Anyone who has heard the story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the middle of the night will likely be familiar with John 3 vs 5.
Jesus answered, Verily, Verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God
growing up in church, I always thought that being born of water was referring to being baptized in water. In fact, I was baptized by immersion, using that same scripture.
but one day, someone drew my attention to that verse of scripture again and told me to read the whole story.
The story is about Jesus explaining to Nicodemus what the kingdom of God meant.
In verse 2, Nicodemus said to Jesus, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no man can do the miracles that you do except God be with him
Jesus' answer was except a man be born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
at this point, Nicodemus was confused...
How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?...Nicodemus asked
Jesus decided to save him from the confusion and explain what he meant by "born of water and of the spirit"
vs 5, Jesus answered, Verily, Verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God
So Jesus explained what he meant by being born again as being born of the water and of the spirit.
it means that Born again=Born of water and of the spirit
They explain each other.
seeing that it is clear that being born of water and of the spirit is the same as being born again, the next question is, "what does it all mean"? Because these are all figures of speech.
I learnt one vital fact in studying the bible...
THE EXPLANATION YOU SEEK IS IN THE TEXT YOU READ
i only need to read on to find out what Jesus meant by being born again, or born of water and of the spirit...
If you notice, the phrase born of water occurs only once in the entire story, but not how many times the phrase born of the spirit occurs... 3 times.
this shows us the emphasis is on being born of the spirit.
The next thing to look at is that word "and" in vs 5...
...born of water and of the spirit
Because the bible's first language is Greek not English, it is important to note some differences in both languages.
In the English, the word and has a additive meaning...
in English, 1 and 1 means 1 + 1... but not so in the greek.
the word and could mean 1+1 it could also mean that the first 1 is explained by the second 1, meaning that both are the same.
an example will sort this out...
If I say I am a doctor and writer, in English, it means i am two things...
in the greek it could mean that writing is part of what i do as a doctor. That is, I am a doctor, that is, a writer. it means that my emphasis in the sentence is that as a doctor i am a writer.
That's exactly what John 3 vs 5 did with the word "and"... so it would read thus
...except a man is born of water, and(that is), the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God
It means that, Jesus was not referring to literal water when he talked of being born of water, he was talking of the spirit.
This goes in line with the way the prophets of the Old testament referred to the spirit... they usually referred to the spirit as water, or rain.
A good example is Ezekiel 36 vs 26 which i would explain in my next post.
someone's asking, does that mean that water baptism is bad?
I didn't say that, i am only saying that Jesus was not referring to water baptism in John 3 vs 5... he was referring to being born again, being born of the spirit.
God has blessed you!