NOTES for Joh 3:5

How much better a position we are in than Nicodemus, who first heard these words. Of course it was very hard for him to understand them, while for us, already knowing what happened afterward, it is much easier.

All our life, all our thoughts and actions from birth itself, are permeated by sin: egoism, pride, self-exaltation, condemnation... Sin leads to wrong, sinful actions, which have very grave consequences, and these in turn provoke new sins in ourselves and in the people around us. And all this rolls like a snowball, gaining more and more momentum. Of course such a life has nothing in common with the Kingdom of God. Can this be stopped, and if so, how?

Jesus says that for this a new birth, or rebirth, is necessary, because the old life must cease completely, and only after that can a new life begin. Here our participation is needed, our desire, what is called by the word "repentance." It is precisely through repentance that we come to voluntary death in the water of Baptism, where our sinful life ends, and the next step is the receiving of new life, which the life-giving Holy Spirit, sent to us by the loving Heavenly Father, grants us. And so we, newborn infants, washed by water and the Spirit, enter the Kingdom of God...

So it is ideally. In practice everything with us is only partial. Our repentance is incomplete; we continue to repent even after Baptism. And this means our sinfulness does not die completely, and we still have much cleansing ahead. And birth from the Spirit is less a full rebirth than the conception in us of new life, like a mustard seed that has yet to grow and grow. May the Lord make us that fertile soil in which the growing Kingdom will reach maturity and bear fruit!