given, powerfully transforming, miraculous, supernatural interposition. God is doing something. He pours out his Spirit so that people are transformed. Even if you don’t understand the mechanics, you can’t deny the effect.

There are, in churches in America, lots and lots of people who claim to be “born-again” (because they’ve signed a card or gone forward or whatever they’ve done; they’ve been “processed”), but their lives are indistinguishable from the lives of people who aren’t Christians.

Conversion, in the New Testament, though it involves a change of mind, is not merely a change of mind. It is a work of God. It is new birth.

Muslims will tell you that, for them, conversion does not involve a supernatural transformation in the heart or life. What it involves is a decision of will. That’s it. You decide to confess one god, Allah, and Muhammad as his prophet,

The water refers to Jesus’ baptism. The point is that this is confusing the sign with what it signifies. The water refers to his baptism: he came through the baptism.

What certain heretics were saying at the time was that Jesus, the man, lived up to the baptism.

At his baptism, the Spirit came upon him. Then Jesus and the Spirit together lived until the death. At Jesus death, but before he died, the Spirit left him, leaving Jesus to cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That is what this heresy says.

John insists, “No, no, This is Jesus, the Son of God, and he came through the water. That is, he was the Son of God through the entire event of the baptism, not taking on Sonship at that point. He always was the Son. He came through the water. He also came through the blood. That is, he lived right through the death.

Then the preposition changes to one simply meaning at the time of. “He did not come by water only …” That is, only at the baptism was there really the Spirit on Jesus, the Son of God somehow coming on Jesus, the man. No, no, no, no. Rather, in water (that is, at the baptism) and in blood (that is, at the death), he was always Jesus Christ or, in the language of verse 5, Jesus the Son of God.

That is to say, they all point in the same direction, namely that Jesus was fully the Son of God, not someone who had a dose of Spirit for a short time. He always was the Son of God. He was himself the Christ. The three are in agreement: the Spirit, the water, and the blood.
So the apostle sees, behind these three events, finally, one actor: God himself. It was God who sent the Spirit. It was God who brought Jesus through the baptism. It was God who brought Jesus through the event of the cross. This was God’s doing. There may be three witnesses that all point in the same direction, but God is the one who brought these things to pass. Are we going to say, “I don’t believe what God has done”?

Why? Jesus immediately reverts to first person. “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.” The Son of Man is one of Jesus’ self-designations. We don’t need to pursue it here, but that’s what it is.

No, “We see what’s going on,” Jesus says, and having made his point with the first-person plural, he immediately switches to the first-person singular. He says (verse 12), “I have spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe.” In Jesus’ view, the new birth is an earthly thing. It comes from heaven, but it takes place amongst sinners down here on earth. It takes place down here.

“You’re finding it hard to believe me when I speak of the work of God as it takes place down here. How, then, will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? Supposing I tell you, instead, what the throne room of God looks like.… Supposing I tell you how the angelic orders are ordered. Supposing I tell you something a little more profound about

Trinitarian relationships, will you swallow that? You can’t even swallow the new birth and that happens here!”

Then he makes his point. “No one has ever gone into heaven” That is, to check it all out. “
The only one who has been there and has come here, the only exception, is the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man. In other words, Jesus claims what he is saying he has brought on the basis of revelation. because he himself has been there and has come.

When he says, “No one has ever gone into heaven …” That is, to come back and tell us what’s going on.” except the one who came from heaven”

Spirit of God, but their access to God was through rites and temples and priests. They taught the people, “Hear the word of the Lord; know the word of the Lord.”

He is claiming to speak not only about earthly things (that’s how he designates this new birth, because it takes place amongst people here on earth), but he’s claiming that he could actually say much more than that. He could tell you what goes on in the very throne room of God. He could tell you about heavenly things. Why? “Because I came from there,” he says.