Biblion Bible Commentary
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You Must Be Born Anew
John 3:1-8
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. · WEB
A senior teacher comes at night with a compliment and is told he cannot even see the kingdom.
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night John 3:1–2.
Everything about the introduction is standing. A Pharisee, which means seriousness about the law; a ruler, which means a member of the council; and later in the book, one of its recognized teachers. He has as much religious credit as a man could hold.
By night is the writer's note, and this Gospel does not use light and dark carelessly. It may be prudence — a councilor visiting the man who overturned the temple tables would not want witnesses. It may be timing, since the rabbis reckoned night the best hours for study. The book leaves both and lets the word do its work, and it will mention his night visit twice more John 7:50 John 19:39.
"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him" John 3:2.
The opening is generous, careful and completely inadequate — and the reader has just been warned about faith built on observing signs John 2:23. We know is the language of a man who has assessed the evidence and reached a favorable verdict, and a teacher come from God is the highest category his system has.
The reply does not engage with any of it.
"Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can't see God's Kingdom" John 3:3.
Nothing has been asked. The answer is to the question the man came with and did not put, and it goes past his compliment to his position: he cannot see it. Not enter yet — see. A trained eye is looking at the kingdom in the dark and not perceiving it, which is the prologue's complaint about the world that did not recognize him John 1:10.
The word rendered anew means both again and from above, and this Gospel uses that kind of double meaning deliberately. Nicodemus hears the first. The answer means the second, and includes the first.
"How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?" John 3:4.
The question is usually read as obtuse and is better read as despair. He is old. He has heard something that would require starting over, and he says the plainest true thing about starting over: it is not available. You cannot go back.
"Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he can't enter into God's Kingdom" John 3:5.
The pairing has been read several ways. Water may point to the baptism John was conducting a few miles away, which is the association any hearer that year would have made and which fits a chapter that goes on to discuss baptizing John 3:22–23. It may take up the prophets, where God promises to sprinkle clean water and put a new spirit within — the two together, in one promise Ezekiel 36:25–27. Those readings agree on the substance: an outward washing and an inward remaking, and the second is what the sentence is about.
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" John 3:6. The rule closes the door on Nicodemus's objection from a different side. The trouble is not that the womb is unavailable; it is that repeating a physical birth would produce more of the same thing. What is needed is a different kind of birth, and no amount of the first kind adds up to it.
"The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don't know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit" John 3:8.
One word carries both halves — the Greek for wind and for spirit is the same, and the sentence turns on the pun. What is being said is not that the Spirit is capricious but that his working is sovereign and undetectable at source. You cannot see wind. You can hear it and watch what it moves, and that is the whole of the available evidence.
Which is a difficult thing to say to a man whose life's work is knowing how things are done.
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