John 3:1–21

3 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: 2 the 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. 3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 4 Nicodemus 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? 5 Jesus 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. 7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew. 8 The 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. 9 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 10 Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things? 11 Verily, 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. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; 15 that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life.

What Jesus is saying in verse 3 is very important.

Nicodemus approaches Jesus respectfully, it seems to be from the point of view of evaluating him.

“We have come to this conclusion. You are really quite remarkable. I want to know more.” What Jesus does by preliminary way of response is smile as it were and say, “My dear Nicodemus, you really don’t see a cotton-pickin’ thing. You think you’re seeing the reign of God operating here. You think you’re seeing it. I tell you, you don’t see the reign of God unless you’re born again.”

You could not be called rabbi at the end of the second century unless you had gone through the rabbinic schools and been properly recognized. Yet, in Jesus’ day rabbi was an informal term, and for someone who was the teacher of Israel, to refer to this northern prophet as rabbi was already pretty respectful. He was listening to Jesus. He had to make some sense of him and realize he was not some charlatan but was actually doing some very remarkable miracles.

It seems he casts himself as someone who is judging Jesus, evaluating him. “We know you must be genuine because no one can do what you’re doing unless God were with him. We do.”

Jesus was turning out to be someone in a category he couldn’t quite handle. So he had come to the conclusion, at least, that Jesus was something special, a teacher come from God, because what he was doing was not the sort of thing a human being could do apart from God. “No one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus Responds

Verse 3: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” The kingdom of God explained. The Jews had a long religious history, and they looked forward to a time when God himself, by some agent whom he would send, would invade that history and bring his reign to pass on the earth.

“Unless he is born again” seems to be parallel to “unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” The “born again” language which refers only to the second birth (the born again birth) seems to be parallel to the born of water and the Spirit clause in verse 5. It appears on the face of it verse 5 (“born of water and the Spirit”) is not itself talking about two births. It’s talking about this birth that is already mentioned in verse 3.

By the time you get to verse 6, clearly there are two births that are in view, so many read verse 6 back into verse 5. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” Clearly there are two births there. If you read verse 6 back into verse 5, you might think flesh giving birth to flesh refers to the water and the Spirit giving birth to spirit gives the description to the new birth.

The difficulty is, you haven’t read verse 6 by the time you’ve read verse 5. What you have done is read verse 3. You’re more likely to read verse 5 in the light of verse 3, and you cannot then help but see the parallelism.

Nicodemus is confused

Nicodemus doesn’t understand in verse 4, so Jesus unpacks it a little more in verse 5. What verse 5 gives, is the explanation of verse 3.

What does it mean to be born?

It can mean from above or it can mean again. What does it mean to be born from above? What does it mean to be born again? The language is transparently translatable either way.

He is rebuking the very claim of Nick to be able to evaluate, the very claim to be able to see the reign of God operating in the miracles of Jesus. You don’t see this reign of God. You see the miracles. You do not see the reign of God. You do not truly see it unless you’re born again, and even the small first person plural we in “We see you are truly from God” is slightly pompous.

Jesus First Explanation

You should not be surprised at my saying,

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. The knowledge of God, which may have seemed very alien to you, now is something you’re passionate about and you want. If God’s Spirit were to come upon you, that’s the way it would change you. It would make you clean, and you’d want to be more like him. Jesus calls that new birth.

Then Jesus gives some quick analogies. Pigs sire pigs. Kangaroos sire kangaroos.

If we’re really going to have this kind of genuine, organic connection with the living God, God must do a kind of siring work. He must regenerate us.

He must beget us again, as it were. He must pour out his Spirit upon us or we’ll never be children of God in the sense that we’re connected with him and he has sired us and we know him. We’ll always be part of a brood that is alienated from God.

Then there’s another analogy. The wind, Or the Spirit, the same word, The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the wind.” Or the Spirit, same word. That is, you can’t deny the effects of the wind even when you can’t explain all of its origins and its destinations.

So also with the Spirit of God. You can’t deny the effects when the Spirit of God comes upon a person and transforms him or her. You may not be able to explain all the mechanics, but, if you meet genuine Christians, you’ll see by their lives that they’re different.

Jesus rebukes Nick

Nicodemus’ astonished, “How could this be?” Jesus quietly says, “You are Israel’s teacher, and you do not understand these things?” That’s what Jesus said about being born again.

Nick says how can this happen

Not just a teacher of Israel, the expression is pretty strong. That means, “You are the teacher of Israel.” Probably a title, “You are the Grand Mufti, you are the Regius Professor of Divinity and you don’t understand this?”

It seems not only that he was a distinguished rabbi but he had some title in rabbinic circles.

We can ask what Nicodemus should have understood. What should he have grasped?

On what basis does Jesus rebuke him?

The area of his expertise was the Old Testament, so the question now becomes where in the Old Testament is there some reference to being born of water and Spirit?

You can read the Old Testament high and low and look for the expression born again and you will not find it, but the primary reason why Jesus changes the terminology here from again to water and Spirit is so that Nicodemus should pick up the clue.

Water and Spirit are linked in the Old Testament in a number of passages, but perhaps the most important is Ezekiel 36. It’s one of the new covenant passages that describe what will take place on the last day.

Ezekiel 36 that describe a time when God would come down and write his law on the hearts of the people, take away their stony hearts and give them hearts of flesh, or, to change the metaphor, pour out his Spirit upon them so that they would all know him.

25 And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. 26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, and do them

“You’re the teacher of Israel and you haven’t got this together, the rabbinic scholars of Jesus’ day had thought very deeply, very penetratingly on many, many issues bound up with law (law as demand, not law as Torah or teaching, but law as demand, law as requirement, law as gift, as covenantal stipulation).

The law was analyzed until it was broken down into the various things that were either commanded to be done or prohibited (613 of them). They had thought deeply and penetratingly on many, many, many of these issues. What you do not find are many profound discussions on the nature and promise of the role of the Spirit in the end times. Yet, those passages are found in the Old Testament too.

Ezekiel 36 is picked up by John and elsewhere as well. In other words, what is promised under the terms of the new covenant is, “I will sprinkle your hearts with clean water, and I will pour out my Spirit.” You will be cleaned up, you will be purified in this new birth, and you will have something of the life of God himself in you by the Spirit.

In so much of the old covenant structure of religion (the time before Christ) the entire relationship between God and his people was a mediated relationship. God spoke through prophets and priests and kings who dispensed the Word to others. God came upon them with great enduement and power, but God says, “The time is coming, under a new agreement, a new covenant, when I will write my law on all of their hearts.”

11–13: “I tell you the truth,” Jesus continues. “We speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.” Notice Jesus here resorts to the plural we.

You have to picture the dynamics of what’s going on. Nicodemus has come to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, we do,” and Jesus now, after this explanation, replies gently with just a trace of humor, “We know one or two things too, we do.” He’s still pricking the pretentions. Nicodemus can’t see it, and he’s going to have to learn that someone does know what he’s talking about.

“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.

He came from there in the first place. “The only person who has come to tell us is me,” he says in this self-designation.

Now there’s just no way that you can escape what Jesus is saying. You may not like it. You may not believe it, but you have to face what he’s saying. What he’s claiming here is that when he speaks on these matters, he’s not speaking as one of many different religious theologians or gurus who is giving his opinion on some complex subjects.

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.

How are you born again, v14

“You can’t be born again.” That’s what Nicodemus is saying. “What is written is written.” Most thoughtful people have felt something like that.

If you’ve never felt something like that, then you’re morally dead. You have no conscience at all. Thus, a poet like Alfred, Lord Tennyson could write, “Ah, for a man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be.” Or the poet John Clare: “If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.”

Many people have said that kind of thing. Nicodemus was a moral, religious man. He would have liked to correct the proofs, but you can’t do it. You don’t start laying up standards for entrance into the kingdom that mean you have to start over again, because then nobody gets in, but Jesus doesn’t back down. Verse 5: “I’m telling you the truth,” he says, “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”

This little bit comes from Numbers, chapter 21. The account is weird, but let me read it to you. What it’s talking about in the context is the Jews, who at this point have recently escaped slavery in Egypt, and this because God has worked even with miracles to help them get out. They would not have gotten out if, in fact, God had not worked miracles to enable them to get out. Now they’re crossing the desert. God is nurturing them along and providing for them, but it’s a bit of a rough go.

They’re heading for the land of Canaan, what is now modern Israel, where they will eventually settle. At this point, they’re becoming discontent along the way because there are a few privations. “The people grew impatient on the way,” we read. “They spoke against God and against Moses, and said, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert?’ ”

Moses was the one who was God’s agent to lead them on the way. They’re speaking against God, and they’re speaking against God’s agent, his leader. “There is no bread! There is no water! We detest this miserable food!” Which God had provided for them. “Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.

In God’s universe, God finds that anarchic. That is the heart of what the Bible calls sin. I know sin is a snicker word. “Somebody sinned. Isn’t that funny?” But in the Bible, sin is bound up with looking at things from God’s point of view, and from God’s point of view, when people he has made in his image to know him and to love him and to enjoy him forever … He is God. He is to be worshiped and cherished. His ways are to be thought through. He is to be adored, and there’s pleasure and privilege in the delight of his glory, of his holiness.

When they wake up in the morning, they think of God. When they order their priorities and their values, they think of God. They delight in his way and word. Now each one thinks of himself or herself at the center of the universe. In a massive act of rebellion, each one declares his or her individual autonomy, thinks it’s a point of strength. If there’s any place left to think about God at all, then God, if he exists, must serve them. So each one of them is at the center of the universe.

That’s what was going on, of course, in the matter of the serpents in the wilderness. Even after God saves them, they don’t even have the courtesy to say, “Thank you. Now will you help us again?” Instead, all they do is murmur and complain. So God sends them judgment. God, at the end of the day, is not simply going to say, “It doesn’t matter,” because if he did that, he would be impugning his own glory, his own authority, his own integrity, his own godhood.

The intriguing thing about that story is that when the people do repent, it is God also who provides a rather surprising remedy. There’s a snake put up on a pole, and the people look at it. It’s a miracle. What else can you say? It’s a miracle, but it’s a miracle provided by God. The people don’t have to earn their way back. God provides it.

Baptism

Some people in the long history of the Christian church have thought the water here in these verses refers to Christian baptism. You have to be baptized and then have the dose of Spirit in some way.

Jesus himself didn’t bother to baptize anybody. He left it to his disciples. If it was so absolutely critical to new birth, one wonders that he didn’t get involved a wee bit more.

It’s a bit like the apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians. “I did baptize the odd family here or there but not many. I mean, God didn’t send me to baptize; he sent me to preach the gospel,” which makes it very difficult to put baptism on a kind of logical par to faith.

Despite our fundamental agreement on the gospel, we differ on the significance and application of the Christian initiation rite of baptism. Whether one believes in infant baptism, or believes baptism, there are differences within each.

In the believers baptism camp, some see baptism as a second step beyond conversion, whereas others see it as an initiation rite to be connected with conversion. In the infant baptism camp, one must distinguish the Lutheran view, the Presbyterian view, and a number of other views, all the way to a minority report from some in Australia who hold that all the significant passages on baptism really refer to Spirit baptism, and therefore, following the Hooker principle, the church is free to prescribe what it likes so far as water baptism is concerned because the relevant passages don’t touch them.

Understandably, Baptists in the light of their understanding of Scripture, dismiss infant baptism as unbiblical unaccompanied as it is by the conscious faith of the person being baptized, while paedo-baptists (those who baptize babies) think they are not only biblically faithful but in line with old covenant practices.

The modern teaching of Catholic baptism is almost as mystical and pagan as is the Church of Rome’s practice of the Mass. In some Catholic writings this is found, The Church teaches, “By water and the Holy Spirit, this child is to receive the gift of new life in faith from God Who is Love.” (Inside, 31) When infants are baptized they are marked on the chest with the oil of chrism. The priest says, “We anoint you with the oil of salvation, the balm of Gilead.” (32) The priest continues:

God of wonder and majesty, look now with love upon us and unseal for us the fountain of baptism … give the water of grace of your Son, so that in this sacrament of Baptism all those who have been created in your likeness may be washed over by your love.

[Child], receive the light of Christ. You have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white garment (baptismal garb) the outward sign of your Christian dignity.

Children cannot be saved without Roman Catholic baptism. The Church says, “If the child is in danger of death, it is to be baptized without delay. Under Christian provision, provided he carries out the wishes of a Christian believer and performs the correct baptismal ritual.” (CathCat, 511) In Catholic jargon, this means that the infant must be baptized in an emergency with some form of Catholic ritual in view. A Protestant ritual would not do, unless the ritual is from a “high” Church like Episcopalianism, or the Greek Orthodox Church. Under normal rules, only the Catholic Church can save with its “correct baptismal ritual.” The Catholic Catechism

Mal Couch, “Roman Catholic Baptism,” Conservative Theological Journal 7, no. 20 (2003): 63–65.

Only the blood of Jesus can save us, applied by our faith, only the blood of Jesus can change us into what He desires us to become.