last week’s post<\/a>, Justin showed us that Jesus confirmed all of this in John 3. He then proved that the doctrine of the “new birth” is not a NT concept; rather, it was taught in the OT as well.<\/span><\/p>\nIn today’s post, Justin offers us two more\u00a0important things to see in John 3 with regard to the spiritual re-birth.<\/span>[\/sws_blue_box]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
There Is No Relationship With God Apart from the New Birth<\/h3>\n
2) When Jesus tells Nicodemus that \u201cunless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,\u201d the word \u201csee\u201d in the Greek is \u1f41\u03c1\u03ac\u03c9 (hora\u014d), and in addition to it meaning “visually<\/em> seeing”, it also means \u201cto perceive, understand, comprehend, and experience.\u201d It is the same verb used in Matthew 13:14 that is translated \u201cperceived.\u201d Thus, once again Jesus is presenting the consistent truth that is expressed throughout Scripture, and that is, apart<\/strong> from the \u201cspiritual rebirth,\u201d NO ONE WILL EVER HAVE A TRUE AND ETERNAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD!<\/p>\nWhat Jesus Meant By “Born of Water”<\/h3>\n
3) The last element to deal with in the passage of John 3:1-8 has to do with Jesus\u2019 reference to\u00a0being \u201cborn of water.\u201d When Nicodemus responded initially to Jesus\u2019 statement that one\u00a0must \u201cbe born again\u201d in order \u201cto see the kingdom of God,\u201d he asked in a very snide manner,\u00a0\u201cHow can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s\u00a0womb and be born, can he?\u201d Jesus then responds with the statement, \u201cTruly, truly, I say to\u00a0you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
This one verse has been greatly misunderstood and traditionally misapplied as though it was\u00a0referring to water baptism. Or in other words, some have wrongly interpreted this verse to mean that water baptism is a requirement to enter the kingdom of God. However, the reference to \u201cwater\u201d in this verse and passage\u00a0has nothing to do with water baptism as a means by which we are born again. Now, water baptism is certainly important with reference to our testimony to the world that we have\u00a0believed in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, but it is not a means of salvation. Furthermore, through the outward act of water\u00a0baptism, we are confessing that through Jesus alone \u2013 i.e., through His birth, life, death, and\u00a0resurrection. It is by faith in this Jesus that we have the assured certainty of the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life\u00a0with Him in heaven.<\/p>\n
However, what we do find in this passage regarding the rebirth is what\u00a0is called a literary parallelism \u2013 that is, Jesus is using what is called a chiastic structure to\u00a0explain His point. I can illustrate this truth in the following manner, with the \u2018a\u2019 and \u2018b\u2019 parts\u00a0being the two different aspects of this chiasmus. However, it must be stated that the\u00a0springboard for this chiastic approach is the very question posed by Nicodemus: \u201cHow can a\u00a0man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be\u00a0born, can he?\u201d Jesus, therefore, is responding to this question of the physical birth raised by\u00a0Nicodemus, and He does so by directly addressing the physical birth out of a woman\u2019s\u00a0womb, which is the physical birth of the \u201cflesh,\u201d and it occurs out of an amniotic water sac\u00a0that has been protecting the baby in the womb:<\/p>\n
Because the uterus, or womb, is a muscular sac containing a bag of waters (the sac\u00a0containing the amniotic fluid) that more or less surrounds the child, contraction of the\u00a0musculature of its walls should diminish its cavity and compress its contents. Because its\u00a0contents are quite incompressible, however, they are forced in the direction of least\u00a0resistance, which is in the direction of the isthmus, or upper opening of the neck of the\u00a0uterus, and are driven, like a wedge, farther and farther into this opening. In addition to forcing the uterine contents in the direction of the cervix, shortening of the muscle fibres\u00a0that are attached to the neck of the uterus tends to pull these tissues upward and away\u00a0from the opening and thus adds to its enlargement. By this combined action each\u00a0contraction of the uterus not only forces the bag of waters and fetus downward against\u00a0the dilating neck of the womb but also pulls the resisting walls of the latter upward over\u00a0the advancing bag of waters, presenting (farthest advanced) part of the child. . . . About\u00a0the time that the cervix becomes fully dilated, the bag of waters breaks, and the force of\u00a0the involuntary uterine contractions may be augmented by voluntary bearing-down\u00a0efforts of the mother. With each labour pain, she can take a deep breath and then contract\u00a0her abdominal muscles. The increased intra-abdominal pressure thus produced may equal\u00a0or exceed the force of the uterine contractions. When properly used, accordingly, these\u00a0bearing-down efforts may double the effectiveness of the labor pains. 13<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThus, Jesus responds with His chiastic, parallellistic answer: \u201cunless one is born of water and\u00a0the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God\u201d \u2013 that is, yes, Nicodemus, (a) one must\u00a0first be born of\/out of water (the physical birth out of the amniotic water sac) and (b)\u00a0secondly of\/out of the Spirit in order to enter the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n
And again, Jesus restates\u00a0His chiasmus \u2013 (a) that which is born of\/out of the flesh (i.e., out of \u201cwater\u201d from the\u00a0amniotic water sac in the mother\u2019s womb) is flesh, and (b) that which is born of\/out of the\u00a0Spirit is spirit.<\/p>\n
I stress the use of \u201cout of\u201d in both instances because the Greek preposition\u00a0that governs the two words, \u201cwater\u201d and \u201cSpirit,\u201d is \u1f10\u03be (ex), and it means \u201cof, out of, from,\u00a0and out from.\u201d Therefore, that which Jesus is stating is that there is a physical birth that we\u00a0all must come \u201cout of\u201d in order to enter this physical world, but in order to \u201center into the\u00a0kingdom of God,\u201d one must come \u201cout of\u201d a spiritual rebirth that is generated by the Holy\u00a0Spirit within a person\u2019s heart and mind, which has been presented from the very beginning in\u00a0the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
(Stay tuned for more next Wednesday!…)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
\n13<\/sup> Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., vol. 26, s.v. \u201cReproduction and Reproductive System,\u201d 726.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[sws_blue_box box_size=”558″] This is the fourth \u00a0post in a blog series on Emphatic Negations. In the first post, Justin introduced the text of Matthew 13:1-17 and passive verbs; he pointed out that God foreordained that Jesus\u2019 disciples would have the ability to know the mysteries of the kingdom. In the second post, Justin continued expounding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-misc","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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