New Birth - John 3:1-21
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John 2:23-25 - 23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. 25 He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.
John 3:1-2a - 1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night…
John 3:2 - “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
John 3:3 - “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
ἄνωθεν (anōthen) - from above
John 3:4 - 4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
William Barclay - “You talk about being born anew; you talk about this radical, fundamental change which is so necessary but in my experience it is impossible. There is nothing I would like more, but you might as well tell me, a full grown man, to enter into my mother’s womb and be born all over again.”
John 3:5-8 - 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Water & Spirit
Ezekiel 36:25-27 - 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Ezekiel 37:9 - 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’”
Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
Darrell Johnson - The only hope for our churches, our city, states, (and) the world is a spiritual revolution. A radical change in human nature from above, effected by the Spirit of God. Flesh, be it East or West, Liberal or Conservative, can never pull off the peace and justice, the freedom and healing of the Kingdom of God. But the Spirit of God can!
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) - “A statue has the shape of a man but it is not alive. In the same way, man has the "shape" or likeness of God, but he has not got the kind of life God has…Everything God has made has some likeness to Himself. Space is like Him in its hugeness…Matter is like God in having energy: though, of course, physical energy is a different kind of thing from the power of God. The vegetable world is like Him because it is alive, and He is the "living God." But life, in this biological sense, is not the same as the life there is in God: it is only a kind of symbol or shadow of it.
When we come on to the animals, we find other kinds of resemblance in addition to biological life. The intense activity and fertility of the insects, for example, is a first dim resemblance to the unceasing activity and the creativeness of God. In the higher mammals we get the beginnings of instinctive affection. That is not the same thing as the love that exists in God: but it is like it—rather in the way that a picture drawn on a flat piece of paper can nevertheless be "like" a landscape.
When we come to man, the highest of the animals, we get the completest resemblance to God which we know of. (There may be creatures in other worlds who are more like God than man is, but we do not know about them.) Man not only lives, but loves and reasons: biological life reaches its highest known level in him.
But what man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual life—the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the same word “life” for both: but if you thought that both must therefore be the same sort of thing, that would be like thinking that the "greatness" of space and the "greatness" of God were the same sort of greatness.
In reality, the difference between Biological life and spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc., is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.
ZOE
How can this be?
John 3:16-17 - 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
John 3:19-21 - 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
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Each Sunday we come together we offer an open invitation into the way of Jesus. An invitation to enter into sacred rhythms - to draw near to God through singing, giving, learning, and praying.
As a community that desires renewal in Des Moines as it is in Heaven, we recognize that we cannot offer what we ourselves do not have. We cannot lead where we ourselves have not been led; in turn, these questions aim at reflection. Reflecting on God’s word and making space for his leadership.
After watching or listening consider the following discussion questions as a large group or in groups of three to four:
What stood out from the teaching?
If God’s life from above could touch down anywhere in your life right now, where would you want it? (Consider pausing and praying, “Lord Jesus, let it be so.”)
Who in your life are eager to experience life from above (to be born anew)? (Again, consider praying by name for that person with the group - this may feel awkward, embrace it folks!)
Where would we do well to draw on God’s life from above rather than tapping into our own strength?