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What does it mean to be “born of water”?

March 7, 2014 — 2 Comments

In John 3:5, Jesus tells Nicodemus that to enter the kingdom one must be “born of water and the Spirit”. How is this phrase understood? Is it a single construct (i.e. one birth of both water and Spirit)? Or are two births in view (one of water and one of Spirit)? And what does it mean to be born of water?

Context is the key to interpretation. You’ve heard the mantra in real-estate, “location, location, location.” Well in interpretation its, “context, context, context.” The location of a verse matters in its interpretation.

Think of the word “hand,” for instance. What does it mean? Without context “hand” could have quite a few meanings.

  • the hired hand fixed the railing
  • his hand was illegible
  • he wanted to try his hand at singing
  • I didn’t hold a good hand all evening
  • The hands read 3:25
  • give the little lady a great big hand
  • hand me the spoon, please

we can see the words meaning more clearly in context.

The Immediate Context

The phrase “born of water and Spirit” appears in Jesus’ night time conversation with Nicodimus. In John 3:3, Jesus says,

I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.

Nicodimus is dumbfounded

How can a man be born when he is old…surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!

Jesus then rephrases his earlier statement

I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of god unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

The contrast between flesh and spirit in the last verse would seem to indicate that water stands for natural birth.

Beyond the Chapter

But there’s an even broader context to John 3:5 that others pick up on. Two chapters earlier, in John 1:32-33, John the baptist testifies,

I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, “the man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.”

Here water and Spirit are linked in the Baptist’s ministry and testimony. John baptizes with water but Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit. If John 3:5 is linked to this verse, water could refer to baptism (or repentance which John’s baptism is often said to represent).

A Look to the Whole Book

But there’s still a greater context which defines the meaning of water. Water isn’t simply mentioned in these two scenes. It’s used everywhere in John as a metaphor and a symbol.

  • John says three times that he baptizes in water (1:26, 31, 33)
  • Jesus turns water into wine (2:1-10)
  • Jesus says we must be born of water and the spirit (3:5)
  • John baptizes at Aenon near Salim because “there was much water there.” (3:23)
  • Jesus promises the woman by the well living water (4:4-28)
  • The lame man wants to get healed in the troubled waters of Bethesda (5:7)
  • Jesus walks on water (6:19)
  • Jesus invites the thirsty to come to him and drink (7:37-39)
  • Jesus heals blind man in pool of Siloam (9:6-7)
  • Jesus washes his disciples feet (13:4-5)
  • Water flows from Jesus’ side (19:34)

With the exception of John’s baptism and Jesus walk on water, these references do not appear in Matthew, Mark or Luke. They are entirely unique to John.

Each of these scenes plays a crucial role in revealing the water’s intended meaning. John develops this meaning early in his gospel, contrasting water that is used in ritual and tradition with a higher, heavenly water offered in Jesus.

John the Baptist’s Testimony (1:19-34): John says Jesus’ baptism in the Holy Spirit surpasses his baptism in water. Water here is the medium of a traditional ritual of purification. But Jesus’ in a comparative and a contrasting sense baptizes with the Holy Spirit (i.e water from above).

Jesus Wedding Miracle (2:1-11): Jesus’ “water-turned-wine” is better than the choice wine/water which came before. The water which becomes wine is drawn from containers used for ritual purification. Though Jesus could presumably have reused the empty wine jars, he instead has the servants fill six waterpots which John says were “set there for the Jewish custom of purification.” Jesus surpasses this ritual water by transforming it into wine (spirit water) which the headwaiter testifies surpasses the wine that came before.

Jesus Conversation by the Well (4:4-26): Jesus’ living water is greater than Jacob’s well. The well itself is a traditional site analogous to the Samaritan’s worship on the mountain. The woman points to the greatness of the well by pointing to “father” Jacob as the source and user of the water. The word “father” is again used when the topic of conversation moves from well to worship. Just as ‘father” Jacob gave the well, the Samaritan “fathers” had given them worship on the mountain. When Jesus offers the woman living water she responds by asking if he is “greater” than Jacob who gave them the well. Jesus indicates that it is by contrasting the limitations of the well water with the never-ending life-giving water he supplies. His water is “Spirit” like the true worship God seeks.

His Healing by the Pool of Bethesda (5:1-9): Jesus’ healing is greater than the troubled water in the pool of Bethesda. Once again the waters of Bethesda are linked with tradition. While the tradition mentioned in 5:3 may not be original to John, it appears to be in line with John’s repeated use of water. While the man looks to the traditional water to heal him, he is powerless to reach it. Because Jesus reaches the man at his need, His power is revealed to be greater than the stirred water’s of the pool.

Jesus’ Invitation to Drink (7:37-39): Jesus’ “living water” is greater than the feasts water ceremony. Jesus invitation occurs on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. On this day the High Priest poured water out in the temple as a symbol of the later day river that would flow from the temple (Ez. 47:1-12; Zech. 14:8). Jesus’ invitation and reference indicates that he is the scriptures true fulfillment. The water here is explicitly connected with the Holy Spirit (John 7:39).

The cumulative effect of these scenes indicates that there’s more than one meaning given to water. Sometimes water is simply a clear physical liquid used for washing, drinking etc. However when associated with Christ, water signifies the Spirit (i.e. “living-water or water from above).

A contrast between two waters (higher and lower) fits within John’s narrative’s dualism. Many of John’s metaphors and symbols have natural polarity. For instance John employees the imagery of light and darkness, life and death, above and below, true and false. Each refers to a separation between tangible world in which we live and the intangible realm of the Spirit. Because it’s immaterial, the world “above” is separate from the world “below.” For instance in John 3:12, Christ distinguishes between “earthly things” and “heavenly things” and in 8:23 He separates Himself from His opponents, stating, “You are from below I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” The higher world represents an intangible reality which man cannot perceive. The prologue asserts “No one has seen God at any time” (1:18). Yet, it also goes on to equally claim that Jesus’ physical presence “explained” or “made known” the invisible God (1:14, 18).

Through metaphors and symbols, John constructs a ladder of understanding from the lower physical world to the higher world of the Spirit. A symbol, according to ordinary sense, is “that which represents something else by virtue of an analogical relationship.” H. Levin describes it simply as “a connecting link between two different spheres.” The symbol, “points beyond itself”, and in someway “embodies that which it represents.” Thus, John takes tangible images and infuses them with a higher connotation in order to define the imperceptible world of God.

Water function within this dualism.

Reading John 3:5 in light of its context

Returning to John 3:5 we can see how this repeated contrast between two different waters fits into the phrase “born of water and the Spirit.”

Most interpretations hold that water and Spirit exist as two distinct elements in the process of rebirth. The English word “and” implies two distinct things. This would certainly fit the apparent contrast between the lower water and the Spirit (higher water) in the scenes outlined above. But these scenes also make a comparison between water and Spirit and unlike the English translation, the Greek may suggest that water and Spirit are one thing and not two. C.H. Talbert states,

The construction in Greek is that of two terms joined by “and” (kai) and governed by one preposition. This Greek construction normally points to one act: e.g., Titus 3:5. If two acts were involved, normally two prepositions would occur.

Though Talbert appears confident in this translation, J. Ramsey Michaels counters with a more moderate approach. He states,

The fact that both are governed by a single preposition in Greek suggests that they are one. Yet in 1 John 5:6, the same sort of construction is immediately followed by a singling out of each element with its own preposition and definite article. The decision must therefore be made on other than grammatical grounds.

Given room to maneuver, immediate context points to water symbolizing the Spirit. “Born of water and Spirit” occurs as a reiteration of John 3:3’s phrase “born again”. The word, “again” possess two meanings. Though Nicodemus translates the word as “a second time,” the word also means “from above.” It is this later interpretation, which Jesus seems to intend. Thus Jesus, in John 3:3 and 3:5, speaks of one birth from above. According to the freedom granted by both grammar and context, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be “born of water from above, which is the Holy Spirit.”

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When Jesus Gave Birth (Part 7)

November 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

As I pointed out in the last post, the Gospel of John’s emphasis on a birth from God points to John’s thematic climax, the cross, as Jesus’ labor for the birth of the believer.  And there’s simply no better picture of birth in this scene than the well-attested allusion to the creation of Eve in the depiction of Jesus’ pierced side  (John 19:34).

Though she comes from the side of a man, Eve’s creation is in fact the first birth recorded in scripture.  Note the implicit twist in the fact that the woman comes out of the man instead of the other way around. Genesis 2:21-22 reads,

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh.  Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.  Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.

The languages of the original readers also indicates they would have understood it this way.  In Hebrew, the imagery of coming from a man is at the heart of several idioms referring to a man’s offspring.

  • the fruit of the man’s belly/womb.  (Deut 28:4, 11, 18, 53, 30:9, Psalms 132:11, Mic 6:7)
  • One who will come fourth from the man’s inward parts  (2 Samuel 7:12, I Chr 17:11)
  • That which comes out from the man’s loins.  (Gen 46:26, Ex 1:5, Judges 8:30, 1 Kings 8:19)

These word-pictures allude to a male parallel to a woman’s labor and delivery, a fact which is somewhat obscured by our English translations.  For instance, the Hebrew word for loins above is not exclusive to men.  It’s the seat of a woman’s labor pains.  And the Hebrew word “belly” has the broader meaning of abdomen which includes the womb.

The LXX, the first translations of the Bible into Greek 200 years before the time of Christ, moved further in this direction.  It rendered “belly” and “inward parts” in the first two examples as koilia, a Greek word which mean’s “hallow” but by extension refers to the abdomen and womb. We might expect than that the translators would have rendered “loins” in the parallel expression of 1 Kings 8:19 in the same way.  Not so.  Instead they translated it as “sides.” (pleura).  This is interesting.  According to the earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible, a man’s child idiomatically comes from his belly, womb, and or sides.  These idiom appear to be linked in no small degree to the “birth” of Eve.

To be continued…

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When Jesus Gave Birth (Part 6)

November 21, 2013 — Leave a comment

I could have kicked myself.  For more than ten years I’d recognized John 19:34 as the gospels climax, capstone and bloom.  I’d seen how it’s allusion to the creation of Eve brought together the gospel’s theme of new creation, marriage and oneness with God.  But until that moment I’d simply overlooked it’s relationship to the most well-known characteristic of John’s gospel, the new birth.

Like every Evangelical, I love the term “born again!”  It perfectly describes how the Holy Spirit transforms hearts and lives.  I’ve experienced it.  But until then I’d never realized how this term points to an event other than conversion.  I now see how John uses it as powerful metaphor for what Jesus did on the cross.

Have you ever seen the crucifixion as Jesus’ labor pains and his death as the moment of birth?  That may sound odd.  But its exactly what John wants us to see in Jesus’ pierced side and its flow of blood and water (John 19:34)

Apart from 1 Peter 1:22-23, the new birth is found exclusively in John’s Gospel and letters.  We could say its his whole point.  John summarizes his gospel this way,

These things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (20:30-31)

How does this new life occur? Through a Divine birth of course. John spells it out for his readers four times.

(1) Born of God (1:11-13)

The nativity forms the heart of John’s introduction (1:1-18)  But unlike Matthew and Luke it’s not Jesus‘.  John 1:12-13 reads,

But to all who did receive him (Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.

The significance of the believers birth is only underscored by its position within the prologue’s structure.  These opening eighteen verses form a chiasm, an ancient rhetorical pattern which rotates around and points to a central core.  And John 1:12-13 is that core.  The new birth is John’s thesis statement, a parallel to his summary on the other end of the book (20:30-31).  The gospel results in a spiritual nativity.  Reception of Jesus leads to a birth from God.

(2) Born Again (3:3-6)

The birth metaphor next appears in Jesus’ conversation with the aged Pharisee, Nicodimus.  Jesus tells him outright, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”  Confused, Nicodimus asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time?”  Jesus clarifies his statement by rephrasing it.  “Unless a man be born of water and the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

The rephrasing here is important.  Nicodimus has stumbled over Jesus’ use of the word again, the Greek word anothen.  Anothen can mean a second time, but unlike the English translation, it can also mean ‘from above.’  The new birth of which Jesus speaks is not a second physical birth but an entirely new birth from God, a birth ‘of water and Spirit” or more accurately “water which is the Spirit.”  Jesus’ here echos the words of the prologue.  This birth is not from any human being but is entirely Divine in origin.

(3) New Sight (9:1-10)

The birth imagery is again found in the opened eyes of the blind man in John 9.  Note how John over and over again tells us that the man’s blindness was from birth (9:1-2, 19-20, 32-33). Through the emphasis, John depicts Jesus’ miraculous gift of sight as the man’s birth to new life.

(4) Labor Pains (16:20-22)

The last clear use of the birth metaphor is found in Jesus’ upper room discourse.  Here, Jesus compares the sorrow of the disciples to a woman in labor.

Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.  You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy.  When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.  So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will turn your joy from you.

In the analogy, the disciples are mother’s in labor and it’s Jesus, in his death and resurrection, who is being born.

But the analogy also implicitly and more accurately points to Jesus as the one giving birth. The disciples are sorrowful but they don’t experience anything close to the physical pain of crucifixion.  And of course their sorrow doesn’t produce the resurrection in the same way a mother’s pain produces a child or the way Jesus’ physical suffering brings about the believers new birth (1:12-13).  Jesus’ use of the word “hour” for a woman’s labor pains (16:21) also reminds the reader of Jesus’ climatic hour which he has used as a reference to the cross so many times before (John 2:4, 7:6, 8, 30, 8:20, 12:23, 27, 13:1, 17:1).

Given the repeated emphasis on a birth from God, it seems highly likely that John intended his readers to see the further implications of this analogy.  The cross is Jesus hour, his labor for our birth.  A birth which quite fittingly comes from the side of God.

If we were to look for a birth in John’s depiction of the crucifixion we would find no better illustration than the flow of blood and water from the pierced side of Christ and its allusion to the creation of Eve in Genesis 2:21-24.

To be continued…

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When Jesus Gave Birth (Part 5)

April 29, 2013 — Leave a comment

The best evidence for the piercing of Christ’s side (John 19:34) being an allusion to the creation of Eve (Genesis 2:21-22) is found in its seamless connection to John’s core message and themes.  In my last post I noted three verbal and or circumstantial parallels between John 19:34 and Genesis 2:21-22: Death as sleep, opened side, and the substance.  In this post we explore John’s theme of new creation.

The Source of Creation

Beginning with John’s opening allusion to Genesis 1:1 (“in the beginning”), references to the creation abound in this gospel. John ascribes the creation of all things to the Word/Logos (1:3) and connects the Word/logos with Jesus (1:14) and so declares that what came into being through Jesus was a new creation – a new beginning.

Life and Light.  As the author of creation, Jesus, the Word made flesh, is the source of life and light (Gen. 1:3).  John 1:4 states, “in Him was life, and that life was the light of all people.”   And throughout the gospel we see Jesus offering life and light to the people he encounters, most notably light to the man born blind in chapter 9 and life to the dead man Lazarus in chapter 11.

Sabbath Work. Jesus’ Sabbath “work” is also tied to creation narrative.  When people object in John 5 to Jesus’ healing on the same day God rested from creation, Jesus responds, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” (5:17). Jesus implies that neither God nor himself has ever stopped working.  The people are outraged.  “This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (5:18).  For Jesus, in John, there is yet to be a completion to the creation and therefore there has been no true day of rest.  We’ll return to this important idea below.

A New Week

John also interestingly opens his gospel with a series of six days (John 1:29, 35, 39, 43; 2:1, 12).  Such a tight sequence is unique in John and appears to allude to the days of creation.  But more than simply echoing the number of days, each day conceptually parallel the corresponding day in the creation account. Note the following similarities.

  • On the first day God creates light and separates the light from the darkness (1:3-5). On the first day in John (note: John 1:29 begins the second day) John distinguishes light from the darkness (1:5).
  • On the second day, God separates the water which was below from the waters above (1:6-8). On the second day in John (1:29-34), John the Baptist states twice that he baptizes “in water” and then goes on to proclaim that Christ will baptize “in the Holy Spirit” (1:33) Like the higher and lower waters in Genesis, there are two baptisms; an earthly baptism and a heavenly one, a baptism in water below and baptism in water from above.
  • On the third day, God gathers the water into one place and causes dry ground to appear. He also causes the earth to produce fruit after its own kind. On the third day in the gospel of John (1:34-39), Jesus speaks for the first time. He also bears fruit, reproducing himself in the gathering of his first disciples.
  • On the fourth day, God creates “the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.” In John (1:39-43), Jesus meets with Peter. Jesus, the greater light (8:12), governs the day (9:4) while Peter, a lesser light, will govern the night.
  • On the fifth day of creation, God creates fish in the sea and birds in the air. On the fifth day in John, Jesus calls Philip who, like the fishermen Peter and Andrew is from a place called Bethsaida, meaning “house of fish.”
  • On the sixth day of creation, God creates male and female. Genesis 2 provides the full details, revealing it as the first marriage in scripture. “For this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” On John’s sixth day, Jesus attends a wedding.
  • And as with Genesis, John’s sixth day is the last day of this series of active days. God rests on the seventh day. In John’s gospel Jesus remains at Capernaum for a few days.

For more on this see Paul Trudinger’s article “The Seven Days of the New Creation in St. John’s Gospel: Some Further Reflections.”

I think it’s again interesting that we find no clear rest day in this “creation” week.  The Sabbath may be hinted at but it’s not reproduced.  Jesus simply continues his work without ever truly resting.  This matches Jesus words that He and His Father have only continued to work.  Jesus’ whole ministry in John should be understood as a continuation of the sixth day – the day in which God made man in his own image.

“It is Finished!”

Allusions to the creation account also cluster around Jesus’ arrest, death and resurrection. Andreas Kostenberger points to several possible instances of the new creation motif here.

  • The setting of the passion narrative in a garden, invoking the memory of Eden (18:1, 26; 19:41)
  • Pilate’s identification of Jesus as “the man” (19:5), which may present Jesus as the new Adam
  • The possible portrayal of Jesus’ resurrection as the beginning of a new creation (1:3; 20:1)
  • The identification of Jesus as “the gardener” by Mary (20:15), reflecting misunderstanding and possible also irony
  • Jesus’ breathing on his disciples and his giving of the Spirit in the final commissioning scene (20:22), invoking the creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7 (Ezek. 37:9)

To this we need to add Jesus’ cry from the cross in John 19:30, “It is finished.”

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”  A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.  When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “it is finished,”  and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.  Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.  (19:28-31)

Note the similarities to the creation account.  Jesus is declaring his work finished on the day immediately preceding a weekly Sabbath, a word which means rest.  Here’s Genesis 2:1-3,

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Given John’s repeated references to the creation and Jesus’ insistence that the Father and He had not stopped working even for a Sabbath, we should hear Jesus’ cry as the ultimate completion to their work.  In Jesus’ death and burial the creation was completed and the Sabbath finally realized.

The Creation of Eve from the Side of Adam

The capstone of this new creation occurs a few verses later in the piercing of Christ’s side and the flow of blood and water (John 19:34).  As an allusion to the creation of Eve, John 19:34 fits seamlessly with John’s theme of new creation.  In my next post we’ll explore John’s theme of new birth.

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When Jesus Gave Birth (Part 4)

April 12, 2013 — Leave a comment

This is part four in the series “When Jesus Gave Birth.”  You can find the introduction to the series here and the second and third parts here and here. 

How can the piercing of Jesus side and the flow of blood and water (John 19:34) have anything to do with the creation of Eve (Genesis 2:21-22)?  Didn’t God use one of Adam’s rib to form Eve?  There’s no mention of a rib in John 19.  Is there?

The verbal and circumstantial parallels between the piercing of Christ side (John 19:34) and the creation of Eve (Genesis 2:21-22) boils down to these:

1. Death as sleep. The piercing and flow follow the death of Jesus.  Genesis tells us that prior to taking Adam’s side to form the woman he caused Adam to go into a deep sleep (tardema).  Deep sleep is commonly used of a night’s sleep as in Job 14:13; 33:15 and Proverbs 19:15.  But here in Genesis 2:21-22 it is the same special work of God as when Abraham slept before the covenant with God (Genesis 15:12).  Since Jesus rises again, His death is likewise comparable to sleep.  Jesus makes the comparison between sleep and death explicit in John 11:11 before the resurrection of Lazarus.

2. Opened side.  While “rib” is a good rendering of what God took from Adam in Genesis 2 it is unnecessarily restrictive.  The Hebrew may refer to a rib but it more broadly means side.  Besides it use in Genesis 2, it is used in the Old Testament for the sides of objects, buildings and hills. Side was also in the minds of the Greek LXX translators when they rendered the Hebrew as pleura. The substance God uses to form the woman is found in the man’s side. John 19:34 and Genesis 2 also share the unique fact that plerua is in both instances is singular when it normally occurs in the plural.  It is the side (pleura singular) of Christ where John locates the piercing.  Just as God takes from Adam’s side (pluera singular) so the solider pierces Christ’s.

3. The Substance.  In Genesis God takes a part of Adam to fashion a helper just like him.  In a similar fashion, what flows from Jesus side is a representations of his two natures.  The blood stands for his flesh or humanity while the water His spirit and divinity.  You can somewhat see this in the standard views on the flow of blood and water reviewed in the second part to this series.  But I would also like to turn you attention to this post where I quote a work that delves a little more deeply into this issue.

These verbal and circumstantial parallels are by no means definitive.  With just a few similarities it’s clear how Brown and Stibbe could have dismissed it.  While the church fathers may have believed in such a connection this in no way proves that John intended it.

But strengthening the connection are the multiple themes in the gospel which point to it.  The greatest support for the connection may not necessarily be the ‘textual’ similarities in 19:34 but rather how it corresponds so  neatly with John’s message and themes.  Volume, as we have already seen, is not the only way to judge an allusion.

We’ll begin to look at how this allusion fits John’s message in our next post.

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