NOTES for Joh 3:1-15
Among the Pharisees there were also people who sincerely sought, if not the Kingdom, then at least that truth of God which mattered to them more than the traditional prejudices that frightened away so many of their fellow believers. Nicodemus was evidently one of them. Yet, for all his sincerity, understanding Jesus proves far from easy for him, although, according to the Savior Himself, He told His interlocutor something that the latter, who considered himself a teacher of the people, could not fail to know. What is at issue is spiritual renewal, which Jesus defines as being “born of water and spirit.” Of course, everyone in Israel knew what a purification washing was and what it was for. But such washing was traditionally associated with purification from a particular sin, or more precisely from its consequences, since one was purified from sin itself through repentance and turning to God. Yet Nicodemus apparently cannot understand what this has to do with being “born from above.” For him, to be born means to enter the world as every human being does, coming out of a mother's womb. Jesus is trying to tell him about another birth, birth into the Kingdom that He brought into the world. Such a birth does indeed require purification, purification for the last time in order to be freed from everything incompatible with the new life. But the essential thing is God's breath, which embraces everyone who joins the life of the Kingdom. Without this breath there will be neither renewal of the person nor participation in the new life. Yet what Jesus says seems so strange and incomprehensible to Nicodemus that He finally simply changes the subject, saying: if I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I speak to you about heavenly things? Indeed, before learning anything about the “heavenly,” about the life of the Kingdom, it was absolutely necessary to understand how one enters that Kingdom. But such understanding proves practically inaccessible to Nicodemus despite all his religiosity and all his knowledge. There is probably nothing strange in this: that knowledge concerned our world, which is not yet transformed, a world too unlike the Kingdom for someone with no experience of the new life to understand its laws.