What did HE say? (continued)
BORN AGAIN ? (continued)
The Whole Story?
There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born ? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven (John 3:1-13).
In the first post on this series on Born Again we discussed the relationship between Jesus’ words regarding being born again and entry into the Kingdom of God, comparing these to the other Kingdom statements that the Master made. In the second we covered some ideas of what the term born again means to Christians noting that there are many different ideas about this in the Christian world and, continuing with the idea that it is necessary for entry into the Kingdom, we looked at what might be the truth behind the words. Yesterday, in the third post, we started to look at the picture that Jesus was painting for us in His dialogue with Nicodemus noting the differences between flesh and Spirit and the interaction between these. Today we will continue this discussion with the bold type scripture above.
We left off with a understanding on the relationship between flesh and Spirit that says:
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We are born into this world in a physical body which comes equipped with a mind and emotions (psychic attributes) and all of these develop together based upon what they are fed as children and then what we individually feed them as we grow older. What we did not discuss yesterday is that this part is complicated by the innate quality of each of these aspects of our physical and psychic lives. As we know, individually we are born with a variety of natural physical and psychic abilities or detriments ranging from outstanding physical form to being crippled; from outstanding mental acuity to retardation; and from apparent emotional stability to disabling phobias. These differences, as we discussed previously, are not understood in the light of our life and death view of things.
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This physical and psychic combination is for us the flesh that the Master speaks of in these verses of dialogue with Nicodemus. This constitutes both our inner and outer appearance; it is our changeable personality which we have called in other posts the heart of the everyday man. When Jesus says “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34) or when He says “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21) He is speaking of the conscious personality of man made up of his physical and psychic natures; This is what is the us that thinks, speaks and acts everyday.
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This physical and psychic combination, the personality, is animated by Life and that Life is what we call Spirit. Life is indescribable in human terms; we know when it begins and when it ends as regards our bodily form and we can testify to the quality of its appearance but we do not know what it is. This animating principle is Spirit and we can say either that we have one or that we are one. Scripture leads us to the latter and in this is our true relationship with the Father God found.
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This Spirit that we are is the Life principle in man. To keep this on track with our verses we will not go into the nature of Spirit or how it may work in relation to who we are and what we know but we will say, as we did yesterday, that the Spirit that is giving Life to our personality is pure, it is what the Apostle Paul calls incorruptible. This is the true nature of every man and this is what stands behind each of us giving Life and shining its Light into the personality life. In the interests of better understanding, I speak of Spirit here as a sort of combination of the qualities of both the Spirit and the Soul. As we discussed yesterday, these terms are confounded and confused in scripture along with Life and it will serve us best at this time to call them as the same.
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The personality life of man can go from beginning to end without a man ever knowing or wanting to know anything about Spirit. Some can be so totally involved in their personality lives that they never sense the presence of their Spiritual selves, never see the Light, and never seek or ask or knock. Others of us see a glimpse of the Light and depending on the innate nature of our personality we can see it in any of a variety of ways. In this idea is the some of the reasoning for the multiplicity of differing religions and denominations and degrees of involvement that we have in them and the attractiveness of any one of these to any one person. The Light shines and we see it and we react to it and, if the personality is ready, we strive to enter into a communion of personality and Spirit; this is being born again.
In today’s text we begin with Jesus telling Nicodemus that these things should not be a wonder to Him and then begins to tell him some things about the nature of Spirit in words that He hopes that Nicodemus will understand and which are also intended for our consumption. He says: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit“. In this the Master is telling Nicodemus and us about the undefinable nature of Spirit. We hear but do not see it; we cannot tell from where it comes because it is not perceptible to our outer senses; it is our Life principle and the reality that we are. Jesus is telling us that when we consciously see and attend to that Spirit and its Light we take on, as personalities, its nature; the nature of the incorruptible Spirit that we are. Jesus is telling us for ourselves with our limited perception; that being born of the spirit we take on that new life of the Spirit and it changes us completely; it puts us in the Presence of God and give us the power and the glory that comes with this. We do not know where Spirit comes from or where Spirit goes but we do know that this power is in us and the peace and the understanding that comes with it.
Now we know from the scripture that Nicodemus still does not understand what Jesus is saying to him and in Jesus answer we find feigned surprise insomuch as he was probably not expected to know these things. We should remember that from the start of this dialogue Nicodemus did not truly understand who Jesus is referring to Him as a teacher come from God and who God is with, based on the miracles he had seen or heard about. Still uninformed after listening to the Master and in awe of His teaching, Nicodemus asks “how can these things be” There is no consensus on the use of the ‘we’ and ‘our’ in His answer but it matters not to the text: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness“. Jesus simply says that “we speak that we do know” rather matter-of-factly as if saying that this is the way all do it; we speak what we know and this is what I know and I testify but you do not receive or accept it.
Jesus then goes on to say to us that: “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?” which is to say that all of the prior words about born again and the nature of Spirit are Earthly. In the confusion regarding these words in the world today, many have come to think that these words and ideas are heavenly but the Master does not say this. He says that these are Earthly ideas and in this knowledge, we can but imagine the nature of those things that are truly heavenly; things which we can know only when we are truly born again and in the Presence of God. Now Jesus is here telling us that He knows of the Heavenly things as well, going on to tell us that “…no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven”. Now this is an hard saying to understand from our limited perspective and with our finite minds.
The whole of the message of Jesus could be said to be instruction on how to enter into the Kingdom of God or of Heaven so that we know that we can enter. He also tells us that the Kingdom is at hand, now, and that the Kingdom is within us. Now forgetting the directional ideas in these words ascended up and came down and looking at them as going higher and lower we can begin to make good sense of the Master’s words as they affect our lives. Higher consciousness for our purposes is living spiritually, born anew, while lower consciousness is of a baser sort and Earthly, of the flesh. With this picture and with the prior idea of the purity of the Spirit that we know that we are, we can see some of what the Master is saying. Speaking not only of Himself but of us all; that we, as Spirit are in the Kingdom in purity and in oneness with God and through being born again we bring this consciousness down to our human personality thus elevating it to the Presence of God.
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed , and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him , though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said , For we are also his offspring. (Acts 17:24-28)
The Apostle Paul’s testimony to the nature of God and man, the brotherhood of man and the unity that is found in the diversity of man. That God made of one blood all nations of men that they should seek the Lord and find Him. For we are ever so close to Him; we in Him and He in us.
