Nic @ Night

John 3:1-10

1 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. 2 After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” 3 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” 4 “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” 5 Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. 6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. 7 So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” 9 “How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked. 10 Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things?

 

Born of Water and Spirit

1. Verses 3 & 5 are parallel verses: Jesus just restates verse 3 in verse 5, replacing “anōthen” or born “from above” with “of water and the Spirit”. He’s not adding anything to it, He’s just defining “anothen” = “of water and the spirit”
2. Translators inserted “the” to clarify their interpretation of “Spirit” as the Holy Spirit, but the literal translation from Greek is “born of water and spirit” 
3. In the Greek, the preposition “of” governs both “water and spirit”. This means that Jesus was clarifying “anothen” by using 2 words that both describe the new birth. He was not saying two separate things have to be present for regeneration to happen. 
4.  Verse 10  “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things?” Why does Jesus ask this question?  Nic should know that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it takes a work (from above) of a Sovereign God because that theme is abundantly clear in the O.T.

 

John 1:10-13
10 He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

 

Ezekiel 36: 25-27

25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

 

Eternal life is a work of God through the Holy Spirit

 

John 3:11

I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony

 

Believe the Truth or deny it. It’s now a matter of response.

 

John 5:36-40

But I have a greater witness than John—my teachings and my miracles. The Father gave me these works to accomplish, and they prove that he sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has testified about me himself. You have never heard his voice or seen him face to face, 38 and you do not have his message in your hearts, because you do not believe me—the one he sent to you. 39 “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! 40 Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.

 

John 3:12

But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

 

John 3:13
No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. 

 

Numbers 21:6-9

So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” 9 So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!

John 3:14-15

And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

 

John 3:16

For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life

 

John 3:36

And anyone who believes in God’s Son has eternal life. Anyone who doesn’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life but remains under God’s angry judgment.”

 

John 3:17

God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

 

John 3:18

There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.

 

John 3:19-20

And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. 20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.

 

1 John 1:5-9

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

 

Titus 3:5
he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.