HE CAME TO Jesus at night, under the cover of darkness. After all, it wouldn’t do for a leading Pharisee like himself to be seen fraternizing with such a controversial figure. But it was all so confusing. On the one hand, he thought, who could do such miracles and not be from God? On the other hand, how could someone from God defy the established religious order so publicly, so brazenly? And during a Passover festival, no less, when the Jerusalem temple was filled with pilgrims from everywhere around the empire! There were questions to ask, riddles to solve.

So Nicodemus went to Jesus, quietly and privately.

It wasn’t long before Nicodemus — let’s call him Nick, shall we? — was even more confused. Jesus started talking strangely about having to be “born again” (John 3:3). “Wait, what?” Nick blurted out. “Born again? Like me crawling back inside my mother (God rest her soul) and coming out again?” Apparently, he was too anxious to have anything but the most concrete and literal of thoughts.

Jesus wasn’t talking about physical rebirth, of course, but spiritual rebirth. “Flesh gives birth to flesh,” he said, “but Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6, NIV). Nick still didn’t quite understand, despite all his theological training.

But by the end of John’s gospel, Nick’s a different man. When it came time to take the crucified Jesus down from the cross and prepare his body for burial with the love and respect he deserved, Nick was there — indeed, he brought the spices needed for the ritual. It seems he no longer cared who saw him.

Christians today speak so easily about being “born again,” in a way that would have flummoxed Nicodemus. To us, all you have to do is go to a church service or evangelistic meeting, pray the right prayer, and presto! You’re born again! And that’s not necessarily wrong, at least as far as how things look on the surface.

But this isn’t a simple “how-to” or a guaranteed process for salvation: Just say a Jesus prayer. Just walk forward at the end of the service. Just raise your hand. Just do this, that, or the other, and congratulations, you’re going to heaven! As Jesus said to Nicodemus: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Being born again isn’t about what we’ve done, it’s about what God has done, what the Spirit has done — and sometimes, the Spirit does surprising things.

And as the apostle John reminds us, once someone has been born again by the Spirit, you should be able to see that in how they live.

ALTHOUGH WE CAN’T be sure what errant beliefs had split John’s community, the first chapter of his letter suggests that it had something to do with not taking the reality of sin seriously. As a result, some people who claimed to believe in Jesus or to have a relationship with the Father were not living righteous lives. Thus, at the end of chapter 2, John writes:

If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. (1 John 2:29)

He’s already reassured his readers that they’ve known the truth about Jesus from the beginning. He encourages them to continue in that belief rather than be swayed by those who were trying to teach them differently.

Here in verse 29, then, he reminds them that one of the things they know about Jesus is his righteousness. Earlier, he said that anyone who claims to abide in Jesus should live — the word is literally “walk” — as he did (1 John 2:6). That’s how you tell the true followers of Jesus from the false; the ones who are “born of him” are the ones who do what’s right.

Here again are echoes of John’s gospel. And it’s not just the story of Nicodemus. In chapter 1 of his gospel, John writes:

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (John 1:12-13)

Remember what Jesus said to Nicodemus: “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but Spirit gives birth to spirit.” Spiritual rebirth, being “born again,” doesn’t happen merely by human initiative, as the result of a human decision. We become children of God by God’s initiative.

Indeed, it might even be better to stop talking about being “born again,” and say instead that we are “born from above“; John’s Greek can be translated either way. Moreover, note that when Jesus tells Nick that we must be born again, Nick mistakenly thinks that Jesus means that we must be born “a second time” (John 3:4), physically, like we were born the first time. That’s why Jesus then distinguishes between birth by the flesh, and birth by the Spirit. And when Nick is still confused, Jesus adds, “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?” (vs. 12).

Spirit versus flesh. Heavenly things versus earthly things. Being born from above versus being born again, a second time. The emphasis is on divine origin and initiative. We are not, therefore, “born-again Christians” because we somehow made a decision to take hold of God; we could make no such decision unless God had taken hold of us.

And because of this, John will remind us next, we are now God’s children.