Jesus and Nicodemus

One night, a Jewish notable comes to find Christ in secret. Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a member of the council, a respected master of the Law. From this conversation comes one of the summits of the Gospel: one must be born again, of water and the Spirit, to enter the kingdom of God; and the Son, lifted up on the cross, gives eternal life to whoever believes in him.

Coming by night

Nicodemus approaches by night, away from watching eyes. His caution betrays the unease of a man of standing who does not want to compromise himself, but also a heart already touched. He opens with respect: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do the signs you do unless God is with him.” John 3:2 The night he chooses is not only discretion: it pictures the darkness in which he still stands, believing by halves, without having received the full light. It is out of this shadow that the whole conversation will draw him.

Born again

Christ goes straight to the heart of it: “Truly, I say to you, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3 The Greek word rendered here as “again”, anōthen (ἄνωθεν), means both “again” and “from above”: the birth he announces comes from God. Nicodemus hears it on the level of the flesh and is astonished: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter again into his mother's womb and be born?” John 3:4 The teacher of the Law conceives only a second birth of the flesh, and there he stumbles.

Of water and the Spirit

Christ then makes plain what this birth is: “Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” John 3:5 Water and the Spirit name baptism, where man receives a new life, that of the children of God. There are thus two births, and two lives: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” John 3:6 The first gives existence; the second, to live by the life of God and to enter his Kingdom.

The wind blows where it will

This birth is the work of God, free and elusive: “The wind blows where it will, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3:8 In Greek, a single word, pneuma (πνεῦμα), means both wind and Spirit: it is the same word in “the wind blows” and in “born of the Spirit”. One perceives its effects without mastering its source: no one gives himself this life, he receives it.

Here the paradox of Nicodemus appears. A master of the Law, versed in the Scriptures, he ought to recognise what Christ speaks of, for the prophets had announced this gift of God: “I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you.” Ezekiel 36:26 Yet he does not understand, and Christ shows it to him: “You are the teacher of Israel, and you do not know these things!” John 3:10 Nicodemus wants to understand how it can happen before believing; but the order is the reverse. One does not wait to have grasped this birth in order to receive it: one welcomes it by faith, and the light comes afterward. What he lacks is not knowledge, but to believe the one who speaks: “If you do not believe when I tell you earthly things, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” John 3:12

Lifted up like the serpent

To say how this life will be given, Christ recalls an episode from the desert. Bitten by serpents, the people were saved by looking at a bronze serpent that Moses had set on a pole: “Whoever has been bitten and looks at it shall live.” Numbers 21:8 That sign announced his own: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” John 3:14-15 Lifted up on the cross, Christ heals of the venom of death all who raise their eyes to him in faith.

God so loved the world

From this comes the verse in which the whole Gospel holds: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16 The gift of the Son does not aim to condemn, but to save: “God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:17 The cross, where the Son is lifted up, is the summit of this love.

The conversation ends on light and shadow, where it had begun. Judgement is not a sentence imposed from without: “The light has come into the world, and men preferred the darkness to the light, because their works were evil.” John 3:19 Each one judges himself by coming to the light or fleeing it. Nicodemus, for his part, had come by night; he will appear again in broad day, when he comes to bury Christ, bringing myrrh and aloes, “he who at first had come by night” John 19:39. The man of darkness has walked toward the light.