“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Christ Jesus – Gospel of John 3:5
The Apostle John begins his Good News with creation then proceeds to verify the identity of Christ as prophesied and witnessed in Jesus’ earthly ministry.
Previously I addressed the very question of God, for not everyone believes in Almighty God, creator of the heavens and earth. We will for the moment skip over the powerful testimony of John the Baptist and continue with creation.
If so, it must follow that you want to know more about God. John refers to Jesus as logos or ‘the Word.’ He tells us: “… the Word was God.”
Therefore, Jesus IS at the beginning – He created with God and He IS God.
Note that the Hebrew word for God, אֱלֹהִים ‘elohiym is plural. Jesus speaks of Himself in this same plural sense.
John 3:11, “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony.
Perhaps you believe in God, but do you believe what God says?
Jesus speaks the very words of God!
John acknowledges the Messiah Jesus the Son as part of the One True God; but John witnesses even more. So let’s continue with the nature of God, also considering Spirit and the intangible attributes of that which is unseen.
John introduces the Holy Spirit in a dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus.
Nicodemus, a faithful Jew
Nicodemus was a Pharisee and therefore believed in the resurrection. His learned position as a leader of the Jews brought him to question Jesus, who had performed many miracles.
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”
We make the same mistake, thinking of birth as creation. It is not.
Just as the resurrection marks an event uniting a created soul with God, birth is an event marking a new existence of that which was already created. The birth of the flesh marks an event connected to the breath of a baby whose spirit is formed by the Lord.
Just as you don’t know the path of the wind,
Ecclesiastes 11:5 CSB
or how bones develop in the womb of a pregnant woman,
so also you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.
Does the work of God in the spirit of man end with the end of our flesh? The Pharisees and Jesus believed the spirit to exist beyond the life of man. (We will not here discuss the nature and timing of the resurrected body here.)
Note that the Hebrew word for wind, רוּחַ ruwach, is equivalent to ‘spirit,’ which we note in the creation narrative of Genesis.
Genesis 1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
A description of a chaotic void of darkness, an emptiness, watery depths describes a formless space without purpose or life itself. Yet God, specifically the Spirit of God (רוּחַ ruwach אֱלֹהִים ‘elohiym) was moving over this formless void.
God IS the only Life in the instant of creation.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, ‘you should know that God is Spirit.’
5 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Born of water
Genesis 1:6-7 Then God said,
“Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.”
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so.
Consider for a moment that if Jesus is the logos, the very spoken Word of God, then these Mosaic quotes may be attributed to the Messiah.
Jesus implies, ‘I AM He who separated the waters and I tell you that you must be born of water and the Spirit.’
Be born again from your chaotic sinful life into the resurrection, reborn pure and forgiven that you might have eternal life.
John also witnesses a connective symbolism between the pure water and the blood at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee.
John 2:
6 Now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish purification…
7 “Fill the jars with water,” Jesus told them. So they filled them to the brim… the headwaiter tasted the water (after it had become wine)…
11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
John then tells us how after this Jesus goes to Jerusalem and cleanses the Temple marketplace. As a result of these events Nicodemus will come to Jesus privately one night.
23 While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.
John points out additional connections between the purification water and the purification of the wine of the Passover sacrifice. In his first letter John speaks again of this rebirth as he writes to the church:
1 John 5:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.
6 Jesus Christ—he is the one who came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and these three are in agreement.
Born of flesh
Imagine a personal conversation with God! The Lord, a flesh and blood ‘Son of Man’ as Jesus referred to himself, answers a learned teacher of scripture. He essentially suggests to Nicodemus that what is created of water and Spirit is different from our flesh created from dust.
Water becomes essential to bones and flesh, as blood flowing with life. Spirit separates the chaos of created man from the lifeless nature of a formless and godless earth.
Perhaps Jesus referred to the scripture from Ecclesiastes in His dialogue with Nicodemus asking about being born of water and the Spirit.
10 “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied.
Jesus, the Messiah in the flesh, tells Nicodemus that we must be born again – born again in the Spirit.
John the Baptist and many other Prophets urged true believers in the Lord to repent. Jesus also preached repentance and emphasizes a return to a new and pure relationship between the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man.
To be ‘born again’ is much more than mere repentance, which may be temporal and lacking in guilt, contrition and an earnest desire for the cleansing of sin.
Our born again spirit is rebirth of a relationship between the new spirit of changed flesh and the Spirit of the Living God.
John also witnesses much more of the difference between spirit and flesh, mostly in the spoken words of Christ Jesus.
“The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
John 6:63
Born of Spirit
The concepts of spirit, as in the Holy Spirit and the spirit of man, is more complex than what we can address in discussion of John’s Gospel, letters and the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John. Jesus’ simple reply to Nicodemus that we must be born again does point to the Holy Spirit.
For a more detailed study worthy of academic study of Scripture as Nicodemus would have been familiar see the entry below:
“Holy Spirit.” Examples where the Person is meant when the article is absent… Sometimes the absence is to be accounted for by the fact that Pneuma (like Theos) is substantially a proper name, e.g., in Jhn 7:39. As a general rule the article is present where the subject of the teaching is the Personality of the Holy Spirit, e.g., Jhn 14:26, where He is spoken of in distinction from the Father and the Son. See also Jhn 15:26 and cp. Luk 3:22…
The subject of the “Holy Spirit” in the NT may be considered as to His Divine attributes; His distinct Personality in the Godhead; His operation in connection with the Lord Jesus in His birth, His life, His baptism, His death; His operations in the world; in the church; His having been sent at Pentecost by the Father and by Christ; His operations in the individual believer; in local churches; His operations in the production of Holy Scripture; His work in the world, etc.
Vine’s Expository Dictionary:
What does it mean to be ‘born again?’
We could, as many do, become entangled in more theological argument of what Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3 and consequently neglect John’s witness of what Jesus reveals about the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus states that we must be born again in Spirit. Where else does John mention this?
Because the Holy Spirit commonly the Person of God most misrepresented and least mentioned, let’s look first to the examples cited in Vine’s Dictionary (above) to the scriptures from John.
“The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” He [Jesus] said this about the Spirit. Those who believed in Jesus were going to receive the Spirit, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
John 7:38-39 CSB
In our next post we will take a look at the witness of John the Baptist, who also bears witness to Jesus receiving the Holy Spirit, to which the Apostle John refers here.
Jesus, prior to His crucifixion and resurrection in the flesh and in the spirit, instructs the Apostles further about the Holy Spirit.
John 14:
25 “I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. 26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.
Jesus’s Gift of Peace
27 “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.
Who would not love a personal counselor like this? Jesus promises a Person with His same love in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Later John affirms this testimony of Jesus:
“When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father — the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father — he will testify about me.
“You also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.
John 15:26-27
John is witness and testifies to this for many years, more years than all other Apostles. Jesus also refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Spirit of truth.’
Does one desiring God seek truth?
John provides both witness and explanation of the Truth. Therefore, even in this present day we would not want to miss what he shares with the church in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.
“Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will never be harmed by the second death.
Revelation 2:11
God’s Love Through John: To be continued...
