Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Conversion from John 3:5-21
“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 wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.
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 their 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.’ ”
This is the Word of the Lord.
I’m sure there are some here with memories long enough to remember when there were Datsun automobiles. They expired a number of decades ago and were replaced by Nissan. Nissan was the motor company, but the baseline car was the Datsun. Somewhere in Japan the decision was made that Datsun would die and Nissan would live.
So today we have Nissan Sentras and so on, and Datsun is pretty well gone. When this happened in North America, it was accompanied by endless ads on the radio and television and newspaper ads about the born-again Datsun. What does born again mean? Does it mean you change the name of the product?
About the same time, there were a number of remarkable figures in the United States who changed their political allegiance. A Republican or two became Democrat and vice versa, and we started reading in the press of the born-again Democrat or whatever. The equivalent here, the born-again progressive conservative or liberal or whatever.
Then, occasionally in the press then and now, you sometimes read of slightly snide remarks. “Well, she’s a born-again Christian. I mean, there are Christians and some of them are actually quite nice. Then there are born-again Christians,” with the overtone being screwball, fanatic, over the top, experientially driven. “They think they’re better than other people.” Fundamentalists. A born-again Christian.
In other words, the term conjures up all kinds of associations. The same expression might actually be found on the lips of somebody who was brought up in the church somewhere (it doesn’t really matter where and it doesn’t even matter what denomination) who somewhere along the line came into a living, personal faith in Christ and might say, “I was sort of a Christian once. Then I was born again. Now I really know Christ.” In that context, suddenly born again has rosette overtones. It’s a happy expression, isn’t it?
What does this mean? Fanatical? Transformed? Changed name? Changed political party? It’s not a transparent expression in our society anymore. If you speak to a neighbor and you say, “I’m a born-again Christian,” you can almost see the glazed look come over their eyes because they don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
So far as we know, when the expression was first coined on Jesus’ lips (we don’t find it before this point), Nicodemus didn’t have a clue either, so we’re in good company. Yet, surely, part of our job is to understand what these sorts of expressions mean, and it turns out this expression and related ones are scattered through the New Testament with different writers. Peter can bring up something similar, and Paul brings up something similar. Even when the expression itself is not used, it’s not far behind some of the descriptions of the Spirit’s transforming work in our lives.
What I propose to do tonight is outline four things. First, what Jesus says about the new birth. Secondly, why Jesus speaks so authoritatively about the new birth. Thirdly, what Jesus must do to bring about the new birth. Fourthly, why God sent Jesus to bring us the new birth.
1. What Jesus says about the new birth.
Verses 1 to 10. We’re introduced to this chap, Nicodemus. We’re told he’s a Pharisee, so he would have been held, by and large, in pretty high regard, a religious conservative, a member of the Jewish ruling counsel that was made up of some priests and some of the aristocracy and some wealthy people and a few others. There is no indication anywhere that he was a priest, but certainly amongst the sophisticated and learned.
Down in verse 10, he’s called Israel’s teacher. The expression is a title. It doesn’t just mean you are a teacher in Israel. You are the teacher of Israel. It’s literally what it means. It was a bit like saying, “You are the Grand Mufti,” or “You are the Regius Professor of Divinity.” He was way up there in the theological pecking order. He was learned, he was powerful, he was from a religiously conservative and confessional group, and we’re told he came to Jesus at night.
What does that mean? You can imagine there have been all kinds of speculations. Some have said, for instance, he came by night because, quite frankly, he was a bit embarrassed to come to Jesus full-bore in the daylight. At the end of the day, Jesus was a rural, Galilean, lay preacher, and he was the Regius Professor of Divinity, so why would he be consulting Jesus? He sort of snuck in at night. That’s what some have suggested. I don’t believe it for a minute.
The reason, of course, is later on, when this man is depicted, he’s always depicted as not really caring too much what people think. At the end of chapter 7, for example, when a lot of people are willing to condemn Jesus, he pipes up and says, “Say, does our law condemn anybody without a fair hearing?” He’s willing to take them all on. After Jesus dies, it’s this man Nicodemus along with Joseph of Arimathea who approached the governor to get permission to bury Jesus in a proper tomb. He’s a man who seems to be quite uninhibited in his willingness to confront public opinion.
If we want to know what night means, why John comments on the time.… Unless you think it’s merely a chronological detail, then you have to look at how John uses the symbolism of light and darkness and day and night elsewhere and his book is full of it. Do you remember, for example, at the Last Supper when Jesus finally tells Judas Iscariot to leave? We’re told, “Judas went out and it was night.”
That’s not a chronological marker either. It’s a way of saying he went out into the awful darkness of eternity. He’s the one whom Jesus describes elsewhere as a son of perdition. It would have been better for him if he had not been born. Even in this passage, yes, in the first verse or two, we have noticed that it’s night, but at the end of the passage in verses 19 to 21, John is still playing with light and darkness. Do you remember? “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
In other words, when Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, doubtless it was night, but John the evangelist, the writer, sees there is a symbol-ladenness to this. Nicodemus, for all his brilliance and his authority and so on, really doesn’t have a clue what he’s asking. He doesn’t really understand what Jesus is going to say. He’s still a lost man. He’s just encased in darkness.
In fact, it’s hinted at even in the very first question. He approaches him with quite a remarkable degree of respect. He says, “Rabbi, we know that 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 the second century a century after this, rabbi meant you were ordained or the equivalent of it in the ancient Jewish world (you were revved up), but at this point there was no official ordination in rabbinic circles.
It was an informal category, so for the Regius Professor of Divinity to approach a traveling itinerant from Galilee and say, “My teacher …” That’s what rabbi means. In one sense, it’s really very remarkable. It shows a certain kind of gentleness and courtesy in approach that is all together commendable.
Yet, on the other hand, there is a slight pompous tone. You can’t help but see it. It’s this first-person plural. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, we do.” People have tried to explain that one in all kinds of ways, too. Maybe he didn’t come all by himself. Maybe he brought a whole school of students with him, so it was a collective we and there’s no edge of pomposity to it.
There are two problems with that. First, there’s no mention of the students, and secondly, there’s another verse a little later in the passage that shows Jesus picks up on it. We’ll come back to it. We’ll come back to it in a few moments. As far as I can see, he comes to Jesus with a certain amount of respect all right, but at the same time, he wants to preserve his own turf.
“We have considered this, we have, and we have come to the conclusion that your miracles are a cut up. There are always in every generation some faith healers who are absolute charlatans, but the kind of thing you’re doing is so transparently miraculous, transparently, unavoidably, irresistibly, and unquestionably miraculous that this has to be from God. It’s wonderful. We know, therefore, you are a teacher come from God.”
What will Jesus say? What he says is quite remarkable! He says, “My dear Nicodemus, I tell you the truth, you can’t see the kingdom of God unless you’re born again.” You say, “How does that answer respond to the comment? What’s going on here?” Many commentaries have an entire reconstruction.
They begin to presuppose Jesus discerns what Nicodemus was going to say was something like, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God because no one could do these miracles unless God were with him, so tell us, are you the ultimate Messiah who is going to bring in the kingdom or are you not?”
Then Jesus responds, “Nicodemus, it’s not so much a question, at this point, of whether I am the Messiah who brings in the kingdom, but how do you get into it yourself? I have to tell you, you can’t get into this kingdom or see this kingdom unless you’re born again.” That makes sense of the flow, but you have to put in an awful lot of sentences to pull it off, don’t you?
I think there’s a far easier way to understand it. Jesus really is answering directly. If you take that sort of interpretation I’ve just given, what it means is Jesus is one of these sorts of “discuss” people, one of these sorts of interlocutors. He never lets you finish your question before he has to jump in and gives you the answer to what he thinks you’re going to ask. It makes Jesus out, at the end of the day, to be just plain rude.
I don’t think that’s the most likely interpretation. No. I think Jesus nicely waited until Nicodemus had finished his comment, and then he actually gave him a direct response to his comment. In other words, Nicodemus has said, in effect, “We see the power of God here. We see in these miracles God’s active reign. We see the kingdom in that sense. We see this is really from God, that you are a teacher from God, and what you are doing is the active reign of God.”
That’s what he’s saying, in effect. “This is what we see, we do.” Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, my dear Nicodemus, you don’t see a blessed thing. You don’t see the kingdom. You’re claiming to see it, but you can’t see it. You can’t really see it unless you’re born again.” In other words, Nicodemus is acting as if he has discerned something profound because he has seen the miracles, but Jesus is saying, “You might have seen the miracles, but you haven’t really seen the kingdom yet.”
It’s a bit like what happens, in fact, in the previous chapter. There’s a thematic connection. Jesus turns the water into wine, and we’re told, after all, the MC didn’t know the water had been turned into wine. He thought the wine was really wonderful. Other people bring out the best stuff at the beginning, and when people are pretty sloshed, then they bring out the lesser stuff.
No. “You saved the best up until the last.” But the text says all the servants knew where this water turned into wine came from. They all knew, but at the end of it, it doesn’t say, “They all saw Jesus was truly the Messiah.” It doesn’t say that. It says, “The disciples knew it was a sign.” They saw his glory. The others didn’t see his glory; they saw a miracle. They didn’t see his glory.
I think Jesus is simply following up on that theme. He says, in effect, “You claim to see the kingdom of God. You’ve seen the miracles, but Nicodemus, you can’t see the kingdom unless you’re born again.” There’s an ambiguity in the word again. It can mean again or from above. The same word is used both ways, and Jesus could be meaning it both ways. There’s an ambiguity built right into the text.
Nicodemus comes back in verse 4, and he says, “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!” Does this mean Nicodemus is really thick and can’t see a metaphor when one stares him in the face? That’s the way some people take it.
Dear old Nicodemus thought Jesus was speaking literally. He had to somehow get shrunk. The amazing shrunken Pharisee. Mummy, I shrunk the Pharisee and reinserted him right into the womb of Mummy again and come out all over again. Dear old Nicodemus was stuck thinking at a very literalistic level.
I don’t think so. You don’t get to be Regius Professor of Divinity in ancient Judaism without being able to spot the odd metaphor. A man of his scholarly attainment would have automatically have had to have memorized all of what we call the Old Testament in Hebrew plus another body of oral tradition twice as long again. That means he knew something about text and metaphor and language. He’s not going to be stuck with crass literalism.
I think he’s responding to Jesus in kind. Jesus says, “You have to be born again,” and he knows it’s some sort of metaphor but he doesn’t have a clue just exactly what kind it is. It sounds as if Jesus is promising a brand new beginning, but how can you have a new beginning? The one thing you can’t do is turn back the clock. You can’t do that. Lord Alfred Tennyson understood that. “Ah for a man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be!”
The poet John Clare understood that when he wrote, “If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.” Hasn’t anybody with even an ounce of moral sensitivity felt that sometimes? Sometimes you wake up squirming in the middle of the night and you remember some really asinine thing you did or said, some stupid thing. Sometimes it’s a stupid thing where you simply made a fool of yourself. I mean, where you know you really did something unbearably cruel, and if only life had a second edition, wouldn’t you go back and correct the proofs?
Some nights you would, and there are sober moments when you think, “Probably I’d do all the same stupid things all over again, too.” In any case, the moving hand having writ moves on. The one thing you can’t do is go back and do it again. “How can you enter your mother’s womb a second time and be born?”
He’s not asking something crass and literal. He’s saying, “How do you start over in that sense? How do you have a fresh origin? How do you begin all over again? You can’t do it. Don’t promise so much. If that’s what it takes to see the kingdom, to start all over again with pristine purity and absolute privilege, then no one is going to see the kingdom. You’re promising too much, Rabbi Jesus.”
But Jesus won’t back down, so he repeats verse 5 in slightly different terms. He says, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” That expression, born of water and the Spirit, as you can well imagine, has generated endless interpretations.
Some have thought it means you have to be born naturally and physically where the water refers, perhaps, to the amniotic sac. The water breaks, and then you’re born. Then you’re born spiritually, so there needs two births. I scanned ancient literature, both Jewish and Greco-Roman, to find places where natural birth is described as being born of water, and I can’t find them. I don’t think that’s what it means. I don’t think that’s the way it would be read in the first century.
Others think the water is a symbol for male semen. It means you’re born of life-giving semen from the man, but wherever that symbolism is used (it’s used rarely) its symbolism is drops of water not just born of water. Others think it refers to Christian baptism. You’re born of water and the Spirit. It’s sort of a baptismal regeneration, and there are entire denominations that argue that point from this particular text.
In verse 10, Jesus chews Nicodemus out for not understanding what he should have understood as the teacher of Israel. What he should have understood as the teacher of Israel is the Old Testament. He should have understood the Old Testament structure, and there simply is no Old Testament structure that simply teaches baptismal regeneration. “This is what you should have understood.” It seems like an anachronistic way of reading the text. It’s trying to read certain developments in later Christian reflection back into the New Testament.
There have been other interpretations as well. I’ll mention one more. Some point out later in the New Testament biblical writers can speak of the washing of water through the Word and think, therefore, this might mean, “Unless you’re born of the Word and of the Spirit.” Well, that’s certainly a great New Testament pairing, but this presupposes every time you find the word Spirit in a metaphorical context it conjures up the Word and that just isn’t true.
This presupposes a certain metaphor always functions on a certain word, but in fact, metaphors can be used in a lot of different ways. Take the word lion, for example. Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He’s royal. On the other hand, the Devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, which means he’s savage.
In other words, the same word lion might conjure up royalty and it might conjure up savagery. It depends on the context. Just because the word water is used here, unless there’s some definitive reason for thinking it calls forth the notion of Word, then we should not import Titus into this text.
I think the strongest clue for understanding this expression, born of water and the Spirit, is twofold. First, if you compare verse 3 and verse 5 line by line, then you find out what is parallel to what. Verse 3: “I tell you the truth …” Verse 5: “I tell you the truth …” Are you following? Verse 3: “No one can see the kingdom of God …” Verse 5: “No one can enter the kingdom of God …” A minor change. Probably not hugely significant.
Verse 3: “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Verse 5: “… unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” Because those verses are so close, this suggests that born again is parallel to born of water and the Spirit. In other words, it suggests you don’t have two births here yet. You just have one born againness, and it’s born of water and the Spirit. All right. You can have two births. It’s some sort of metaphor (born of water and the Spirit) that is parallel to born again.
The second clue is, as I’ve said, verse 10. The second clue is verse 10 where Jesus berates Nicodemus for not understanding. The question now becomes.… On what basis should Nicodemus have understood? He should have understood on the basis of the area where he was, in fact, a renowned scholar. Namely, his reading of the Old Testament and Jewish theology.
Where does the Old Testament speak of being born again? Nowhere directly, but it does link water and Spirit quite a number of times. In fact, regularly when water and Spirit are linked in the Old Testament, it’s in anticipation of what is coming on the last day. For example, in Ezekiel 36, there is a promise of a new covenant.
God says, “In those days, I will sprinkle them with clean water,” which is a way of ceremoniously making them clean, “… and I will pour out my Spirit upon them.” They will not only be cleaned up, but they will be empowered. This linkage of water and Spirit is pretty common in the Old Testament. They will be cleaned up and they will be empowered.
All that Jesus has added to that is a metaphor of new birth. The essential symbolism in this new birth is a new origin that cleans you up and empowers you to live differently, and unless you are cleaned up and empowered by the Spirit of God to live differently, I tell you, you cannot see and you cannot enter the kingdom of God. That’s what the text says.
Then, Jesus explains with a couple of metaphors. He says (verse 6), “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.’ ” What he means by this is that pigs give birth to pigs and elephants give birth to elephants and orangutans give birth to orangutans and hummingbirds lie their eggs and gender more hummingbirds.
Like produces like. Kind produces kind. So human beings (flesh) produce human beings. That’s what we produce. As far as I know, there are no human beings who have engendered angels. We produce human beings. That’s what we do, but we human beings are a sinful, rebellious lot. That’s what is meant by world in John’s gospel, the human moral order made by God in rebellion against God. Sinners produce sinners.
We’re a lost lot, so how are we going to produce saints? How are we going to produce people who are sons of God in some sense such that we know God and walk with him and are conformed to him and live by his life and under his rule and in his light and delight in holiness? How on earth is that going to happen? “Nicodemus, don’t you see you shouldn’t be surprised when I tell you that you must be born again because natural birth sure isn’t going to do it. Natural birth plus all your erudite education and all of your detailed knowledge of the Lord still doesn’t transform your heart.
You’re a good man by all the social structures of this world, Nicodemus, but I have to tell you, you cannot see and you cannot enter the kingdom because what you have to have (what anyone has to have) is being cleaned up by God and empowered to live differently, to live in a different sphere, a different way, a transformation that comes from a new nature that only God himself can give you by his Spirit. That’s what you must have.”
In case Nicodemus still hasn’t got it, he says, partly because the word for Spirit can mean wind depending on the context, “Look at it this way, Nicodemus.” Maybe at that moment there was a tumbleweed blown by the wind down the Jerusalem street. Maybe at that point Jesus said, “Look at that tumbleweed, Nicodemus.” Or maybe there was a sycamore tree whose leaves were swaying in the wind. I don’t know, but there was some stir of the wind, in any case, because what he says is, “Nicodemus, you can’t see the wind and you can’t explain its origins.”
They knew even less than we do about highs in the Arabian Desert and lows over the Mediterranean and cyclones and anticyclones. This isn’t a physics question or a meteorology question. At the end of the day, when the tumbleweed goes by or the sycamore leaves sway back and forth, you don’t sit around and say, “Evidence of a high in the Arabian Desert.” You don’t think in those terms, do you? You see the results.
You don’t deny the wind is operating. You see its power. The question of origin or whatever doesn’t enter your head. You don’t actually see the wind. What is the wind? It’s just moving air. How do you see the air? You might in places like LA or Beijing, but usually you don’t see the air, and even then, you don’t really see the air; you see all the impurities in the air. You don’t see the wind, but you see its effects. You can’t deny the effects.
“So it is,” Jesus says, “with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Do you hear that? You may not be able to unpack in great explanatory detail exactly what the new birth is, but you see its effects. It is unthinkable, according to this teaching of Jesus, that someone is born again and you don’t see any effects, as unthinkable as there should be wind without seeing its effects. It’s unthinkable.
Where the Spirit of God comes, where people’s lives are cleaned up, where they are empowered to live differently, you see the effects. Vocabulary changes. Priorities change. Your goals change. Your loves change. What you dislike changes. When you’re born again, life changes. In other words, the promise of the gospel includes not only justification in which God declares us to be just because of what Christ has borne in our behalf on the cross, but it includes also regeneration, rebirth, renewal.
There is transformation. It’s not just that we have a new legal standing before God. We are empowered by the Spirit of God to change. You can claim new legal standing before God till the cows come home, but where is the evidence of the wind? “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit, Nicodemus. That’s why I have to tell you, you may be the teacher of Israel, but you can’t see the kingdom and you can’t enter the kingdom unless you, too, are born again.”
“How can these things be?”
“You’re Israel’s teacher and you don’t understand this?” For the fact of the matter is when you pour over the records of first-century Judaism and related literature, there is a huge amount of speculation and theological reflection and understanding on many, many, many Old Testament issues, not least law and what God requires.
Even what the final age will be like and how do you live under this or that legal principle and how it works out in life and what is an appropriate approach to the temple? Many, many issues are worked through in enormous theological detail (good, bad, or indifferent), but what there is surprisingly little reflection on is that array of Old Testament passages that promise the coming of the Spirit in life-transforming power. Relatively little. “You’re the teacher of Israel, Nicodemus, and you don’t understand this?” That’s what Jesus said about the new birth.
2. Why Jesus speaks so authoritatively about the new birth.
Verses 11 to 13. Notice carefully in verse 11, when I read it, how Jesus himself now uses the first-person plural. “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.”
Does this mean now Jesus is associating his disciples with him? I don’t think so, because the whole evidence of John’s gospel is that, at this juncture, the disciples don’t understand very much, thank you. They really don’t. In fact, that already picks up a theme in chapter 2 as well. In chapter 2, when Jesus declares he himself is the temple, John acknowledges the opponents didn’t have a clue. Jesus’ own disciples didn’t have a clue, but after he had risen from the dead, then they understood he was talking about himself and they believed the Scriptures.
They began to put things together, but at this juncture, they don’t have a clue, and that’s shown later on in the chapter. It’s shown in chapter 4 at the well. It’s shown in chapter 5. It’s shown again and again. The disciples don’t have a clue at this stage. They’re loyal to him. They understand some basics. They understand very little. To suggest Jesus is associating his own disciples as knowledgeable witnesses to the truth simply wouldn’t be accurate with respect to the context.
Other scholars of more critical bent.… What they say is, “You see? John has it wrong here. This is not really Jesus speaking. This is really later theologians and Christians in the church, and they’re read back anachronistically onto Jesus’ lips. You know, ‘We Christians understand; you poor, ignorant Jews don’t.’ It’s we later Christians read back into the mouth of Jesus, and that’s what’s really going on here. John has a historical detail wrong. This is an anachronism.”
Maybe. I can think of all kinds of reasons why that’s not very likely, but it seems to me it misses the obvious point for anybody with any sort of literary eye. You see, Nicodemus has approached Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent from God, we do.” Jesus says, “We know one or two things, too, we do.”
I think Jesus is simply literarily using Nicodemus’ first-person language right back at him. It’s a rebuke to the implicit arrogance Nicodemus has when he thinks he sees the kingdom and Jesus is forced to tell him, “You don’t see anything. You can’t really see what’s going on here. You can’t see the power of God at work when all you see is miracles and you can’t see the new birth. You don’t understand what’s going on.”
No, no, no. “We see what’s going on,” Jesus says, and having made his point with the first-person plural, he immediately switches to the first-person singular. He says (verse 12), “I have spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe.” In Jesus’ view, the new birth is an earthly thing. It comes from heaven, but it takes place amongst sinners down here on earth. It takes place down here.
“You’re finding it hard to believe me when I speak of the work of God as it takes place down here. How, then, will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? Supposing I tell you, instead, what the throne room of God looks like.… Supposing I tell you how the angelic orders are ordered.… Supposing I tell you something a little more profound about Trinitarian relationships, will you swallow that? You can’t even swallow the new birth and that happens here!”
Then he makes his point. “No one has ever gone into heaven …” That is, to check it all out. “If the angels themselves hide their faces before the throne of God daring not to look on the unshielded glory but with bowed heads cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,’ how is some earthborn sinner, earthbound sinner, going to visit heaven for a little weekend and check it out and come back and tell us?”
No. The only one who has been there and has come here, the only exception, is the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man. In other words, Jesus claims what he is saying he has brought on the basis of revelation. In his case, not simply revelation because a dream has come to him or a vision. Sometimes revelation in the Old Testament does come that way, but because he himself has been there and has come.
He’s the one who, earlier on in the book, is described by the author as God’s Word, God’s self-expression. In the beginning was this Word, this divine self-expression, who was with God (God’s own fellow) and was God (God’s own self), and this Word, he goes on to say, became flesh, became a human being. He is himself a locus of the revelation.
I hasten to add there are many claims in the New Testament about the truth of the gospel that are grounded in history, something that takes place at the historical level and we have access to it by the ordinary canons of history. For example, Jesus rose from the dead. The tomb was empty. Over a period of 40 days and 40 nights, as many as 500 people saw him or touched him or ate with him in different circumstances in different configurations.
One here and two there, the 11 there and the 10 there, with 500 on a hillside in Galilee, a distraught woman, two apostles racing to the tomb. They either saw the empty tomb or they saw him or they touched him. In fact, Thomas was told, “Reach out your hand, and actually touch my wounds.”
“By the way,” he said, “I’m hungry. Give me something to eat.” They knew this resurrected apparition had to have genuine continuity with the one who went into the tomb because he had the marks of the nails and the spear thrust in his side, a unique wound in a crucified man. That was not normally done. There was genuine continuity. There is historical access to these things.
At the end of the day, our knowledge of these things depends on the witnesses who spoke and wrote and so on and whose materials were put down and they became part of what we call the New Testament, the New Testament documents. We have some access to certain things that stand right at the core of biblical Christianity because they are historical claims, and we have access to them by the historical canons of history, but there are some elements of biblical Christianity to which we have no historical access.
Even when we have historical access, it doesn’t mean we’re transformed. I mean, the Devil certainly believes Jesus rose from the dead. It doesn’t mean he’s born again. In other words, it takes more than knowledge of historical facts even when we have historical access. Beyond all the historical access we have and the written records of John actually saying, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God,” there are some things that depend on our accepting this is revelation from God.
If it’s not revelation from God, it is the most amazing load of bilge water. It’s just ridiculous. If it is revelation from God, then we’re called to bend the knee, and there’s really no logical stopping place between the two. You come down on one side or the other. You can accumulate all the reasons, and there are lots of them, for holding that it is revelation.
You can talk about the coherence of it all, the quality of Jesus’ life. You can account for many, many things once you accept this is revelation, but at the end of the day, I can’t put it in a test tube and shake it up and out pops definitive truth. It doesn’t work quite like that either. At the end of the day, it takes the work of the Spirit of God himself to convict us of our sin and enable us to see.
We’ll come pretty close to that declaration before this passage is over. We’ll come back to this point. All I’m pointing out now is, when Jesus gives his teaching on the new birth, after giving the teaching he grounds his authority so to give it in revelation. At the end of the day, I don’t think you can become a Christian (I don’t think you can really close with the Spirit of God) and know what new birth really means unless, whether you’ve thought it all out or not, you actually come to accept this is God’s self-disclosure. This is the revelation of God in his Son. That’s why Jesus speaks so authoritatively about the new birth.
3. What Jesus must do to bring about the new birth.
Verses 14 and 15: “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.” You can tell Jesus understood his interlocutor knew the Old Testament or else he wouldn’t have picked on such an obscure passage.
He doesn’t pick here on the great sacrificial tradition and what is happening on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which takes up chapter after chapter after chapter and recurs again and again and again with endless descriptions of the temple and the priesthood. He doesn’t talk anything about the great Davidic typology theme in the Psalms. No. He picks on one, small, obscure passage, Numbers 21, and he knows, of course, Nicodemus will know all about the passage because, after all, he’s Israel’s teacher, and this is what is said. It’s just a few verses.
Numbers 21:4–9: “The Israelites 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!’ ” This is the manna God had provided for them.
“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 up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.”
What is the nature of the comparison Jesus is drawing? What’s going on in the two settings that are similar? For a start, in the Old Testament, the people think they have the right to judge God. “We don’t like what’s going on here. We don’t like the food. We don’t like the way you’re looking after us.” They think they’re in the place where they can judge God.
That’s the way Nicodemus begins. “We know that you are a teacher sent from God, we do.” As if we are in the place where we can make our validations or invalidations about what the living God says and does. Do you know what the first responsibility of the sentient creature is? It’s to recognize his or her creatureliness.
That’s our first responsibility, because if we don’t recognize our creatureliness, then the alternative is we start acting as if we ourselves are God. When we start criticizing God, that’s what we’re doing, in effect. We know more than God. “God, why are you doing it like this? This is really dumb.” We’re acting as if we’re God. That’s what the people in ancient Israel did. That’s what Nicodemus was doing. God help us. That’s what we do pretty often, too, isn’t it?
Not only so, but the people were blind to all God had done in the ancient world. They had such short-term memories they didn’t remember the salvation of the Lord. He had saved them out of slavery. They had seen his miraculous power in the plagues and the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea and the splendor of Sinai, but such short-term memories!
Nicodemus, for his part, he’s heir to all this literature. He knows it all. He knows all of these stories. He has memorized them, in fact. Yet, somehow the lessons don’t really sink in, and sometimes we do the same, do we not? We know the biblical stories, and at a certain level they touch us and move us when we’re in the right frame of reference, but does that mean we live and act faithfully on the basis of all we really know?
Then there is judgment. God sends judgment. He sent it in the form of venomous snakes in the Old Testament. Well, there is lots of judgment that is described in this chapter. Here we’re told, for example, by the end of the chapter in verse 36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”
Help comes in the Old Testament by something God himself ordains and provides. God tells Moses what to do (“Put it up on a pole”) and God provides a Savior in the New Testament. Not only so, but the people didn’t have to do anything. They didn’t have to say, “Okay. I’ll earn lots and lots of brownie points. I’ll try really, really hard to be good. Then, maybe you’ll look on me with favor.”
No. They had to look to the provision God made, and they were healed of their snakebites. Likewise, under the terms of the new covenant, people don’t come to God and say, “Okay. Will you please accept me if I go to all the summer fellowships? I’ll go every cotton picking week. Will that help? Or I’ll go to church or read my Bible or whatever.” Is that what finally commends you to God or do you look to the provision God himself has made? Namely, Christ.
Even the lifting up on a pole.… There’s a certain kind of geometric analogy there, isn’t there? It was lifted up on the pole so people could look to it, but now this is the first instance of the verb to lift up in John’s gospel. It’s used four times, and every single time it’s referring to Jesus lifted up on the cross.
Later on in John’s gospel, “If I be lifted up, I will draw men to me.” This he said talking about what kind of death he would die. He wasn’t going to be shot with an Uzi submachine gun or beheaded by a machete. He was going to be crucified, lifted up, and he would die the most abhorrent death the Romans could mete out.
They had three methods of execution, and crucifixion was the worst. In shame and agony, he would be lifted up, and salvation for others would depend on looking to him. There he would bear in his own body our sins on the tree. In that sense, he transcends the bronze snake. The bronze snake doesn’t bear any sins. It’s a symbol-laden thing that points to the ultimate one who bears our death, who bears our sin as so often Jesus transcends the type.
Yes, yes, yes. The lambs were slaughtered at Passover, and symbolically our sins were laid on them. Yes, yes, I understand that, but at the end of the day, as the writer to the Hebrews says, “Do you really think the liquid viscous we call sheep’s blood actually atones for human sin? Do you really think so?”
No. It’s a symbol-laden thing that points forward to the ultimate Lamb of God who, by the shedding of his blood, dies our death as we are assigned his righteousness. In other words, the new birth Jesus talks about is grounded in the cross of Christ every bit as much as justification is.
4. Why God sent Jesus to bring about this new birth.
Verses 16 to 21. Here it would be possible to spend a lot of time, and I’m not going to. I’m going to say four quick things. The entire reason why God sent Jesus to bring about this new birth was because he loved the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son …” That he gave his Son to be the equivalent to the serpent in the Old Testament fixed up on a pole. You must follow the flow of the argument. These are the four things that must be said.
A. It is simply astonishing from a biblical perspective that God loves us.
There was a time when people found it difficult to believe God loves and, in particular, that God loves them, but there have been so many changes in the culture since that period in Western history that nowadays people take a rather different stance.
“Of course God loves me. I’m nice. I may even be cute. It’s his job to love us, isn’t it? Of course he loves me. I’m a pretty good conversation partner, and it’s his job in any case. His job is not to be angry. Oh, there are some nasty, right-wing, born-again, bigoted Christians who hold that God is angry; nevertheless, I believe God is a God of love. It’s his job to love me.”
They find it very easy to believe God is a God of love, but in fact, the Bible takes just the opposite stance. It insists God loves us, but it insists it in such a way as to say, “It is a shocker that he loves us.” The Lord is slow to anger, plenteous in mercy, and abounding in loving kindness.
The wrath of God everywhere in the Old Testament, as in the New, is presupposed granted what kind of people we are, granted that we want to go our own independent way, granted that we are the world, and the world in John’s gospel doesn’t simply mean a big place or lots of people. It does not simply mean the created order. It means the created order in moral defiance of the Creator. That’s a shocker!
Our life comes from him, and now we want to stand in judgment of him? We want to shake our puny fists in his face and be gods ourselves or choose our own gods or become completely independent? What we’re doing is cutting ourselves off from the one who gives us life. What is there, then, but death, and God loves us anyway.
Usually, when we love, we are declaring the loveliness of the loved. When I say I love my wife, I’m also declaring that I find her lovely. When we’re told in John 3 and in John 5 the Father loves the Son, certainly that is presupposed. The Father finds the Son lovely. When we’re told in John 14:31 the whole world must know the Son loves the Father, the Son finds the Father lovely.
But when we read, “God so loved the world,” God does not find the world lovely. He loves the world because he’s that kind of God. When, with perfect holiness, with immaculate justice, with absolutely impartial integrity he could condemn us all, in fact, he sends the Son to bring us new birth grounded in his bearing our sins in his own body on the tree. Why? Because God so loved the world. It is a shocking thing in the Bible that God loves us.
B. The measure of God’s love for us is Jesus.
The Greek text literally reads, “For God thus loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” The measure of his love for us is Jesus. This one-with-him Son who from endless eternal ages was always in the deepest spiritual, ontological communion with the Father in a perfect bliss of eternal triune love, he gave him. The measure of God’s love for us is not that we’re so wonderful; the measure of God’s love for us is that, to redeem us, he gave his Son.
The more you think of and understand and ponder the intimacy of the eternal triune God, the more you understand and ponder and think of the glories of the Son, what it cost the eternal Son to lay aside his heavenly robes of untainted glory to become one with us and then die the death of an accursed sinner that we might go free, you will understand not only the love of the Son for us but the love of the Father in that he gave his Son.
C. The purpose of God’s love for us is that we might have life.
These verses speak in a variety of ways along these lines. “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.” Or to change the language a bit, verse 17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Or verse 18: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already …”
Have light, be saved, not be condemned.… Because the understanding is, apart from this sending of the Son, we don’t have life. We have death. We’re not saved. We’re lost. If we don’t believe, we’re already condemned. That’s already done. It’s not as if God comes to us in the person of his Son and says, “A neutral bunch. I’ll save this one and damn that one. Save this one and damn that one.” He comes to us, and we’re all damned. We’re all lost. We’re all justly condemned. We start off not believing.
What does verse 36 say? “Whoever does not believe the Son, whoever disobeys the Son, the wrath of God is on him.” We’re already a lost breed, but his purpose in sending the Son was to save us which, of course, means the rejection of the Son is all the worse, isn’t it? It means rejecting the only means of salvation that has come to us. That’s what the writer to the Hebrews says when he comments at the beginning of chapter 2, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”
D. The means by which we come to enjoy this love is faith.
Verse 16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him …” Verse 18: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already.” Then you see the whole thing is hidden again in this strange little light-darkness metaphor in verses 19 to 21. It is wonderful how carefully the writer writes.
He breaks the parallelism to get across the point. Listen. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world …” Through Jesus. Later on in chapter 8, he will say, “I am the light of the world.” That theme was already introduced in the prologue in chapter 1. “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light …”
We like to go our own way. We’re a bit embarrassed by Jesus. He’s claiming a bit too much. The darkness of our own independence, of our own idolatry, of our own deep self-love devours us. We love darkness instead of light because our deeds are evil. Evil not necessarily in a complete sociological sense but in a much deeper and worse sense. They’re evil before God because we live our existence without reference to the one who has made us. That’s the very heart of idolatry.
Even in our self-righteousness and our efforts to do good, all we’re doing is piling up different kinds of evil. We might be sociologically philanthropic, but at the end of the day, if we’re doing it so we can pat ourselves on the back and shove our fists in God’s face and sing with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way,” it’s still evil. It’s still evil. The first responsibility of creatures is to recognize their creatureliness, and that means recognizing God’s creatorness, to recognize the sheer Godness of God.
The mark of idolatry is we don’t begin there. When the light finally does come and makes its claims and exposes our secret motives and corrupt hidden things, we love the darkness. Verse 20 says, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” That’s why Jesus becomes so intensely embarrassing. Because he does expose our darkness. He won’t let us get away with it.
That is why in the next chapter, for example, when Jesus is talking with the Samaritan woman, though he is ever so gentle, before he goes to the next stage in the conversation he says to her, “Woman, go get your husband.”
“I’m not married.”
“You’re saying the truth. You’ve been married five times, and the one you’re living with now is not your husband. You are speaking the truth.” Why does he embarrass her? Why doesn’t he just talk about forgiveness and be done with it? Because, you see, Jesus won’t do that. His light exposes our darkness, and for some, that might be a really messed up sex life.
For others, it will be our lust for power, the brutality within our own family, our deceitful hearts, our love for promotion, our endless self-seeking, our failure to serve, our failure to pray, our endless love for more and more and more, or the way we interact with others so we always have to be at the center of the universe.
He comes along to a Zacchaeus and condemns him for his corruption and will not let it go. In each case, he comes to the person where the sin is the biggest, and he exposes it because he’s the light. It’s what the light does, and we dirty creatures go away and hide from the light for fear that our deeds will be exposed.
What does verse 21 say by contrast? “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that …” What does the text say? “… so that it may be plainly seen that he actually walks in the light”? No. That would have preserved the parallelism, but that would presuppose, then, whether you walk in the darkness or whether you walk in the light, it all finally depends just on me and how I live.
The language is too subtle for that. The one who runs from the light does so because he’s afraid his deeds will be exposed. The one who comes to the light so that it may be plainly seen that what he has done has been done through God. God gives the new birth. God gives the transformation. God changes us.
That’s why Christianity is always, always, always corrupted and corroded whenever we try to reduce it merely to a set of rules. You make some sort of decision for Jesus. Now you’re in and have your escape pass out of hell. After that, hang in there. We’re going to have rules. Even some of us who really do have a pretty good understanding of the gospel, as soon as we think we have a really, really good understanding of the gospel, we’re in danger of losing it because as soon as you start thinking you have a really, really good understanding of the gospel, then you start congratulating yourself for having a good understanding of the gospel.
Then pride and self-centeredness is slipping back in through the back door, isn’t it? No. Where the Spirit is flowing in full measure, we like to come to the light. Not because we have such brilliant understandings of the gospel. Not because we’re such wonderful people. When we come to this kind of light, we do so only because what we’re doing is being done through God. It’s being done by the transforming work of the Spirit of God.
All of our lives look a little different. At the end of the day, people do not obey Christ if they’re Christians because there are a whole lot of social rules, but because they love Christ. That’s the new birth. It has changed our loves, our directions, our orientations. Some people say to me, “I don’t think I want to become a Christian. I wouldn’t like to live the way you live.”
Well, you don’t become a Christian by living the way I live, but when you become a Christian, you start living differently because you want to. It’s new birth. It’s the power of the Spirit of God that cleanses and transforms, and that is done through God. Received in faith, done through God. Let us pray.
There may well be some people here this evening, heavenly Father, for whom everything I have said stands just outside their experience. Have mercy upon them. Open their eyes. Even now, where they sit, enable them by your Spirit to pray, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”
For the many who have been Christians a long time, O Lord God, forgive us our sins and restore us to the fundamentals of Christian faith. So fill us afresh with your Spirit that we will want with our whole beings to please the Lord Christ precisely because he has regenerated us and we have already the Spirit of God, the down payment of the promised inheritance. Enable us to turn away from all that is mediocre and shoddy and to press on for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen.
