One of the most brilliant law teachers in the land had heard of the things this carpenter-turned-Rabbi was teaching, and came for answers. Nicodemus had been following Jesus and said, “No one can perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus knew his heart and the real question was about the kingdom to come and eternal life. Jesus always knows our heart and the real problems and questions. The law teacher had come at night since he had such a busy schedule. Jesus looked at him in the dim light of the late evening and said, “No man can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
This started an intellectual discussion with the two men starting from different epistomological platforms. Nicodemus is hearing that a man must re-experience natural birth with his mother, and Jesus is talking of an idea not mentioned in the gospels until this moment, the new spiritual birth into the Kingdom of the church. Jesus continues, “He must be born of the water and the spirit….” We could argue if the water were the natural water of the mother in natural birth, or the water of baptism. Peter clarifies that in his sermon in Acts 2. The important verse is how this can take place. The answer is, “God so loved the world he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but have eternal life….” We are speaking today of “God’s great love.”