Born Again (22)

John 3:5 (D)

The correct interpretation is that Jesus is talking about a single birth. Physical birth is assumed, and this is why spiritual birth applies in the first place. The theological, grammatical, and contextual reasons already discussed above all apply here as support for this view, but we need not repeat them. Instead, we will make only one more point to make sense of the "water" in verse 5.

In verse 10, Jesus refers to Nicodemus as "Israel's teacher," and because of this he is supposed to "understand these things." We infer from this that the Old Testament already contains what Jesus is teaching here. With this in mind, we find the following in Ezekiel 36:25-27, where God declares through the prophet:

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 your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

What is described in this promise is consistent with what Jesus teaches in John 3, and here the application of water and spirit is considered as one act, and this one act is to be performed by God and not man. It is likely that Jesus expects Nicodemus to recall this passage and come to understand what he means by "born again," or what is the equivalent, "born of water and spirit."

With all this talk about what it means to be born of water and spirit, I do not want anyone to lose sight of what our passage is really about, what Jesus is really telling us, and that is, "You must be born again." Unless a person is born again, or born from above, and unless God sprinkles this person with water and puts a new spirit into him, he will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, when you assess the condition of your soul, the first question to ask yourself is not whether you have made a decision to reform your life, or whether you have repeated a prayer of salvation, but the question is whether God has performed this cleansing action in you, whether he has given birth to you in the spirit, and whether he has thus adopted you through Jesus Christ.

(to be continued)