Birth from Above and the Witness Who Steps Aside

Nicodemus is a Greek name, “victor over the people”, borne by some Jews of the time; the Talmud remembers a rich Jerusalemite called Nakdimon ben Gurion (Taanit 19b to 20a), though no link can be proved. “A ruler” means a member of the council, as 7:50 confirms: he is “one of them”. He returns at 7:50 and 19:39.

Night carries weight in this Book: Judas leaves the supper, “and it was night” (13:30), and when Nicodemus reappears at the burial he is still “he which at the first came to Jesus by night” (19:39). He says “we know”, speaking for a group, and calls an untrained Galilean “Rabbi”.

“The kingdom of God” appears in the Book of John only here and in verse 5, though it fills the other Gospels. Elsewhere this Book speaks instead of life, eternal life, and Jesus calls it “my kingdom” only before Pilate (18:36).

“When he is old” is geron, an old man, and Nicodemus may be speaking of himself. He takes “born” at its most physical and presses it to absurdity: a second entry into the womb. His objection is not stupid; it states plainly that no one can arrange his own birth.

Where verse 3 said “see” the kingdom, this says “enter” it. The Greek has one preposition governing both nouns, ex hydatos kai pneumatos, “of water and spirit”, with no article on either, which suggests one birth described two ways, not two births.

“Flesh” here is human nature as it is, not something evil; the prologue excluded “the will of the flesh” as a source of this birth (1:13). Isaiah 31:3 sets the same contrast: “the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit.”

“Thee” is singular and “Ye” is plural: Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, but the requirement is laid on everyone. “Marvel not” is a turn of phrase the Book uses again at 5:28, before an even stranger claim, that the dead in their graves will hear his voice.

Pneuma means both wind and spirit, as ruach does in Hebrew, so the sentence is a pun that English cannot keep. “Listeth” is 1611 English for pleases or wills. Ecclesiastes 11:5 makes the same comparison: “thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit… even so thou knowest not the works of God.”

These are Nicodemus’s last words in the conversation. From here the dialogue becomes a monologue, and the Book of John never says how or when he left.

The Greek has the article: “Art thou the teacher of Israel?”, as though Nicodemus were the famous teacher of his day. “Knowest not” answers the “we know” with which Nicodemus opened in verse 2: the man who came announcing what he knew is told what he does not.

Jesus answers Nicodemus’s “we know” (verse 2) with a “we” of his own. Who “we” are is debated: Jesus and his disciples, Jesus and John, Jesus and the Father, or the later church speaking through him. The “ye” who do not receive it is plural too.

The Wisdom of Solomon asks the same question in reverse order: “hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth… but the things that are in heaven who hath searched out?” (Wisdom 9:16). The “earthly things” may be the birth and the wind just used as illustrations.

Proverbs 30:4 asks “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?”, and Deuteronomy 30:12 “Who shall go up for us to heaven?” The words “which is in heaven” at the end are missing from the oldest manuscripts, which end with “the Son of man”.

In the Greek of Numbers 21:8–9 the pole on which Moses set the serpent is called a semeion, a “sign”, the word this Book uses for Jesus’ miracles. “Lifted up” is hypsoo, which also means exalted, as in Isaiah 52:13, “my servant shall… be exalted and extolled.”

“Eternal life”, zoe aionios, appears here for the first of seventeen times in the Book of John. It means the life of the coming age, the phrase first found in Daniel 12:2, “some to everlasting life”. The oldest manuscripts read “may in him have eternal life” and lack “should not perish”, which comes from verse 16.

“So” is houtos, “in this way”, describing the manner of the love more than its size: God loved the world like this, he gave. “Gave” is an aorist, a single act. The only son given recalls Abraham told to take “thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest” (Genesis 22:2).

“Condemn” is krino, to judge, and the word and its noun run through the next three verses. Jesus says the same near the end of his public teaching: “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world” (12:47).

“Condemned already” is a perfect tense, ede kekritai, a verdict already reached. The reverse is stated at 5:24: the believer “shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” Both sides of the verdict are present, not deferred.

“Condemnation” is krisis, which means both judgment and a sifting or decision, the source of the English “crisis”. The judgment is the choice itself: light arrived, and it was not wanted. “Men” has the article, hoi anthropoi, humankind in general.

“Doeth evil” is phaula prasson, practising what is base or worthless. “Reproved” is elencho, to expose and convict, the verb of 16:8, where the Spirit “will reprove the world of sin”. Avoiding the light is a way of avoiding the verdict.

“Doeth truth” is a Hebrew idiom, “to do truth”, to act faithfully, as when Jacob asks Joseph to “deal kindly and truly with me” (Genesis 47:29). The Qumran Community Rule uses the same expression (1QS 1:5), and so does 1 John 1:6.

Only here does the Book say that Jesus himself baptized, and 4:2 corrects it: “Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples.” “The land of Judaea” is the Judean countryside, away from Jerusalem, where two baptizing movements are now at work side by side.

Aenon comes from the Aramaic for springs, which fits “much water there”, literally “many waters”. Eusebius placed it eight miles south of Scythopolis in the Jordan valley; others look to the springs near Shechem in Samaria. Neither site is certain.

The Book of John never narrates John’s arrest or death; it assumes the reader already knows of it. Mark says Jesus began preaching in Galilee “after that John was put in prison” (Mark 1:14), so this aside places the Judean baptizing before the ministry Mark describes.

The best manuscripts read “with a Jew”, singular, not “the Jews”. “Purifying” is katharismos, the concern of the stone jars at Cana, set there “after the manner of the purifying of the Jews” (2:6). Two rival baptisms raise the question of which washing counts.

John’s disciples call him “Rabbi”, as the first two disciples called Jesus (1:38). “All men come to him” is the exaggeration of the aggrieved. “Thou barest witness” is a perfect, “thou hast borne witness”: they complain that John’s own testimony is still working against him.

Jesus will say something close to Pilate: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above” (19:11). “From heaven” means from God, the reverent idiom that avoids the divine name.

John calls his own disciples as witnesses to what he said at 1:20, “I am not the Christ”. “Sent before him” recalls Malachi 3:1: “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.”

Israel was God’s bride in the prophets: “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isaiah 62:5). Later Jewish custom knew the shoshbin, the groom’s friend who arranged the match and stood guard at the chamber. “Rejoiceth greatly” is chara chairei, “rejoices with joy”, a Hebrew way of intensifying.

“Must” is dei, the same necessity as “so must the Son of man be lifted up” in verse 14. Augustine noticed that John’s feast falls in late June, when the days begin to shorten, and Christmas in late December, when they begin to lengthen, and preached on this verse accordingly.

“He that is of the earth” is ek tes ges, “from the earth”, a statement of origin: it may mean John himself or any human speaker. The phrase “is above all” brackets the verse, though some manuscripts drop the second one.

The verse restates what Jesus said to Nicodemus in verse 11, “we testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness”, now in the third person. The prologue had said “No man hath seen God at any time” (1:18); this one has seen, and speaks as an eyewitness.

“Set to his seal” is sphragizo, to certify a document with one’s seal. Jeremiah bought a field and “subscribed the evidence, and sealed it, and took witnesses” (Jeremiah 32:10). Receiving the testimony is countersigning God’s truthfulness; at 6:27 the Father is said to have sealed the Son.

A later rabbinic saying held that the Holy Spirit rested on the prophets only in measure (Leviticus Rabbah 15:2). “Unto him” is printed in italics in the King James because the Greek lacks it, so it is unclear whether God gives the Spirit without measure to the Son, or the Son gives it without measure.

The same words open the foot washing: “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands… riseth from supper” (13:3–4). In this Book, having all things in his hand leads to a towel and a basin.

“Believeth not” is apeitheo, which means to disobey, a different verb from “believeth”: refusal of the Son is treated as disobedience. This is the only time the word “wrath”, orge, occurs in the Book of John. “Abideth” is meno, the verb for the Spirit remaining on Jesus (1:32).