The Divine Necessity of the New Birth Text: John 3:1-21
Introduction: A Meeting in the Dark
There are some conversations that change the course of history. This is one of them. We have here a clandestine meeting, a conversation held under the cover of darkness between the Light of the World and a man who was, for all his learning and prestige, entirely in the dark. Nicodemus was not some fringe character. He was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin. He was the best that the old covenant system, in its corrupted state, could produce. He was morally upright, theologically educated, and nationally respected. If anyone could get to God on his own merits, it was Nicodemus.
And so he comes to Jesus, not with hostility, but with a cautious, professional courtesy. He comes with a compliment. "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher." He acknowledges the signs, he recognizes the divine power. He is trying to fit Jesus into his existing categories. He is trying to add Jesus to his theological framework, perhaps as a prophet, perhaps as a great teacher. He is opening a negotiation. He wants to understand, to analyze, to categorize.
But Jesus does not negotiate. He detonates Nicodemus's entire worldview with a single, non-negotiable declaration. He does not start where Nicodemus is. He doesn't offer three steps to a better life. He goes straight to the root, to the absolute foundation. He tells this man, the best of the best, that he is spiritually dead and that his only hope is to be completely remade by a power outside of himself. This is not a message of self-improvement. It is a message of radical, sovereign recreation. It is the announcement of a divine necessity. You must be born again.
This conversation lays the groundwork for the entire gospel. It establishes the absolute necessity of regeneration, the sovereign work of the Spirit, the substitutionary nature of the cross, and the dividing line of all humanity: belief or unbelief, light or darkness, life or death. If we do not understand this, we do not understand Christianity.
The Text
Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”... [And the rest of our passage down to verse 21]
(John 3:1-21 LSB)
The Unyielding Requirement (vv. 1-3)
We begin with the initial encounter.
"Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, 'Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.' Jesus answered and said to him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.'" (John 3:1-3 LSB)
Nicodemus comes by night. Much has been made of this, and it is likely a mixture of fear of his colleagues and a genuine desire for an uninterrupted conversation. But John, the master theologian, is also telling us something deeper. Nicodemus, for all his knowledge, is in the dark. He represents the world, lost in the night of sin and ignorance, coming to the one who is the Light.
He opens with a flattering, yet inadequate, assessment. He calls Jesus "Rabbi" and a "teacher." He has seen the evidence, the miracles, and has drawn a logical conclusion: God is with this man. He is trying to start a peer-to-peer dialogue. But Jesus cuts right through the pleasantries. He doesn't thank Nicodemus for the compliment. He answers the question Nicodemus has not yet asked, the question that is buried deep in the heart of every man: "How can I be right with God?"
Jesus' answer is absolute. "Truly, truly," He says. Amen, amen. This is bedrock. Pay attention. "Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." The word "again" can also be translated "from above." Both are true. It is a second birth, and its origin is from heaven. Jesus is not talking about turning over a new leaf. He is talking about receiving a new life. He is telling Nicodemus that his problem is not a lack of information, but a lack of life. He is spiritually stillborn. A dead man cannot see. He doesn't need glasses; he needs a resurrection. This is the fundamental problem of every human being. We are born dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). The first birth gets us into a world of sin; only a second birth can get us into the kingdom of God.
The Carnal Mind's Confusion (vv. 4-8)
Nicodemus, the great teacher, is utterly baffled. His response reveals the profound inability of the natural mind to grasp spiritual realities.
"Nicodemus said to Him, 'How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?' Jesus answered, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.'" (John 3:4-8 LSB)
Nicodemus takes Jesus with a crass literalism. His question is absurd on its face, and he knows it. He is expressing his total incomprehension. He is thinking in purely physical, fleshly categories. And this is the point. The unregenerate mind cannot do otherwise. As Paul says, "the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).
Jesus clarifies, but He does not soften the blow. To be "born of water and the Spirit" is the same as being born from above. As a teacher of Israel, Nicodemus should have understood this. "Water" here is not a reference to baptism or physical birth. It is a direct echo of the Old Testament promises of cleansing and renewal, particularly in Ezekiel 36: "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean... And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes" (Ezek. 36:25-27). To be born of water and Spirit is to be spiritually cleansed and inwardly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. It is a divine washing and a divine quickening.
Jesus then lays down a fundamental principle: "That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit." Like begets like. Your first birth, your human birth, can only produce a human nature, which is fallen, corrupt, and incapable of seeing God. You cannot get a spiritual result from a fleshly process. No amount of self-effort, religious observance, or moral improvement can make the flesh into spirit. It requires a different kind of birth altogether, a supernatural one.
To illustrate the sovereign nature of this birth, Jesus uses the analogy of the wind. You can hear its effects, you can see the leaves rustle, but you cannot control it. You don't know its origin or its destination. It blows where it "wishes." The Greek word for wind (pneuma) is the same as the word for Spirit. The new birth is a sovereign, mysterious, powerful, and uncontrollable act of the Holy Spirit. He regenerates whom He wills, when He wills, how He wills. You do not orchestrate your new birth any more than you orchestrated your first one. You are the passive recipient of a divine miracle.
The Teacher Schooled (vv. 9-15)
Nicodemus is still lost. "How can these things be?" he asks. Jesus' response is a gentle, but firm, rebuke.
"Jesus answered and said to him, 'Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?... If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?... And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.'" (John 3:10, 12, 14-15 LSB)
Jesus points out the irony. Nicodemus is "the teacher of Israel," a master of the Scriptures, and yet he is ignorant of one of its central themes: the need for a new heart. This isn't some new, esoteric doctrine. This is Old Testament 101. The new birth is an "earthly thing" in the sense that it is what must happen to men on earth to enter the kingdom. If Nicodemus can't grasp this foundational truth, how can he possibly understand the "heavenly things", the eternal counsels of God, the nature of the Trinity, the incarnation of the Son?
Then Jesus gives him a picture, an illustration from his own textbook, the Torah. He points him back to the book of Numbers, when the rebellious Israelites were dying from the bites of venomous snakes (Num. 21:4-9). God's remedy was not a complex ritual or a series of good works. He commanded Moses to fashion a bronze serpent, lift it up on a pole, and declare that anyone who looked at it would live. It was a stark, simple act of faith in God's provision.
Jesus says, "Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." This is the first time in John's gospel that Jesus speaks of His crucifixion. He will be "lifted up" on the cross, bearing the curse and venom of our sin. The remedy for the snakebite of sin is to look to the one who was made sin for us. And the requirement is the same: "whoever believes." Just as the dying Israelite had only to look, the perishing sinner has only to believe, to trust in Christ alone. The result is not just continued physical existence, but "eternal life."
The Heart of the Gospel (vv. 16-21)
What follows is perhaps the most famous summary of the gospel in all of Scripture. Jesus moves from the "how" of the new birth to the "why" of the entire redemptive plan.
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." (John 3:16-17 LSB)
Here is the motivation behind it all: the love of God. Not a sentimental, squishy love, but a resolute, sacrificial, giving love. He "so loved" the world, this rebellious, sinful cosmos of fallen humanity, that He gave His most precious gift, His unique, one-of-a-kind Son. The purpose of this gift is explicit: that men might not perish. To perish is the default setting. It is the just end for our rebellion. But God has made a way of escape. The condition is singular: "whoever believes in Him." This is not universalism. It is a universal offer with a particular condition. The promise is glorious: "eternal life."
Verse 17 clarifies the Son's mission. His first coming was not for condemnation, but for salvation. This should shock us. The world was already under condemnation. We were already judged and found guilty (v. 18). He didn't come to tell us we were sinners; we already were. He came as a rescue mission into enemy territory to save those who were perishing.
The final verses draw the great dividing line.
"He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already... And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil... But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been done by God." (John 3:18-21 LSB)
The arrival of Jesus forces a choice. It is the great sort. Believing in Him removes the judgment that is already upon us. Refusing to believe simply confirms that judgment. The issue is not that God arbitrarily condemns people. The issue is that people are already condemned, and they refuse the pardon.
And why do they refuse? Jesus gives the diagnostic reason. "Men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil." The problem is not intellectual; it is moral. Unbelief is not a matter of insufficient evidence; it is a matter of suppressed truth. Men love their sin. They hate the light because it exposes their sin for what it is. They are like roaches scattering when the kitchen light is flipped on. They don't want their deeds to be seen.
But the one who has been born from above, the one who "practices the truth," is not afraid of the light. He comes to the light, not to boast in his own righteousness, but so that it might be clearly seen that his good deeds are not his own at all. They are the fruit of a supernatural work, "having been done by God." The believer comes into the light to put the spotlight on God's grace, while the unbeliever flees the light to keep the spotlight off his sin.