Jesus is speaking with a Pharisee, a religious leader and member of the Jewish ruling council. Being unable to openly speak with Jesus he came at night, in a clandestine meeting.
“Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” John 3:2
Jesus gets straight to the crux of the matter.
“I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” John 3:3
Born again. Born from above.
“I tell you the truth, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again.” John 3:5
How can this be, Nicodemus asks. And for Jesus’ answer, I suggest you read the rest of the passage yourself. It’s important. As John says
“For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.” John 3:34
It’s all about the Holy Spirit. You must be born again.
Humanity. You really must.
Reader. You really must.
Here’s another encounter, where Jesus clearly explains the nature of God as Spirit, and his own part in the giving of that Spirit.
Jesus talks with a Samaritan woman. Jesus was a Jew, and the woman a Samaritan, twice as incompatible in the terms of the times. Yet Jesus, waiting at a well, asks the woman for a drink. It’s a conversation starter.
“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” John 4:9
Jesus has a disclosure to make.
“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10
It’s a metaphor of course. For The Holy Spirit. The woman is still thinking in terms of the literal.
“Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?” John 4:11
Jesus answers;
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13
Still the lady does not understand, whereupon Jesus reveals to her various facts about her own life, in order that she may understand Jesus to be a prophet, and thereby drawing the conversation into an overt one of God.
She remarks that she can see he is a prophet, but there is a problem, that of where to rightly worship, on the mountain, as the Samaritans would have it, or in Jerusalem, held by the Jews, and therefore inaccessible to them. Jesus gets to the point. The location is not important.
“A time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:23
The woman now knows the Messiah is coming, and Jesus takes her to the final conclusion.
“I who speak to you am he.” John 4:26
To reiterate: Everyone who drinks water will be thirsty again, but whoever receives the Spirit Jesus gives them will never spiritually thirst (be spiritually deficient). Indeed, the Spirit he gives them will become in them a spring of spirit welling up to eternal life.
And even those around them may get splashed.
Spirit and Truth.
The Spirit is the Holy Spirit that Jesus brings and gives.
The Truth is Jesus himself.
And the understanding of this.
That Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour, and deliverer, and one who is to be worshipped as and with God.
The Holy Spirit will not come to one who denies this.
The Holy Spirit testifies to the Truth by his presence and action upon man. Not everyone likes or understands this. So it was in Jesus’ own day, and ever since.
Indeed.
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The Words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” John 6:63
Believe.
Spirit and Truth. Truth sows. Spirit reaps.
Written by Bird Lovegod of www.CompassionateTV.com
