Perrydox.com is devoted to the pursuit of truth, whether plain or paradoxical, whether simple or sublime, or simply absurd yet absolute.
John 3:5 – Is Born of Water Our Physical Birth?
Is Being Born of Water our Physical Birth?
In doing market place evangelism using Bible Jeopardy, the “player” said that “born of water” is our physical birth. Is that what Jesus meant? We didn’t get an opportunity to sit and study, but I will share with you a way that helps me see it more clearly. Maybe it will help you too. I’ll admit it does seem possible, but in the end it doesn’t fit Jesus’s own words.
A – 3) Jesus responded and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
1. “Again” implies a second birth therefore two births. As will be revealed as we keep reading the first is physical and second spiritual.
B – 4) Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a person be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?”
1. Nicodemus understands two births with both, the first and the “again”, being physical.
C – 5) Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
1. Jesus mentions one birth which is the second or “again” birth having two elements: water and the Spirit. Since Jesus speaks of the second birth including water it is not our physical birth. Jesus goes from one person with two births to one birth with two parts.
B ‘- 6) That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit.
1. Jesus is now contrasting Nicodemus’s two births with both being physical or of the flesh, with Jesus’s “again” second birth which is of the Spirit and which has two elements: water and the Spirit. Notice the difference is Nicodemus’s two births and Jesus’s second birth.
A’ – 7) Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8) The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going; so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.”
1. Jesus repeats two phrases: “born again”; “born of the Spirit”. They are the same. Just as Nicodemus did not understand the second birth is spiritual, Jesus tells him that the second birth, which moves us, is from a place Nicodemus did not know – from God and not from our mother.
So, is being born of water our physical birth? No. Jesus does speak of a physical birth and spiritual birth, but Jesus applies the word “water” to the “again” or second birth. Without it we cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is this second birth that involves water? The “now” of Jesus’s ministry shows us later in John 3 it is baptism. The Spirit will be added to our water baptism in the “not yet” present of Nicodemus. This new birth of water and Spirit comes together in Nicodemus’s future and our present – Acts 2:38. Have you been baptized in water so as to receive the Spirit? Have you been born again of water and Spirit? Do you want to enter the kingdom of God?
Comments