Sermon You Must Be Born Again

Born From Above: What Jesus Said to a Man Who Had Everything

Nicodemus had everything a person could want by the standards of his world. He was educated, respected, religiously serious, and morally upright. He was a Pharisee, which meant he had devoted his life to keeping God's law. He was a ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest religious council in Israel. If anyone had earned a place with God through effort and achievement, it was this man. And yet something drove him to find Jesus in the night and ask the deepest question a human being can ask.

That question is still being asked today. Not always in those exact words, but it is underneath every honest conversation about what happens when we die, whether our lives have meaning, and whether God is actually reachable. Nicodemus came to Jesus carrying the weight of religion without certainty, and Jesus gave him an answer that has echoed through twenty centuries of Christian preaching. It is an answer this congregation needs to hear again today, whether you have followed Christ for decades or whether this is the first Sunday you have walked through these doors.

Open your Bible to John chapter three, beginning at verse one.

The Text And What It Shows Us

John writes that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. Some have suggested he came at night because he was afraid of what his colleagues would think. That may be true. But night in John's Gospel carries a deeper meaning. John uses light and darkness throughout his account to describe the condition of the human heart apart from God. Nicodemus came out of the darkness, literally and spiritually, toward the one who called himself the light of the world.

He opened respectfully: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him." That is a generous acknowledgment. But Jesus did not respond to the compliment. He went straight to the need. Verse three: "Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

That phrase, born again, stopped Nicodemus cold. He was a scholar. He understood the law. He understood ritual and ceremony and sacrifice. But this he did not understand. He asked the only question that made sense to him: "How can anyone be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born?"

Jesus was not speaking about a physical event. He was speaking about something that only God can do. Verse five: "Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." The phrase born of water and the Spirit has been interpreted in various ways across Christian traditions. In context, Jesus appears to be drawing on the language of Ezekiel 36, where God promised to cleanse his people and put a new spirit within them. The new birth is a complete transformation, an inward washing and a spiritual awakening that no human effort can produce.

Then Jesus said something that should settle the matter for every person in this room. Verse six: "Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit." He was not saying that the body is evil. He was saying that flesh, meaning human nature and human effort, can only produce more of the same. You cannot reform your way into the kingdom of God. You cannot study your way in, volunteer your way in, or be born into the right family and inherit your way in. The new birth is not a self-improvement project. It is an act of God.

The Wind And The Mystery

Jesus used a beautiful image to explain how the Spirit works. Verse eight: "The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." In the original language of the New Testament, the same word means both wind and Spirit. Jesus was making a deliberate connection. You cannot see the wind. You cannot control it or manufacture it. But you can see what it does. Leaves move. Trees bend. Sails fill.

That is how the Spirit of God works in a human life. You may not be able to explain the exact moment or the precise mechanism. But the evidence is real. A person who was hard becomes tender. A person who was enslaved to patterns they could not break finds freedom. A person who had no interest in God begins to hunger for him. That is not psychology. That is the wind of God moving through a human soul.

Nicodemus was still struggling. He asked, "How can these things be?" And Jesus gently pressed him: "Are you a teacher of Israel and don't know these things?" The point was not to embarrass him. The point was that the new birth was not a new idea. It was the fulfillment of what the prophets had been pointing toward all along. The problem was not a lack of information. The problem was that no amount of religious information can substitute for a transformed heart.

The Gospel At The Center

Now we come to the heart of the passage, and it is the heart of the entire Christian message. Jesus said in verse fourteen: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

He was pointing back to a moment in Israel's history recorded in Numbers 21. The people had sinned and were dying from snake bites. God told Moses to make a bronze snake and lift it up on a pole. Anyone who looked at it in faith would live. It was not the snake that saved them. It was the act of looking in trust toward what God had provided.

Jesus said that is what his death would accomplish. He would be lifted up on a cross, bearing the weight of human sin, so that anyone who looks to him in faith would not die but live. That is the gospel in a single image. We are bitten. We are dying. We cannot heal ourselves. And God has provided the remedy, not a program, not a philosophy, but a person, his own Son, lifted up in our place.

Then came the verse that may be the most recognized sentence in the entire Bible. Verse sixteen: "For God so loved the world in this way: he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." Notice what drives this. It is love. Not obligation. Not a transaction. Love. God looked at a world that had turned away from him, a world full of people like Nicodemus who were religious but unregenerate, and people who were not religious at all, and he gave his Son. Not loaned him. Gave him.

And verse seventeen completes the picture: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." Jesus did not come to make us feel guilty. He came to make us alive. He did not come to add more requirements to an already impossible list. He came to do what we could not do for ourselves.

What This Means For You Today

So what does this mean for the person sitting in this room right now?

If you have never trusted Christ, this passage is speaking directly to you. You may be like Nicodemus, sincere, serious, morally careful, and still missing the one thing that matters most. The new birth is not something you can produce by trying harder. It is something you receive by faith. Jesus said everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. That word believes does not mean simply agreeing that Jesus existed. It means trusting him, resting the full weight of your hope on what he has done, the way a person in a sinking boat trusts the rescue that reaches them.

Repentance is part of that trust. To repent means to turn, to stop running your own life in your own direction and turn toward God. It is not a feeling you manufacture. It is a decision you make, and God honors it. If you have never made that decision, today is the right day.

If you are a believer, this passage is a reminder of what happened to you and why it matters. You did not talk yourself into the kingdom. You did not earn your way in. The Spirit of God moved, and you were born from above. That is the foundation of your assurance, not your performance, but God's action. And it is the foundation of your compassion for people around you who have not yet come to Christ. They are not simply people with bad habits or wrong opinions. They are people who need what only God can give, and we have been entrusted with the message.

In Baptist life, we practice believer's baptism because we believe the new birth comes first. Baptism does not produce the new birth. It declares it. When a person goes under the water and comes up again, they are proclaiming publicly that they have died with Christ and been raised with him to new life. If you have trusted Christ but have never been baptized as a believer, that is the next step of obedience.

A Closing Word

Nicodemus did not disappear from John's Gospel. He appeared again in chapter seven, defending Jesus before the council. And he appeared one final time in chapter nineteen, bringing spices to anoint the body of Jesus after the crucifixion. The man who came in the night ended up standing at the cross in the open. Something happened to Nicodemus. The wind blew.

The same wind is blowing today. You cannot see it. You cannot manufacture it. But you can respond to it. Jesus said unless a person is born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God. That is not a threat. It is an invitation. The door is open. The remedy has been provided. The Son has been lifted up.

Look to him. Trust him. Be born from above.

If you are ready to trust Christ for the first time today, or if you want to talk with someone about what that means, do not leave without taking that step. Speak to a pastor or a trusted believer after the service. The life Jesus described is not a future possibility. It begins the moment you believe.

Sources Consulted

Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 1991.

Kostenberger, Andreas J. John. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 2004.

Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to John. Revised edition. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1995.

Schreiner, Thomas R. New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ. Baker Academic, 2008.

Thielman, Frank. Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach. Zondervan, 2005.