I could camp in John chapter 3 for the rest of my life. This encounter with Nico (Nicodemus) is priceless. “We know that you are a teacher come from God,” Nico says to the God Man. And Jesus replies with these puzzling, yet profound, words, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
It hit me this morning that Jesus is breaking it to Nico, this teacher of Israel—despite all his learning, Nico knows nothing. We can’t miss this, kids. God forbid we fill up on information about God and have zero intimacy with the Holy Spirit.
To wake up this morning born of water only is to remain in darkness for all eternity.
“But blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:22-23) Jesus’s words are hard for Nico to swallow. He has enjoyed being honored, looked up too, revered as God’s holy man. But Jesus says, “You must be born again.” And that changes everything.
The Son of Man was lifted up, nailed to a cross no one born of water could miss—not to condemn, but to save.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind.” There is nothing greater, better, more life worth living than this kind of union with the Father.
“The scripture does not say, Ye must be improved, ‘But, Ye must be born again.'” –Charles Spurgeon
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