February 20, 2005
By Jack Price

The Gospel lesson from John 3 is perhaps the most famous passage in Christian scripture.  It includes the phrase “born again,” made so familiar by evangelical Christianity.  It also includes that singularly familiar verse John 3: 16, made famous by signs in end zones of countless football games.  As we look to unpack some of the baggage of our own faith tradition and religious experience, let us look to this story. 

The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus was almost certainly not a  verbatim transcript of a literal meeting.  As this exchange appears in the Gospel of John, it represents a mixture of historical memory and metaphorical narrative.  The questions it raises are twofold:  what did it mean for John’s listeners and what does it mean for us?

The meaning of this story for John’s readers involves a lot of the imagery present.  For example, Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the darkness of night so as not to be seen by his peers in the Sanhedrin.  He comes to find out about Jesus.  Symbolically, he comes out of the darkness into the presence of the light.

There is an unasked question:  “What must I do to have eternal life?”  Nicodemus wants to find out Jesus’ views as to the key to religious faith.  Jesus seems to hear the unasked question and tells Nicodemus something startling:  “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  In this case, “see” means to perceive and to recognize.  No one recognizes the presence of God without spiritual birth (born from above).  The word for “born” is actually the masculine form of the Greek gennan.  In its feminine form, this word represents the very familiar phrase “to be born”.  Its use here in the masculine form, highlights the distinction between physical and spiritual birth.  

The idea of being born is coupled with the Greek word anöthen that can mean both “again” and “from above” -- new and spiritual.  Jesus probably meant “from above” and Nicodemus, judging from his reaction, probably heard “again”. 

No phrase epitomizes modern evangelical Christianity quite like “born again”. While many Christians shy away from this term, the idea of new birth and personal transformation is pretty basic to following Christ.   What can this promise look like for us today in a way that has integrity for our individual and communal journeys?

Being born from above means to think a new way and to gain a new perspective.  It is not just a matter of changing your mind, but of changing your mindset.  The Spirit is not doing magic to us, but is cooperating with us in enabling the direction of our will.  This represents a partnership between persons and the Spirit with God enabling the process and practice that results in newness of vision and newness of life.

In your own life, how have you experienced spiritual birth?  Spiritual re-birth can happen more than once in a person’s lifetime, as the Spirit continues to work within us, shaping the person we are becoming.  To be able to embrace this idea of being “born again,” again in our lives, we can begin to let go of seeing it as an exclusive idea – that separates the saved from the unsaved.  We can embrace the inclusive nature of spiritual birth as a universal and human process of spiritual consciousness.  This is a work of the Spirit within each person that leads us to be able to perceive God’s presence all around and within.  What aspect of your life needs spiritual (re)birth at this time?        

John 3: 16 is, for most Christians, the most familiar verse in the Bible:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  God’s way of loving is represented by the Greek word agapé.  This is self-giving love.  Jesus is God’s self-giving love.  The purpose for Jesus’ life is to show God’s love to the world.

If we are to push beyond a literal understanding of this verse to its deeper meaning, what do we find?  Jesus is “one” with the Father, in sync with God – on the same page.  The actual translation is “the only Son “ rather than
His only son.”  This phrase is not a literal definition of Jesus’ divine origin, but rather a  description of how unique and precious Jesus was.  He had the quality of an only son in that culture to God the Father.

“Whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.”  Belief in Jesus should not be understood merely as assenting to any particular doctrine concerning who Jesus was or is.  Belief is not a matter of joining the right church or using the right words to describe your understanding.  

Believing in Jesus means to have faith in Jesus as the source of life.  It is to trust in the truth of God Jesus shows us, to be faithful in that trust, and to take into ourselves the view of God’s nature and purpose that Jesus shared.  This is a far cry from belief in the divinity of Jesus that will save your soul from eternal damnation.

To “perish” means to be lost or destroyed.  Its use in this verse functions as the opposite of having eternal life.  Eternal life is equivalent to seeing the Kingdom or realm of God.  Perceiving the Spirit means to know abundant life.  Helping us to see and appropriate this great truth of life seems to have been Jesus’ top priority for us.

In making sense of this verse, the most pressing question to consider is this, “Does God’s love have any strings attached?”  How we answer that question affects how we will tend to interpret the meaning of this verse.  Crossroads Church answers the question with a resounding “No.”  God’s love has no pre-requisites, unless you consider the need to accept it a “string”.  It exists.  It surrounds us.  God’s love is for us.

            “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  The mission of Jesus, according to John’s Gospel, is to represent God to the world.  That’s the whole world, not just the Jewish people.  His mission was not to judge world with condemnation, but to bring good news.  The salvation of the world equates to embracing God’s Shalom.

Questions for congregational discussion

How have you experienced God’s love in your life?  In what ways do you perceive God’s presence in the world?  Elizabeth O’Connor offers these word from her book Cry Pain, Cry Hope:

Each person, matter how old, has an important work to do. This good work not only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in us. When it is finished, a new work emerges that will help us to make green a desert place, as well as to scale another mountain in ourselves. The work we do in the world, when it is true vocation, always corresponds in some mysterious way to the work that goes on within us.

What will it mean for this congregation to experience re-birth, to be born from above?  I have often used the image in funeral services of death as being a kind of birth.  We are born to a new life.  The reverse is also true that birth is a kind of dying.  In both cases, we must let go of what is old and move into the new.  The signs of newness, and the reality of letting go, are all around us individually and in our life together.  What is the identity of the child to which you are giving birth?  What is the identity of the child to which Crossroads Church is giving birth?

            Let this be our prayer.

"O God for whom we long
as a woman in labor
longs for her delivery,
give us courage to wait,
strength to push,
and discernment to know the right time,
that we may each bring into the world
the child you have given us to bear
through Jesus Christ. Amen"
--Janet Morley (All Desires Known)