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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 3:5

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Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

5. of water and of the Spirit ] Christ leaves the foolish question of Nicodemus to answer itself: He goes on to explain what is the real point, and what Nicodemus has not asked, the meaning of ‘from above:’ ‘of water and (of the) Spirit.’ The outward sign and inward grace of Christian baptism are here clearly given, and an unbiassed mind can scarcely avoid seeing this plain fact. This becomes still more clear when we compare Joh 1:26; Joh 1:33, where the Baptist declares ‘I baptize with water;’ the Messiah ‘baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.’ The Fathers, both Greek and Latin, thus interpret the passage with singular unanimity. Thus once more S. John assumes without stating the primary elements of Christianity. Baptism is assumed here as well known to his reader, as the Eucharist is assumed in chap. 6. To a well-instructed Christian there was no need to explain what was meant by being born of water and the Spirit. The words therefore had a threefold meaning, past, present, and future. In the past they looked back to the time when the Spirit moved upon the water causing the birth from above of Order and Beauty out of Chaos. In the present they pointed to the divinely ordained (Joh 1:33) baptism of John: and through it in the future to that higher rite, to which John himself bore testimony.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Be born of water – By water, here, is evidently signified baptism. Thus the word is used in Eph 5:26; Tit 3:5. Baptism was practiced by the Jews in receiving a Gentile as a proselyte. It was practiced by John among the Jews; and Jesus here says that it is an ordinance of his religion, and the sign and seal of the renewing influences of his Spirit. So he said Mar 16:16, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. It is clear from these places, and from the example of the apostles Act 2:38, Act 2:41; Act 8:12-13, Act 8:36, Act 8:38; Act 9:18; Act 10:47-48; Act 16:15, Act 16:33; Act 18:8; Act 22:16; Gal 3:27, that they considered this ordinance as binding on all who professed to love the Lord Jesus. And though it cannot be said that none who are not baptized can be saved, yet Jesus meant, undoubtedly, to be understood as affirming that this was to be the regular and uniform way of entering into his church; that it was the appropriate mode of making a profession of religion; and that a man who neglected this, when the duty was made known to him, neglected a plain command of God. It is clear, also, that any other command of God might as well be neglected or violated as this, and that it is the duty of everyone not only to love the Saviour, but to make an acknowledgment of that love by being baptized, and by devoting himself thus to his service.

But, lest Nicodemus should suppose that this was all that was meant, he added that it was necessary that he should be born of the Spirit also. This was predicted of the Saviour, that he should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire, Mat 3:11. By this is clearly intended that the heart must be changed by the agency of the Holy Spirit; that the love of sin must be abandoned; that man must repent of crime and turn to God; that he must renounce all his evil propensities, and give himself to a life of prayer and holiness, of meekness, purity, and benevolence. This great change is in the Scripture ascribed uniformly to the Holy Spirit, Tit 3:5; 1Th 1:6; Rom 5:5; 1Pe 1:22.

Cannot enter into – This is the way, the appropriate way, of entering into the kingdom of the Messiah here and hereafter. He cannot enter into the true church here, or into heaven in the world to come, except in connection with a change of heart, and by the proper expression of that change in the ordinances appointed by the Saviour.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Verse 5. Of water and of the Spirit] To the baptism of water a man was admitted when he became a proselyte to the Jewish religion; and, in this baptism, he promised in the most solemn manner to renounce idolatry, to take the God of Israel for his God, and to have his life conformed to the precepts of the Divine law. But the water which was used on the occasion was only an emblem of the Holy Spirit. The soul was considered as in a state of defilement, because of past sin: now, as by that water the body was washed, cleansed, and refreshed, so, by the influences of the Holy Spirit, the soul was to be purified from its defilement, and strengthened to walk in the way of truth and holiness.

When John came baptizing with water, he gave the Jews the plainest intimations that this would not suffice; that it was only typical of that baptism of the Holy Ghost, under the similitude of fire, which they must all receive from Jesus Christ: see Mt 3:11. Therefore, our Lord asserts that a man must be born of water and the Spirit, i.e. of the Holy Ghost, which, represented under the similitude of water, cleanses, refreshes, and purifies the soul. Reader, hast thou never had any other baptism than that of water? If thou hast not had any other, take Jesus Christ’s word for it, thou canst not, in thy present state, enter into the kingdom of God. I would not say to thee merely, read what it is to be born of the Spirit: but pray, O pray to God incessantly, till he give thee to feel what is implied in it! Remember, it is Jesus only who baptizes with the Holy Ghost: see Joh 1:33. He who receives not this baptism has neither right nor title to the kingdom of God; nor can he with any propriety be termed a Christian, because that which essentially distinguished the Christian dispensation from that of the Jews was, that its author baptized all his followers with the Holy Ghost.

Though baptism by water, into the Christian faith, was necessary to every Jew and Gentile that entered into the kingdom of the Messiah, it is not necessary that by water and the Spirit (in this place) we should understand two different things: it is probably only an elliptical form of speech, for the Holy Spirit under the similitude of water; as, in Mt 3:3, the Holy Ghost and fire, do not mean two things, but one, viz. the Holy Ghost under the similitude of fire-pervading every part, refining and purifying the whole.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

To excite his spirit and attention, our Saviour again expresses the authority of his person,

I say; and twice repeats the solemn asseveration,

Verily, verily, to show the infallible certainty and importance of what he propounds, that it is a truth worthy of his most serious consideration, and to be embraced with a stedfast belief. After this preface, he declares, If any one be not born of water and the Spirit, to rectify the carnal conceit of Nicodemus about regeneration. In Joh 3:3 our Saviour compared the spiritual birth with the natural, and with respect to that a reviewed man is born a second time. But in this verse he expresses the cause and quality of the new birth, that distinguishes it from the natural birth, and resolves the vain, carnal objection of Nicodemus. He speaks not of the terrestrial, animal birth, but of the celestial and Divine; that is suitable to that principle from whence it proceeds, the Holy Spirit of God. There is a great difference among interpreters about the meaning of being

born of water. The Romanists, and rigid Lutherans, understand the water in a proper sense, for the element of baptism, and from hence infer the absolute necessity of baptism for salvation; but the exposition and conclusion are both evidently contrary to the truth. Indeed the new birth is signified, represented, and sealed by baptism, it is the soul, and substance of that sacred ceremony; and if our Saviour had only said, that whoever is born of water and the Spirit shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, it might have been congruously understood of baptism; because it is an undoubted truth, that all who are truly regenerated in baptism shall be saved. But our Saviour says, He that is not born of water and the Spirit cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven: the exclusion of the unsanctified is peremptory and universal. And our Saviour shows a manifest difference between an affirmative and negative proposition; when having declared, that whoever believeth and is baptized shall be saved; and coming to the negative, he only adds, but he that believeth not shall be damned, Mar 16:16. The reason why he does not say, Whoever is not baptized shall be condemned, is evident; for without faith it is impossible to be saved; but without baptism, even as the Romanists themselves grant, many have been saved. For if we consider the time when our Saviour spake these words, they acknowledge that believers were not then, obliged to receive the baptism of Christ for salvation; for our Saviour had this conference with him some years before his death; and they hold, that before the death of Christ baptism was not necessary, neither by virtue of Divine command, nor as a means to obtain salvation; therefore the believers that lived then might enter into heaven without baptism. They also declare, that martyrdom supplies the want of baptism; and that persons instructed in the doctrine of the gospel, and sincerely believing it, if prevented by death without being baptized, their faith and earnest desire is sufficient to qualify them for partaking of the heavenly kingdom. But if by water here be meant the elementary water of baptism, the words of our Saviour are directly contrary to what they assert; for neither the blood of martyrs, nor the desire and vow of receiving baptism, are the water of baptism, which they pretend is properly and literally named by our Saviour. And certainly, if as the apostle Peter instructs us, it is not the cleansing of the flesh in the water of baptism that says, 1Pe 3:21, it is not the mere want of it, without contempt and wilful neglect, that condemneth. By

water then we are to understand the grace of the Holy Spirit in purifying the soul, which is fitly represented by the efficacy of water. And this purifying, refreshing virtue of the Spirit is promised in the prophecies that concern the times of the Messiah, under the mystical expression of water. Thus it is twofold by Isaiah, I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground, Isa 44:3. And this is immediately explained, I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed; and the Divine birth follows, they shall spring up as among the grass. In the same manner the effects of the Holy Spirit are expressed by Ezekiel: I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; and presently after, I will put my Spirit within you, Eze 36:25,27. Our Saviour instructing a Pharisee, to whom the prophetical writings were known, expressly uses these two words, and in the same order as they are all set down there, first water, and then the Spirit, that the latter might interpret the former; for water and the Spirit, by a usual figure when two words are employed to signify the same thing, signify spiritual water, that is, his Divine grace in renewing the soul; as when the apostle says, in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, to signify the powerful Spirit. Thus John the Baptist foretold of Christ, that he should baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire, that is, with the Spirit, that has the force and efficacy of fire to refine us from our dross and corruptions. Thus our Saviour plainly instructs Nicodemus of the absolute necessity of an inward spiritual change and renovation, thereby showing the inefficacy of all the legal washings and sprinklings, that could not purify and make white one soul, which were of high valuation among the Jews. Entering into the kingdom of God, is of the same import and sense with the seeing the kingdom of God, in Joh 3:3; that is, without regeneration no man can truly be joined with the society of the church of God, nor partake of the celestial privileges and benefits belonging to it, here and hereafter.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

5. of water and of the SpiritAtwofold explanation of the “new birth,” so startling toNicodemus. To a Jewish ecclesiastic, so familiar with the symbolicalapplication of water, in every variety of way and form of expression,this language was fitted to show that the thing intended was no otherthan a thorough spiritual purification by the operation of theHoly Ghost. Indeed, element of water and operation of theSpirit are brought together in a glorious evangelical predictionof Ezekiel (Eze36:25-27), which Nicodemus might have been reminded of had suchspiritualities not been almost lost in the reigning formalism.Already had the symbol of water been embodied in an initiatoryordinance, in the baptism of the Jewish expectants of Messiah by theBaptist, not to speak of the baptism of Gentile proselytes beforethat; and in the Christian Church it was soon to become the greatvisible door of entrance into “the kingdom of God,” thereality being the sole work of the Holy Ghost (Tit3:5).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee,…. Explaining somewhat more clearly, what he before said:

except a man be born of water and of the Spirit: these are,

, “two words”, which express the same thing, as Kimchi observes in many places in his commentaries, and signify the grace of the Spirit of God. The Vulgate Latin and Ethiopic versions read, “the Holy Spirit”, and so Nonnus; and who doubtless is intended: by “water”, is not meant material water, or baptismal water; for water baptism is never expressed by water only, without some additional word, which shows, that the ordinance of water baptism is intended: nor has baptism any regenerating influence in it; a person may be baptized, as Simon Magus was, and yet not born again; and it is so far from having any such virtue, that a person ought to be born again, before he is admitted to that ordinance: and though submission to it is necessary, in order to a person’s entrance into a Gospel church state; yet it is not necessary to the kingdom of heaven, or to eternal life and salvation: such a mistaken sense of this text, seems to have given the first birth and rise to infant baptism in the African churches; who taking the words in this bad sense, concluded their children must be baptized, or they could not be saved; whereas by “water” is meant, in a figurative and metaphorical sense, the grace of God, as it is elsewhere; see

Eze 36:25. Which is the moving cause of this new birth, and according to which God begets men again to, a lively hope, and that by which it is effected; for it is by the grace of God, and not by the power of man’s free will, that any are regenerated, or made new creatures: and if Nicodemus was an officer in the temple, that took care to provide water at the feasts, as Dr. Lightfoot thinks, and as it should seem Nicodemon ben Gorion was, by the story before related of him; [See comments on Joh 3:1]; very pertinently does our Lord make mention of water, it being his own element: regeneration is sometimes ascribed to God the Father, as in 1Pe 1:3, and sometimes to the Son, 1Jo 2:29 and here to the Spirit, as in Tit 3:5, who convinces of sin, sanctifies, renews, works faith, and every other grace; begins and carries on the work of grace, unto perfection;

he cannot enter into the kingdom of God; and unless a man has this work of his wrought on his soul, as he will never understand divine and spiritual things, so he can have no right to Gospel ordinances, or things appertaining to the kingdom of God; nor can he be thought to have passed from death to life, and to have entered into an open state of grace, and the kingdom of it; or that living and dying so, he shall ever enter into the kingdom of heaven; for unless a man is regenerated, he is not born heir apparent to it; and without internal holiness, shall not enter into it, enjoy it, or see God.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Of water and the Spirit ( ). Nicodemus had failed utterly to grasp the idea of the spiritual birth as essential to entrance into the Kingdom of God. He knew only Jews as members of that kingdom, the political kingdom of Pharisaic hope which was to make all the world Jewish (Pharisaic) under the King Messiah. Why does Jesus add here? In verse 3 we have “” (from above) which is repeated in verse 7, while in verse 8 we have only (of the Spirit) in the best manuscripts. Many theories exist. One view makes baptism, referred to by (coming up out of water), essential to the birth of the Spirit, as the means of obtaining the new birth of the Spirit. If so, why is water mentioned only once in the three demands of Jesus (John 3:3; John 3:5; John 3:7)? Calvin makes water and Spirit refer to the one act (the cleansing work of the Spirit). Some insist on the language in verse 6 as meaning the birth of the flesh coming in a sac of water in contrast to the birth of the Spirit. One wonders after all what was the precise purpose of Jesus with Nicodemus, the Pharisaic ceremonialist, who had failed to grasp the idea of spiritual birth which is a commonplace to us. By using water (the symbol before the thing signified) first and adding Spirit, he may have hoped to turn the mind of Nicodemus away from mere physical birth and, by pointing to the baptism of John on confession of sin which the Pharisees had rejected, to turn his attention to the birth from above by the Spirit. That is to say the mention of “water” here may have been for the purpose of helping Nicodemus without laying down a fundamental principle of salvation as being by means of baptism. Bernard holds that the words (water and) do not belong to the words of Jesus, but “are a gloss, added to bring the saying of Jesus into harmony with the belief and practice of a later generation.” Here Jesus uses (enter) instead of (see) of verse 3, but with the same essential idea (participation in the kingdom).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Born of water and the Spirit. The exposition of this much controverted passage does not fall within the scope of this work. We may observe,

1. That Jesus here lays down the preliminary conditions of entrance into His kingdom, expanding and explaining His statement in ver. 3.

2. That this condition is here stated as complex, including two distinct factors, water and the Spirit.

3. That the former of these two factors is not to be merged in the latter; that the spiritual element is not to exclude or obliterate the external and ritual element. We are not to understand with Calvin, the Holy Spirit as the purifying water in the spiritual sense : “water which is the Spirit.”

4. That water points definitely to the rite of baptism, and that with a twofold reference – to the past and to the future. Water naturally suggested to Nicodemus the baptism of John, which was then awakening such profound and general interest; and, with this, the symbolical purifications of the Jews, and the Old Testament use of washing as the figure of purifying from sin (Psa 2:2, 7; Eze 36:25; Zec 13:1). Jesus ‘ words opened to Nicodemus a new and more spiritual significance in both the ceremonial purifications and the baptism of John which the Pharisees had rejected (Luk 7:30). John’s rite had a real and legitimate relation to the kingdom of God which Nicodemus must accept.

5. That while Jesus asserted the obligation of the outward rite, He asserted likewise, as its necessary complement, the presence and creating and informing energy of the Spirit with which John had promised that the coming one should baptize. That as John’s baptism had been unto repentance, for the remission of sins, so the new life must include the real no less than the symbolic cleansing of the old, sinful life, and the infusion by the Spirit of a new and divine principle of life. Thus Jesus ‘ words included a prophetic reference to the complete ideal of Christian baptism – “the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Tit 3:5; Eph 5:26); according to which the two factors are inseparably blended (not the one swallowed up by the other), and the new life is inaugurated both symbolically in the baptism with water, and actually in the renewing by the Holy Spirit, yet so as that the rite, through its association with the Spirit’s energy, is more than a mere symbol : is a veritable vehicle of grace to the recipient, and acquires a substantial part in the inauguration of the new life. Baptism, considered merely as a rite, and apart from the operation of the Spirit, does not and cannot impart the new life. Without the Spirit it is a lie. It is a truthful sign only as the sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

6. That the ideal of the new life presented in our Lord ‘s words, includes the relation of the regenerated man to an organization. The object of the new birth is declared to be that a man may see and enter into the kingdom of God. But the kingdom of God is an economy. It includes and implies the organized Christian community. This is one of the facts which, with its accompanying obligation, is revealed to the new vision of the new man. He sees not only God, but the kingdom of God; God as King of an organized citizenship; God as the Father of the family of mankind; obligation to God implying obligation to the neighbor; obligation to Christ implying obligation to the church, of which He is the head, “which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all things with all things” (Eph 1:23). Through water alone, the mere external rite of baptism, a man may pass into the outward fellowship of the visible church without seeing or entering the kingdom of God. Through water and the Spirit, he passes indeed into the outward fellowship, but through that into the vision and fellowship of the kingdom of God.

Enter into. This more than see (ver. 3). It is to become partaker of; to go in and possess, as the Israelites did Canaan.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,” (apekrithe lesous amen lego soi) “Jesus replied, truly, truly I tell you,” personally, and as an individual.

2) “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,” (ean me tis gennethe eks hudatos kai pneumatos) “Unless anyone is born of water and spirit;” This alludes to two births: First, there is the birth from the mother’s womb, the natural birth, referred to in medical terms as, the water birth,” by which the natural man or the old man is born; Second, there is the birth, begettal, or quickening by the spirit, referred to as the “new birth,” birth from above, when man’s spirit is quickened by God’s Spirit, by which one becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus and a child of God, fit to enter the kingdom of God, and then by baptism into the church, Joh 6:63; 1Jn 5:1; Gal 3:26-27.

3) “He cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (ou dunatai eiselthein eis ten basileian tou theou) “He is not able to enter into the spiritual domain of God,” to enter into the Holy presence, domain, and jurisdiction of God. One can neither enter into heaven, where He resides and presides over the affairs of His universe, until and unless he is born again, born from above, born of the Spirit, or has another birth nature (of Spirit kind) different from the natural, fleshly, or water birth, the first birth nature, 1Ti 3:15; Mat 28:18-20.

One’s genealogy must be Divinely established for him to worship God in holiness, in spirit and in truth, Joh 4:24. Those born of the flesh, without the new birth, the birth from above, have an unholy genealogy, a depraved spiritual nature only, and are by nature “children of wrath,” Eph 2:3; who can not enter heaven, the kingdom of God, in its spiritual sphere, until and unless they are born of the spirit, their spirit is born of God’s spirit, through faith in Christ Jesus. By this birth one may become a new creature, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, Joh 6:63; 1Jn 5:11; 2Co 5:17; Eph 2:8-10.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

5. Unless a man be born of water. This passage has been explained in various ways. Some have thought that the two parts of regeneration are distinctly pointed out, and that by the word Water is denoted the renunciation of the old man, while by the Spirit they have understood the new life. Others think that there is an implied contrast, as if Christ intended to contrast Water and Spirit, which are pure and liquid elements, with the earthly and gross nature of man. Thus they view the language as allegorical, and suppose Christ to have taught that we ought to lay aside the heavy and ponderous mass of the flesh, and to become like water and air, that we may move upwards, or, at least, may not be so much weighed down to the earth. But both opinions appear to me to be at variance with the meaning of Christ.

Chrysostom, with whom the greater part of expounders agree, makes the word Water refer to baptism. The meaning would then be, that by baptism we enter into the kingdom of God, because in baptism we are regenerated by the Spirit of God. Hence arose the belief of the absolute necessity of baptism, in order to the hope of eternal life. But though we were to admit that Christ here speaks of baptism, yet we ought not to press his words so closely as to imagine that he confines salvation to the outward sign; but, on the contrary, he connects the Water with the Spirit, because under that visible symbol he attests and seals that newness of life which God alone produces in us by his Spirit. It is true that, by neglecting baptism, we are excluded from salvation; and in this sense I acknowledge that it is necessary; but it is absurd to speak of the hope of salvation as confined to the sign. So far as relates to this passage, I cannot bring myself to believe that Christ speaks of baptism; for it would have been inappropriate.

We must always keep in remembrance the design of Christ, which we have already explained; namely, that he intended to exhort Nicodemus to newness of life, because he was not capable of receiving the Gospel, until he began to be a new man. It is, therefore, a simple statement, that we must be born again, in order that we may be the children of God, and that the Holy Spirit is the Author of this second birth. For while Nicodemus was dreaming of the regeneration ( παλιγγενεσία) or transmigration taught by Pythagoras, who imagined that souls, after the death of their bodies, passed into other bodies, (58) Christ, in order to cure him of this error, added, by way of explanation, that it is not in a natural way that men are born a second time, and that it is not necessary for them to be clothed with a new body, but that they are born when they are renewed in mind and heart by the grace of the Spirit.

Accordingly, he employed the words Spirit and water to mean the same thing, and this ought not to be regarded as a harsh or forced interpretation; for it is a frequent and common way of speaking in Scripture, when the Spirit is mentioned, to add the word Water or Fire, expressing his power. We sometimes meet with the statement, that it is Christ who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost and with fire, (Mat 3:11; Luk 3:16,) where fire means nothing different from the Spirit, but only shows what is his efficacy in us. As to the word water being placed first, it is of little consequence; or rather, this mode of speaking flows more naturally than the other, because the metaphor is followed by a plain and direct statement, as if Christ had said that no man is a son of God until he has been renewed by water, and that this water is the Spirit who cleanseth us anew and who, by spreading his energy over us, imparts to us the rigor of the heavenly life, though by nature we are utterly dry. And most properly does Christ, in order to reprove Nicodemus for his ignorance, employ a form of expression which is common in Scripture; for Nicodemus ought at length to have acknowledged, that what Christ had said was taken from the ordinary doctrine of the Prophets.

By water, therefore, is meant nothing more than the inward purification and invigoration which is produced by the Holy Spirit. Besides, it is not unusual to employ the word and instead of that is, when the latter clause is intended to explain the former. And the view which I have taken is supported by what follows; for when Christ immediately proceeds to assign the reason why we must be born again, without mentioning the water, he shows that the newness of life which he requires is produced by the Spirit alone; whence it follows, that water must not be separated from the Spirit

(58) “ Qui imaginoit que los ames apres la mort de leurs corps cntroyent dedans des autres corps.”

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(5) Again the words Verily, verily (comp. Note on chap Joh. 1:51), calling attention to the deeper truth which follows; and again the words of authority, I say unto thee.

Of water and of the Spirit.We are here on the borderland of a great controversy. The subject is closely connected with that of the discourse in Capernaum (John 6), and so far as it is a subject for the pages of a Commentary at all, it will be better to treat of it in connection with that discourse. (See Excursus C: The Sacramental Teaching of St. Johns Gospel.) Our task here is to ask what meaning the words were intended by the Speaker to convey to the hearer; and this seems not to admit of doubt. The baptism of proselytes was already present to the thought; the baptism of John had excited the attention of all Jerusalem, and the Sanhedrin had officially inquired into it. Jesus Himself had submitted to it, but the Pharisees and lawyers [Nicodemus was both] rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptised of him (Luk. 7:29). The key to the present verse is found in the declaration of John, I baptise with water . . . He baptiseth with the Holy Ghost (Joh. 1:26; Joh. 1:33), and this key must have been then in the mind of Nicodemus. The message was, baptism with water; baptism with water, by which the Gentile had been admitted as a new-born babe to Judaism, the rite representing the cleansing of the life from heathen pollutions and devotion to the service of the true God; baptism with water, which John had preached in his ministry of reformation (comp. Mat. 3:7), declaring a like cleansing as needed for Jew and Gentile, Pharisee and publican, as the gate to the kingdom of heaven, which was at hand; baptism with water, which demanded a public profession in the presence of witnesses, and an open loyalty to the new kingdom, not a visit by night, under the secrecy of darknessthis is the message of God to the teacher seeking admission to His kingdom. This he would understand. It would now be clear to him why John came baptising, and why Jews were themselves baptised confessing their sins. There is no further explanation of the outward and visible sign, but the teaching passes on to the inward and spiritual grace, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, the birth of the Spirit, which was the work of the Messiah Himself. Of this, indeed, there were foreshadowings and promises in the Old Testament Scriptures (comp., e.g., Eze. 36:25 et seq.; Jer. 31:33; Joe. 2:28); but the deeper meaning of such passages was buried beneath the ruins of the schools of prophets, and few among later teachers had penetrated to it. It is hard for this Rabbi to see it, even when it is brought home to him.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

(5) It is believed that the rendering adopted agrees with the whole context, and gives a fuller sense to the words of the great Teacher.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

5. Jesus now proceeds to tell the

how. Of water and of the Spirit Of water, as the external indication of the external kingdom; of Spirit, as the internal induction into the internal kingdom. The former supposes the latter as its previous condition, and is its external profession or sign. Those who refuse to perform and accept the sign, do wilfully exclude themselves from the kingdom of God. Yet, although the conditional duty, it does not stand on the same ground of an absolute condition without which salvation is in itself impossible, as is the case in being born of the Spirit. This we see intimated in Mar 16:16, where baptism is required; but there is a careful avoidance of saying that he that is not baptized shall be damned. Baptism may in many eases be impossible. There are many, however, who by gross negligence or for other reasons stay out of the Christian Church; abandoning thereby the ordinances of God both of baptism and communion, and yet suppose themselves to be justified Christians. For aught they do the rites of baptism and the Lord’s Supper would die out. How they will answer this contempt of the solemn requirements of Christ at the judgment-day, is for themselves to answer. Except a man be born of water as well as of Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

The term regeneration is seldom used in the Bible; but the words that express it are used often. All those expressions that embrace the idea of renovation, renewal, being created anew, being begotten anew, come under the collective term regeneration. As being born again is here spoken of water, there is some excuse for the early Fathers who called baptism regeneration, and spoke of baptismal regeneration; provided the water regeneration be not confounded with that real regeneration, of which the water regeneration is but the symbol.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Jesus answered, “In very truth I tell you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingly Rule of God.’

Jesus replies that He is speaking about a birth “of water and Spirit” without which entry under the reign of God is impossible. The connection of water with Spirit may possibly, but not certainly, look back to John’s baptism in the writer’s mind, but it is not strictly of baptism that Jesus is thinking. He is thinking of the Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Spirit like the rain. Baptism is but the symbol. The need is for a work of the Spirit, as symbolised by John’s baptism, the Spirit being poured out ‘from above’ like rain on the dry ground.

Like most Jews Nicodemus was looking forward to the coming of “the Kingly Rule of God” understood in their own terms, which the Jews saw as a time when God’s king would rule over the world and bring a time of plenty and prosperity, especially for the Jews. But Jesus stresses that coming under God’s rule requires a work of the Spirit, for it must be spiritually appreciated. Human birth will only bring human understanding, a spiritual relationship with God requires spiritual birth (compare Joh 1:12-13).

But what does Jesus mean by being “born of water” and being “born from above” (or born anew)? . The phrases link back to the preaching of John the Baptiser and to the prophets. John spoke of fruits meet for repentance, of ripened grain that would be harvested, of trees that produced good fruit, and of one who would ‘drench (baptizo) with the Holy Spirit’. These were all pictures of when the land came alive again after the dry season, when the dead land lived again, when it was ‘born again’

There is good Old Testament precedent for this. In Psalms 72 the psalmist is praying for the king of Israel. He prays that he will be just and wise, and he clearly has especially in mind the future king, for he speaks of his world wide dominion and the fact that all nations would call him blessed (Joh 3:8; Joh 3:17). This king will be “like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth”, for in his days righteousness will flourish, and peace will abound. The water from above has done its work.

The thought is taken further in Isa 45:8 where righteousness (i.e. vindication, being ‘put in the right’) ‘rains down’ like showers, and deliverance and righteousness ‘sprout forth’ from the earth, and in Isa 32:15 where a period of desolation is followed by ‘the Spirit’ being ‘poured upon us from above’ resulting in fruitfulness and deliverance. In Isa 44:1-5 the promises are more personalised. “I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon your children and my blessing upon your offspring.” (Isa 44:1-4). The people will flourish like grass at the coming of the rainy season, like willows planted where there is abundant water, and the result will be a full-hearted dedication to the Lord (Isa 44:5).

This vivid picture speaks most forcefully to those who live in hot countries like Israel. There they are used to the long hot summer when everything dries up, the grass withers, the ground is barren and fruitless, the bushes die. Life appears to have gone. But then the rain comes, and everything changes. The ground is almost immediately covered with the beginnings of luxurious vegetation, the bushes spring to life and the trees grow and flourish. It has to be seen to be believed. It is an apt picture of spiritual renewal. They are born again, born from above!

Isa 55:10-13 takes it even further. “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring to birth (The Hebrew is yalad in the hiphil, almost exclusively used of the birth of living creatures) and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth, it will not return to me empty. It will accomplish what I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Here we have the clear idea of new birth from above, and it is here connected with the going forth of the word of God. God speaks and the Spirit acts (compare Isa 34:16 where God’s word precedes the action of His Spirit). And now, says John, the Word of God has come (Joh 1:1-18) and the Spirit is acting.

Hos 6:1-3 adds, ‘He has torn and He will heal us, He has smitten and He will bind us up, after two days he will revive us, on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him — he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.’ This would again seem to be a picture of a raising again to life connected with showers of rain.

A further passage in the Old Testament which illustrates the new birth by the Spirit is Eze 36:25-27. Here God promises His people that “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean”. The fact that the water is sprinkled indicates that it is seen as water purified by the ashes of sacrifice for those who have touched what is impure (Num 19:7-20). There would appear to be no other reason for stressing that it is CLEAN water.

The result of this sprinkling is that “a new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you. I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my ordinances and carry them out”.

While Ezekiel, thinking as a priest, has apparently illustrated the idea of rain with the priestly sprinkling of water purified with the ashes of a heifer, he soon moves on to the idea of fruitfulness and plenty (Joh 3:29-30). It would be difficult to conceive of a better picture of the new birth. So here the new birth is linked with purification through the shedding of sacrificial blood.

So when Jesus speaks of being born of water, born from above, He has every reason to think that Nicodemus will understand Him, and to chide him for failing to do so. It is possible that there is in the back of His mind John’s baptism, but if so His vision is filled with that baptism’s significance as a picture of the life-giving rains pouring down, transforming the earth and producing a cleansing, regenerating work of God and ‘fruits meet for repentance’. The new work of the Spirit, begun in embryo by John the Baptiser and continuing with Jesus, is bringing new life into the hearts of those who ‘put their trust in Him’ so that they ‘might not perish but have the life of the age to come’ (Joh 3:15). And Nicodemus is in danger of missing out!

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Joh 3:5. Jesus answered, Verily, verily, &c. Jesus replied, that he was not speaking of a natural, but of a spiritual regeneration; Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a “man be born of water, that is, be baptized, the only appointed means of admission into the visible church; and of the Spirit, that is, have a new nature given him by the Spirit, and shew forth in his life the fruits of that new nature; he cannot be a subject of God’s kingdom here, nor have a share in his glory hereafter.” Our Lord did not mean that baptism is, in all cases, absolutely necessary to salvation; for in the apostles’ commission, Mar 16:16 notwithstanding faith and baptism are equally enjoined upon all nations: not the want of baptism, but of faith, is declared to be damning. Besides, it should be considered that this is a mere ceremony, which in itself has no efficacy to change men’s natures, or to fit them for heaven; and that in some circumstances it may be absolutely impracticable; nevertheless, as the washing with water in baptism fitly represents the purification of the soul necessary to its happiness, this ceremony is very properly made the rite by which we publicly take upon ourselves the profession of the Christian religion, the dispensation preparatory to heaven. Wherefore, the receiving of this rite is highly necessary in all cases where it can be had. If so, persons who undervalue water baptism, on pretence of exalting the baptism of the Spirit, do greatly err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the commandment of Christ.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Joh 3:5 . Jesus now explains more fully the onwards to Joh 3:8 .

. ] water , inasmuch as the man is baptized therewith (1Jn 5:7-8 ; Eph 5:26 ) for the forgiveness of sins (Act 2:33 ; Act 22:16 ; 2Co 6:11 ), and spirit , inasmuch as the Holy Ghost is given to the person baptized in order to his spiritual renewal and sanctification; both together [152] the former as causa medians , the latter as causa efficiens constitute the objective and causative element, out of which (comp. Joh 1:13 ) the birth from above is produced ( ), and therefore baptism is the (Tit 3:5 ; comp. Tertullian c. Marc . i. 28). But that Christian baptism (Joh 3:22 ; Joh 4:2 ), and not that of John (B. Crusius; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis , II. 2. 12; Lange, who, however, generalizes ideally; and earlier comm.), is to be thought of in , is clear from the . joined with it, and from the fact that He who had already appeared as Messiah could no longer make the baptism of His forerunner the condition, not even the preparatory condition, of His Messianic grace; for in that case He must have said , . If Nicodemus was not yet able to understand as having this definite reference, but simply took the word in general as a symbolical designation of Messianic expiation of sin and of purification, according to O. T. allusions (Eze 36:25 ; Isa 1:16 ; Mal 3:3 ; Zec 13:1 ; Jer 33:8 ), and to what he knew of John’s baptism, still it remained for him to look to the immediate future for more definite knowledge, when the true explanation could not escape him (Joh 4:2 , Joh 3:22 ). We are not therefore to conclude from this reference to baptism, that the narrative is “ a proleptic fiction ” (Strauss, Bruno Bauer), and, besides Mat 18:3 , to suppose in Justin and the Clementines uncanonical developments (Hilgenfeld and others; see Introduction, 2). Neither must we explain it as if Jesus were referring Nicodemus not to baptism as such, but only by way of allusion to the symbolic import of the water in baptism (Lcke; Neander, p. 910). This latter view does not satisfy the definite , upon which, on the other side, Theodore of Mopsuestia and others, in modern times Olshausen in particular, lay undue stress, taking the water to be the female principle in regeneration (the Spirit as the male ) water being, according to Olshausen, “the element of the soul purified by true repentance.” All explanations, moreover, must be rejected which, in order to do away with the reference to baptism, [153] adopt the principle of an , for water and Spirit are two quite separate conceptions. This is especially in answer to Calvin, who says: “of water, which is the Spirit ,” and Grotius: “ spiritus aqueus , i.e. aquae instar emundans .” It is further to be observed, (1) that both the words being without the article, they must be taken generically , so far as the water of baptism and the Holy Spirit are included in the general categories of water and Spirit; not till we reach Joh 3:6 is the concrete term used; (2) that is put first, because the gift of the Spirit as a rule (Act 2:38 ) followed upon baptism (Act 10:47 is an exceptional case); (3) that believing in Jesus as the Messiah is presupposed as the condition of baptism (Mar 16:16 ); (4) that the necessity of baptism in order to participation in the Messianic kingdom (a doctrine against which Calvin in particular, and other expositors of the Reformed Church, contend) has certainly its basis in this passage, but with reference to the convert to Christianity, and not extending in the same way to the children of Christians, for these by virtue of their Christian parentage are already (see on 1Co 7:14 ). Attempts to explain away this necessity e.g . by the comparative rendering: “ not only by water, but also by the Spirit” (B. Crusius; comp. Schweizer, who refers to the baptism of proselytes, and Ewald) are meanings imported into the words.

[152] Weisse, who does not regard the rite of baptism by water as having originated in the institution of Christ, but considers that it arose from a misapplication of His words concerning the baptism of the Spirit, greatly errs when he declares that to make regeneration depend upon baptism by water “ is little better than blasphemy ” ( Evangelienfrage , p. 194).

[153] Krummacher, recently, in the Stud. u. Krit . 1859, p. 509, understands by the water the working of the Holy Spirit. How untenable! for the Spirit is named as a distinct factor side by side with water .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

Ver. 5. Be born of water, and the Holy Ghost ] That is, of the Holy Ghost working like water, cooling, cleansing, &c. In allusion, belike, to that first washing of a newly born babe from his blood,Eze 16:4Eze 16:4 . Or else to those Levitical washings, and not without some reference to Nicodemus and his fellow Pharisees, who placed a great part of their piety in external washings, as do also the Mahometans at this day. Every time they ease nature (saith one that had been among them) they wash those parts, little regarding who stands by. If a dog chance to touch their hands, they wash presently; before prayer they wash both face and hands, sometimes the head and privates, &c.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

5. ] Our Lord passes by the question of Nicodemus without notice, further than that this His second assertion takes as it were the ground from under it, by explaining the token and means of the new birth.

There can be no doubt, on any honest interpretation of the words, that refers to the token or outward sign of baptism, . to the thing signified, or inward grace of the Holy Spirit. All attempts to get rid of these two plain facts have sprung from doctrinal prejudices, by which the views of expositors have been warped. Such we have in Calvin: “spiritum, qui nos repurgat, et qui virtute sua in nos diffusa vigorem inspirat clestis vit;” Grotius: “spiritum aqu instar emundantem;” Cocceius: “gratiam Dei, sordes et vitia abluentem;” Lampe: “obedientiam Christi;” Tholuck, who holds that not Baptism itself, but only its idea , that of cleansing , is referred to; and others, who endeavour to resolve into a figure of , so as to make it mean ‘ the cleansing or purifying Spirit .’ All the better and deeper expositors have recognized the co-existence of the two, water and the Spirit . So for the most part the ancients: so Lcke (in his last edition), De Wette, Neander, Stier, Olshausen, &c.

This being then recognized, to what does refer? At that time, two kinds of baptism were known: that of the proselytes , by which they were received into Judaism, and that of John , by which, as a preparatory rite, symbolizing repentance, the people were made ready for Him who was to baptize them with the Holy Ghost. But both these were significant of one and the same truth; that namely of the entire cleansing of the man for the new and spiritual life on which he was to enter, symbolized by water cleansing the outward person. Both were appointed means, the one by the Jewish Church, the other, stamping that first with approval, by God Himself, towards their respective ends. John himself declared his baptism to be incomplete , it was only with water; One was coming, who should baptize with the Holy Ghost. That declaration of his is the key to the understanding of this verse . Baptism, complete , with water and the Spirit , is the admission into the kingdom of God. Those who have received the outward sign and the spiritual grace , have entered into that Kingdom. And this entrance was fully ministered to the disciples when the Spirit descended on them on the day of Pentecost. So that, as spoken to Nicodemus, these words referred him to the baptism of John, which probably (see Luk 7:30 ) he had slighted. But they were not only spoken to him. The words of our Lord have in them life and meaning for all ages of His Church: and more especially these opening declarations of His ministry. He here unites together the two elements of a complete Baptism which were sundered in the words of the Baptist, ch. Joh 1:33 in which united form He afterwards (Mat 28:19-20 ; Mar 16:16 ) ordained it as a Sacrament of His Church. Here He speaks of spiritual Baptism, as in ch. 6. of spiritual Communion, and in both places in connexion with the outward conditions and media of these sacraments. It is observable that here, as ordinarily (with a special exception, Act 10:44 ff.), the outward sign comes first, and then the spiritual grace, vouchsafed in and by means of it where duly received.

is more than above, though no stress is to be laid on the difference. The former word was perhaps used because of Nicodemus’s expectation of teaching being all that was required: but now, the necessity of a real vital change having been set forth, the expression is changed to a practical one the entering into the Kingdom of God.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Joh 3:5 . , , , . To remove as far as possible the difficulty of Nicodemus as to the of the second birth our Lord declares that the two great factors in it are “water” and “spirit”. Calvin thinks this is a , and that the two names cover one reality. “Spiritum et aquam pro eodem posuit.” “ Aqua nihil aliud est quam interior Spiritus sancti purgatio et vegetatio.” And he defends this by a reference to the Baptist’s announcement that the Messiah would baptise with the spirit and fire. Grotius takes the same line, but cautiously adds: “Si quis tamen malit ista decernere, ut aqua significet mali fugam, spiritus vero impetum ad optima quaeque agenda, inveniet quo hanc sententiam fulciet”. Lk. (Luk 7:30 ) tells us that the Pharisees, to whom belonged Nicodemus, were not baptised of John; their reason being that to submit to the same rite as Gentiles and acknowledge the insufficiency of their Jewish birth was a humiliation they could not suffer. To receive the Spirit from the Messiah was no humiliation; on the contrary, it was a glorious privilege. But to go down into Jordan before a wondering crowd and own their need of cleansing and new birth was too much. Therefore to this Pharisee our Lord declares that an honest dying to the past is as needrul as new life for the future. To be born of the Spirit involves a dying to the past, and therefore it is only the Spirit that is spoken of in the subsequent verses; but it is essential that our past be recognised as needing cleansing and forgiveness. These two factors, water and spirit, are not strictly co-ordinate. Water is not an actual spiritual agency in the second birth; it is only a symbol. But in every true second birth there is a negative as well as a positive side, a renunciation of the past as well as a new life created. The same idea is found in Tit 3:3-5 , “We were [of the flesh] but He saved us by the bath of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Ghost”. The same combination is found in Eze 36:25-27 , “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.” The water, then, is considered as that which cleanses from sin: the Spirit as the principle of the new life.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

of water, &c. = of water and spirit. No Art. Figure of speech Hendiadys (App-6). Not two things, but one, by which the latter Noun becomes a superlative and emphatic Adjective, determining the meaning and nature of the former Noun, showing that one to be spiritual water: i.e. not water but spirit. It is to be rendered “of water-yea, spiritual water”. Compare Eph 5:26, and See Joh 7:38, Joh 7:39 and Eze 36:25-27 for the “earthly things” of Joh 3:12.

enter. Showing what the Lord meant by “see”, in Joh 3:3.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

5.] Our Lord passes by the question of Nicodemus without notice, further than that this His second assertion takes as it were the ground from under it, by explaining the token and means of the new birth.

There can be no doubt, on any honest interpretation of the words, that refers to the token or outward sign of baptism,-. to the thing signified, or inward grace of the Holy Spirit. All attempts to get rid of these two plain facts have sprung from doctrinal prejudices, by which the views of expositors have been warped. Such we have in Calvin: spiritum, qui nos repurgat, et qui virtute sua in nos diffusa vigorem inspirat clestis vit;-Grotius: spiritum aqu instar emundantem;-Cocceius: gratiam Dei, sordes et vitia abluentem;-Lampe: obedientiam Christi;-Tholuck, who holds that not Baptism itself, but only its idea, that of cleansing, is referred to;-and others, who endeavour to resolve into a figure of , so as to make it mean the cleansing or purifying Spirit. All the better and deeper expositors have recognized the co-existence of the two, water and the Spirit. So for the most part the ancients: so Lcke (in his last edition), De Wette, Neander, Stier, Olshausen, &c.

This being then recognized, to what does refer? At that time, two kinds of baptism were known: that of the proselytes, by which they were received into Judaism,-and that of John, by which, as a preparatory rite, symbolizing repentance, the people were made ready for Him who was to baptize them with the Holy Ghost. But both these were significant of one and the same truth; that namely of the entire cleansing of the man for the new and spiritual life on which he was to enter, symbolized by water cleansing the outward person. Both were appointed means,-the one by the Jewish Church,-the other, stamping that first with approval, by God Himself,-towards their respective ends. John himself declared his baptism to be incomplete,-it was only with water; One was coming, who should baptize with the Holy Ghost. That declaration of his is the key to the understanding of this verse. Baptism, complete, with water and the Spirit, is the admission into the kingdom of God. Those who have received the outward sign and the spiritual grace, have entered into that Kingdom. And this entrance was fully ministered to the disciples when the Spirit descended on them on the day of Pentecost. So that, as spoken to Nicodemus, these words referred him to the baptism of John, which probably (see Luk 7:30) he had slighted. But they were not only spoken to him. The words of our Lord have in them life and meaning for all ages of His Church: and more especially these opening declarations of His ministry. He here unites together the two elements of a complete Baptism which were sundered in the words of the Baptist, ch. Joh 1:33-in which united form He afterwards (Mat 28:19-20; Mar 16:16) ordained it as a Sacrament of His Church. Here He speaks of spiritual Baptism, as in ch. 6. of spiritual Communion, and in both places in connexion with the outward conditions and media of these sacraments. It is observable that here, as ordinarily (with a special exception, Act 10:44 ff.), the outward sign comes first, and then the spiritual grace, vouchsafed in and by means of it where duly received.

is more than above, though no stress is to be laid on the difference. The former word was perhaps used because of Nicodemuss expectation of teaching being all that was required: but now, the necessity of a real vital change having been set forth, the expression is changed to a practical one-the entering into the Kingdom of God.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Joh 3:5. , of water and the Spirit) Jesus renders His speech the more difficult, in order to try [discipline] Nicodemus, and at the same time declares the difference between birth from above, and birth from a mother: and He defines birth from above by communion with [the partaking of] Himself and with [of] the Spirit (for He speaks concerning Himself and concerning the Spirit also at Joh 3:11, we speak that we do know). Comp. 1Co 6:11, Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. No one can enjoy God without the Son and His Spirit. Water denotes the baptism of John into [preparing for] Christ Jesus, Joh 3:22-23 [Jesus tarried in the land of Juda with His disciples, and baptized: John was also baptizing in non, etc.]; which baptism the colleagues of Nicodemus, by omitting, Joh 3:1, despised the counsel of God: Luk 7:30, The Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of John; when nevertheless the Jews were accustomed to baptisms: Heb 9:10, divers washings. And Nicodemus himself appears to have entertained not sufficiently exalted views of John and his baptism, as being one who had wrought no miracle. Comp. Joh 3:2 [where he emphasises the miracles of Jesus; thus forming a contrast to John]. Nor is communion needful with Christ only, but also with His Spirit: Act 2:38, Repent and be baptized-in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And because the same Spirit glorifies Christ, for this reason, the mention of water being presently after omitted, mention is made of the Spirit alone, of whom we are to be born again: nor does He say at Joh 3:6, that which is born of water is water. Therefore the necessity of regeneration primarily, and of baptism secondarily, is here confirmed (comp. a similar , and, ch. Joh 6:40, every one which seeth the Son and believeth on Him): otherwise there would be but little hope of infants dying without baptism. Comp. as to water and the Spirit, Tit 3:5, Not by works which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.-, enter) Answering to the word enter [a second time into his mothers womb] of the previous verse. The severity of His expression increases: comp. see, Joh 3:3. He cannot even enter, much less see. He must enter a house, whoever wishes to see thoroughly its internal structure. That which is not born, uses neither eyes nor feet.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 3:5

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.-Men were being baptized by John, and by way of suggestion, he added he must be born of water and the Spirit. This new birth carries with it more than is usually attached to it. It was addressed to Nicodemus and regarded as one of the truest and most faithful of the teachers under the law of Moses-one ready to accept Jesus as the teacher from God. Jesus tells him, for him or any one to enter the kingdom of heaven, he must be born anew. Nicodemus was not in the kingdom of heaven. He was a subject of the Jewish law, which only made them servants or slaves, and he must be born into a higher and better. The kingdom of heaven was to be a spiritual kingdom. In it the Spirit of God was to abide and rule. It had not done this in the Jewish kingdom. In this kingdom those who had been servants were to possess a higher measure of the Spirit of God by which they were to become sons of God. He here tells that the birth, instead of being from the mothers womb, is from the water and the Spirit. They are the agents and instruments in producing the birth. The Spirit is living, active; the water is

inanimate. The Spirit is the active agent, the water the instrument of the birth. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit spoke through the apostles-produced faith in the hearts of the people. They then that received his word were baptized: and there were added unto them in that day about three thousand souls. The coming forth from the water of him who had believed through the teaching of the Spirit was the birth of the water and the Spirit as exemplified in the practice of the apostles. To this the whole religious world has always agreed until of late a few from partisan motives call it in question. [This last statement is sanctioned by J. R. Graves, editor, The Tennessee Baptist, as follows: If Brother Vaughn convinced us that born of water refers to anything but the baptism of one previously born of the Spirit, we never knew it, and we would have owned it to him and to our readers. It means nothing else, and no Baptist that we ever heard or read of ever believed otherwise until A. Campbell frightened them away from an interpretation that is sustained by the consensus of all scholars of all denominations in all ages.-(The Tennessee Baptist, page 5, October 30, 1886.)]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

A New Beginning

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.Joh 3:5.

1. It is impossible for any one to read or hear these words without remembering what solemn words they have been to multitudes of our fellow-men. There are hardly any words that Christ ever spoke which have more fascinated and held the hearts of earnest men.

In a letter from Whitefield to Benjamin Franklin, dated 1752, occur these words: As I find you growing more and more famous in the learned world I would recommend to your diligent and unprejudiced study the mystery of the new birth. It is a most important study, and, when mastered, will richly answer all your pains. I bid you, my friend, remember that One at whose bar we shall both presently appear hath solemnly declared that without it we shall in no wise see His Kingdom.

2. Born again! The new birth! Oh, these old words which so many souls have puzzled over and could not understand, and yet have been fascinated by so that they could not let them go! In silent chambers souls have agonized and wondered, What is it to be born again? In silent chambers souls, conscious of a richer and fuller life, have dreamed and questioned timidly: Is it possible, then, that this is the new birth? Have we come any nearer to an answer to it all to-day? Have we passed from the shallow life to the profound, from the unspiritual to the spiritual, from the first life to the second?1 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Seeking Life, 208.]

How was it that he, who in 1727 could not move a village, after 1739 could shake three kingdoms? How did it come to pass that the teacher who was driven out of a little colony as a mere human irritant became the teacher, the comforter, the trusted leader of whole generations? The explanation certainly does not lie in any personal gifts of body or brain Wesley possessed. These were exactly the same at both stages of his career. Wesley at Wroote was twenty-five years of age. He had then the scholars brain, the zealots fire, the orators tongue; and he failedfailed consciously and completely. I preached much, is his own record, but saw no fruits of my labour. Wesley, again, in Charleston, was thirty-two years of age. At no stage of his life did he show a higher passion of zeal, or more methodical and resolute industry; a self-sacrifice so nearly heroic in temper. And yet he failed! But something came into his life by the gate of his conversion, something he never lost, something which transfigured his career. It was a strange gift of powerpower that used Wesleys natural giftshis tough body, his keen intellect, his resolute willas instruments, but which was more than these. Who looks on Wesleys life as a whole, and sees on one side of a particular date doubt, weakness, and defeat, and on the other side certainty, gladness, and matchless power, cannot doubt that the secret of Wesleys career lies in the spiritual realm. Wesleys story is simply one embodied, historic, and overwhelming demonstration of the truth of what is called the Evangelical reading of Christianity.1 [Note: W. H. Fitchett Wesleu and his Century 281.]

3. Many are perplexed, as Nicodemus was. They understand religion on its educational and tangible side; but the doctrine of regeneration, of conversion, perplexes and offends them. They will consent to the faith of Christ, to the Church of Christ, excepting this one doctrine, which is of its very essence. Yet what of the fact? Only as our interior eyes are enlightened can we see the Kingdom of God; only as our mind, affections, conscience, and will are raised and energized by the Holy Spirit can we enter into that Kingdom and share its righteousness and blessedness. Such is the teaching of the Master, and tens of thousands in all generations testify to the truth of His teaching. They are conscious that they have experienced this very change; they know it as a fact, the most glorious fact of their history. They have been transformed in the spirit of their mind; they henceforth walk in newness of life. These witnesses will vary much as to what brought it all about, as to their recognition of the time and place of awakening, and many features of the experiences through which they passed; but concerning the substantial fact itself, that the Spirit of God has imparted to them a higher life, given them a clean heart, and renewed within them a right spirit, they bear testimony to it as the most indubitable and blessed fact of their life. Let there be no mistake about it; that penitent men are turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, is one of the best authenticated facts in the history of the race.

There are a great many things that I cannot explain and cannot reason out, and yet that I believe. I heard a commercial traveller say that he had heard that the ministry and religion of Jesus Christ were matters of revelation and not of investigation. When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, says St. Paul (Gal 1:15-16). There was a party of young men together, going up the country; and on their journey they made up their minds not to believe anything they could not reason out. An old man heard them, and presently he said, I heard you say you would not believe anything you could not reason out. Yes, they said, that is so. Well, he said, coming down on the train to-day, I noticed some geese, some sheep, some swine, and some cattle, all eating grass. Can you tell me by what process that same grass was turned into hair, feathers, bristles, and wool? Do you believe it is a fact? Oh yes, they said, we cannot help believing that, though we fail to understand it. Well, said the old man, I cannot help believing in Jesus Christ. And I cannot help believing in the regeneration of man, when I see men who have been reclaimed, when I see men who have been reformed.1 [Note: D. L. Moody, The Way to God, 45.]

4. Let us remember the occasion upon which the words were spoken. Our Lord at the very beginning of His ministry exercised His vital powers to heal those who were sick with all manner of diseases; and this He did in order to manifest His sympathy with human suffering, to win confidence for Himself and His message, to illustrate the operations of grace in renewing the life and vigour of the soul, and to reveal in living form, by prophecy, the coming time when the former things shall have passed away, and no one shall ever again know pain, and cry out, I am sick!

His works of healing not only touched the people but moved thoughtful men very deeply. One of them, a member of the Great Council, came to Him for more light. He came alone, secretly, in the night. He was no coward. He was not yet convinced, not yet ready to commit himself. He had much to sacrifice should he become a disciple of this young Rabbi. Not until he could be sure that he had more to gain than to lose would he be able to decide. At last, when all had forsaken Him and fled, it was this unknown follower of Jesus who was ready to perform the sacred rites of burial.

His words, as he first spoke, were these: Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these signs which thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus immediately replied, not to these words, but to the inmost thought of the man, which had moved him to seek His presence and turn a listening ear to His teachings: Except a man be born anew, he cannot so much as perceive the kingdom of God. Nicodemus confessed that he could not understand, and then strove to draw the Master out: Surely one cannot return to the single, throbbing cell of life, and grow, and be born anew? Thou dost not speak words that have their ordinary meanings; what, then, dost Thou mean by the use of them? Then Jesus explained: That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. By the word flesh Jesus evidently meant our nature as it comes into the world by the first birth, therefore what the Apostle calls the natural; for He sets the flesh over against the spirit as the Apostle sets the natural over against the spiritual. A man, therefore, who comes into the world in the fulness of human nature, made in the image of God, and after His likeness, must pass through a change which is really a birth anew. And this is but the quickening life, the inspiring breath of the Divine Spirit, which, confluent with his own spirit, gives him life abundantly. The growth and progress of man, then, made in Gods image and after His likeness, into His full, complete, glorious, blessed likeness, involves a transition which may be called a birth anew.

Now one thing that strikes us about Christs conversation with Nicodemus is its representative character. The situation is always recurring wherever the call to higher truth comes face to face with mere traditional teaching or hereditary precept. Nicodemus is always with us in one shape or another. He is the embodiment of religious conventionalism and social respectability. He is always ready with his rationalistic efforts at solving spiritual mysteries; he is always trying to reduce the mysterious to the common-place. He has his dwelling among current traditions and rules and interpretations, and he will not look beyond them. How can a man be born again except by recurrence to some improbable natural method? And Christs answer is always the same: You must be born againnot in the lower world, but into a higher world; you must be born again, the Spirit must touch your spirit, and you must leave rule and tradition and interpretations behind you. Morally you must be born again into the Kingdom of the Father, where God is loved and trusted and dealt with at first hand and communed with.

Speaking of the writer of the Eikon Basilike, Carlyle said that he was the most portentously self-righteous mortal ever extant in this planet; that seemed to say to the Almighty, in place of asking for His grace and mercy, Oh, Lord, I have attained to such a pitch of heavenly perfection that I fear it is not even in Thy power to make me any better than I am; but if at the time Thou shouldst find an opportunity for adding a little finish and perfectness to my many excellences I should feel obliged to Thee.1 [Note: Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle, ii. 436.]

5. In religious circles in Jerusalem there was nothing being talked of but the Kingdom of God which John the Baptist had declared to be at hand. And when Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to enter this Kingdom he must be born again, He told him just what John had been telling the whole people. John had assured them that, though the King was in their midst, they must not suppose they were already within His Kingdom by being the children of Abraham. He excommunicated the whole nation, and taught them that it was something different from natural birth that gave admission to Gods Kingdom. And just as they had compelled Gentiles to be baptized, and to submit to other arrangements when they wished to partake of Jewish privileges, so John compelled them to be baptized. The Gentile who wished to become a Jew had to be symbolically born again. He had to be baptized, going down under the cleansing waters, washing away his old and defiled life, being buried by baptism, disappearing from mens sight as a Gentile, and rising from the water as a new man. He was thus born of water, and this time born, not a Gentile, but a Jew. As the Gentile had to be naturalized and born again that he might rank as a child of Abraham, and enjoy the external privileges of the Jew, so must the Jew himself be born again if he is to rank as a child of God and to belong to the Kingdom of God. He must submit to the double baptism of water and of the Spiritof water for the pardon and cleansing of past sin and defilement, of the Spirit for the inspiration of a new and holy life.

The Jewish doctors, it is said, not uncommonly described the Gentile as one who became a little child, who began his life anew, when he was received by baptism into the privileges of their outer court. If so, Nicodemus must have been familiar with the expression; but it must have been to him, and to most who availed themselves of it, a mere figure of rhetoricone of those counters which pass among religious people, which have a certain value at first, but which become at length so depreciated that they serve no purpose but to impose on those who take and those who give them. However little Nicodemus might know of Jesus, he did know that He was not resorting to figures of rhetoricthat if He spoke of a birth, He meant a birth; and he must have perceived that what He said did not apply to sinners of the Gentiles, but to him, the religious ruler of the Jews. It was, therefore, a good and healthy sign, a proof of the power of the new Teacher, that he forgot the conventionalisms of the Sanhedrim, and spoke out coarsely and naturally, as a peasant might have done. Our Lord, surely, passed this judgment upon him; for, instead of rebuking him for his question, He meets it in the most direct manner possible: Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The object of Nicodemus in coming to ask Him about His kingdom is still kept prominently forward; but there is a noticeable change in our Lords words. He had spoken of seeing the Kingdom of God; He now speaks of entering into it. Each expression may, unquestionably does, involve the other; still they are distinct. To see a kingdom is to have an apprehension of its reality and of its nature; to enter into a kingdom is to become a subject of it.1 [Note: F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of John, 90.]

6. Our Lord speaks of the second birth as completed by two agencies, water and the Spirit. To make the one of these merely the symbol of the other is to miss His meaning. The Baptist baptized with water for the remission of sins, but he was always careful to disclaim power to baptize with the Holy Ghost. His baptism with water was of course symbolical; that is to say, the water itself exercised no spiritual influence, but merely represented to the eye what was invisibly done in the heart. But that which it symbolized was not the life-giving influence of the Holy Spirit, but the washing away of sin from the soul. Assurance of pardon John was empowered to give. Those who humbly submitted to his baptism with confession of their sins went from it forgiven and cleansed. But more than that was needed to make them new menand yet, more he could not give. For that which would fill them with new life they must go to a Greater than he, who alone could bestow the Holy Ghost.

These, then, are the two great incidents of the second birththe pardon of sin, which is preparatory, and which cuts our connection with the past; the communication of life by the Spirit of God, which fits us for the future. Both of these are represented by Christian baptism because in Christ we have both; but those who were baptized by Johns baptism were only prepared for receiving Christs Spirit by receiving the forgiveness of their sins.

This passage brings out the deep truth of which Baptism was afterwards made an outward and visible exponent. Here we are shown the need of an external acceptance of promise and position, and of these being sealed on us, and still further the need of the Spirit dwelling in our hearts to make this outward confession a reality, and give us power for practising it. And so, be it ever remembered, the mere form of baptism, unless the Holy Spirit be actually in the heart, can avail nothing. It is but, as it were, a husk, and can be no more, but the gift of the Holy Spirit is open to all; and as we read this passage, and are perhaps for the moment tempted to think it excludes some, or even ourselves, from the Kingdom, we should put beside it that other glorious passage of promise: If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? (Luk 11:13).1 [Note: J. H. Rogers, The Verily, Verilys of Christ, 28.]

Imagine not infants, but crowds of grown-up persons already changed in heart and feelings; their life hidden with Christ in God, losing their personal consciousness in the laver of regeneration; rising again from its depths into the light of heaven, in communion with God and nature; met as they rose from the bath with the white raiment, which is the righteousness of the saints, and ever after looking back on that moment as the instant of their new birth, of the putting off of the old man, and the putting on of Christ. Baptism was to them the figure of death, burial, and resurrection all in one, the most apt expression of the greatest change that can pass upon man, like the sudden change into another life when we leave the body.1 [Note: B. Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul, i. 291.]

7. We now see what our Lord demanded of Nicodemus. It was that he should enter into an entirely new relationship to God. There were two classes of people, the righteous and the sinners. The difference between them was due to their attitude to the Law. The righteous knew the Law, and so counted themselves right with God; the sinners did not know it; and the judgment which the righteous pronounced on them was, This people who knoweth not the law are cursed.

Now when Nicodemus came to Jesus, instead of being confirmed in his righteousness, or perhaps told what omissions he had to make good in order that his obedience to the Law might be perfect, he was informed that the whole framework of his life was wrong. His relation had been to the Law, not to the Person of God. He had obeyed God as a servant; he had not loved Him as a son. The whole structure of righteousness which he had built up laboriously, by rigid observance of the precepts of the Law, had therefore to be taken down. He had to begin at the beginning again; or, to use the inimitable figure of our Lord, he had to be born anew.

The New Birth, then, is the entrance on a new attitude towards God, the attitude of a loving son to a Father instead of that of an obedient servant to a lawgiver. This new attitude is entered upon by repentance on the part of the sinner (however righteous the sinner may have thought himself to be), and the gift of the Spirit on Gods part. It thus involves three thingsfirst and chiefly a new attitude to God; next, and as belonging to that, a new attitude to the past, or Repentance; and, last, a new attitude to the future, or Spiritual Life.

I doubt if there is a doctrine of Jesus which modern men so thoroughly disbelieve as that which staggered Nicodemus nineteen centuries ago. I know just how men roast it over the slow fires of their sarcasm. I have watched them score it with the keenest infidel blades. I have seen it pilloried and hung in effigy before an admiring crowd. To all of which there is just this to sayand I believe it can be substantiated with vital truththat of all the Masters doctrines none is more self-evident and philosophical than this. There was nothing in it to bewilder Nicodemus or any man of us. Jesus touched the bedrock of common-sense when He insisted that there is no way into His Kingdom except through a second birth.1 [Note: G. C. Peck, Ringing Questions, 161.]

A New Attitude to God

1. To be born again means to get back to our childhood. Who has not cried, Oh, that I were a child again! If only I could start life over again, free from all the errors and disasters, free from all the stains and soils of the past! We may, we can. We can get back to childhood again. For Naaman there was the river that washed away the leprosy of the flesh; for us there is a fountain opened in the house of David for sin and uncleanness, where the soul may be washed clean. To get back to childhood, to get the weight of sin removed, to start anewJesus says we can. Science tells us that all that is wanted to create a new star is a start. There are the vast floating nebulae. If they will only cohere at some little point, then the globe will begin to form, and presently you will have a star. All that we want is the point of contact, the cohering point; then the new life will begin to stir in us, and the new soul begin to grow into the starry image of Christ.

2. When a child is born in common life it is born into a sonship; it becomes at once a member of the family; and there and then, before it has done a thing to merit it, the little child has a right to its fathers and mothers love. It is exactly the same with the new birth of the child of God. Every person born of the Spirit is born into a sonship, and is received at once as a beloved child into the family of God. This is what St. John teaches us (Joh 1:12): As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name; and what St. Paul teaches (Gal 4:4-5): When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

3. Now this new attitude to God, which is here called a new birth, is necessaryYe must be born again. It is necessary for the acknowledged sinner, since his attitude is openly and admittedly wrong. But it is necessary also for every person whose highest aim in life has been to do his duty. He must be born anew as a son and begin to live a life of love to God as his Father. The Kingdom of God, as far as man is concerned, is a state in which we are in our right relation to Him. All irrational creatures obey God and do His will: the sun runs his course with an exactness and punctuality we cannot rival; the grace and strength of many of the lower animals, their marvellous instincts and aptitudes, are so superior to anything in ourselves that we cannot even comprehend them. But what we have as our speciality is to render to God a willing service; to understand His purposes and enter sympathetically into them. The lower creatures obey a law impressed upon their nature; they cannot sin; their performance of Gods will is a tribute to the power which made them so skilfully, but it lacks all conscious recognition of His worthiness to be served and all knowledge of His object in creation. It is God serving Himself: He made them so, and therefore they do His will. So it is with men who merely obey their nature: they may do kindly, noble, heroic actions, but they lack all reference to God; and, however excellent these actions are, they give no guarantee that the men who do them would sympathize with God in all things, and do His will gladly.

In the evening I got into a very interesting conversation with Macleod, the blacksmith of the Pioneer. He is a Scot from Campsie, has a true west country twang, and, like most of our countrymen, is far better informed on many subjects of the highest importance than nine-tenths of those among whom he lives. I found him to be a Christian, and the manner of his calling was one of the most singular that has ever been heard of. He was for some time resting on a righteousness of his own, trusting to a moral life and his general goodness, but frequently with misgivings as to the security of his foundations. At times he felt that the sand on which he was resting was moving. When at Johanna on board the Lynx, he was sent along with a party to assist the Enchantress, which had got ashore. In the subsequent destruction of the vessel there was much confusion. Kicking about the deck, he found some of Spurgeons sermons. In reading a few sentences casually where the book opened, he met the expression: You need not carry your coals to Newcastle, i.e. you need not bring your righteousness to the righteousness of Christ. He saw his mistake, and shortly afterwards found peace and rest on the true foundation. This blacksmith had made the very discovery that was made by Saul of Tarsus, Luther, Wesley, and Dr. Chalmers.1 [Note: Stewart of Lovedale, 67.]

(1) This new attitude is not required, of course, of such as are already subjects of the change; and many are so even from their earliest years, having grown up into Christ by the preventing or anticipating grace of their nurture in the Lord, so that they can recollect no time when Christ was not their love, and the currents of their inclination did not run toward His word and His cause. The case, however, of such is no real exception; and, besides this, there is even no semblance of exception. Intelligence, in fact, is not more necessary to our proper humanity than the second birth of this humanity to its salvation.

The first years of our existence are simply animal; then the life of a young man is not that of mere instinct, it is a life of passion, with mighty indignations, strong aversions. And then passing on through life we sometimes see a person in whom these things are merged; the instincts are there only for the support of existence; the passions are so ruled that they have become gentleness, and meekness, and love. Between these two extremes there must have been a middle point, when the life of sense, appetite, and passion, which had ruled, ceased to rule, and was ruled over by the life of the spirit; that moment, whether it be long or short, whether it come like the rushing mighty wind, or as the slow, gentle zephyr of the springwhenever that moment was, then was the moment of spiritual regeneration.

My conversion to the Lord Jesus might, with propriety, be compared to a mother rousing an infant with a kissa simile answering exactly to my experience in recalling it. Nor can I look back to that blessed epoch in my life without magnifying His tender loving-kindness who spared me the doubts, terrors, and perplexities through which so many souls have passed ere they tasted joy and peace in believing.1 [Note: The Life, Labours, and Writings of Csar Malan, 37.]

There is no outwardly marked act of religious decision in Rainys youth, except that he was admitted as a communicant in the year 1842 in connection with St. Johns congregation, the minister of which at the time was the Rev. Dr. Thomas Brown. He was a notably regular attendant at public worship. But we have merely these outward facts. No one now survives who could give any report of his religious impressions at this period and he has himself left no indication of them. I venture, however, to recall in this connection a remark he once made to me to the effect that Tolstois way of stating the Christian life lacked something of saneness and even his way of exposing sinful life something of wholesomeness, probably because his conversion unfortunately had had to be so violent a reaction. Robert Rainys decisive religious experience, it may be safely said (if one may so far presume as to characterize it), was not so much a reaction as a realizationthat equally genuine and equally evangelical type of conversion (though the word conversion seems inappropriate to describe it) which consists in the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ becoming, and that perhaps not at any special time but with the natural development of mind and heart and will, something personal and something vital. A Christian life thus originated is at once supernatural and normal. It is the Christian life of one who not only has been converted but has been converted and become as a little child, with a childs natural trust in its father, a childs sheer happiness in goodness, a childs instinct of recoil from the impure. This was the note of Principal Rainys religion to the end, and it seems to have been so from the beginning.2 [Note: P. C. Simpson, The Life of Principal Rainy, i. 25.]

(2) One reason why the new attitude must be entered on by everybody is that it is the entrance into a new order of being. It is the passage from the natural to the spiritual. That fact gives the figure of the new birth peculiar appropriateness, though the figure must not be urged too far, or treated literally. The passage from the natural to the spiritual is beyond a mans own effort; it is accomplished by co-operation with the Spirit of God.

In this world we find a number of creatures which have what is known as animal life. They can work, and feel, and, in a fashion, think. They have wills, and certain dispositions, and distinctive characteristics. Every creature that has animal life has a certain nature according to its kind, and determined by its parentage; and this nature which the animal receives from its parents determines from the first the capabilities and sphere of the animals life. The mole cannot soar in the face of the sun like the eagle; neither can the bird that comes out of the eagles egg burrow like the mole. No training can possibly make the tortoise as swift as the antelope, or the antelope as strong as the lion. If a mole began to fly and enjoy the sunlight it must be counted a new kind of creature, and no longer a mole. The very fact of its passing certain limitations shows that another nature has somehow been infused into it. Beyond its own nature no animal can act. You might as well attempt to give the eagle the appearance of the serpent as try to teach it to crawl. Each kind of animal is by its birth endowed with its own nature, fitting it to do certain things, and making other things impossible. So is it with us: we are born with certain faculties and endowments, with a certain nature; and just as all animals, without receiving any new, individual, supernatural help from God, can act according to their nature, so can we. We, being human, have a high and richly-endowed animal nature, a nature that leads us not only to eat, drink, sleep, and fight like the lower animals, but also to think and to love, and which, by culture and education, can enjoy a much richer and wider life than the lower creatures. Men need not be in the Kingdom of God in order to do much that is admirable, noble, lovely, because their nature as animals fits them for that. If we were to exist at all as a race of animals superior to all others, then all this is just what must be found in us. Irrespective of any kingdom of God at all, irrespective of any knowledge of God or reference to Him, we have a life in this world, and a nature fitting us for it. And it is this we have by our natural birth, a place among our kind, an animal life. The first man, from whom we all descend, was, as St. Paul profoundly says, a living soul, that is to say, an animal, a living human being; but he had not a quickening spirit, could not give to his children spiritual life and make them children of God.

It is not any doctrine of development or self-culture, no scheme of ethical practice or social reorganization; but it is a salvationa power moving on fallen humanity from above its level to regenerate, and so to save. The whole fabric is absurd, therefore, unless there was something to be done in man, and for him, that required a supernatural intervention. We can see, too, at a glance, that the style of the transaction is supernatural from the incarnate appearing onward. Were it otherwisewere Christianity a merely natural and earthly productthen it were only a fungus growing out of the world, and, with all its high pretensions, could have nothing more to do for the world than any other fungus for the heap on which it grows. The very name, Jesus, is a false pretence unless He has something to do for the race which the race cannot do for itselfsomething regenerative and new-creativesomething fitly called a salvation.1 [Note: H. Bushnell, The New Life, 60.]

The difference between the two positions is radical. Translating from the language of Science into that of Religion, the theory of Spontaneous Generation is simply that a man may become gradually better and better until in course of the process he reaches that quality of religious nature known as Spiritual Life. This Life is not something added ab extra to the natural man; it is the normal and appropriate development of the natural man. Biogenesis opposes to this the whole doctrine of Regeneration. The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living Spirit. The spiritual man is no mere development of the natural man. He is a New Creation born from above. As well expect a hay infusion to become gradually more and more living, until in course of the process it reached Vitality, as expect a man by becoming better and better to attain the Eternal Life.2 [Note: H. Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 65.]

Truly there is only one way of being born again, regeneration by the power of the Spirit of God, the new heart; but there are many ways of conversion, of outwardly turning to the Lord, of taking the actual first step that shows on whose side we are. Regeneration is the sole work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart and soul, and is in every case one and the same. Conversion, on the other hand, bringing into play the action also of the human will, is never absolutely the same perhaps in even two soulsas like and yet as different as are the faces of men.3 [Note: John G. Paton, ii. 217.]

A New Attitude to the Past

The new attitude to God involves a new attitude to the past life. The sinner repents of his sin and turns to God in Christ; the righteous man passes from outward obedience to inward love, with a sense of his sinfulness as keen as that of any acknowledged sinner.

When men talk of the abolition of conversion and of the imitation of Jesus Christ, they forget that there is a past which must be atoned for. Look at it this way. Supposing I have run up an account with a tradesman, and I owe him quite a large sum of money. I call at his place of business and I tell him that in future all my transactions with him will be on a strictly cash basis, that I will pay for everything as I order or receive it. I say nothing about the money which I owe him, but I point out that as I intend to pay cash in future we start all square! Do you think you could find a tradesman willing to agree to this? No. What about the money you already owe? he would ask. Payment of cash in the future will never wipe out the debt of the past, and not until that is cleared off can we start square.1 [Note: A Fathers Letters to his Son, 128.]

1. We can verify our Lords assertion by honestly searching the depths of our own hearts, and looking at ourselves in the light of God. Think what is meant when we say, God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Think of that absolute purity, that, to us, awful aversion from all that is evil, from all that is sinful. Think of what sort of men they must be who can see the Lord. Are we fit to pass that threshold? Are we fit to gaze into that Face? Is it possible that we should have fellowship with Him? If we rightly meditate upon two facts, the holiness of God and our own characters, we shall feel that Jesus Christ has truly stated the case when He says, Ye must be born again. Unless we can get ourselves radically changed, there is no Heaven for us; there is no fellowship with God for us. We must stand before Him, and feel that a great gulf is fixed between us and Him.

Self-dissatisfaction is with most of us our one necessity. Do you remember Brownings verses on the pictures in Florence, that tremendous and thrilling contrast which he draws between the great Christian pictures in their manifest incompleteness and the early Greek statues with their manifest completeness of beauty and grace? Many of us have felt the contrast. It would be well for us all if we fought our way with him through the depression to which the thought sometimes gives birth. How vividly he sets forth the truth that a sense of incompleteness is the first condition of completeness! You must ever be born again to higher completeness if you would believe in a life to come, and the very fact that you recognize your imperfection is the best thing about you. It is finiteness in view and purpose that is our besetting sin. It was finiteness of view and purpose that gave to the old classic statues a chance to seem complete, and their very finiteness is the proof of their utter incompleteness; out of that came at once their possibilities and their impossibilities.1 [Note: R. Eyton, The Glory of the Lord, 25.]

Growth came when, looking your last on them all,

You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day

And cried with a startWhat if we so small

Be greater and grander the while than they?

Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?

In both, of such lower types are we

Precisely because of our wider nature;

For time, theirsours, for eternity.

To-days brief passion limits their range;

It seethes with the morrow for us and more.

They are perfecthow else? they shall never change:

We are faultywhy not? we have time in store.

The Artificers hand is not arrested

With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished:

They stand for our copy, and, once invested

With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.

Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven

The better! Whats come to perfection perishes.

Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven.

2. How close and personal are the lessons which we may learn from our Lords treatment of Nicodemus! He had lost a great opportunity in resisting the teaching of John. The way of the Lord would have been prepared in his heart had he listened to the desert preacher. He would not now have been sitting bewildered and amazed at the teaching of Jesus. Neglect of light and truth is always punished. Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known. As one of Brownings characters says

I see a duty and do it not, therefore I see no higher.

We must be faithful to the light which comes to us, if we would be ready for the greater light when it arises.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar,

And what we have been makes us what we are.

We can never tell how much we lose by unfaithfulness to the truths which touch the conscience or to the light which shows the way of duty. The demands from which we shrink or which we refuse are not always done with when we turn away from them. They meet us again. The sin we know, the duty we have neglected, the right which we have disobeyed, present themselves to us again. They have to be confessed, performed, obeyed, before we can enter the kingdom of life and peace.

(1) The first evidence of the reality of the new attitude to the past is that the sinner ceases from sin. This is the meaning of the words of St. John (1Jn 3:9): Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. The passage of which this forms a part is sometimes quoted as proving the sinlessness of all those who are partakers of what is called higher life. The sixth verse especially is thus appealed to. But these passages do not refer to any particular class who have attained this higher life of which they speak, but to all, according to the sixth verse, who have either seen or known Christ, and, according to the ninth verse, to all who have been born again. If the passage teaches the perfect sinlessness in thought, word, and act of any individual, it is of every one that has been born of the Spirit. But that is not the meaning of the passage. The tense employed in the Greek is the tense employed to denote habit, and the word is that made use of by St. John himself to express habitual practice. The word rendered commit in 1Jn 3:9 is the same word as is rendered keep in Joh 7:19 : None of you keepeth the law; and the one verse may explain the other. As none of the Jews kept the law, so those who have been born again do not keep sin. With their whole heart they have given up their wicked ways; their habits are changed; they have abandoned their former ways; they hate the sins they once loved, and they prove by their life and conversation that a real change has taken place in their heart. That this is the true meaning of the passage is proved beyond all doubt by the tenth verse, In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil; whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

A man lying drunk was accosted by Dr. Kidd, who asked him what he was and why he was lying there. Do you not know me, Doctor? I am ane o your converts, was the reply. Very like my handiwork, rejoined the Doctor; for if God had converted you, you wouldnt be where you are.1 [Note: James Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 277.]

(2) Another sign of the reality of our new attitude to our past life is that we obtain a clear victory over sin. It is impossible to overestimate the terrific hold that sin has on the natural man. It grips him with such a grasp that he has no better hope of escape than a fly has in a spiders web. But when a person is reconciled to God through the precious blood of Christ, and born in Him into the family of God, the web is broken, the chains are loosed, the conqueror is conquered, and the captive free. Look at the words in 1Jn 5:4-5 : For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? The change therefore is not merely one in thought or feeling, nor only an alteration of opinion; it is essentially practical, and the result of it is that the dishonest man becomes honest; the drunkard becomes sober; the rough-tempered man gentle; the corrupt man pure; and the immoral profligate is transformed into the humble, holy, repentant, and God-fearing servant of the Lord.

I would not for one minute have you suppose that Gods children are perfect, and without spot or stain or defilement in themselves. Do not go away and say I told you they were pure as angels and never made a slip or stumble. The same St. John in the same Epistle declares: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. But I do say that in the matter of breaking Gods commandments, every one that is born again is quite a new man. He no longer takes a light and cool and easy view of sin; he no longer judges of it with the worlds judgment; he no longer thinks a little swearing, or a little Sabbath-breaking, or a little fornication, or a little drinking, or a little covetousness, small and trifling matters; but he looks on every sort of sin against God or man as exceeding abominable and damnable in the Lords sight, and, as far as in him lies, he hates it and abhors it, and desires to be rid of it root and branch, with his whole heart and mind and soul and strength.1 [Note: J. C. Ryle, The Christian Race, 44.]

Immediately upon his conversion the conviction came clearly to the scholars mind that his opium-habit must at once be broken. There seems to have been no parleying about it. Ever since he first entered the missionarys household his conscience had troubled him on the subject. Mr. Hills kind but sorrowful words would not leave him, and their reproach was burnt into his soul.

Mr. Hsi, he had said, you are a distinguished member of a scholarly family. I deeply regret to see you brought to so enfeebled a condition through opium. If you do not cleanse yourself, how can you be an example to others?

But at that time he knew no power that could enable him to cleanse himself from the degrading vice. Now all was different. He belonged to Christ, and there could be no doubt as to the will of his new Master. It was thoroughly in keeping with the character of the man to come to this clear decision at once. Of course, he knew well what leaving off opium-smoking would involve. But there was no shrinking; no attempt at half measures. He saw it must be sacrificed at once, entirely, and for ever.

Then came the awful conflict. It was as though the great enemy of souls, seeing his prisoner escaping, fell back upon this opium-habit as an invincible chain with which to bind him. How critical was the struggle, how momentous the issues, Hsi himself hardly realized. Upon its outcome all his future power and usefulness depended. As angels lingered near the Saviour tempted in the wilderness, may we not believe the watchful ones lingered near Hsi in the hour of his great need? By the merciful aid of God he was at last victorious.2 [Note: J. E. Hellier, Life of David Hill, 136.]

(3) Another sign is that we gain the victory over the world. What is the natural man?a wretched slave to the opinion of this world. What the world says is right he follows and approves; what the world says is wrong he renounces and condemns also. How shall I do what my neighbours do not do? What will men say of me if I become more strict than they? This is the natural mans argument. But from all this he that is born again is free. He is no longer led by the praise or the blame, the laughter or the frown, of children of Adam like himself. He no longer thinks that the sort of religion which everybody about him professes must necessarily be right. He no longer considers What will the world say? but What does God command?

I fear that unworldliness is almost conspicuous by its absence from our Church members to-day. The world and the Church are so interlocked in unholy wedlock that it is scarcely possible to say where the Church ends and where the world begins. There was a time when the world and the Church were widely separated, in the days when the early Christians carried their cross for Jesus; but now the world has become religious, or which amounts to the same thing, the Church has become worldly and the power of God has almost left us.1 [Note: G. C. Grubb, Unsearchable Riches, 33.]

(4) The whole man is changed. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. There are new sorrows, new joys, new motives, new hopes, and new principles. All things are now seen under a new light, and so appear in a new colour; for all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. That great reconciliation changes everything.

It is inevitable that in such a moment there shall come into a mans mind a disgust for the past life,the life of selfishness, the life of low ideals, the life of contentment with self and with selfish surroundings. There will come a disgust in the mans soul, and he will say, Is it possible that I was made for this, that this is the end and object of my life?to go down town every morning and back again at night, to see more beautiful things year by year in my house, to gather my books about me, to learn a little more, to make myself more comfortable? Is it possible that this is the last expression of life, the outcome of all the Divine power that has been moving in the universe since the fiery clouds first filled the firmament? Is this the outcome of it? An animal, comfortable, respecting himself, respected of his fellow-men? Is this the end? Is there no higher term of existence?1 [Note: L. Parks, The Winning of the Soul, 182.]

In a former chapter, we followed Father Paul Le Jeune on his winter roamings, with a band of Montagnais, among the forests on the northern boundary of Maine. Now Father Gabriel Druilletes sets forth on a similar excursion, but with one essential difference. Le Jeunes companions were heathen, who persecuted him day and night with their gibes and sarcasms. Those of Druilletes were all converts, who looked on him as a friend and a father. There were prayers, confessions, masses, and invocations of St. Joseph. They built their bark chapel at every camp, and no festival of the Church passed unobserved. On Good Friday they laid their best robe of beaver-skin on the snow, placed on it a crucifix, and knelt around it in prayer. What was their prayer? It was a petition for the forgiveness and the conversion of their enemies, the Iroquois. Those who know the intensity and tenacity of an Indians hatred will see in this something more than a change from one superstition to another. An idea had been presented to the mind of the savage to which he had previously been an utter stranger. This is the most remarkable record of success in the whole body of the Jesuit Relations.2 [Note: Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, ii. 138.]

That noble old soul, Abraham, stood by me as an angel of God in sickness and in danger; he went at my side wherever I had to go; he helped me willingly to the last inch of strength in all that I had to do; and it was perfectly manifest that he was doing all this, not from mere human love, but for the sake of Jesus. That man had been a Cannibal in his heathen days, but by the grace of God there he stood verily a new creature in Christ Jesus. Any trust, however sacred or valuable, could be absolutely reposed in him; and in trial or danger, I was often refreshed by that old Teachers prayers, as I used to be by the prayers of my saintly father in my childhoods home. No white man could have been a more valuable helper to me in my perilous circumstances, and no person, white or black, could have shown more fearless and chivalrous devotion.3 [Note: John G. Paton, i. 173.]

III

A New Attitude to the Future

We have seen that two things are essential to a member of the Kingdoman outward act of allegiance, signifying repentance and the acceptance of pardon, and an inward infusion of a new nature, which is indicated generally in chap. Joh 1:12 by the words, As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

The Christianity of Clovis does not indeed produce any fruits of the kind usually looked for in a modern convert. We do not hear of his repenting ever so little of any of his sins, nor resolving to lead a new life in any the smallest particular. He had not been impressed with convictions of sin at the battle of Tolbiac; nor, in asking for the help of the God of Clotilde, had he felt or professed the remotest intention of changing his character, or abandoning his projects. What he was, before he believed in his queens God, he only more intensely afterwards became, in the confidence of that before unknown Gods supernatural help. His natural gratitude to the Delivering Power, and pride in its protection, added only fierceness to his soldiership, and deepened his political enmities with the rancour of religious indignation. No more dangerous snare is set by the fiends for human frailty than the belief that our own enemies are also the enemies of God; and it is perfectly conceivable to me that the conduct of Clovis might have been the more unscrupulous, precisely in the measure that his faith was more sincere.1 [Note: Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens (Works, xxxiii. 39).]

1. The new birth is the commencement of a new life. When the child is born it begins to live. No one can tell what that mysterious power is that we call life. It is something which all the science of the world is unable either to create or to define. Now as life commences in the child at the moment of its birth, so life commences in the soul when it is born again of the Spirit. The new birth is not merely a change of habit in a living soul, it is the commencement of life where there was none before. Thus the change when a person is born again is of the same character as that which took place in Adam when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. There is the same difference in a person before the new birth and after it as there is between a beautiful statue and a living man. The statue may be perfect in form, but it is lifeless; the living person may be in some respects less beautiful in figure, but he is alive, and, being alive, can move, and think, and act for God.

They tell me that some months ago a young Scotsman, who had been blind all his life, suddenly, by a marvellous operation, received his sight. They say that to that young man the world is another place. He wanders daily up and down in scenes with which you and I are so familiar that we do not even call them beautiful, and he sees a radiance which was hidden from ordinary everyday eyes that have gazed upon them all their lives. Oh, he says, the world is so beautiful! Who would have thought it was so beautiful? Apt figure of the experience of the man who has found his God through the touch of a quickening Spirit.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell, The Song of Ages, 160.]

Lord, I was blind: I could not see

In Thy marred visage any grace;

But now the brightness of Thy face

In radiant vision dawns on me.

2. The fundamental difficulty in understanding the truth of the new birth and the new life lies in attempting to grasp it as a whole, and not in its special activities. All life grows vague if you try to understand its central essence. All life is clear, if you look at its special exhibitions. Ask us what life is in the most commonplace of living men, and we utterly fail to tell what it is in its unfound essence, or where it lurks among the hiding-places of the wondrous body; but when he lifts his hand and strikes, when he opens his mouth and talks, then in a moment we know unmistakably the living man. Now, so it is with the spiritual life. It is hard to tell just what the essence of the new Christian life is in any man. Theologians may contend over that, just as the physiologists contend over the essence of life in the body; but the new functions of the new existence, the way in which each separate power works differently, and each separate act is done differently, in the Christians experiencethis is not hard to trace.

(1) One of the features of the new life is self-satisfaction.There is a bad and a good self-satisfaction. The bad self-satisfaction is only too common. It is what we call self-conceit. A man seems to himself sufficient for everything. There is no task that he will not accept. He does not look outside himself. The strength is in his own arm, which he can make strong as iron to subdue his foes; in his own heart, which he can make hard as a rock to bear his troubles. For doing or enduring he needs nothing but himself. He can do anything. That self-conceit must die, or the man is a failure. Somehow or other, the man must learn that in himself he can do nothing. Then comes humility; and when in his humility he casts himself upon another strength, and expects to do nothing save in the power of God, then he is born again into a new self-satisfaction. To find himself taken by God; to feel that God is giving him His strength; to say, I can do anything through Christ; to face the world not in his own power, but in his Mastersthat is the new, the deeper self-satisfaction.

The first effect of conversion, says Pascal, is that we see the world and ourselves from a standpoint altogether new. New also are the feelings of relief after struggle, of peace and harmony, of strength suddenly acquired, that the triumph of unity brings in its train. The convert is caught up into a world of grandeurs hitherto unknown. While shackled to the Moi he was a prisoner in a strange land, cooped up in narrow bounds of space and time. Its chains once broken, he feels heir to immensities beyond all telling.1 [Note: Viscount St. Cyres, Pascal, 227.]

It is with mans Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of Creation isLight. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least? The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World.2 [Note: Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, bk. ii. ch. ix.]

(2) Another feature is Happiness.It is easy to recognize the two levels of happiness, and the way in which men pass from the upper and lighter into the profounder and more serious one. Is this man happy whom I see in the first flush of youth, just feeling his new powers, the red blood strong and swift in all his veins, the exquisite delight of trying his just-discovered faculties of taste and thought and skill filling each day with interest up to the brim? Is he happy, he with his countless friends, his easy home, the tools and toys of life both lying ready at his hand? Most certainly he is. His days sing as they go, and sparkle with a bright delight that makes the generous observer rejoice for him, and makes the jealous envy him.

But then you lose sight of him for a while, and years after you come on him again. The man is changed. All is so altered! Everything is sobered. Is he happy still? As you look into his face you cannot doubt his happiness a moment, but neither can you fail to see that this new happiness is something very different from that which sparkled there before. This is serene and steady, and as you look at it you see that its newness lies in this, that it is a happiness in principles and character, while the other was a happiness in circumstances. The man whom you used to know was happy because everything was right about him, because his self was thoroughly indulged, because the sun shone and he was strong. The man whom you know now is happy because there is goodness in the world, because God is governing it, because in his own character the discipline of God is going on. The first sort of happiness was self-indulgent; the new sort is built on and around self-sacrifice.

You hear much of conversion nowadays: but people always seem to think they have got to be made wretched by conversion,to be converted to long faces. No, friends, you have got to be converted to short ones; you have to repent into childhood, to repent into delight, and delightsomeness.1 [Note: Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive (Works, xviii. 431).]

To the typical Moody convert, during this mission, the Gospel came as tidings of great joy.

I had seen occasional instances before of instant transition from religious anxiety to the clear and triumphant consciousness of restoration to God; but what struck me in the gallery of Bingley Hall was the fact that this instant transition took place with nearly every person with whom I talked. They had come up into the gallery anxious, restless, feeling after God in the darkness, and when, after a conversation of a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, they went away, their faces were filled with light, and they left me not only at peace with God but filled with joy. I have seen the sunrise from the top of Helvellyn and the top of the Righi, and there is something very glorious in it; but to see the light of heaven suddenly strike on man after man in the course of one evening is very much more thrilling. These people carried their new joy with them to their homes and their workshops. It could not be hid.1 [Note: The Life of R. W. Dale of Birmingham, 319.]

A short time before leaving for China it became my daily duty to dress the foot of a patient suffering from senile gangrene. The disease commenced as usual insidiously, and the patient had little idea that he was a doomed man and probably had not long to live. I was not the first to attend him, but when the case was transferred to me I naturally became very anxious about his soul. The family with whom he lived were Christians, and from them I learned that he was an avowed atheist and very antagonistic to anything religious. They had without asking his consent invited a Scripture reader to visit him, but in great passion he had ordered him from the room. The Vicar of the district had also called, hoping to help him, but he had spit in his face and refused to allow him to speak. His temper was described to me as very violent, and altogether the case seemed as hopeless as could well be imagined.

Upon first commencing to attend him I prayed much about it, but for two or three days said nothing of a religious nature. By special care in dressing his diseased limb I was able considerably to lessen his sufferings, and he soon began to manifest appreciation of my services. One day with a trembling heart I took advantage of his grateful acknowledgments to tell him what was the spring of my action, and to speak of his solemn position and need of Gods mercy through Christ. It was evidently only a powerful effort of self-restraint that kept his lips closed. He turned over in bed with his back to me, and uttered no word.

I could not get the poor man out of my mind, and very often through each day I pleaded with God, by His Spirit, to save him ere He took him hence. After dressing the wound and relieving the pain, I never failed to say a few words to him which I hoped the Lord would bless. He always turned his back, looking annoyed, but never made any reply.

After continuing this for some time my heart sank. It seemed to me that I was not only doing no good but perhaps really hardening him and increasing his guilt. One day after dressing his limb and washing my hands, instead of returning to the bedside, I went to the door and stood hesitating a moment with the thought in my mind, Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone. Looking at my patient I saw his surprise, as it was the first time since opening the subject that I had attempted to leave without saying a few words for my Master.

I could bear it no longer. Bursting into tears, I crossed the room and said: My friend, whether you will hear or whether you will forbear, I must deliver my soul, and went on to speak very earnestly, telling him how much I wished that he would let me pray with him. To my unspeakable joy he did not turn away, but replied:

If it will be a relief to you, do.

I need scarcely say that falling upon my knees I poured out my soul to God on his behalf. Then and there, I believe, the Lord wrought a change in his soul. He was never afterwards unwilling to be spoken to and prayed with, and within a few days he definitely accepted Christ as his Saviour.

Oh the joy it was to me to see that dear man rejoicing in hope of the glory of God! He told me that for forty years he had never darkened the door of a church or chapel, and that then, forty years ago, he had only entered a place of worship to be married, and could not be persuaded to go inside when his wife was buried. Now, thank God, his sin-stained soul I had every reason to believe was washed, was sanctified, was justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. Often in my early work in China, when circumstances rendered me almost hopeless of success, I have thought of this mans conversion and have been encouraged to persevere in speaking the Word, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear.

The now happy sufferer lived for some time after this change, and was never tired of bearing testimony to the grace of God. Though his condition was most distressing, the alteration in his character and behaviour made the previously painful duty of attending him one of real pleasure. I have often thought since in connection with this case and the work of God generally of the words, He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Perhaps if there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently see the results we desire. Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our own feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of eternal things may be the true cause of our want of success.1 [Note: Hudson Taylor in Early Years, 178.]

(3) Faith.There is a first faith and a second faith. The first faith is the easy, traditional belief of childhood, taken from other people, believed because it belongs to the time and land. The second faith is the personal conviction of the soul. It is the heart knowing, because God has spoken to it, the things of God, the after-faith that means communion. The first faith has a certain regulative force, but it has no real, life-giving power in it. The second faith is full of life. It, and it alone, is the belief which brings salvation.

Bushnells reconversion, if such it should be called, was a conversion to duty rather than to faith, but he made the discovery that faith could wait, but duty could not. Through this simple principle he found his way not only into a full faith, but into the conception of Christianity as a lifeChrist Himself rather than beliefs about Christ, a distinction which, if not then seen in its fulness, is implied in all his writings.1 [Note: T. T. Munger, Horace Bushnell, 27.]

(4) Knowledge.There is a shallow and a deep, an upper and a lower knowledge. The quick perception that catches the mere outside of things, and, recognizing the current condition of affairs, is able to throw itself in with them and so achieve a certain cheap success; and the calm, philosophic wisdom which looks down to the roots of things and sees their causes, and really helps to govern themthose are the two.

Have you never heard a man talking flippantly to-day of the worlds system, of the government of life, of the secrets of existence? and to-morrow some blow, some surprise has come right into the midst of his knowledge and killed it. Things have gone entirely different from what he expected, from what he prophesied. He has found how ignorant he is, and has been driven to the deeper understanding of a Will that works under everything, to that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge, ignorance, wisdomhere are the strata of life again; the first birth into one, death through the second, and a new birth into the third.2 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Seeking Life, 198.]

A young girl of twelve years decided to become a Christian. She was one of a large family of children. The new purpose went down into the vitals of her sensitive nature, and became the over-mastering passion. She had less opportunity of schooling than some of the others. But in strong, gripping life-purpose, in mental keenness, in deep, tender sympathy, and in the achievement of her life, she has so far outstripped all the others of the family, parents and children alike, that there seems to be no second.3 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Home Ideals, 248.]

A friend in America told me that in one of his after-meetings, a man came to him with a long list of questions written out for him to answer. He said: If you can answer these questions satisfactorily, I have made up my mind to be a Christian. Do you not think, said my friend, that you had better come to Christ first? Then you can look into these questions. The man thought that perhaps he had better do so. After he had received Christ, he looked again at his list of questions; but then it seemed to him as if they had all been answered. Nicodemus came with his troubled mind, and Christ said to him, Ye must be born again. He was treated altogether differently from what he expected; but I venture to say that was the most blessed night in all his life. To be born again is the greatest blessing that will ever come to us in this world.1 [Note: D. L. Moody, The Way to God, 39.]

(5) Love.We have now a new motive in life. Hitherto it has been only for ourselves that we have cared to live, and not even for our better selves, but just to gratify what our own fancies have dictated. And now this is changed. Not your own is our watchword; to show forth the praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light is our aim, so that, as it were, a new spirit is infused into us, and a new object set before us. This is the direct consequence of our acceptance of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, for he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.

Love is the infallible mark of possessing eternal life in Christ. We know, says the Apostle John, that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethrenthe brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ; those that do the will of Jesus; we feel at home with them, and learn to love them, because they have the same Father, the same Elder Brother as ourselves.2 [Note: G. C. Grubb, Unsearchable Riches, 32.]

He that is born of the Spirit loves his neighbour as himself; he knows nothing of the selfishness and uncharitableness and ill-nature of this world; he loves his neighbours property as his own; he would not injure it, nor stand by and see it injured; he loves his neighbours person as his own, and he would count no trouble ill bestowed if he could help or assist him; he loves his neighbours character as his own, and you will not hear him speak a word against it, or allow it to be blackened by falsehoods if he can defend it; and then he loves his neighbours soul as his own, and he will not suffer him to turn his back on God without endeavouring to stop him by saying, Oh, do not so!1 [Note: J. C. Ryle, The Christian Race, 51.]

I no longer stood aloof from men, and found pleasure in intellectual superiority; I was willing to become a fool for Christs sake if by any means I might save some. I issued a card of invitation to the services of my church with this motto of St. Pauls upon it, which I now felt was mine. I had had for years feelings of resentment towards one who, I thought, had wronged me; those feelings were now dead. In another case I had been harsh and unforgiving under great provocation; but when I met after a long interval of time the one who had injured me, my heart had only love and pity for him. I sought out the drunkard and the harlot, and, when I found them, all repulsion perished in the flow of infinite compassion which I felt. I prayed with fallen women, sought them in their miserable abodes, fought with them for their own souls, and O exquisite moment!I saw the soul awake in them, I saw in their tear-filled eyes the look that Jesus saw in the eyes of Magdalene. On my last Sabbath in London before leaving for America, one of these rescued girls, now as pure of look and manner as those most sweetly nurtured, called at my house to give my daughter a little present bought with the first money she had earned by honest toil in many years. On the day we sailed another said a special mass for us, and held the day sacred for prayer, in the convent where her bruised life had been nursed back to moral beauty. Love had triumphed in them, and I had brought them that love.2 [Note: W. J. Dawson, The Empire of Love, 115.]

(6) Goodness.There is a first and second goodness. Man is born into a garden, as that story runs. Right impulses, perceptions that the good is better and more beautiful than the badthese are not wanting in the early, the unregenerate life. And yet that life is unregenerate. It must be born again. Those good impulses, that mere sense of the beauty of goodness, that ignorance of vice, are not the true strength of the moral man, in which he can resist temptation and really grow to God. That fails. He dies out of that; and, once out of that, he never can go back to it again. The angels and the flaming sword are at the gate, to keep any man who has been innocent, and sinned, from ever returning to innocence again.

There is a natural goodness; there is also a relative goodness. Some men are naturally good-tempered; it costs them nothing to be amiable; it would be difficult for them to be severe even in the judgment of wrong,they would excuse it, or wink at it, or in some way escape the duty of branding it. And some are constitutionally more generous than others. They like to give; they like to lighten burdens, and to help the blind and the weak over difficult roads. This, indeed, is beautiful, charming, as are also other wild flowers often found in hedge-rows or in rocky places.1 [Note: J. Parker.]

The very first mark of regeneration is straightness. Oh, for a revival of Divine righteousness in our business circles! oh, for a revival of Divine righteousness in our ecclesiastical dealings with money! oh, for a revival of Divine righteousness in our family lives! The first mark that God gives is not any inward ecstasy, is not any peculiarity of feeling, is not the singing of hymns, and saying Hallelujah; the first mark of regeneration is that you are straight inside and straight outside. He that doeth righteousness, hath been born of God.2 [Note: G. C. Grubb, Unsearchable Riches, 29.]

(7) Progress.When we are born again it is not only to a position but a power, not only to give us a technical right to certain promises and possessions, but to enable us to enter upon them and to use them. There is, indeed, a new creation in usa power that never existed before; and one which, though it may be very small at first, still does exist, and will go on growing and growing day by day, until it assumes a real and vigorous proportion which all our enemies shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.

Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.3 [Note: G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 193.]

The souls whole life is in progress, in the eternal search, the quest of the Grail.

Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,

Paid with a voice flying by to be lost in an endless sea

Glory of virtue to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong,

Nay but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she:

Give her the glory of going on and still to be.

The wages of sin is death; if the wages of virtue be dust

Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly?

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,

To rest in a golden grove or to bask in a summer sky;

Give her the wages of going on and not to die.

This going on is the life of the soul. It is the essential thing in Christian character, which is not a possession of finished qualities, but a stern self-government under the will of God to the end of the widest service and an unending attainment.1 [Note: R. E. Speer, The Marks of a Man, 160.]

One of the most interesting aspects of the life of St. Francis is, in fact, the continual development revealing itself in him. He is one of the small number to whom to live is to be active, and to be active is to make progress. There is hardly any one except St. Paul in whom is found to the same degree the devouring need of being always something more, always something better.2 [Note: Paul Sabatier, St. Francis of Assisi.]

Our course is onward, onward into light:

What though the darkness gathereth amain,

Yet to return or tarry, both are vain.

How tarry, when around us is thick night?

Whither return? what flower yet ever might,

In days of gloom and cold and stormy rain,

Enclose itself in its green bud again,

Hiding from wrath of tempest out of sight?

Couragewe travel through a darksome cave;

But still as nearer to the light we draw,

Fresh gales will reach us from the upper air,

And wholesome dews of heaven our foreheads lave,

The darkness lighten more, till full of awe

We stand in the open sunshine unaware.3 [Note: R. C. Trench, Poems, 36.]

A New Beginning

Literature

Albertson (C. C.), The Gospel according to Christ, 25.

Arnold (T.), Sermons, vi. 124.

Bain (J. A.), Questions Answered by Christ, 133.

Banks (L. A.), The Great Saints of the Bible, 276.

Brooks (P.), Seeking Life, 193.

Burrell (D. J.), The Verilies of Jesus, 1.

Bushnell (H.), The New Life, 58.

Campbell (R. J.), The Song of Ages, 147.

Chapman (J. W.), Revival Sermons, 110.

Dawson (W. J.), The Evangelistic Note, 133.

Drummond (H.), Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 64.

Edger (S.), Sermons at Auckland, New Zealand, i. 96.

Eyton (R.), The Glory of the Lord, 20.

Gordon (A. J.), Ecce Venit, 85.

Grubb (G. C.), Unsearchable Riches, 24.

Hoare (E.), Great Principles of Divine Truth, 239.

Jowett (J. H.), Brooks by the Travellers Way, 137.

Maurice (F. D.), The Gospel of St. John, 85.

Moberly (G.), Plain Sermons at Brighstone, 1.

Moody (D. L.), The Way to God, 38.

Parks (L.), The Winning of the Soul, 177.

Pearse (M. G.), Jesus Christ and the People, 370.

Peck (G. C.), Ringing Questions, 157.

Reid (J.), Jesus and Nicodemus, 43.

Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, iv. 103.

Rogers (J. H.), The Verily, Verilys of Christ, 12, 21.

Ryle (J. C.), The Christian Race, 15.

Simon (D. W.), Twice Born, 1.

Watkinson (W. L.), The Fatal Barter, 77.

Watkinson (W. L.), The Transfigured Sackcloth, 169.

Christian Age, xlvi. 114 (Duryea).

Christian World Pulpit, x. 201, xxviii. 266, xxx. 33 (Beecher); lxxv. 104 (Watkinson).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

born: Joh 3:3, Isa 44:3, Isa 44:4, Eze 36:25-27, Mat 3:11, Mar 16:16, Act 2:38, Eph 5:26, Tit 3:4-7, 1Pe 1:2, 1Pe 3:21, 1Jo 5:6-8

and of: Joh 1:13, Rom 8:2, 1Co 2:12, 1Co 6:11, 1Jo 2:29, 1Jo 5:1, 1Jo 5:6-8

cannot: Mat 5:20, Mat 18:3, Mat 28:19, Luk 13:3, Luk 13:5, Luk 13:24, Act 2:38, Act 3:19, Rom 14:17, 2Co 5:17, 2Co 5:18, Gal 6:15, Eph 2:4-10, 2Th 2:13, 2Th 2:14

Reciprocal: Mat 5:18 – verily Mat 7:21 – shall Mat 11:21 – repented Mat 19:23 – enter Mat 21:43 – The kingdom Mar 10:23 – enter Mar 14:18 – Verily Luk 10:9 – The kingdom Luk 10:13 – repented Luk 11:13 – being Joh 1:33 – the same Joh 1:51 – Verily Joh 3:11 – verily Joh 3:12 – earthly Joh 6:26 – Verily Joh 6:53 – Except Joh 13:8 – If Joh 13:16 – Verily Act 8:36 – See Act 14:22 – enter Rom 2:29 – spirit Rom 8:8 – they that 1Co 12:13 – by 2Co 1:20 – Amen Gal 4:29 – after the Spirit Heb 10:22 – our bodies 1Pe 1:23 – born Rev 11:3 – clothed

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

The necessity of a new birth in general was the form in which Jesus opened up this subject to Nico-demus; He then entered more into the details of the process. The Greek New Testament uses the same word in the process of reproduction, whether the time of begetting or that of the birth is considered. The word is GENNAO, and Thayer gives us the two definitions, “To be begotten; to be born.” If the entire process is referred to in our language, it is proper to use the word “born,” such as saying a child was born to Mr. and Mrs. John Doe. But if the parents are referred to separately, the correct form of speech is that a child is begotten by his father, and born of his mother. Having only the one Greek word on the subject, the King James translators often give us “born” when it should have been “begotten.” A more exact wording of our passage would be, a man must be born of the water, having been begotten by the Spirit. This begetting takes place when a man believes the words of the Spirit (1Jn 5:1), because that word is the seed (of reproduction) of the kingdom (1Pe 1:23). After a man believes this word, he is then put under the water, and as he comes out of it he is being born of that water, because the literal meaning of “being born” is, “to come out of.” The person has then been born into the kingdom of God.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

[Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit.] He tells him, that the Jew himself cannot be admitted into the kingdom of the Messiah unless he first strip himself of his Judaism by baptism, and then put off his carnal and put on a spiritual state. That by water here is meant baptism; I make no doubt: nor do I much less question but our Saviour goes on from thence to the second article of the evangelical doctrine. And as he had taught that towards the participation of the benefits to be had by the Messiah, it is of little or of no value for a man to be born of the seed of Abraham, or to be originally an Israelite, unless he was also born from above.

Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels

Joh 3:5. Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except any one have been born of water and spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The answer is a stronger affirmation of the same truth, with some changes of expression which made the words no easier of acceptance, save as the new terms might awaken echoes of Old Testament language, and lead the hearer from the external to an inward and spiritual interpretation.

The first words have given rise to warm and continued controversy. Many have held that the birth of water and spirit; can only refer to Christian baptism; others have denied that Christian baptism is alluded to at all. The subject is very important and very difficult. Our only safety lies in making the Evangelist his own interpreter. We shall repeatedly find, when a difficulty occurs, that some word of his own in the context or in some parallel passage brings us light. (1) First, then, as to the very peculiar expression, of water and spirit. We cannot doubt that this is the true rendering; no direct reference is made as yet to the personal Holy Spirit. The words water and spirit are most closely joined, and placed under the government of the same preposition. A little earlier in the Gospel (chap. Joh 1:33) we find the same wordsnot, indeed, joined together as here, but yet placed in exact parallelism, each word, too, receiving emphasis from the context. Three times between chap. Joh 1:19 and chap. Joh 1:33. John speaks of his baptism with water; twice there is a reference to the Spirit (Joh 1:32-33); and in Joh 3:33. Johns baptizing with water and our Lords baptizing with holy spirit (see the note) stand explicitly contrasted. It is very possible that this testimony was well known to others besides Johns disciples, to all indeed in Judea who were roused to inquiry respecting the Baptist and his relation to Jesus. (2) It is possible that the Jews of that age may have been familiar with the figure of a new birth in connection with baptism. It is confessedly difficult accurately to ascertain Jewish usages and modes of thought in the time of our Lord. The Talmud indeed contains copious stores of information, but it is not easy to distinguish between what belongs to an earlier and what to a later age. We know that converts to the Jewish religion were admitted by baptism to fellowship with the sacred people. The whole tenor of the law would suggest such a washing when the uncleanness of heathenism was put off, and hence no rite could be more natural. Yet we have no certain knowledge that this was practised so early as the time of our Lord. There is no doubt that, at a later date, the proselyte thus washed or baptized was spoken of as born again. Here again, therefore, we have some confirmation of the view that in the words before us there is in some sort a reference to baptism,at all events, to the baptism of John. (3) But what was Johns baptism? We see from chap. Joh 1:25 how peculiar his action appeared to the rulers of the people. Even if proselytes were in that age baptized, a baptism that invited all, publican and Pharisee alike, would but seem the more strange. Johns action was new and startling; and from chap. Joh 1:21-25 it appears that the leaders of Jewish thought beheld in it an immediate reference to the time of Messiah. It seems very probable that Johns baptism was directly symbolic, a translation into visible symbol of such promises as Eze 36:25, which looked forward to the new spiritual order of which he was the herald. To the sprinkling with clean water, the cleansing from all filthiness, of which Ezekiel speaks, answers closely Johns baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (compare also Eze 36:31). To the promise which follows, A new spirit will I put within you. … I will put my spirit within you, answers just as closely Johns testimony to Jesus, He it is that baptizeth with holy spirit. (4) The two contrasted elements in the baptisms of chap. Joh 1:33 are(a) the covering and removal of past sin; and (b) the inbreathing of a new life. In that verse holy spirit is the gift and not the Giver. The Giver is the Holy Spirit; but the gift, that which is the essential element in the new baptism, is the bestowal of holy spirit, the seed and the principle of a holy spiritual life. (5) These two elements were conjoined in the Christian baptism instituted afterwards: the cleansing of forgiveness through Christs death and the holiness of the new life in Christ are alike symbolized in it. Here, therefore, our Lord says that no man can enter into the kingdom of God unless he have been born anew, the elements of the new birth being the removal by cleansing of the old sinful life, and the impartation by the Holy Spirit of a new holy principle of life.If this view of the words is correct, there is error in both extremes of which mention has been made. There is no direct reference here to Christian baptism; but the reference to the truths which that baptism expresses is distinct and clear.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Nicodemus not rightly understanding Christ’s meaning in the former verse, our Saviour is pleased to explain himself in this, and tells him, That the birth he spake of was not natural, but spiritual, wrought in the soul by the Spirit of God, whose working is like water, cleansing and purifying the soul from all sinful defilement.

Learn hence, That the regenerating change is wrought in the soul by the Spirit of God, which purifies it from its natural defilement, and renews it after the divine likeness and image. We never understand divine truths aright, till Christ opens our understandings; till then they will be denied, nay, perhaps derided, even by those that are profoundly learned.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Ver. 5. Jesus answered: Verily, verily, I say unto thee that except a man is born of water and of spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

The words, of water and spirit, substituted for (from the beginning) indicate to Nicodemus the new factors, and consequently the totally different nature of this second birth. The first term: of water, agrees better with the idea of a new birth, than with that of a heavenly birth. Spiritualism, embarrassed by the material character of this first means, has often sought to unite it with the second. Thus Calvinparaphrases the expression of water and spirit by the term aquae spiritales; he finds support in the expressionbaptism of the Spirit and of fire (Luk 3:16). But the spiritual sense of the word fire could not be questioned in that phrase.

It was otherwise with the word water in the saying with which we are occupied, especially at the time when Jesus was speaking thus. The baptism of John was producing at that time an immense sensation in Israel, so that the thought of Nicodemus, on hearing the words, birth by water, must have turned immediately to that ceremony; as it was celebrated in the form of a total or partial immersion, it quite naturally represented a birth. Jesus, moreover, at the moment when He thus expressed Himself, was in a sense coming out from the water of baptism; it was when completing this rite that He had Himself received the Holy Spirit. How, in such circumstances, could this expression:Born of water, have possibly designated on His lips anything else than baptism? Thus, also, is explained the negative and almost menacing form: Except a man …Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and we know that the Pharisees had refused to submit to John’s baptism (Luk 7:30); this saying contained, therefore, a very real admonition addressed to Nicodemus. Weiss, laying stress upon the absence of the article before the word water, rejects this special allusion to the rite of baptism. He sees in the water only an image of the purification of sin effected by the new spiritual birth. But the absence of the article simply makes prominent the quality of the means, and does not prevent us from thinking of the special practical use which was made of it by John at that time. Nicodemus must learn that the acceptance of the work of the forerunner was the first condition of entering into the new life.

This first term, therefore, contained a positive invitation to break with the line of conduct adopted by the Pharisaic party towards John the Baptist. But what is the relation between baptism and the new birth (Joh 3:3)? Lucke makes prominent in baptism the subjective element of repentance (). He thinks that Jesus meant to say: First of all, on the part of man, repentance (of which baptism is the emblem); afterwards, on the part of God, the Spirit. But the two defining words are parallel, depending on one and the same preposition; the one cannot represent something purely subjective and the other something purely objective. The water also contains something objective, divine; this divine element in baptism is expressed in the best way by Strauss. If baptism is, on the part of man, he says, the declaration of the renunciation of sin, it is, on the part of God, the declaration of the pardon of sins. The baptism of water, in so far as offered and administered on the part of God and in His name, contains the promise of pardon, of which it is the visible pledge, in favor of the sinner who accepts it.

In this sense, Peter says on the day of Pentecost, Act 2:38 : Be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the pardon of sins; and [following upon this pardon] you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And it must, indeed, be noticed that he says: The pardon of sins, and not of his sins. For it is the idea of baptismin itself, and not that of its individual efficacy, which Peter wishes to indicate. Baptism is, indeed, the crowning-point of the symbolic lustrations of the Old Testament; comp. Psalms 51, 4, 9, Wash me from mine iniquity…Cleanse me from my sin with hyssop; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Eze 36:25, I will sprinkle upon you clean water, and you shall be clean. Zec 13:1, In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. Water is, in all these passages, the emblem of the expiatory blood, the only real means of pardon. Comp. 1Jn 5:6, where the water, the blood and the Spirit are placed in connection with one another; the water, on the one hand, as the symbol of the blood which reconciles and, on the other, as the pledge of the Spirit which regenerates. To accept the baptism of water administered by John was, therefore, while bearing witness of one’s repentance, to place oneself under the benefit of the promise of the Messianic pardon. The condemnation being thus taken away, the baptized person found himself restored before God to his normal position, that of a man who had not sinned; and consequently he found himself fitted to receive from the Messiah Himself the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit: Here is the active, efficient principle of the new birth, of the renewal of the will and of the dispositions of the heart, and thereby even of the whole work of sanctification. Jesus sums up, therefore, in these two words: Of water and spirit, the essential principles of the Christian salvation, pardon and sanctification, those two conditions of entrance into the divine kingdom.

In the following verses, no further mention of water is made, precisely because it has in the new birth only a negative value; it removes the obstacle, the condemnation. The creative force proceeds from the Spirit. The absence of the article with the word spirit, is explained in the same way as with the word water. The question is of the nature or quality of the factors co-operating in this supernatural birth. The expression, (to enter), is substituted here for the term (to see), of Joh 3:3. The figure of entering into, is in more direct correspondence with that of being born. It is by coming forth from () the two elements indicated, in which the soul is plunged, that it enters into (), the kingdom. The reading of the Sinaitic MS.: the kingdom of heaven, is found also, according to Hippolytus, among the Docetae of the second century; it is found in a recently discovered fragment of Irenaeus, in the Apostolical Constitutions, and in Origen (transl.). These authorities are undoubtedly not sufficient to authorize us to substitute it for the received reading, as Tischendorf does. But this variant must be extremely ancient. At all events, it overthrows the objection raised against the reality of the quotation of our passage in Justin, Apol. 1.61. (See Introd., p. 152, 153.)

In speaking thus to Nicodemus, Jesus did not think of making salvation depend, either in general or in each particular case, on the material act of baptism. The example of the thief on the cross proves that pardon could be granted without the baptism of water. But, when the offer of this sign has been made and the sinner has rejected it, the position is different; and this was the case with Nicodemus. By the two following sentences, Jesus demonstrates the necessity (Joh 3:6 a), and the possibility (Joh 3:6 b), of the new birth, by leaving aside the water, to keep closely to the Spirit only.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

Again Jesus prefaced a further affirmation with the statement that guaranteed its certainty. Entering the kingdom and seeing the kingdom (Joh 3:3) seem to be synonymous terms, though the former may be a bit clearer. There are several views of the meaning of being born of water and the Spirit. The verse and its context contribute much to our understanding of this difficult phrase.

Whatever its meaning, "born of water and the Spirit" must equal being born "again" or "from above" (Joh 3:3) since Jesus used this phrase to clarify the new birth for Nicodemus. Second, the definite article translated "the" before "Spirit" is absent in the Greek text. The English translators have inserted it to clarify their interpretation of "spirit" (Gr. pneuma) as the Holy Spirit. A more literal translation would be simply "born of water and spirit." Third, the construction of the phrase in the Greek text indicates that the preposition "of" governs both "water" and "Spirit." This means that Jesus was clarifying regeneration by using two terms that both describe the new birth. He was not saying that two separate things have to be present for regeneration to happen. It has but one source. Fourth, Jesus’ criticism of Nicodemus for not understanding these things (Joh 3:10) indicates that what He taught about the source of regeneration was clear in the Old Testament.

The only view that seems to be consistent with all four of these criteria is as follows. The Old Testament often used water metaphorically to symbolize spiritual cleansing and renewal (Num 19:17-19; Isa 55:1-3; cf. Psa 51:10; Jer 2:13; Jer 17:13; Zec 14:8). God’s spirit (or Spirit) in the Old Testament represents God’s life (Gen 1:2; Gen 2:7; Gen 6:3; Job 34:14). God promised that He would pour out His spirit on people as water (Isa 32:15-16; Joe 2:28-29). The result of that outpouring would be a new heart for those on whom the spirit came (Jer 31:31-34). Thus the revelation that God would bring cleansing and renewal as water by His Spirit was clear in the Old Testament. Jesus evidently meant that unless a person has experienced spiritual cleansing and renewal from God’s spirit (or Spirit) he or she cannot enter the kingdom. This is what He meant by being born from above or again (cf. 1Co 6:11). [Note: Carson, pp. 191-96; cf. Hugo Odeberg, The Fourth Gospel, p. 50; ad Morris, pp. 191-93.]

Another view proposed by many scholars is that "water" is an allusion to the amniotic fluid in which a fetus develops in its mother’s womb. Other scholars see it as a euphemistic reference to the semen without which natural birth is impossible. In either case "water" refers to physical or natural birth while "spirit" refers to spiritual or supernatural birth. [Note: E.g., Wiersbe, 1:295.] They claim that Jesus was saying that natural birth is not enough. One must also experience supernatural birth to enter the kingdom. However this use of "water" is unique in Scripture. Moreover it assumes that two births are in view whereas the construction of the Greek phrase favors one birth rather than two. If two were in view, there would normally be a repetition of the preposition before the second noun.

Another popular view is that "water" refers to the written Word of God and "spirit" refers to the Holy Spirit. This figurative use of "water" does exist in the New Testament (cf. Eph 5:26), but it is uncommon in the Old Testament. It is unlikely that Nicodemus would have associated water with the Word of God, and it would have been unfair for Jesus to rebuke him for not having done so. This view, as the former one, also specifies two separate entities whereas the Greek text implies only one as the source of regeneration.

Some commentators take the "water" as an allusion to water baptism and the "spirit" as referring to the Holy Spirit. [Note: E.g., R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John: Introduction, Translation and Notes, 2:139-141.] According to this view spiritual birth happens only when a person undergoes water baptism and experiences regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Some advocates of this view see support for it in the previous reference to water baptism (Joh 1:26; Joh 1:33). However, Scripture is very clear that water baptism is a testimony to salvation, not a prerequisite for it (cf. Joh 3:16; Joh 3:36; Eph 2:8-9; Tit 3:5). In addition, this meaning would have had no significance for Nicodemus. He knew nothing of Christian baptism. Furthermore Jesus never mentioned water baptism again in clarifying the new birth to Nicodemus.

Others have suggested that the "water" could be a reference to the repentance present in those who underwent John’s water baptism and the "spirit" an allusion to the Holy Spirit. [Note: F. Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, with a Critical Introduction, 2:49-52; Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John , 1:713; Westcott, 1:108-9; Blum, p. 281; Tenney, "John," p. 47.] In this case, repentance as a change of mind is necessary as a prerequisite for salvation. According to advocates of this view Jesus was urging Nicodemus to submit to John’s baptism as a sign of his repentance, or at least to repent. The weakness of this view is that the connection between water and repentance is distant enough to cause misunderstanding. Nicodemus’ response (Joh 3:9) expressed lack of understanding. If the connection between water and John’s baptism were that clear, he would not have responded this way. It would have been simpler for Jesus just to say "repentance" if that is what He meant. Repentance in the sense of the fruit of a mental change is not necessary for salvation since by that definition repentance is a meritorious work.

Some scholars believe that "water" refers to the ritual washings of Judaism and "spirit" to the Holy Spirit. They think Jesus was saying that Spirit birth rather than just water purification was necessary for regeneration. However, Jesus was not contrasting water and spirit but linking them.

Finally at least one writer understood that when Jesus said "spirit" He meant it in the sense of wind (Gr. pneuma) and used it as a symbol of God’s life-giving work. [Note: Zane C. Hodges, "Water and Spirit-John 3:5," Bibliotheca Sacra 135:539 (July-September 1978):206-20.] This view holds that the wind is parallel to the water that also symbolizes God’s supernatural work of regeneration. However this is an unusual though legitimate meaning of pneuma. In the immediate context (Joh 3:6) pneuma seems to mean spirit rather than wind. This fact has led almost all translators to render pneuma as "spirit" rather than as "wind" in Joh 3:5, even though it means "wind" in Joh 3:8.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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