article12

§6 Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3:1–21)

Nicodemus is introduced as a particular example of the “believers” mentioned in 2:23–25. As a “member of the Jewish ruling council” and “Israel’s teacher” (vv. 1, 10), he is perhaps not wholly typical of the group, though later indications are that leaders of the people were indeed conspicuous among these so-called believers (12:42). It is probably out of fear that Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Speaking perhaps for the larger group, he makes a confession that puts the narrator’s summary (2:23) into his own words: Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him (v. 2).

Jesus brings Nicodemus up short with a solemn declaration that no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (v. 3). The image is a heightened form of Jesus’ use elsewhere of children as a metaphor of discipleship: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). The extreme example of becoming a child is, as Nicodemus put it, to go back to one’s mother’s womb and be born a second time (v. 4). Jesus explains that born again actually means born of water and the Spirit (v. 5), a phrase intended to clarify but one that has for some modern readers just the opposite effect. Verse 6, without mentioning water again, affirms that the Spirit gives birth to spirit, while a similar expression, “born of God,” has appeared already in the prologue (1:13; cf. also 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18).

Only in verse 5 is water mentioned in connection with this new birth. To be born again or born … of the Spirit is to have one’s life radically transformed by the power of God. It is like beginning life over again, with new perceptions and new relationships. But what has water to do with it? Are water and the Spirit two distinct elements, or one? Is Jesus saying that a person must be “born of water” (whatever that means) and also “born of the Spirit”? Or does he intend water as a metaphor for the Spirit (i.e., that one must be “born of water, even the Holy Spirit”)? If water simply represents the Spirit (as, e.g., in 7:39), why is water mentioned at all? The metaphor is pointless unless the phrase “born of water” by itself has a definite meaning on which a metaphor can be based. Some have suggested that it refers to physical birth. Water in Jewish writings can be a euphemism for the male sperm (e.g., the Qumran Hymns speak of humanity as dust or clay “kneaded with water” (1 QH 1.21, 3.24, 12.25, 13.15). Metaphorically, born of water and the Spirit would then mean born of a seed or sperm that is spiritual and not physical (H. Odeberg, The Fourth Gospel [Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner, 1968; reprint of 1929 edition], pp. 63–64). This would yield a masculine metaphor of God as Father in the sense of male procreator (cf. 1 John 3:9). The problem with this view (aside from the heaping of metaphor on metaphor!) is that water is not among the expressions for physical birth listed in 1:13. And when Jesus proceeds to mention physical birth to Nicodemus in verse 6, the phrase is “born of the flesh” (RSV), not “born of water.”

If water and Spirit are two distinct elements, then it is all the more true that the phrase born of water must be assigned a meaning of its own. Again, there are those who connect it with physical birth: A person must be born both physically and spiritually. In popular discussions of this passage, water is sometimes understood in connection with birth itself rather than procreation, that is, with the breaking of the water bag in the mother’s womb at the onset of labor. But the difficulties inherent in the “spiritual seed” interpretation are present here as well and are compounded by the redundancy of saying that one must be born physically in order to enter the kingdom. The whole point of verse 6 is that the new birth itself is not physical but spiritual.

It is more likely that born of water and the Spirit is a metaphor for baptism in water and in the Holy Spirit. The two elements were joined earlier in John the Baptist’s testimony about baptism: John baptizes in water, but Jesus is the one who will baptize in the Holy Spirit (1:26, 33). The pairing of the two elements involves both contrast and continuity. John’s baptism is incomplete without the Spirit, yet there is no evidence that water baptism came to an end when John passed from the scene. Baptism in water and the Spirit (in that order) becomes in the book of Acts the normative way of initiation into the Christian community: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you,” said Peter on the day of Pentecost, “so that your sins may be forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). In a similar way, Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he takes the step of initiation into the new community of faith forming itself around Jesus. He must leave the group he is in and join a new group by being baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit. The metaphor of becoming a child is combined with the language of Christian initiation. Nicodemus is being addressed as a representative of those who believed in Jesus but were afraid to confess him (2:23–25, 12:42). Unless such people risk persecution by publicly identifying themselves as Christians, their faith is declared invalid. In the first century, this public identification consisted of water baptism and the experience of receiving the Spirit. The point is not that baptism is always and everywhere necessary for salvation, or that a person is born again simply by being baptized. The point is that a faith that risks nothing is no faith at all and brings no one into the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ meeting with Nicodemus is more than an exchange between two individuals. The plurals in verse 7 (you must be born again) and verse 11 (you people do not accept our testimony) make it clear that two communities confront each other here: the Christian followers of Jesus and the Jewish community represented by Israel’s teacher (v. 10). The thrust of the interview is negative: The community of Nicodemus can no more understand the community of Jesus than one can understand where the wind comes from or where it goes. The lives of those who are born again are an utter mystery to those who are not (v. 8). The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus centers around the impossible. Jesus’ miracles are impossible without the help of God (v. 2). No one can see or enter the kingdom of God without a new birth (vv. 3, 5), and no one can go through the process of birth a second time (v. 4). There are two spheres of existence, the physical and the spiritual, with no natural access from the one to the other (vv. 6–8). How can this be? asks Nicodemus, not realizing that he is the living proof of it. He is Israel’s great teacher, yet even he cannot understand (v. 10). There is nothing in the world (or in Judaism in particular) that offers genuine access to God or his kingdom. Only by accepting the testimony of Jesus and his followers (v. 11) and becoming part of the Christian community can a person enter the realm of the Spirit. This is what Nicodemus and his community have (so far) failed to do.

After a brief transition, the positive Christian testimony is set forth in verses 14–17. The earthly things (v. 12) are the impossibilities of the preceding section, while the heavenly things represent the good news of eternal life through the gift of God’s Son. The note of impossibility continues in the pronouncement that no one has ever gone into heaven (v. 13a), but a crucial exception marks a change of tone: except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man (v. 13b). The time perspective of this verse and the verses that follow is postresurrection, as if Jesus, the Son of Man, has already gone up into heaven (cf. 6:62; 20:17), or as if the writer is looking back on God’s gift of his Son (v. 16). The third-person, almost detached, way of summarizing the gospel story is reminiscent of the first half of the prologue.

It is difficult to tell where Jesus’ words spoken during his earthly ministry end and these postresurrection words begin. Jesus’ speech to Nicodemus and the reflections of the narrator under the inspiration of the Spirit are so closely intertwined that it is neither possible nor necessary to distinguish them. Together they comprise the heavenly things uniquely known and made known by the ascended Son of Man. Verse 14 appears to be a kind of riddle addressed by Jesus to his opponents (or to Nicodemus in particular) in the manner of 2:19, a riddle solved for Christian readers by the reflection on Jesus’ redemptive death in verse 16. Formally, the pattern, as Moses … so the Son of Man, recalls a synoptic saying about Jonah: “As Jonah … so the Son of Man will be” (Matt. 12:40; cf. Luke 11:30). In each case a biblical incident is made the point of comparison for a veiled reference to Jesus’ death or resurrection. Here the bronze snake raised on a pole in the desert to brings healing from a plague of snakes (Num. 21:8–9) becomes a grotesque intimation of Jesus nailed high on a cross (cf. 12:23; 18:32). But instead of mere physical healing, Jesus brings eternal life (vv. 15–16) or salvation (v. 17).

God’s intent is a saving intent, and the scope of his salvation is worldwide. His love for the whole human race expresses itself in the giving of his only Son to die on the cross (v. 16). This “giving” is more specific than “sending” (v. 17). God “sent” his Son into the world (the Incarnation), but he gave his Son in death (the Passion) so that the world might be saved and not condemned (v. 17). The universality is qualified, however, by the phrases everyone who believes in verse 15 and whoever believes in verse 16. To gain eternal life, a person must believe, just as the Israelites had to look at the bronze snake in order to be healed (Num. 21:8–9). Eternal life is this Gospel’s equivalent of the kingdom of God, about which Jesus had spoken to Nicodemus (vv. 3, 5). It is not simply endless life; nor is it a life that begins after death. It is a new kind of life, a new order of existence that characterizes even now the person who believes in Jesus and is born again.

In verses 18–21, the alternatives of faith and unbelief are examined. Even though salvation and not judgment is God’s prime intent, judgment is inevitable on those who do not believe. Judgment, like salvation, is a present reality. Unbelievers are condemned already (v. 18). The verdict is that they “loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (v. 19). Once again it appears that the Gospel writer is looking back at Jesus’ teaching from a later vantage point, as if the issue of belief and unbelief were already settled. He writes in anticipation of a later verdict on those who “loved praise from men more than praise from God” (12:43). It is likely that the same group is in view in both instances, that is, the so-called believers of 2:23–25 and 12:42.

True belief is understood in verses 20–21 as coming into the light. The light that has entered the world is Jesus (cf. 1:5–10), and to come to the light is to come to Jesus, publicly and not in secret, for baptism and discipleship. Genuine faith requires open participation in a community of faith. The indictment of Nicodemus and his friends is that they have not taken this step. A person’s failure to come to the light is attributed to fear that his or her deeds will be exposed (v. 20). It is a sign that that person is an evildoer. The one who comes to the light is a person who lives by the truth (v. 21) and demonstrates by coming that his or her deeds have been accomplished through God. Coming to Jesus proves that God has already been at work in one’s life. In a curious reversal of later Christian theology, Jesus makes the point that people prove their good works by their faith!

Behind this surprising logic is not the notion that salvation is earned by good works but rather a strong doctrine of divine election. From a human perspective the new birth is a conversion, but from God’s perspective “conversion” simply brings out in the open the true nature of those whom God has chosen to be his children. No one can come to Jesus unless God draws that person to him (6:44). The one who comes is the one who has first listened to God and been instructed (6:45). Only the person who “chooses to do God’s will” will understand the message of Jesus (7:17). All people will one day be divided into “those who have done good” and “those who have done evil” and judged accordingly (5:29). But the test of whether one has done good or evil is whether or not one comes into the light. The dualism of John’s Gospel has been called a “dualism of decision” (R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament [New York: Scribners, 1955], vol. 2, p. 21). Back of it is the dualism implicit in God’s sovereign choice, and after it comes the dualism of the last judgment; but the one is an eternal mystery and the other a ratification of something already decided. What matters in history is whether a person decides to remain in darkness or to come to the light that has dawned in Jesus Christ. This is the main theological issue arising out of Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem.