Born of Water and Spirit
Chapter 3; A teacher by night and a wind that goes where it will
Where this chapter sits
See the full timeline →Right now: Jesus is baptized and his public ministry begins (AD 28)
Setting: Jerusalem
By Bea Zalel
John 3
Read in NIV →- Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.
- He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs You are doing if God were not with him."
- Jesus replied, "Truly, truly, I tell you, 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. "Can he enter his mother's womb a second time to be born?"
- Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.
- Flesh is born of flesh, but spirit is born of the Spirit.
- Do not be amazed that I said, 'You must be born again.'
- The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know 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 you do not understand these things?
- Truly, truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, and yet you people do not accept our testimony.
- If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
- No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man.
- Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, 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 everyone who 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 has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
- And this is the verdict: The Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil.
- Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
- But whoever practices the truth comes into the Light, so that it may be seen clearly that what he has done has been accomplished in God."
- After this, Jesus and His disciples went into the Judean countryside, where He spent some time with them and baptized.
- Now John was also baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because the water was plentiful there, and people kept coming to be baptized.
- (For John had not yet been thrown into prison.)
- Then a dispute arose between John's disciples and a certain Jew over the issue of ceremonial washing.
- So John's disciples came to him and said, "Look, Rabbi, the One who was with you beyond the Jordan, the One you testified about—He is baptizing, and everyone is going to Him."
- John replied, "A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.
- You yourselves can testify that I said, 'I am not the Christ, but am sent ahead of Him.'
- The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom stands and listens for him, and is overjoyed to hear the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.
- He must increase; I must decrease.
- The One who comes from above is above all. The one who is from the earth belongs to the earth and speaks as one from the earth. The One who comes from heaven is above all.
- He testifies to what He has seen and heard, yet no one accepts His testimony.
- Whoever accepts His testimony has certified that God is truthful.
- For the One whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.
- The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands.
- Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him."
Inline text: Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain. Compare with the John 3 chapter in your preferred translation via the link above.
Theme
Nicodemus is introduced with three details that meant a great deal to John's first readers and almost nothing to a modern one. He is a Pharisee. He is "a ruler of the Jews." And he comes by night. The Pharisees were not the priestly establishment. They were a lay reform movement, scattered through villages as well as cities, that focused on applying the Torah to ordinary daily life. They are the ancestors of the rabbinic Judaism that took shape after 70 CE. The phrase "ruler of the Jews" probably places Nicodemus on the Sanhedrin, the council of seventy plus the high priest. He represents the very best of his tradition, sincerely seeking. The detail about night carries two meanings at once. On the surface, it is prudent. The council had begun to see Jesus as a threat. A public meeting would have cost Nicodemus his standing. But light and darkness are also theological signals throughout John. This teacher of Israel has come from the wrong side of the symbol he is about to be tested by.
The conversation that follows turns on a Greek pun an English reader cannot hear. Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born "anothen." The single Greek adverb carries two meanings at the same time. It can mean "again" and it can mean "from above." Nicodemus hears it the flat way, the way a tired teacher hears a riddle. He objects to the obvious biological impossibility of a grown man entering the womb a second time. Jesus means the other thing. Underneath the conversation sits Ezekiel 36:25-27: "I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean. A new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you." A Pharisee like Nicodemus would have known that passage by heart. A Greek-educated Gentile reader has no Ezekiel inside him. What he hears is a god who claims to give a person a second nature. That sounds close to the mystery cults, but stranger, because it is offered to a Jewish councilman in private rather than to paying initiates in a ceremony. Both audiences notice that Jesus is naming something already half-promised in their world.
Then comes the verse Western readers have nearly worn smooth. "God so loved the world." The Greek noun is "kosmos." For a 1st-century Jewish ear, "kosmos" was a charged word. Centuries of imperial humiliation under Babylon, Persia, the Greek Seleucids and now Rome had hardened the boundary between Israel and the nations into a near-physical line. The Maccabean revolt two centuries before, the slow Hasmonean expansion, the daily friction of Roman occupation, the temple tax and the census and the Roman army altars at the city gates all pushed in the same direction. God loves Israel. The nations are under judgment. The claim that God loves the "kosmos," meaning the Greek-speaking, idol-worshiping, slave-owning, Roman-occupying mass of nations, was not a Hallmark line on the first hearing. It was a theological earthquake. For a Gentile reader the shock cut the other way. The God of an occupied minor province had just claimed authority over every nation that had ever stepped on it. Both audiences were unsettled.
Nicodemus is not a one-scene character. John writes him with unusual care. Lincoln calls him the most carefully developed minor character in the gospel. He appears three times. Here, by night, full of questions. Then again in John 7:50-52, where he cautiously defends Jesus's right to a fair hearing before the Sanhedrin and is sneered at by his own colleagues. And finally in John 19:39, after the crucifixion, where he comes with Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus. The gospel tells us he brings "about a hundred Roman pounds" of myrrh and aloes mixed together. A hundred Roman pounds is a king's burial spice budget. Ordinary first-century burials used a tiny fraction of that. He has gone from a man who came in the dark to a man who openly mourns a condemned criminal under the eyes of the same council he once served on. The arc is quiet and it costs him everything. The "by night" man becomes, by John 19, a public witness.
Supporting cross-references
Discussion questions
- Sit with the doubled meaning of Nicodemus coming "by night." If you were on a council that had begun to oppose Jesus, what would you have risked by going to him at all? What does it tell you that John refuses to flatten the detail into a single meaning?
- Read Ezekiel 36:25-27 alongside John 3:5. How does it change your sense of Jesus's words about water and the Spirit when you hear them as the fulfillment of a prophecy Nicodemus already taught from?
- Imagine you are a 1st-century Jew under Roman occupation, paying the temple tax in Tyrian shekels and walking past Roman army altars to do it. How does "God so loved the world" sound on a first hearing in that life?
- Trace Nicodemus across his three appearances in John 3, John 7:50-52 and John 19:39. What changed in him between the night visit and the hundred pounds of burial spice? What part of his arc do you recognize in your own?
Further reading
- The Gospel According to John, Volume 1 (Anchor Bible)— Raymond E. BrownDetailed reading of the Nicodemus dialogue and the "anothen" wordplay; argues for the unity of John 3.
- The Gospel According to St John (Black's New Testament Commentary)— Andrew LincolnTreats Nicodemus as the most carefully developed minor character in the gospel; traces the arc across all three appearances.
- Jewish Encyclopedia entry on PhariseesPublic-domain reference work; helpful for understanding the Pharisees as a lay reform movement rather than the priesthood.
- Gospel of John Overview— BibleProjectAnimated overview that maps the misunderstanding pattern across the dialogues with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, and Martha.