John 3:5

John 3:5. Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except any one have been born of water and spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The answer is a stronger affirmation of the same truth, with some changes of expression which made the words no easier of acceptance, save as the new terms might awaken echoes of Old Testament language, and lead the hearer from the external to an inward and spiritual interpretation.

The first words have given rise to warm and continued controversy. Many have held that the birth ‘of water and spirit; can only refer to Christian baptism; others have denied that Christian baptism is alluded to at all. The subject is very important and very difficult. Our only safety lies in making the Evangelist his own interpreter. We shall repeatedly find, when a difficulty occurs, that some word of his own in the context or in some parallel passage brings us light. (1) First, then, as to the very peculiar expression,' of water and spirit.' We cannot doubt that this is the true rendering; no direct reference is made as yet to the personal Holy Spirit. The words ‘water and spirit' are most closely joined, and placed under the government of the same preposition. A little earlier in the Gospel (chap. John 1:33) we find the same words not, indeed, joined together as here, but yet placed in exact parallelism, each word, too, receiving emphasis from the context. Three times between chap. John 1:19 and chap. John 1:33. John speaks of his baptism with water; twice there is a reference to the Spirit (John 1:32-33); and in John 3:33. John's baptizing with water and our Lord's baptizing with ‘holy spirit' (see the note) stand explicitly contrasted. It is very possible that this testimony was well known to others besides John's disciples, to all indeed in Judea who were roused to inquiry respecting the Baptist and his relation to Jesus. (2) It is possible that the Jews of that age may have been familiar with the figure of a new birth in connection with baptism. It is confessedly difficult accurately to ascertain Jewish usages and modes of thought in the time of our Lord. The Talmud indeed contains copious stores of information, but it is not easy to distinguish between what belongs to an earlier and what to a later age. We know that converts to the Jewish religion were admitted by baptism to fellowship with the sacred people. The whole tenor of the law would suggest such a washing when the uncleanness of heathenism was put off, and hence no rite could be more natural. Yet we have no certain knowledge that this was practised so early as the time of our Lord. There is no doubt that, at a later date, the proselyte thus washed or baptized was spoken of as born again. Here again, therefore, we have some confirmation of the view that in the words before us there is in some sort a reference to baptism, at all events, to the baptism of John. (3) But what was John's baptism? We see from chap. John 1:25 how peculiar his action appeared to the rulers of the people. Even if proselytes were in that age baptized, a baptism that invited all, publican and Pharisee alike, would but seem the more strange. John's action was new and startling; and from chap. John 1:21-25 it appears that the leaders of Jewish thought beheld in it an immediate reference to the time of Messiah. It seems very probable that John's baptism was directly symbolic, a translation into visible symbol of such promises as Ezekiel 36:25, which looked forward to the new spiritual order of which he was the herald. To the sprinkling with clean water, the cleansing from all filthiness, of which Ezekiel speaks, answers closely John's ‘baptism of repentance for the remission of sins' (compare also Ezekiel 36:31). To the promise which follows, ‘A new spirit will I put within you.... I will put my spirit within you,' answers just as closely John's testimony to Jesus, ‘He it is that baptizeth with holy spirit.' (4) The two contrasted elements in the baptisms of chap. John 1:33 are (a) the covering and removal of past sin; and (b) the inbreathing of a new life. In that verse ‘holy spirit' is the gift and not the Giver. The Giver is the Holy Spirit; but the gift, that which is the essential element in the new baptism, is the bestowal of ‘holy spirit,' the seed and the principle of a holy spiritual life. (5) These two elements were conjoined in the Christian baptism instituted afterwards: the cleansing of forgiveness through Christ's death and the holiness of the new life in Christ are alike symbolized in it. Here, therefore, our Lord says that no man can enter into the kingdom of God unless he have been born anew, the elements of the new birth being the removal by cleansing of the old sinful life, and the impartation by the Holy Spirit of a new holy principle of life. If this view of the words is correct, there is error in both extremes of which mention has been made. There is no direct reference here to Christian baptism; but the reference to the truths which that baptism expresses is distinct and clear.