Homily 26 — John 3, verses 6 to 11

“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” [a]

Great are the mysteries the only Son of God has counted us worthy of — great, and such as we were not worthy of, but such as it was fitting for him to give. For if one reckons what we deserved, we were not only unworthy of the gift, but liable to punishment and vengeance as well. But he did not look to this. He not only set us free from punishment, but freely gave us a life far brighter than the first. He brought us into another world and made us another creation. “If anyone is in Christ,” Paul says, “he is a new creation” (Second Corinthians 5, verse 17). What kind of “new creation”? Hear Christ himself declare it: “Unless a man is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Paradise was entrusted to us, and we showed ourselves unworthy to live even there; yet he has raised us to heaven. In the first things we were found unfaithful, and he has entrusted greater ones to us. We could not keep away from a single tree, and he has provided the delights above for us. We did not keep our place in paradise, and he has opened the doors of heaven to us. Paul said it well: “Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11, verse 33)

There is no longer a mother, or birth pains, or sleep, or coming together and the embracing of bodies. From now on the whole fabric of our nature is shaped above, of the Holy Spirit and water. Water is used, and it becomes the birth for the one who is born: what the womb is to the unborn child, the water is to the believer, for in the water he is fashioned and formed. At first it was said, “Let the waters bring forth creeping things that have life” (Genesis 1, verse 20, as the Greek Old Testament reads it). But from the time the Lord went down into the streams of the Jordan, the water no longer brings forth “creeping things that have life,” but souls endowed with reason and bearing the Spirit. And what was said of the sun, that he is “like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber” (Psalm 18, verse 6, in the Greek numbering), we may now say rather of the faithful, for they send out rays far brighter than his.

What is fashioned in the womb needs time. What is fashioned in the water does not; everything is done in a single moment. Here our life is perishable, and it takes its origin from the decay of other bodies. What is to be born comes slowly, for that is the nature of bodies: they reach their completeness over time. But it is not so with spiritual things. Why not? Because what is made there is formed complete from the beginning.

Nicodemus, hearing these things, was still troubled. See how Christ now partly opens to him the secret of this mystery, and makes clear what had for a while been dark to him. “What is born of the flesh,” he says, “is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” He leads him away from everything that belongs to the senses, and does not let him pry uselessly with his fleshly eyes into the mysteries now being revealed. “We are not speaking of flesh,” he says, “but of Spirit, Nicodemus.” By this word he turns him toward heaven for a while. “So look for nothing that belongs to the senses. The Spirit can never appear to those eyes. Do not think that the Spirit gives birth to flesh.”

“How then,” perhaps someone will ask, “was the flesh of the Lord brought forth?” Not of the Spirit alone, but of flesh as well, as Paul declares when he says, “Made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4, verse 4). The Spirit did not fashion him out of nothing — for then what need would there have been of a womb? — but from the flesh of a virgin. How, I cannot explain to you; yet it was done, so that no one would suppose that what was born is foreign to our nature. For if, even now that this has taken place, there are some who do not believe in such a birth, what ungodliness would they not have fallen into if he had not shared in the Virgin’s flesh?

“What is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Do you see the dignity of the Spirit? It is seen doing the work of God. Earlier the evangelist said of some that they “were born of God” (John 1, verse 13); here Christ says that the Spirit gives them birth.

“What is born of the Spirit is spirit.” What he means is this: “Whoever is born of the Spirit is spiritual.” For the birth he speaks of here is not a birth of essence, but of honor and grace. Now if the Son is born in this way too, in what will he be superior to people born this way? And how is he the only Son? For I too am born of God, though not of his essence; and if he too is not of his essence, how does he differ from us in this respect? Why, then he will turn out to be inferior to the Spirit, for a birth of this kind comes by the grace of the Spirit. Does he need the Spirit’s help, then, in order to go on being a Son? And how do these teachings differ from those of the Jews?

So Christ, having said, “Whoever is born of the Spirit is spirit,” saw that Nicodemus was confused again, and turned his discourse to an example taken from the senses. He says, in verses 7 and 8: “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes.”

By saying, “Do not marvel,” he shows how confused Nicodemus’s soul was, and he leads him to something lighter than a body. He had already led him away from fleshly things by saying, “What is born of the Spirit is spirit.” But when Nicodemus did not understand what “what is born of the Spirit is spirit” meant, he next takes him to another comparison. He does not bring him down to the heaviness of bodies, and yet he does not speak of things wholly without body either, for Nicodemus could not have taken that in if he had heard it. Instead he found something between what is body and what is not — the movement of the wind — and to that he brings him next. And he says of it, “You hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes.”

Though he says, “It blows where it wishes,” he does not say it as if the wind had any power of choice. He is declaring that its natural movement cannot be hindered, and that it goes with power. For Scripture knows how to speak this way of lifeless things, as when it says, “The creation was made subject to futility, not willingly” (Romans 8, verse 20). So the expression “blows where it wishes” belongs to someone who wants to show that it cannot be held back; that it spreads out everywhere; that no one can stop it from passing this way and that, but that it goes out with great force, and no one is able to turn its violence aside.

“And you hear its voice” — that is, its rustling, its noise — “but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [f]

Here is the conclusion of the whole matter. “If you do not know how to explain the movement or the path of this wind,” he says, “which you perceive by hearing and by touch, why are you so anxious about the working of the divine Spirit? You do not understand the working of the wind, though you hear its voice.” The expression “blows where it wishes” is also used to establish the power of the Comforter. For if no one can hold the wind, but it moves where it wishes, much less will the laws of nature, or the limits of bodily birth, or anything else of that kind, be able to restrain the workings of the Spirit.

That the expression “you hear its voice” is said of the wind is clear from this: when he was talking with an unbeliever, a man who knew nothing of the Spirit’s working, he would not have said, “You hear its voice.” So, as the wind is not visible although it makes a sound, neither is the birth of what is spiritual visible to our bodily eyes. And yet the wind is a body, though a very fine one, for whatever the senses perceive is a body. If, then, you do not complain because you cannot see this body, and do not refuse to believe on that account, why is it that when you hear of “the Spirit” you hesitate and demand such exact explanations, though you do not act this way in the case of a body?

What, then, does Nicodemus do? He still holds on to his low, Jewish way of thinking, and that after so clear an example has been set before him. So when he asks again, doubtfully, in verses 9 and 10, “How can these things be?”, Christ now speaks to him more reprovingly: “Are you a teacher in Israel, and do not know these things?” Notice how he nowhere accuses the man of wickedness, but only of weakness and simplicity.

“And what,” someone may ask, “does this birth have in common with Jewish things?” Tell me, rather, what does it have that is not in common with them? The first-created man, and the woman formed from his side, and the barren women, and the things done by water — I mean the spring where Elisha made the iron tool float, the Red Sea the Jews passed through, the pool the angel stirred, and Naaman the Syrian, who was cleansed in the Jordan — all these announced in advance, as in a figure, the birth and the cleansing that were to come.

And the words of the prophet point to the manner of this birth, as when he says, “A generation that is coming will be announced to the Lord, and they will announce his righteousness to a people that will be born, whom the Lord has made” (Psalm 22, verses 30 and 31, as the Greek Old Testament reads it); and, “Your youth will be renewed like an eagle’s” (Psalm 103, verse 5, as the Greek Old Testament reads it); and, “Shine, Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming!” (Isaiah 60, verse 1, and Zechariah 9, verse 9); and, “Blessed are those whose wrongdoings are forgiven” (Psalm 32, verse 1, as the Greek Old Testament reads it).

Isaac too was a type of this birth. For tell me, Nicodemus, how was he born? Was it by the law of nature? Not at all. The way he came into being was midway between the birth we are speaking of and natural birth: natural, because he was conceived through the union of husband and wife; the other, because he was born not of blood but by the will of God.

I will show that these figures announced in advance not only this birth, but also the birth from the Virgin. For because no one would easily have believed that a virgin could bear a child, barren women bore children first, and then women who were not only barren but old as well. That a woman should be made from a rib was indeed far more wonderful than that the barren should conceive. But because that belonged to early and ancient times, another figure, new and fresh, was given — that of the barren women — to prepare the way for belief in the Virgin’s childbearing. So it was to remind him of these things that Jesus said, “Are you a teacher in Israel, and do not know these things?”

Verse 11: “We speak what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, and no one receives our witness.”

He added this to make his words believable by yet another argument, stooping down in his speech to meet the other man’s weakness.

And what does he mean by saying, “We speak what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen”? Among us, sight is the most trustworthy of the senses. When we want to win someone’s belief, we speak this way: we say that we saw a thing with our own eyes, not that we know it by hearsay. So Christ speaks to him rather in the way people speak, winning belief for his words by this means too. That this is so — that he wants to establish nothing more than this, and is not referring to seeing with the bodily eyes — is clear from the following. After saying, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit,” he adds, “We speak what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen.” Now this birth of the Spirit had not yet taken place. How, then, does he say, “what we have seen”? Is it not plain that he is speaking of a knowledge that is exact, and nothing less? [l]

“And no one receives our witness.” He uses the expression “we know” either of himself and his Father, or of himself alone. And “no one receives” is the expression not of someone displeased, but of someone stating a fact. For he did not say, “What could be more senseless than you, who do not receive what we have declared so exactly?” Showing complete gentleness in both his works and his words, he said nothing of the kind. Mildly and kindly he foretold what would come to pass. In this way he guides us too toward complete gentleness, and teaches us, when we talk with people and do not persuade them, not to be irritated or turn savage. For a man who has lost his temper cannot possibly accomplish his purpose; he only makes the person he is speaking to still less willing to believe. So we must keep away from anger, and make our words believable in every way by avoiding not only anger but loud speaking too, for loud speaking is the fuel of passion.

So let us bind the horse, that we may subdue the rider. Let us clip the wings of our anger, and the evil will no longer rise to a height. Anger is a sharp passion — sharp, and skilled at stealing away our souls — so we must guard against its entry on every side. It would be strange if we were able to tame wild beasts and yet neglected our own savage minds. Anger is a fierce fire; it devours everything. It harms the body, it destroys the soul, it makes a man deformed and ugly to look at. If an angry person could see himself at the moment of his anger, he would need no other warning, for nothing is more unpleasant to look at than an angry face. Anger is a kind of drunkenness — or rather, it is worse than drunkenness, and more pitiable than being possessed by a demon.

But if we take care not to be loud in speech, we will find this the best road to a sober way of acting. That is why Paul takes away shouting as well as anger, when he says, “Let all anger and shouting be put away from you” (Ephesians 4, verse 31). So let us obey this teacher of all wisdom. When we are angry with our servants, let us think of our own offenses, and be ashamed at their patience. When you are insulting and your servant bears your insults in silence, when you behave disgracefully and he behaves like a wise man, take this as your warning in place of any other. Though he is your servant, he is still a human being. He has an immortal soul, and he has been honored with the same gifts as you by your common Lord. And if he, who is our equal in the greater and more spiritual things, bears our wrongs so gently because of some poor and trifling human advantage we have over him, what pardon can we deserve, what excuse can we make, we who cannot — or rather, will not — be as wise through fear of God as he is through fear of us?

So, considering all these things, and calling to mind our own sins and the nature all people share, let us take care at all times to speak gently, so that, being humble in heart, we may find rest for our souls, both in the life that now is and in the life to come. May we all attain it, through the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory to the Father and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.