Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Person of Christ from John 3:1–21
“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know 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.’ In reply Jesus declared, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’
‘How can a man be born when he is old?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 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.” 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.’
‘How can this be?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘You are Israel’s teacher,’ said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand these things? I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 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.
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.’ ”
So reads God’s most Holy Word.
About a decade or so ago now, the Datsun automobile underwent a name change. The parent company, Nissan Motors, decided that its baseline automobile would henceforth be called the Nissan instead of the Datsun. The Datsun died. Nissan was born. This was accompanied in this country by endless TV advertisements about the “born-again Datsun,” and thus born again entered the mainstream of American vocabulary.
Nowadays, born again is a not uncommon term in America. If a politician changes his or her party or even his or her views on tax, we refer to the politician as a born-again politician. Certain religious people are also called born again. They are called by the media born-again Christians, as if there are two sorts: the non-born-again Christians and the born-again Christians.
In this context, born again means roughly fanatical and nothing more. It is not a statement loaded with theological content; rather, it is a term of opprobrium, a cheap one at that. So what does born again mean? Does it suggest change of name, change of mind, change of party, change of policy, or simply is it a designation for a religious nutter?
Well, Nicodemus wanted to know what the expression meant too the first time, so far as we know, the expression was ever used by Jesus himself 2,000 years ago. It’ll be helpful to break the text down into four rather unequal parts. First, what Jesus actually said about being born again; second, why Jesus could speak about being born again; third, how Jesus brings about this new birth; and finally, why Jesus was sent to bring about this new birth.
1. What Jesus actually said about being born again.
Verses 1–10: “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.” Nicodemus, undoubtedly, by all social standards of the day, was a good man. The Pharisees have a very bad name with us because there was enough hypocrisy in this elite group that the charges of hypocrisy have stuck down through the ages, but by the social standards of the day, undoubtedly the Pharisees were perceived as being at the very front end.
They were scrupulous about following the law. They were scrupulous in their religious observance. They were picky to a fault in most matters of finance and the like. This man, on top of that, was a member of the Jewish ruling council, probably the Sanhedrin. Under the Roman superpower, the Jews had authority within the constraints of that superpower (mediated in the South through a procurator or a prefect, Pilate), and within those constraints the Sanhedrin had all three branches of governmental authority.
In other words, this was simultaneously the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the supreme court. So to be a member of this body of 70 or 72 men meant you were right up there in the top crowd. On top of that, verse 10 tells us he is Israel’s teacher. The expression in the original suggests a title. Not a teacher in Israel but the Regius Professor of Divinity, the Grand Mufti. He was the head of the heap, as it were.
Within that framework, therefore, he was undoubtedly conservative, probably rich, certainly powerful, very knowledgeable. You didn’t get to be a head honcho in rabbinic circles in those days unless you memorized virtually the whole Old Testament, certainly the Pentateuch, and a body of oral tradition about twice as long again. The man was not a fool.
He approaches Jesus in the terms of verse 2. “He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know 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.’ ” There has been endless speculation about why he came at night. Some have thought that perhaps he was a bit embarrassed to approach an itinerant preacher of no great standing in rabbinic communities during the daytime, so he came at night. I don’t believe it.
Every time Nicodemus shows up in this book, he is singularly unimpressed by the opinion of others, whether of colleagues in the Sanhedrin or anyone else. He is a man of rare independent judgment. He is not a wimp. If we’re to understand what is meant by this, we should ask how John thinks of night and uses it elsewhere, or light and darkness for that matter. Then it becomes clear.
Undoubtedly, historically, Nicodemus did come at night, but John uses language in some of the most symbol-laden ways of any New Testament writer, and he just quietly mentions that fact, as he mentions a whole lot of similar facts throughout his whole book. Thus, for example, on the night Jesus is betrayed, when Judas is finally dismissed, we are told that he went out and it was night.
That’s not simply a chronological marker. He went out into the blackness of rebellious, dark, sinful, ignorant night. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. How does the whole section end? Verses 19–21: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
John is constantly playing with this theme of light versus darkness, and we shall see in a moment that John’s whole point in these opening verses is that despite Nicodemus’ status, knowledge, and power, he comes not really knowing what he’s asking for. He approaches in night in more than one way. At night undoubtedly as a chronological marker, but he comes in the blackness of astonishing ignorance in addition to the mere absence of sunlight.
He approaches Jesus, and he says, “Rabbi …” In those days, rabbi was not yet a signal for ordination. By the second century, it becomes that. Today people get revved up, and then you call them reverend, but in those days you didn’t get “rabbied” up as a mark of ordination until the second century. Rabbi was an informal title in the first century. It was a mark of honor to anyone who was a recognized public teacher, but there was no formal going through schools and an official council until the second century.
So for this man to address Jesus as “Rabbi” when Jesus is an itinerant preacher is already indicating that he recognizes that Jesus is something special at least. He’s not being discourteous. At the same time, he approaches Jesus with a rather pompous first-person plural. “We know that you are a teacher come from God, we do, for we have seen your powers.” At least the man has looked.
There were a lot of charlatans then as faith healers as there are today, people who could do psychosomatic tricks, people who were just cheap tricksters. Undoubtedly, there were some things that were genuinely of God but an awful lot that wasn’t. Nicodemus had looked closely enough at Jesus to believe what he was doing was genuinely miraculous, but instead of coming in any sort of petitioner’s guise, he comes with his preliminary evaluation.
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for one couldn’t do these powerful deeds unless God were with him.” That that is the way we are to read this is made very clear by Jesus’ answer. Jesus replies, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” What is the connection between verse 2 and verse 3? It is sometimes presupposed that Nicodemus was about to ask a question, but before he got there Jesus sort of cut him off at the pass and gave the answer to the question before the question was addressed.
What Nicodemus was going to say was something like this: “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher sent from God, because no one could do these miracles you are doing unless God were with him, so tell us, therefore, are you about to introduce the kingdom or are you not?” or something like that. “Are you the Messiah who is introducing the promised eschatological kingdom?” To which Jesus responds, “The question is not so much whether or not I’m introducing the kingdom but whether you’re ready to enter it.”
It makes sense except that it pits Jesus as one of these people who can never wait until the other person is finished before they have to butt in and put in their two cents’ worth. It doesn’t make a very good connection in any case. No, Jesus’ response is designed to answer Nicodemus right off the bat. He is challenging Nicodemus’ hubris, his arrogance. Nicodemus thinks he sees the power of God. That’s what kingdom means. It’s not first and foremost realm but reign.
He thinks he sees the reign of God, the power of God displayed in the miracles of Jesus. That’s what he thinks he understands and sees. What does Jesus say? “My dear Nicodemus, let me tell you the truth. You don’t see the power of God. You don’t see the reign of God unless you’re born again. You see the powerful displays, yes. You see miracles, yes, but you don’t really see what’s going on. You do not see the reign of God unless you enter the kingdom.”
In other words, Nicodemus wants to come to Jesus and do the initial evaluating. He is still putting himself in a place where he evaluates Jesus. One of the big themes in this gospel is that Jesus won’t have any of that. Every time somebody tries to evaluate him, Jesus says, in effect, “You have the shoe on the wrong foot. The real question is how I shall evaluate you. The real question is whether you can enter the kingdom at all.”
If Jesus is the kind of Lord he is presented to be in this gospel, he is not the kind of person who finally offers himself, and then we all sit around and give the pluses and the minuses, give an evaluation, an evenhanded sort of thing, with all our wisdom. If he’s the kind of person who is set forth in this gospel, then the only appropriate response is worship, contrition, obedience, and faith, and everything less than that is just sheer rebellion.
He does not present himself simply as someone or something to be evaluated. A common illustration used in this regard comes from the hippie period, when apparently some long-haired wonder entered the Louvre in France and was wandering around looking at paintings and making cheap and shoddy remarks. One of the curators came up behind this chap making his cheap and shoddy remarks. Just ignorant. Not thoughtful, not humble, not intelligent, not culturally sensitive. Just ignorant.
The curator said, “Sir, in this museum, it is not the paintings that are being judged.” Just so. With this Jesus, it is not the Messiah that is being judged. Right off the bat, then, Jesus will not have this kind of arrogance as people approach him. He says right away, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Nicodemus replies, “How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
It may be that Nicodemus honestly thought Jesus was talking at a purely naturalistic level. It’s possible, but he wasn’t a fool. The man who is called the Regius Professor of Divinity in Israel can spot a metaphor. I suspect, therefore, that far from making an ignorant comment, where he misunderstands Jesus at the simplest level, he is criticizing Jesus because he hears Jesus to be promising too much.
Let me back off. Most conservative Jews in Jesus’ day did long for the coming of the kingdom. They expected the Messiah to come. When the Messiah came, he would turf out the Romans, but the best of them also saw he would bring in righteousness in the land. He would establish a rule that would be righteous and godly and establish integrity in the land, and the other nations would be subservient. It would be a kingdom that would far surpass the kingdom of David and Solomon, but it would be a good kingdom.
What they did not have categories for is any sense of tremendous personal renewal. It was in terms of national transformation, not in terms of personal transformation. In this light, however, Jesus seems to be saying that individuals have to change. Individuals must be born again. He is saying, in effect, “We need new men and new women, not simply new institutions. We need new lives, not simply new laws. We need new creatures, not new creeds. We need new people, not mere displays of power.”
But how do you generate new people? Haven’t most of us felt the pressure sometimes to wish we were something other than we were? Oh, some of us are reasonably self-satisfied with who we are. We don’t go through anxious throes of self-recrimination at every interval during the day, but even the most self-confident of us, if we have any sensitivity to sin at all, aren’t there times when you wake up in the middle of the night and you remember?
You remember that time when your tongue was just so wicked. You would do anything to go back and unwind the clock and live through that again. Or when the relationship with such-and-such a person was less than pure or when you were such an idiot the way you handled something or so foolish with respect to the children. Am I the only one who has things like that? You wake up in a sort of cold sweat, and you wish you could undo it.
You’re not sure if you’re embarrassed for yourself or you’re embarrassed before the Lord or you’re embarrassed before people, but you can’t undo it. You can’t change. The history is done. It’s written. The English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, “Ah, for a man to arise in me, that the man I am may no longer be.” Or the nineteenth century poet John Claire: “If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.”
Here is Jesus promising that you can be a new person after all. Start all over. New birth. In that light, I think Nicodemus is saying, “Jesus, quite frankly, you’re encouraging the impossible. You can’t rewrite history.” So he uses extreme literalistic language to make his point. “You cannot change people. Their pasts are written. A man cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born again.” That’s what he’s saying, but Jesus won’t back down. Hence verse 5.
“Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.’ ” Thus, he basically repeats verse 3 with minor changes. So it’s time to ask … What does this mean to be born of water and the Spirit? There have been many suggestions. Some think this means born of baptism and Spirit, so that water is an allusion to baptism. The problem with that view is that post-Pentecost Christian baptism hasn’t been invented yet. That would be reading the text in a remarkably anachronistic way.
Others think it means you have to have two births. You must be born of water (natural birth) and of Spirit (spiritual birth), in which case the water either refers to the amniotic fluid … the water breaks and the baby comes forth … or alternatively, in a few late Jewish sources, one finds instances where drops of water stand as symbols for semen. In fact, in Greek, the verb to bear (to bear a child) can equally mean, if it’s applying to a man, to beget.
So this might not be born again. It might be beget again. What you’re talking about are two begettings … one begetting from semen, and one begetting from the Spirit. Some have argued for that. But besides the fact that the sources for that are late and rare, and the fact that there is no instance, to my knowledge, in Jewish or Greek literature from this period where natural birth is spoken of as birth of water, the fact of the matter is verse 5 must be put in parallel to verse 3, and then I think the meaning becomes clearer.
By verse 6, there will be two kinds of birth mentioned. We’ll come to verse 6 in a moment, but in the first instance, line out verse 3 and verse 5 and strike the common elements. So verse 3: “In reply Jesus declared.” Verse 5: “Jesus answered.” Roughly the same thing. Verse 3: “I tell you the truth.” Verse 5: “I tell you the truth.” Verse 3: “No one can see the kingdom of God.” Verse 5: “No one can enter the kingdom of God.” A minor change. Verse 3: “Unless he is born again.” Verse 5: “Unless he is born of water and Spirit.”
In other words, if verse 5 is parallel to verse 3, born of water and Spirit is parallel to born again. In other words, it sounds like one birth of water and Spirit rather than two births, and that is made clearer yet in the Greek structure where there is one preposition that governs both of those nouns. Born of water and Spirit. If you wanted to make it two births, it would be much clearer in Greek if you had “born of water and born of Spirit” or “born of water and of Spirit.” It’s one preposition governing both nouns.
So then what does Jesus mean? What does this born of water and Spirit mean? Perhaps the most important clue is again verse 10. Jesus bawls out Nicodemus for not knowing what Jesus is talking about. “You’re the Grand Mufti, and you don’t understand these things?” Well, on what grounds should Nicodemus have understood them? Clearly on the ground in which he was an expert: Scripture. That’s where he was an expert. He should have understood on the basis of Scripture.
So we ask the question … Where, then, is new birth talked about in Scripture? The short answer from the Old Testament is it’s not. So what is Jesus on about? Then I think the penny drops, and it’s reasonably clear. Although new birth is not talked about explicitly, this concatenation of water and Spirit is talked about explicitly and in contexts of immense messianic significance. Of the several passages at stake, the most important one is Ezekiel 36.
This is one of the many new covenant passages in the Old Testament. It is right before the valley of dry bones passages, which finally looks not only to the restoration of Israel but to new life being given where there is only death and ultimately to resurrection itself. Ezekiel 36:22: “Say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things …’ ” To bring them out of exile and transform them on the last day.
“… but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes. For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.”
Verses 25–27: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be very careful to keep my laws.” There is much more of the same. Verse 32: “I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, O house of Israel!”
This is only one of several passages in the Old Testament that promise that a time is coming when there is individual spiritual renewal, characterized by two things. First, cleaning up. “I will sprinkle you with pure water, and you will be clean.” Second, internal transformation, the pouring out of the Spirit, such that people really do have hearts that are hearts of flesh, that want to do God’s will, that are so transformed from within they cleave to what is good.
So there’s a cleaning up of the dirt, and there is a transformation from within. There is the pouring out of the water to make them clean and a pouring out of the Spirit to give them lives and hearts and minds that transform people. This isn’t the only Old Testament passage that deals in such terms. Sometimes the same sort of promise is given without explicit mention of water and Spirit.
In perhaps the most famous new covenant promise passage of all, Jeremiah 31, exactly the same themes are articulated without mention of water and Spirit. We normally read Jeremiah 31 from verse 31 and following, but start rather at Jeremiah 31:29. “In those days people will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ ” That was a proverb in Israel. It’s used twice in the Old Testament, once in Ezekiel with a slightly different usage, and once here.
The point is under the tribal structure of the old covenant God mediated his presence to the people through prophets on whom the Spirit was poured out, through kings on whom the Spirit was poured out, and through priests on whom the Spirit was poured out. The Spirit was also poured out on a few extra people, like Bezalel and Oholiab, when they had special jobs to do. When the prophets and priests and kings fell, the whole nation fell. When David sins, there is judgment on the whole people.
There is a tribal structure to the covenant. It is not an individualizing structure nearly so much as a tribal structure. God is represented through certain leaders to the people, and they are represented back to God through these leaders. Thus, even when the covenant is introduced on Mount Sinai, that is Moses’ function.
When the Ten Commandments are given in Exodus, chapter 20, immediately the people respond in chapter 20, verses 18 and following, “This God is too terrifying. We cannot approach a God like this. You be God in his place, as it were. You represent us to God. You bear us before God, and you be God’s spokesman back to us, for we cannot approach this God and live.”
Thus, the whole nature of the old covenant is mediatorial and tribal, so when the leaders go off the track, the whole nation eats sour groups. All the children’s teeth are set on edge. What does God say? “That has been the proverb, but that’s not the way it’s going to be in those days,” he says. Verse 30: “Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge. ‘The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant.’ ”
In other words, the difference in the new covenant is going to turn on the breakdown of this tribal structure, this mediating kind of structure. This is the nature of the new covenant. Verse 32: “ ‘It will not be like that covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord.”
Verse 33: “ ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord.” That’s the transformation part. Now the cleansing part. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Now this does not mean that under the terms of the new covenant there’s no teacher. When the text says, “No longer will a man teach his neighbor, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ ” it’s not an announcement of an abolition of all teachers. It is, in the light of the line of argument, an announcement of an abolition of all mediating teachers, because that’s the way the old covenant worked, with prophets, priests, and kings who taught the people, who stood in God’s place for them, and if they eat sour grapes, all the children’s teeth will set on edge.
Under the new covenant, although, as you know from reading the New Testament (the Pastoral Epistles and elsewhere), there are teachers in the church, the teachers in the church never have an inside track with God. We are not mediating teachers. There is only one Mediator under the terms of the new covenant. I may function in the body as a teacher (a stomach in the body, as it were, taking in food and feeding the rest), yet that is not because I have an inside track. I don’t have a leg up, a special relationship you can’t possibly have because you’re not a teacher.
Under the old covenant, there was this essentially tribal mediated structure, but under the new covenant, that’s not the way it is. Everyone under the new covenant has these two characteristics. They know the Lord from within. They are transformed from within. They have hearts that want to do what is right, and they’re cleaned up.
Under the old covenant, there were all kinds of people in the covenant because they were born into the covenant community, and the males were circumcised, who never were finally renewed. Under the new covenant, the very nature of the new covenant is that all those under this covenant are renewed. This is not the only passage. Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 31. You could go to Joel, chapter 2, and many other passages that talk of the coming of the kingdom not only in terms of a changed political structure and a final new heaven and a new earth but in terms of personal renewal and transformation.
All that Jesus has added to this language is the metaphor of new birth. It’s all there plainly as anything in the Old Testament text. Nicodemus should have seen it, but so much had he focused on political change, on national change, even on national righteousness, even on the glory of God, he couldn’t see that under the terms of the new covenant there is this promise for all those under the covenant having this fantastic life-transforming change.
Then Jesus gives two illustrations, two analogies. First, verses 6–7: “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.’ ” Pigs give birth to pigs. Horses give birth to horses. Like generates like. So how can we have a nature that is genuinely godlike unless God’s Spirit is poured out? Second Peter 1 can actually go so far as to say we have been made partakers of the divine nature. Extraordinarily strong language. You’re not going to generate that no matter how good a set of parents you are.
It’s akin to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 6–16. We cannot understand the things of God. The natural person does not understand the things of God. What is required is the gift of the Spirit. So also here. Like gives birth to like. If we are going to think God’s thoughts after him, if we are going to be more godlike, if we are going to be transformed from within, we must have a divine begetting.
“You shouldn’t be surprised at that. It’s intuitively obvious,” God says. “Not only so,” he says, “but the wind blows wherever it pleases.” In Greek and in Hebrew, the word for wind and spirit is the same, so there’s a pun that operates that doesn’t work in English, but clearly, he’s talking about the wind. “You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. It blows where it likes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
What does that mean? Today we know a bit more about meteorology than they knew in the first century, but even so, when the wind blows by, the snowstorms come, and the gusts of snow build drifts by the side of the road, or in the summer the tumbleweed goes by, we don’t stop and think, “Aha! This is a high in Nebraska. I know what’s going on there. This is an anticyclone. We’re on the leading edge.” We just don’t think in those terms, and they thought even less in those terms in the first century.
What is clear is that although you don’t see the wind and although you don’t think through its origin, you can’t deny its effects. So it is with everyone who is born of God. We may not be able to give a detailed analysis of all of the spiritual mechanics that go into new birth, but you can’t deny its effects. That is one of the reasons why in the New Testament it is inconceivable for someone to be truly born again and still live like the world and the flesh and the Devil.
Yes, people may backslide. Yes, there are different rates of growth, but at the end of the day, for someone to make a profession of faith and then six months later proceed to live like the world, the flesh, and the Devil for the next 30 years … Jesus says, “By their fruit you will know them.” The new birth in its very nature is a cleanup job with power to change.
Of course, the old nature is still there, and I know we still fight, and we can struggle through the passages of Romans that deal with these things, but at the end of the day, the nature of the new birth means that we must change. It may not be rapid. There will be different rates. Finally, on the last day, we will be so changed we will stand in great delight in the unshielded glory of God and not be ashamed because of what Christ has done for us.
To think, therefore, of new birth that sort of gives you a ticket into discipleship classes where all the real change takes place is to miss where the motive power comes from. Biblical conversion changes people. Again, do not misunderstand. That is not saying there is no place for discipleship classes, that there is not a great deal of growing to go. A new baby is still a new baby, but it is a baby.
It’s not a nothing, which may turn into something. It is already life from God with motive power to grow in a certain direction. “ ‘You are Israel’s teacher,’ said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand these things?’ ” They’ve already been announced abundantly under the terms of the Old Testament as they look forward to the new covenant.
2. Why Jesus could speak about being born again.
Verses 11–13: “I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.” The remarkable thing about this passage is the first-person plural. In the next verse, Jesus reverts to the first-person singular, but in verse 11 it’s first-person plural. Why?
Well, people of more skeptical bent have argued one of two things. They have either argued that Jesus is including his disciples … “Our side speaks the truth. We speak what we know.” But that really won’t work. We saw last week at the end of chapter 2 that the disciples themselves really don’t have much of a clue what’s going on at this stage, nor do they all the way through to the other side of the resurrection.
The other approach is to say this is a bit of anachronism. Jesus didn’t really say we. This is the later church projecting themselves backward in time into it. The witness has changed a bit so that we Christians can be bound up there with Jesus’ words as we talk to “you Jews” and other people who don’t really understand. At that point, this record is anachronistic. It is not reliable. It’s not what Jesus really did say.
I suspect the real answer is far simpler. Again, John is the most subtle of the gospel writers. He means us to listen very carefully. What has Nicodemus done? He has approached Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one could do these things unless God were with him.” Now Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know too.”
He’s still taking the mickey out of him. He’s still pricking his pretensions. Jesus simply will not have someone come in an evaluative position of him. Moreover, he is not just scoring a cheap point. He is saying, “We speak of what we know. Nicodemus, I’ve just demonstrated to you you don’t know what you’re talking about, even if you are the grand mufti. We speak of what we know. We testify to what we have seen, and still you people do not accept our testimony.”
Then, having made his point, he reverts to the first-person singular. “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe.” The new birth is thus classed as an earthly thing, not because its origin is from the earth but because where it takes place is on the earth. Its origin is from heaven, but as far as Jesus is concerned it’s an earthly thing because it takes place down here amongst earthly people.
“Now if instead I try to prove my credentials,” Jesus says, “by speaking of heavenly things, will you believe? You’re finding it hard to swallow the things that must take place under the terms of the new covenant here on earth right now. If I try to prove you my credentials by giving you a kind of detailed description of the throne room of God, will you be happier? You can’t swallow this. How will you believe that?”
At the end of the day, what Jesus is appealing to (this is of utmost importance) is revelation. At the end of the day, everyone who starts to close with Christ has to come to this point. He is not offering himself as one guru amongst many, one option, a good alternative. Not a whit. “No one has gone into heaven [to come back and give us a report] except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.” A title picked up from Daniel, chapter 7, where one like a son of man approaches the Ancient of Days and receives the kingdom from him.
“I’ve come from heaven. I know what I’m talking about,” he says. In other words, the claim is the starkest, most absolute form of a claim to revelation. This is the one of whom it is said in the prologue, “He was with God, and he was God.” This is the one of whom it is said in the prologue, “No one has seen God at any time, but God, the one and only, who is with God—he has made him known.”
We’ll see in another week that the Son of God language likewise is steeped with a presupposition that he reveals the Father. In other words, there is an immense God-centeredness to the whole vision in which God, by his Word made flesh, has disclosed what should be known, and if that really is what’s going on, standing in judgment over him to pick and choose what we like is simply inappropriate.
You may have to come to the place where you see that is what is going on, but once you do see that is what is going on, there is no option of picking and choosing and standing in judgment and boasting about what you know and making evaluations. You bow before this one. You hear what he says. “We speak of what we know,” he said. That’s why Jesus could speak so forcefully about being born again.
3. How Jesus brings about this new birth.
It will not do, on the one hand, to talk about the God you can believe in. The God you can believe in may or may not exist. The only real question is the God who is there. Jesus claims that kind of authority. But now he talks about bringing about this new birth. He gives another appeal to Scripture to give more information about the basis on which this transformation takes place.
If I had been talking (not for a moment to suggest that I’m claiming such revelation), my mind would not have gone in the first instance to the account of the snake in the wilderness. Don’t forget Jesus is talking not to your average street person in 1993 or 1994. He’s talking to a Jewish rabbi who’s steeped in Scripture. Jesus can make the merest allusion to the serpent in the wilderness. Nicodemus knows the whole story.
The account is found only once in Numbers, chapter 21, verses 4–9. They’re just a few verses, and it’s worth taking the time to read them. This is at the time when the people are traveling through the desert. “They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!’ ”
The miserable food is the manna, which Jesus himself will reintroduce into the account in John 6, where he claims to be the manna from heaven, the Bread of Life. In other words, they’re rejecting God’s provision. “Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people.
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.” That’s the only thing that is said. Hundreds of years later, a king destroyed that bronze snake because it was becoming an idol. People were investing a certain amount of magic to it.
Have you ever wondered why there are no real preserved elements of Jesus’ cross, no first autograph of Paul’s letter to the Romans? I’m sure it’s part of God’s great wisdom to prevent us from stooping to similar idolatry. Why does Jesus then make this appeal? John 3:14: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” When the New Testament cites the Old … not always but frequently … it is bringing with it the entire context. You’re supposed to know the whole story.
There is an analogy on which the actual small point is built. Nicodemus, like the people of God, wants to stand in judgment of God. Nicodemus, like the people in the desert, is not too satisfied with what the text actually says, with the provision God has actually made. Nicodemus, like the people of God, is standing under the judgment of God. They’re in imminent danger of death. Nicodemus, like the people of God, is going to experience new life out of the death they deserve only by the provision God makes.
God made the provision through Moses of this pole, and the people looked to it and lived. How, then, does this new birth come about to answer our death? Well, again, someone else is lifted up on another pole. We have already seen that John, as he recounts the gospel, is constantly introducing themes that are further explained a little farther on in the narrative. Jesus himself does this in the course of his ministry. We’ve seen that too in John, chapter 2. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again.” It’s not quite clear until some more events take place.
So also here. This lifting up language is introduced here for the first time, but then the verb keeps reappearing until finally it’s made clear in John, chapter 12. “ ‘He must be lifted up.’ This he said indicating by what means he would die.” Jesus ultimately is lifted up on the cross, and by means of the cross is lifted up to return to the glory he had with the Father before the world began. The lifting up language is itself pregnant.
Thus, God’s provision was that a certain snake, a bronze snake, be lifted up, and people only had to look at it and they were healed. Now the Son of Man, this one who receives the kingdom from the Father … He too must be lifted up, God’s provision, and people look to him and get new life, new birth, out of their death and judgment for the same sins Nicodemus is displaying, this insistence that, “I will do things my way, and I will stand in evaluation of God.”
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” In other words, all of this is brought about by Jesus, and it is received by faith. It can’t be received any other way. It can’t be received by good works. The text already established that we’re guilty.
“Anyone who believes on him may have this eternal life.” Thus, eternal life is linked in the narrative to new birth. The way you have eternal life is by being born again. The life of God coming to us anew, this new begetting, this new bearing, is what generates our new life and gives us eternal life, and all of that is predicated on the Son of Man who was lifted up on a cross.
4. Why Jesus was sent to bring about this new birth.
What motivates all of this? What empowers it? Verse 16 shows that what empowers it is nothing other than the love of God. Verse 16 must be read in that context. “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” In the closing minutes, I want to say four things about this love.
First, in John’s view, it is simply astonishing that God loves us. Picture Ted and Sally walking down a beach at the end of term, hand in hand. They’ve finished their final exams. It is a lovely spring night. They’ve kicked off their sandals, and the warm sand squishes between their toes. It is dusk, and there is one of those glorious sunsets that you find at the end of mushy films when the credits are scrolling up.
The air is blowing freely through their hair. The relief from all the pressure now dissipated … exams are over … is adding to their comfort. Ted turns to Sally and says, “Sally, I love you. I really do.” What does he mean? It is not obvious. He may mean nothing more than he feels like testosterone on legs and wants to go to bed with her, but if we assume for a moment that he has a modicum of decency about him, the least he means is something like this.
“In my eyes, you are wonderful. I love to be near you. I want to share my life with you. I would do anything to serve you. You’re beautiful to me. I want to be near you. I want to cherish you. I love you.” Isn’t that what he means? He does not mean, “Sally, you have the most amazingly bulbous nose I have ever seen. You have the stringiest, greasiest, gooiest hair I have ever touched, and quite frankly, your halitosis would embarrass a pig, but I love you anyway.” He doesn’t mean that.
Now God says, “I love you.” What does he mean? Does he really mean, “I find you so adorable I can’t bear being without you. I love to be near you. I want to cherish you and coddle you. You are lovely to me. I can’t bear being without you”? Is that what he means? That’s what a fair bit of modern psychobabble says. The argument runs like this: “God loves you; therefore, you must be important. Therefore, you should love yourself, and then you’ll be all right.” Rubbish!
These texts make abundantly clear that, morally speaking, we are the people of the bulbous nose and the greasy hair and the halitosis. Look at how it ends up. Verse 19: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” God doesn’t find that attractive. “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
Then verse 21, when you give the flip side, those who do come to the light, it’s not because what they’ve done is so wonderful that, therefore, they just come charging into the presence of God with great relief and delight. The parallelism breaks down. “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” If we do the good, God gets the credit. If we do the bad, it’s our fault. It’s the way it is.
In fact, these texts are pretty blunt. The world, we’ve seen already in John, is not so much a big place as a bad place. “God so loved the world.” His love is remarkable not because the world is big but because the world is bad. Verse 17: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.” No, he didn’t need to. The world was already condemned.
He sent his Son into the world to save the world that was already condemned, as verse 36 makes clear. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” It’s already there. You don’t have to add to it. It’s done. For some strange reason, our generation has come to think that God’s love is an easy doctrine to believe in. Our generation finds it hard to believe in the wrath of God.
In other periods in the history of the church, it has been the opposite. Sometimes too much so, if it has to be said. Biblically speaking, God’s justice is never questioned. God’s right to condemn us is everywhere either assumed or taught. What is astonishing in the Scripture is that God, despite his wrath, loves us anyway … not because we are so lovely but because he is that kind of God, which brings us to the second point.
The measure of God’s love for us is Jesus. “God thus loved the world that he gave his Son.” That becomes clearer yet next week, when we look at some connections between John 3 and John 5. The Father always loved the Son. John 3:35: “The Father loves the Son.” John 5:20: “The Father loves the Son.”
The Father has always loved the Son, but despite this unimaginable length of the love of the Father for the Son in eternity past, God so loved the world that had rebelled against him and in sheer anarchy defied him that he sacrificed his Son. We rightly do well to magnify the love of Jesus. There is a parable written by Walter Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor, that I rather like. May I take three or four minutes to read it to you? It’s a modern parable.
“I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing in my life, my street sense, my sly tongue, had ever prepared me for. Hush, child. Hush now, and I will tell it to you. Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of the city. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear tenor voice, ‘Rags!’
Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music. ‘Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags. Rags!’ ‘Now this is a wonder,’ I thought to myself, for the man stood six-foot-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?
I followed him. My curiosity drove me, and I wasn’t disappointed. Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into her handkerchief, sighing and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking. The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping around tin cans, dead toys, and dirty nappies.
‘Give me your rag,’ he said, ‘and I’ll give you another.’ He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver. Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing. He put her stained, snotty handkerchief to his own face, and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left behind without a tear.
‘This is a wonder,’ I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery. ‘Rags! Rags! New rags for old!’ In a little while, when the sky showed gray behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheeks.
Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart. ‘Give me your rag,’ he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, ‘and I’ll give you mine.’ The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw. For with the bandage went the wound. Against his brow ran a darker, more substantial blood … his own.
‘Rags! Rags! I take old rags!’ cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman. The sun hurt the sky now and my eyes. The Ragman seemed more and more in a hurry. ‘Are you going to work?’ he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head. The Ragman inquired, ‘Do you have a job?’ ‘Are you crazy?’ sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket. It was flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.
‘So,’ said the Ragman. ‘Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine.’ Such quiet authority in his voice. The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman, and I trembled at what I saw, for the Ragman’s arm stayed in the jacket, and when the other put it on, then he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs, but the Ragman had only one. ‘Go to work,’ he said.
After that he saw a drunk lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it around himself, but for the drunk he left a new suit of clothes. And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably and bleeding freely at his forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old and sick, yet he went very fast.
On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the city, this mile and the next, until he had come to its limits, and then he rushed beyond. I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such a haste, perhaps to know what drove him so. The little old Ragman … he came to a landfill. He came to a garbage dump. I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding.
He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with the old army blanket. And he died. Oh, how I cried to witness that death. I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope, because I had come to love that Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I cried myself to sleep.
I did not know—how could I know?—that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night. But then on Sunday morning, I was awakened by a violence. Light … pure, hard, demanding light … slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And besides that, healthy. There was no sign of sorrow or of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.
Well, then I lowered my head and, trembling for all I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice, ‘Dress me.’ He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!”
It’s only a story, but it helps us understand what substitutionary atonement means. He became sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We do well to magnify the love of Christ, but this passage, it must be said, goes beyond that. This is talking about the love of the Father. “God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” What did it cost? Most of us are parents. What would it cost for us to give our child for an undeserving wretch? Browning in the last century wrote:
Yea, once Immanuel’s orphaned cry this universe has shaken
It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!”
It went up from the Holy’s lips amidst a lost creation
That of the lost no son should use this cry of desolation.
His Father heard that and remained silent. God’s love is astonishing. God’s love is measured by his gift of Christ. The purpose of God’s love for us is that we might have life (verses 16–18) … to have life, to be saved, not to be condemned. The means by which we come to enjoy this love is faith. “God so loved the world that he gave his Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
