That Which is Born of the Spirit is Spirit

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. John 3:6

Although Luke makes it clear that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, one can’t help but notice that his coming is rather pretentious; there is some superficial sense of daylight in his own mind, reverently raving of Jesus as a teacher, yet irreverently considering himself as Jesus’ colleague.

He approaches the master as an emissary, speaking not only for himself, but on behalf of a committee who has made observation and consideration of this strange itinerate rabbi from the country side. Nicodemus stated what he could not know: “We know that thou art a teacher come from God.” Yet in the presence of Christ all his nobility, wisdom and status is brought to naught. Nicodemus’ plan of qualifying and inducting Jesus into the elite Pharisaical club results in the reduction of his own pompous suitability to an unqualified leader and an ill-equipped teacher.

Nicodemus had been taught all his life that we, the Jews, are it and they, the gentiles, are not. He believed that being in the physical lineage of Abraham was innate spirituality, inborn status and instant salvation. Jesus wrecked his world by telling him, Nicodemus the old birth will not do; there must be a new one, not of earth, but of heaven, not of men, but of God, not of the first Adam but of the second Adam, not of the old creation but of a new creation.

And there is that human tendency to postulate that God’s agenda does not differ from our own, that God finds a high degree of pleasure in the person that we are, and that our associations are good and godly. Few do not regard their lineage, ethnicity, and/or societal status as having some innate degree of virtue. Yet these things are inconsequential before God. One must possess something altogether differently than has been supply by the natural birth. This requires a new birth, sonship to a new father, kinship into a new family, and citizenship in a new nation.