John 3:3,4 - Born again

3:3

The you here is singular, Jesus is addressing Nicodemus directly. It is important that we do belong to groups, it is part of our God given human nature and to be a lone Christian is a contradiction in terms. But we can also hide behind groups when we need to have a direct personal encounter with the Lord, which is what Nicodemus needed here. The ”very truly” stresses the importance of what Jesus is saying.

Seeing the kingdom of God means knowing God, having more than some theoretical knowledge. And in order to be able to see it we need to be born again. The phrase “born again” can also mean “born from above”. This latter meaning would tie in nicely with what Nicodemus said about Jesus coming from God, ie from above.

We cannot see the kingdom of God by mere human knowledge or wisdom, our own efforts are not able to get us there. It is only God who can enable us to see.

3:4

Nicodemus clearly didn’t catch the significance of Jesus saying we needed to be born again or born from above. He assumed Jesus was talking about physically being born again. He decided to take it completely literally. Now there is a lesson for us here. Sometimes people talk as if unless we take all God’s words literally then we are not being faithful to the text. This is clearly nonsense. We need to apply an ounce of common sense when interpreting God’s words.

Then there is the question of why did Nicodemus take it literally? Was he just being obtuse? Or is it that he had no conception at all of what Jesus was talking about?