The first verse is self-evident; we might suppose all the rest to be so, but it is worth taking a closer look:
So, at this one time, Nicodemus came to Jesus to proclaim that which He believed about Jesus, and notice that which the leader of the Pharisees proclaims about our Lord:
“You are a teacher, come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”
Ah, how perceptive! He distinguishes our Lord as a teacher come from God, without giving any more understanding of Him than that – such a teacher would be one who performs signs, and this we know our Lord did, from the ending of chapter 2: “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing” (John 2:23). That such a teacher was from God is distinguished by the signs that that teacher did, and so, this might be a way of saying that he believed Jesus to be another of God’s prophets, but notice what he didn’t say, which Nathanael had said when simply confronted with our Lord’s seeing Him under the fig tree in chapter 1: Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel” (John 1:49)!
So, while giving our Lord a distinguished status because of the signs done by Him, this leader of the Jews did not have the recognition of Him afforded to one much less learned than he, and in essence, showed that understanding that Nathanael had spoken of (Can anything good come out of Nazareth?[before confessing what he did upon meeting the Lord]) – it was common knowledge among the Jews, regardless of station, status, or learning, that the Messiah would come out of Bethlehem, and that one of these men recognized Jesus as the Son of God, the King of Israel, was not out of character with that expectation: remember, our Lord’s disciples fully expected Him to restore Israel to it’s former glorious status as the conquering Messiah, and this never stopped until after the crucifixion and resurrection; still, this leader of the Jews did not afford our Lord such status even now, after seeing the signs He had done, for signs alone have never led any to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the great King spoken of in the prophets – that is the point of this discourse between our Lord and Nicodemus – there must be that divine intervention of the triune God, to take a man from spiritual death to spiritual life, of which we learn the Spirit’s work in these verses.
The signs that Jesus did are not described, but that they were of a character which led Nicodemus to believe that God is with Jesus in certain – it may be that our Lord was doing that which He often did: healing the sick, casting out demons – but we are not told; we are only told that they were of enough significance to show that Nicodemus, as the leader of the Pharisees, said they believed (at this point) that God was with our Lord, not that our Lord was God.
In responding to Nicodemus’ assertion, Jesus not only does not answer his statement, He refutes it, in part: He IS God the Son, and this has not been recognized by Nicodemus; secondly, our Lord addresses the reason why Nicodemus has not recognized who He is – He states the absolute necessity of being born again to even see the kingdom of God. This seeming ignoring of Nicodemus’ assertion is nothing of the sort, as our Lord is teaching him what it needed to recognize that which leads to eternal life – He is addressing the assertion, refuting the part of it that does not have to do with seeing the kingdom of God, and making His own assertion that is strictly of God, which allows a person to have access to the proper view of the kingdom of God. This corrects the basic assumption of Nicodemus, which was shared by all the Jews, both learned and unlearned alike, for they thought the kingdom of God would be established on their behalf, taking the yoke of the oppressors off them, and restoring them to their former glory as the most prominent nation on earth, with whom God’s special favor rested.
In this first part of His teaching, our Lord is correcting this assumption, as well – the kingdom of God is not to be of simply the nation Israel, restoring them to political and economical power as the preeminent nation upon which God’s favor rests. It is necessary for this assumption to be refuted, for the Jews, and especially their leaders, thought themselves already favored by God, despite the abundance of evidence of the prophecies of the Prophets having been fulfilled, as to their disobedience to His laws, their continual idolatry and adultery, etc.
Looking through the record of all the things God had brought upon them, how they could still consider themselves God’s favored people was based solely on Scripture, but they had missed the one thing that would have ensured that favor when it came: the necessity for atonement to be made for the people, that their sins would be forgiven forever, by the very Messiah they waited for! Theirs was a conquering Messiah-King who would extinguish their enemies and reinstate the law and priesthoods and all that had to do with what they wanted, even though they had continually provoked Him to anger, and after all, hadn’t He restored them before? Hadn’t He promised them a king after the line, or from the line of David, that would rule them forever in righteousness?
Of course, they missed that the Messiah would be the literal fulfilling of those things which were but a shadow and type of He who was to come – if they had recognized this, they would have understood the Psalms, writings and Prophets which spoke of the suffering Lamb of God: and hadn’t His forerunner already called Him that?
How, then, could they mistake the parallel of which the Baptist spoke?
Because they looked for a new heart through the simple giving of it; a new spirit that would be theirs simply because God promised them it would be so – they completely overlooked the necessity of the need for their sins to be atoned for, and indeed, for many of them, this would not be so, as we shall see further in this study.
So, Jesus addresses this lack, which is in all men – this lack which cannot be met by any seeking, any searching, for it is the very lack of that which will seek and search for God: a new life imparted (Romans 3:9-12; 6:4; 8:11-17). This new life is the regeneration of the dead in sin spirit, literally represented, in our references, as dying with the literal death of Christ, and being made alive as the literal resurrection of Christ. This not only gives us new life now, it is a forerunner of that promise of the new bodies we shall have when He comes again, to judge the world (1 Corinthians 15:20-58).
Before that great and glorious day when our Lord returns to collect His elect from the four corners of the earth (Matthew 24:31), we who are Christ’s will already know of that eternal life which He has given us to have, not by our choosing, but by His working (Romans 9:16) – God, in His magnificent mercy towards those He has chosen to show forth the riches of His grace in Christ Jesus, does this work completely, effectively, and without the aid of anything of man, and here we see the working of the third Person of the triune God, the Holy Spirit.
Read through the passage, then read it again – you will find nothing whatsoever about the so-called “free will of man” in it, but the free will of God, the free will of the Spirit, which we cannot even tell from where He comes or where He goes in this work – man is never mentioned as anything in this section of Scripture but as the recipient of the magnificent work of the Spirit of God, and the result is that, just as Christ took on the sins of the elect, so His life is given to us – not literally, as in God the Son living in us, though we put it that way, and it is correct to say so; however, this means that we are given to have our dead in sins spirit reborn into the likeness of that very sinless human spirit our Lord had as a man – it is, as we observed, literally, “a new life imparted.”
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