John 3 - the "born again" mystery

John 3 provides a concise, if enigmatic, summary of what has come to be the core of evangelical theology. Mankind is flesh, food, earthy. He is, by all accounts, an animal that is born, feeds reproduces, ages and dies. According to John, though, there is a possibility for more, and that more is hard to embrace because, like the wind, it comes and goes invisibly from and to wherever it will. It is therefore different from the material world that we sense on a daily basis and so it must be apprehended differently. The spirit comes to the one who believes, the one who is, as it were, born over again into a spiritual realm where all is new and different.

Nicodemus apparently comes prepared to be inspired to something more than he has so far experienced as a mortal being; he recognizes in Jesus a teacher who possesses something more than life has offered him so far. He comes at night because the niceties of his formal life as a person of importance in the ruling class would see his conversation with Jesus as a sign of weakness.

 

But Nicodemus apparently doesn't quite get it. “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, 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?”

The switch into “you people” at this point signals a familiar complaint aimed not specifically at Nicodemus, but at a Jewish leadership that is leading God's people astray and doesn't recognize a prophetic word when it hears one.

We were required to memorize John 3:16 as children: “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.” According to John, the door to eternal life is opened only to those who believe that Jesus is authentically proclaiming the will of God, the Father. 

We easily forget that the message is directed specifically to the ruling class Nicodemus represents. Jesus seems to be trying to revive in his coreligionists an authentic relationship to God that has been lost, proclaiming himself as the messenger sent to inaugurate this revival.

It's all very hard to comprehend, naturally, being day-to-day biological creatures of the 21st Century that we are, and so steeped in worldly things and the Protestant work ethic that the vision of another world seems almost absurd. I sometimes envy people who grew up in religions that recognize the interconnectedness among things—earth, life, spirit—and think that had they heard Jesus' “born again” metaphor, they would have understood it more easily.

John the Baptist re-enters to end this chapter and John puts into his mouth another way of explaining what Jesus has been trying to clarify for Nicodemus:

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, but no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted it 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 everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

The core of thought in John 3 is hard to miss; accepting Christ's authenticity as God's son is key, ergo walking by choice in the light of his teaching ministry must surely follow naturally.