John 3:5,6 - Water, blood, flesh and Spirit

3:5

Again Jesus uses the phrase “Very truly I say to you”. In verse 3 He had said no one can see the kingdom of God, now He says no one can enter the kingdom. The you here is still singular, so Jesus is still talking directly to Nicodemus. This time He adds that we need to be born of water and the spirit. There have been numerous suggestions as to what water and the spirit mean. These include:

1. Water is just another means of saying we need to be born of the spirit. This seems unlikely as there is little point in saying the same thing twice, even though water is often used when talking about the Spirit.
2. Water refers to Christian baptism. This also seems unlikely as Christian baptism hadn’t been instituted at this point.
3. Water refers to natural birth. This is possible, as in the next verse Jesus talks about natural birth.
4. Water refers to John’s baptism. This seems the most likely to me (or, let’s be honest, it is the one I like best). John the Baptist was well known to people. In order to receive the kingdom one needs to repent and to be born again by the Spirit.

3:6

This verse sheds light on the inadequacy of the materialist approach. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. We are more than material beings. Any attempt to live live, or explain life, in purely material terms is doomed to failure. If one takes a purely material approach then there is no explanation of consciousness, intelligence, meaning, beauty etc. In fact the statement that materialism explains everything itself becomes meaningless, a victim of its own flawed philosophy.

The universe does not just happen to be here, it did not pop out of nothing, and nor did we. Rather the universe and ourselves were created by the Lord. And we were created in the image of God and are meant to be both material and spiritual beings. In fact at this point I might change my mind on preferring option 4 in the comments on the previous verse! If we deny the spirit side we are hopelessly wrong, but we are equally wrong if we ignore the material side. God created us as flesh and blood, and then breathed His life into us (Gen 2:7). So in order to see the kingdom we need to be born naturally and to be born spiritually.

Moreover, the flesh cannot give birth to spirit. We must use our human abilities, but if we rely on them alone we will get nowhere, we will never understand spiritual things. We need to be born of God.