If anyone appeared qualified for God’s kingdom, it was Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, a teacher of Israel and a member of the Jewish ruling council—the highest court of the nation. He knew the Scriptures, lived a conspicuously moral life and possessed influence and status. Yet when he comes to Jesus at night, Jesus does not congratulate him or offer a small improvement to his spiritual life. The kingdom of God is standing before Nicodemus, but he cannot see it. Jesus tells him, ‘You must be born again.’ (v.7)

The Greek word translated ‘again’ can also mean ‘from above’. Nicodemus hears only the first meaning and wonders how anyone could enter the womb a second time. Jesus is speaking of a birth whose origin is heaven. We contributed nothing to our physical birth, and we cannot manufacture spiritual life. Flesh gives birth to flesh: our first birth places us in Adam’s humanity, marked by sin, decay and death (see yesterday’s blog). We need the Spirit of God to give us a second birth from above.

In his sermon, Andrew drew out the costly beauty of this image. A baby does nothing to bring about its own birth. It receives life through the pain, suffering, blood and water of its mother, who may carry the scars for the rest of her life. In the same way, our new life comes entirely through the suffering of Jesus – his pain, his shed blood and his pierced side. We do not deliver ourselves spiritually any more than we delivered ourselves physically.

Jesus recalls the Israelites who were dying from snake bites in the wilderness. God told Moses to lift up a bronze snake; those who looked at it in trusting obedience lived. In the same way, the Son of Man will be lifted up on the cross so that everyone who looks to him and believes may have eternal life. The invitation is not to make ourselves worthy but to confess our sin, look to Jesus and trust what he has done.

This means that neither Nicodemus’s religious accomplishments nor our own can give us new birth. But it also means that no history of sin, failure or shame puts new birth beyond our reach. God loved this fallen world by giving his one and only Son. The invitation is not to make ourselves worthy, but to look to Jesus and believe.

Look closely at the cross and the whole curse of Genesis 3 comes into view. The serpent’s head is crushed as Satan is defeated. The pain that gives us our second birth is borne by Jesus. The God-forsakenness our sin deserves is heard in his cry, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34) The thorns of the cursed ground are pressed onto his head, and the death pronounced upon Adam is taken by Christ. When Jesus says, ‘It is finished,’ (John 19:30) the curse has been borne.

The picture of birth keeps grace concrete. No baby causes or manages its own delivery; life is received through another’s labour. Andrew’s work among women with childbirth injuries makes the costliness of that image impossible to romanticise. Birth may involve pain, blood, water, fear and lasting scars. Jesus says that the Spirit gives birth to spirit, and then explains what this new life will cost him. Like the bronze snake lifted up in the wilderness, the Son of Man will be lifted up so that dying people may look and live. At the cross he bears hostility, abandonment, thorns, shame and death. New birth is free to us and immeasurably costly to God. Nicodemus can only receive what God gives.