Born Again

In John chapter 3, we meet Nicodemus — a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. His name means "conqueror", and it suggests "works". He comes to Jesus under the cover of night, likely to avoid being seen consorting with this controversial rabbi by his fellow religious leaders. Nicodemus opens with flattery, acknowledging Jesus as a teacher sent from God. Jesus, however, bypasses the compliment entirely and goes straight to the heart of the matter:

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" - John 3:3

It is a striking reply. Nicodemus came with a theological compliment; Jesus answered with a spiritual diagnosis.

The phrase translated "born again" in the Greek is gennethe anothen (γεννηθη ανωθεν). Gennethe means "born," "begotten," or "brought forth." Anothen carries a double meaning — it can mean "again", but more literally it means "from above" or "from the first, the beginning". Jesus is not simply telling Nicodemus he needs a second chance at life; He is telling him he needs a birth that originates from heaven itself.

This distinction matters, because birth, by its nature, is something received rather than achieved. No one chooses their parents or engineers their own arrival into the world — it is given. In the same way, spiritual rebirth is not the product of human effort, ethnic heritage, or religious performance. It is something God alone brings about in a person.

Anothen (ανωθεν) appears elsewhere in Scripture with this same "from above" sense — for instance, when Jesus tells Pilate that his authority over Him could only exist because it "was given thee from above" (John 19:11). The word consistently points to a heavenly, not merely repeated, origin.

Later rabbinic literature, around 5th or 6th century, offers a useful window into this idea. When a Gentile converted to Judaism, that person was regarded as having become a new creation — so thoroughly transformed that, in a legal and theoretical sense, all prior family ties were considered severed. Rabbinic discussion even entertained the extreme hypothetical that a mother and her converted child could, in theory, no longer be bound by their old familial relationship (though this was never actually practiced, since it would still amount to incest). The point being made was conceptual, not practical: a convert was, in every meaningful sense, treated as a newborn.

This idea is preserved in the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Yevamot 22a, with parallels in 62a and 97a–98a, and Tractate Avodah Zarah 2b) — texts compiled centuries after Nicodemus's lifetime. They're cited here not as something Nicodemus himself necessarily knew, but simply to show that "new birth" already existed as a recognizable category within Jewish thought, distinct from the sense in which Jesus was using it.

NOTE: The Talmud itself is not Scripture — it is quoted here only to illustrate the framework of thought already present in the Jewish religious world.

Nicodemus takes Jesus's words with flat, physical literalism — hence his question, almost incredulous, about how a grown man could re-enter his mother's womb. Jesus's response is pointed:

"Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?" - John 3:10

This wasn't a rhetorical question. Jesus expected Nicodemus, as a recognized teacher of Israel, to already understand spiritual rebirth from the Hebrew Scriptures he had spent his life studying. He was likely pointing to passages like Ezekiel 36:25–27, where God declares through the prophet:

"Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them." - Ezekiel 36:25-27

As a leading Pharisee, Nicodemus should have recognized that entrance into the Kingdom of God was never simply a matter of ethnic descent from Abraham or compliance with the Law's external requirements. The Old Testament prophets had already taught that God's ultimate work of redemption would require an internal, spiritual overhaul — a re-creation of human nature carried out by God's own Spirit.

God repeatedly rebukes Israel's leaders for having eyes that do not truly see, and ears that do not truly hear. This theme runs throughout the Old Testament, in passages such as Isaiah 29:13, Jeremiah 5:21, and Ezekiel 12:2, as Israel's leaders had grown fluent in ritual, sacrifice, and lineage, while remaining blind to the inward reality those things were meant to point toward. Jesus's concern with Nicodemus was not that he failed to anticipate Christian doctrine yet to come — it was that an expert in the Hebrew Bible had missed what his own Scriptures had already made plain: fleshly pedigree does not grant citizenship in God's kingdom. The human heart, according to the Old Testament prophets Nicodemus claimed to teach, is fundamentally dead and in need of a radical, divine recreation from above. Jesus said:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" - John 3:16

According to the Bible, a person is born again by believing in the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — that He stepped down from heaven to our level, took upon Himself the full weight of human sin, and paid for it in full with His own blood on the cross. In exchange, He transfers His righteousness to those who believe, so that they might live in complete forgiveness and possess the gift of eternal life. Because Christ's work on the cross is finished, salvation is not earned but received as a free gift — the same way that natural birth is received rather than achieved. When we die, heaven becomes our home, secured by nothing of our own doing.

Nicodemus does not disappear from the Gospel narrative after this conversation. Apostle John shows him again later, this time among the Pharisees who are actively plotting against Jesus. Cautiously — without ever openly declaring Jesus as Messiah — Nicodemus appeals to their own legal standards, echoing principles found in passages like Exodus 23:1 and Deuteronomy 1:16–17. He objects to condemning a man without a fair hearing by saying:

"Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?" - John 7:51

His colleagues respond with contempt, dismissing him with the jab, "Are you from Galilee too? Search and look — no prophet arises out of Galilee." It is a small, cautious act of courage, but a telling one: something in Nicodemus is beginning to shift.

The full transformation of Nicodemus becomes visible after the crucifixion. The man who once approached Jesus secretly, under cover of darkness, is now seen standing openly at the foot of the cross, in broad daylight:

"And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight" — John 19:39

Joining Joseph of Arimathea, to claim and bury Jesus's body was no small risk. It meant public association with a man executed as a criminal, exposure to ritual defilement during Passover, and jeopardizing his standing on the Sanhedrin. This was no longer a man hiding in the shadows.

Nicodemus also brought with him roughly hundred pounds (about 45 kilograms) of myrrh and aloes — an extravagant quantity historically associated with royal burials. In doing so, he and Joseph of Arimathea made a quiet but profound statement. Pilate had mockingly nailed a sign above the cross reading "King of the Jews" as an act of derision. Yet it was these two once-secret disciples who gave that claim its most fitting response — providing Jesus with a burial worthy of a king. The following are few examples from the Bible and other well known historic documents:

- 2 Chronicles 16:14 — King Asa laid on a bier piled with spices prepared by perfumers.

- 2 Chronicles 21:19 / Jeremiah 34:5 — great burnings of spices in honor of deceased kings of Judah.

- Josephus, Antiquities 17.8.3 — 500 servants carrying spices in Herod the Great's funeral procession.

- Rabbinic tradition — roughly 40–80 lbs (≈ 18–36 kg) of spices used at Rabbi Gamaliel's funeral, itself noted as an unusually lavish gesture for a non-royal.

Nicodemus's story is, in many ways, a portrait of the very transformation Jesus described to him that night. He begins in darkness, confused by a truth his own Scriptures had already foretold. He moves to a place of cautious, partial courage. And he ends standing openly at the foot of the cross, spending everything he has to honor the crucified King. His journey illustrates that being "born again" is not a single emotional moment but a genuine, Spirit-wrought transformation — one that moves a person from secrecy to open devotion, from external religion to internal reality, and from spiritual blindness into the light.