What is Flesh is Flesh; what is Spirit is Spirit!

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17 ESV)

There is probably no better-known verse in Scripture than John 3:16. We see it everywhere there is a witness to the saving grace of our Lord Jesus. This verse gives the individual with “ears to hear” all they need to know about how they can come to have eternal life with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But this verse is part of the whole picture of Jesus' discussion with a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews, called Nicodemus.

You know that the best advice on understanding Scripture that I ever received was to “Read the surrounding verses”, or “to keep the verse in context”. Now, when we do that, we see that John 3:16 was really an answer to Nicodemus' question in John 3:9: “How can these things be?” Then, to understand Nicodemus' confusion about his discussion with Jesus, we need to go back to Jesus' statement in verse 3, where He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” So, John 3:16 is telling Nicodemus and the entire world not only that we must be born again but exactly how that can happen: “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

In this passage, Jesus also tells Nicodemus another profound truth: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” You see, Nicodemus was dumbfounded when Jesus told him, “You must be born again”. Really, just read his response to Jesus, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Clearly Nicodemus had no clue what Jesus was talking about. I think that is the problem with many people today: they try to understand spiritual truths through fleshly minds.

King Solomon gave us the answer to this dilemma some 1,000 years before Jesus had this conversation with Nicodemus. Proverbs 3:5 states. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Let’s break this verse down. First, “trust” means to be convinced or persuaded that God is a truth teller. You can trust what He says in His Word. Then, we are NOT to lean on our understanding. The word lean means to support, strengthen, to depend on. Now I think that is the problem that most people have when they try to make sense of spiritual things from God: they rely on their own human, fleshly understanding. They try to make God fit into a box of their understanding. They become the judge over God, and if they can’t understand something with their human, fleshly logic, then it can’t possibly be true. I find this reasoning very sad. Actually, if I could understand everything about God, He wouldn’t be a very capable God, would He?

So, if we go back and read this section of John through the filter of Proverbs 3:5, and stop leaning on our own understanding and start understanding that Jesus is talking about spiritual things, and not fleshly things, then it all makes sense.

Nicodemus was “leaning on his own understanding” when he said, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” You can see that he was thinking fleshly, earthly, human understanding, and Jesus was talking about spiritual birth.

Are you like Nicodemus today? Scriptural truths just don’t make sense to you; you can’t understand what Jesus meant about being born again, and you can’t understand the love of God that would sacrifice His only Son so you can have eternal life? Are you trying to put God in a box of your own making, and limit Him on what He can do?

Go back and read John 3:1-17 again, stop “leaning on your own understanding”, and see what Jesus meant when he said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Open your heart, have ears to hear what the Spirit is telling you, believe in Jesus, the only way to eternal life.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

 "Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"