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John 3:8
John 3 is is commonly known for teaching about being born again. One segment has always baffled me, and so we have this Thought Exercise.
That segment is verse 8 (CSB) “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
“Wind” and “Spirit” is the same Greek word – pneuma. Remember that.
Nicodemus then says, “How can these things be?” (v.9). Jesus queries Nicodemus, “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” (v.10). Why should Nicodemus as a teacher of Israel know these things?
In the beginning, God created involving both water and the Spirit (Genesis 1:1-2). That connection is clear; and since John is writing about a new creation, a new “in the beginning” (John 1:1), going back to Genesis should be easily seen.
But what baffled me, until possibly now, is Jesus’s words in verse 8 – “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Why does Jesus use this image? Where do we see this imagery first?
Genesis 3:8 (CSB) Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
The word for breeze (which is another word for wind) (Gen.3:8) is the same word for Spirit (Gen.1:2) – ruach.
After Adam and Eve sinned, they died that day spiritually. To use Jesus’s language, did they need to be born again? While they were not physically baptized as we are, there was an apparent sacrifice or atonement because they were literally covered by animal skins. In order to be in the presence of God, didn’t they need to stop being spiritually dead?
For Adam and Eve, God moved like a breeze, they heard the sound, resulting in a covering. For us today God moves by His Spirit, we hear the sound, resulting in a new covering. All who are spiritually dead are made alive by hearing, God’s Spirit and a sacrifice. In our baptism, in our being born of water and the Spirit, there is hearing, water and the Spirit, and Jesus’s sacrifice (John 3:14-15).
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