Marveling at the Gospel

In John 1:6 Jesus says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” 

Your flesh and human effort cannot attain spiritual life. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh…” Only the Spirit can grant spiritual life and He does it through the proclamation of the gospel.

Hear the voice of the Shepherd, the voice of Jesus, and follow Him through faith in His finished work on the cross. And thank Him and praise Him for the rest of your life. This is the affection of a regenerate heart toward the Lord!

When Jesus said in verse 6, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” Nicodemus began to marvel. How do we know that?

Even though there’s no recorded response from Nicodemus between verse 6 and verse 7, verse 7 is where Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

So I infer from the words of Jesus in verse 7 that Nicodemus must have been marveling at what Jesus has been saying up to this point. The phrase that made Nicodemus marvel in particular were the words, “You must be born again.”

Do you remember how we explained the meaning of “born again?”

We saw that it means ‘born from above’ or ‘born of the Spirit.’ It also means the same thing as being ‘born of water and the Spirit.’ The word we sometimes give to the new birth is the word “regeneration.”

This word means to be formed anew, referring to a spiritual birth from spiritual death. You and I are born into this world as spiritually dead.

None of us are born without sin. We must be born again to live spiritually or we cannot see the kingdom of God.

Seeing the kingdom of God and being spiritually reborn has everything to do with the free will of the Spirit of God as we’ll see in verse 8.

Until next time,
Pastor Kevin

.