First Principles for Rightly Handling God’s Word

Don Carson: The apostle writes, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” What that presupposes, of course, is that it is all too possible to handle the Word of Truth incorrectly. Strictly speaking, all we’re interested in during these four sessions is to think through together some of the principles that are involved in correctly handling the Word of Truth.

Historically, such study has been called hermeneutics. From the Greek verb, hermeneuo, which means to interpret, but in fact, in recent years hermeneutics has come to mean one of three separate things, and during the course of these days we shall be considering two of them. The first, the classic approach to hermeneutics: try to develop rules and principles for interpreting the text.

The assumption under this vision is that I, the knower (the student), studies it, the Bible (the text), and develops a number of rules and principles in order to interpret it correctly. “How do you handle a parable? What is the proper understanding of certain structures in Greek? How does cultural background fit in? How does one relate this text with that text?” Much of our time will be addressing interpretive questions of that order.

More recently, hermeneutics has been used to describe a number of technical scholarly tools. For some of you who are involved in biblical study, I’ll mention them. Source criticism, redaction criticism, and the like. I shall not address those things here. I doubt it is worth the time. There is a third element of hermeneutics that has become extremely important because it is reflective of all of contemporary Western culture. It is sometimes called the new hermeneutic.

Here there is recognition that the interpreter is himself or herself not a fixed base. When I approach the text, I bring my biases and baggage with me (all the things that make me me with all of my questions, doubts, uncertainties, biases, convictions, misinterpretations, and misunderstandings), so the kinds of questions I address to the Bible and the kinds of things I hear back are shaped by who I am in some measure, in which case how can one hear any true word, any infallible word from the Lord at all?

In fact, in the most extreme case in the new hermeneutic a push is made to argue there is a kind of endless cycle of subjectivity and it is sheer arrogance and old-fashioned bigotry to presuppose you can say, “Thus says the Lord,” even if you assume God has given us a true word to begin with. A little later on in the week I will address some of those things because there are some valuable things to learn from the new hermeneutic as well as some things to be aware of.

What I propose to do today is to outline a number of general principles by which we should approach the Bible. I do not know you very well. I recognize some faces. Some of you are pastors and vicars. Some of you are advanced students. Some of you are fairly young Christians. I need to lay some common ground, so if today I spend a little extra time doing things some of you know, be patient. We’ll get to a little more advanced things later.

Progressively during the week, I want to reflect with you a little on some particular areas: how to go about studying words, what difference literary genre has in our biblical interpretation (The Bible is made up of parable and chronicle and history and discourse and wisdom saying. They are not all to be treated the same way. What bearing does literary genre have on how we read the Bible?), what place the Holy Spirit has in interpreting the Bible, how we avoid on the one hand sheer rationalism and on the other hand sheer subjectivity (“The Spirit told me; therefore, I know” sort of thing).

As we progress then during the week we’ll pick up the new hermeneutic and one or two of these other things. Let me lead off with some basic principles in biblical interpretation.

1. Read the Bible.

I really don’t mean to be insulting, but I cannot stress that point strongly enough. Sometimes you find people who would like to know all about car mechanics. They don’t even know which end of a screwdriver to hold, but they would like to know all about car mechanics because it so happened a couple of times they were stuck out in the middle of the boonies and the car broke down.

If only they had known which wire to connect or how to change a fuse, they would have been all right. They would like a quick course on car mechanics, so they register at the local school for a quick course on car mechanics. A six-week sort of thing. “All you need to know about car mechanics.” Of course, the next time they’re broken down, they’re in just as bad a situation.

The only way you’re likely to know enough about car mechanics to actually bail yourself out when you get into a crisis is to know a fair bit about the whole machine, about the way mechanics work generally, about all kinds of things you’ll probably never actually use in a breakdown but you have to have that part of the background and structure and understanding before you get to the bit where you need it in a crisis.

So also in biblical interpretation. What some people want when they ask for more in biblical interpretation is something like, “I think I know my Bible pretty well, but there are little nasty bits here and there that really trouble me: what women should wear on their hair, baptism, and predestination. If I could just have a quick course, then I’ll sort all those problem passages out.”

It doesn’t work like that. As in the case of car mechanics, so much of our ability to handle the hard bits of Scripture turns on a growing rising of knowledge across the whole field of biblical interpretation. The more you know about the whole Bible the easier it is to handle some of the really difficult bits which crop up every once in a while.

There is another reason why we must read and read and read Scripture. If you’re a Buddhist, it doesn’t matter if you could show Gautama the Buddha never lived. Buddhism is a philosophical system. It is so abstracted from history that it doesn’t matter what you think about the historical claims of some Buddhists, but biblical Christianity is not built that way.

The God of the Bible is a talking God. He speaks. Then he ensures his words, whether in direct quotation or mediated through prophets and apostles and others, are inscripturated. That is, they are written down. This introduces what is sometimes called the scandal of historical particularity.

That is to say that God has accommodated himself to real people in real history speaking real language with a real culture. Thus, the Bible has come to us across a millennium and a half to real people. If you could start falsifying huge chunks of it, all of its claims drift away. It becomes a falsified book, an untrustworthy book.

Conversely, if we are to think God’s thoughts after him, what is required is not merely the adoption of an abstract philosophical system divorced from history but rather the saturation of our minds with his thoughts, with his words, so that we think them through again and again and again and again.

I’m reasonably sure even in this group of fairly mature Christians there would be a fairly significant number here who have not read the Bible through in the last year or in the last five years. I heard one or two people saying, “Malachi?” Why? That’s part of God’s Word, too, isn’t it? Read the Bible. Read the Bible. Read it and re-read it and re-read it.

You can get through it in a whole year if you read four chapters a day give or take or three chapters five days a week and five chapters the other two days. You can get through the whole thing more than once. Four chapters a day will get you through the whole Old Testament and the New Testament twice and the book of Psalms twice in one year. Gradually, over 10 years, some of the things you find so difficult begin to fit into place almost by a process of osmosis.

Most of us who are pastors will testify to the little old lady or the elderly gentleman who may not have great learning but who have read the Bible carefully for 50 or 60 years who have a certain kind of biblical knowledge that may not be technical but is sometimes extraordinarily profound and insightful. Anybody can do that. All you have to do is be a Christian and read a lot if what you read is the Bible. Read the Bible. That’s the first rule of all hermeneutics.

2. The original languages take precedence.

I don’t mean to be daunting or to put people off, but it is important to follow up on the truth God has revealed himself to certain people in real history. The people God revealed himself to in real history and whose record is inscripturated for us in Scripture were not Englishmen or Welsh living in the twentieth century. They were Jews, some Gentiles, living in the Middle East and various other parts, and God chose to reveal himself to them in their language.

That means because God has revealed himself to us in real history, part of our job in biblical interpretation is to read ourselves back into where they were in order that we may understand how it comes to us today. The Bible, in other words, is not an abstract system. It is a set of 66 historical documents. That means there will inevitably be some precedence given to the original languages.

In the English-speaking world we are very fortunate in that we have many, many helps to get around our limitations in language acquisition. It is probably worth saying in passing that at some of the most vibrant times in the history of the Christian church, many, many lay people learned Greek and some learned Hebrew as well.

In Puritan times, there were endless stories, for example, of cobblers at their bench with an elementary Greek text in front of them learning the language as they fixed shoes and the like. It wouldn’t hurt to regain some of that vision today, but granted that we don’t, then there are at least many helps.

If you’ve never read a commentary in your life, let me tell you where to start. Start with something fairly easy, warm-hearted biblical expositions at the level of the series titled The Bible Speaks Today or something like that or J.A. Motyer’s The Day of the Lion: The Message of Amos or Guard the Gospel by John Stott on 2 Timothy or Only One Way by Stott on Galatians. Then move up to the elementary commentaries and work your way up.

If you can get enough into the languages so you can use the larger commentaries that comment on the original languages then that will be a help as well. All I’m saying is at the end of the day one cannot simply move from the Authorized Version or from your preferred English version and draw vast theological conclusions because God has chosen to reveal himself in history. Those two are very basic, but they are important to articulate.

3. The immediate context takes precedence over a more remote context.

Let me give you some examples now. What we will try to do during these four sessions is to have enough examples so even if you don’t like the hermeneutics you might like the Bible teaching. Matthew, chapter 6, and Luke 18. In Matthew, chapter 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus issues some warnings on prayer.

Matthew 6:5 and following. He says, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.” Verse 7: “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them.”

Luke, chapter 18. There we are explicitly told Jesus begins a parable in order to tell people to continue praying and not quit. Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them they should always pray and not give up. If you are a pedant, you will look at Luke, chapter 18, verse 1, and then look at Matthew, chapter 6, and say, “You see, the Bible contradicts itself. One passage says, ‘Here’s a parable to tell you to keep praying and not give up.’ Here is instruction by Jesus which says, ‘Don’t go on babbling like pagans. God knows what you need before you even ask him. Keep it short.’“

Therefore, what should you do? Practically speaking, what should you do? Again, we are greatly helped if we focus on the immediate context rather than on the more remote context. What you can do is simply try to find all the passages in the Bible about prayer without examining how they are introduced in their respective contexts, but if you examine how something functions in its context, then you have a different vision.

In Luke’s gospel, Luke has a great concern to record all of Jesus’ extended prayer times. It’s Luke’s gospel that repeats again and again that he went out a great while before dawn and prayed, for example, that he spent all night in prayer before choosing his apostles and so forth. It’s Luke’s gospel also that finds the disciples going to Jesus and saying, “Teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” (Luke, chapter 11)

Partly, Luke has a whole interest in this subject of prayer. Moreover, it is pretty clear from the context of Luke 18 Jesus is issuing this sort of parable against people who are apathetic and cool and undisciplined in their prayer lives. What they need to hear is, “Persevere. Persevere in your praying. God is a prayer-answering God. Persevere. If even an unjust judge finally gives in, in order to get this lady off his back, don’t you think God, whose very name is justice, will hear your prayer if you persevere?”

But Matthew is directed rather more against false forms of religion, against a kind of formality in praying, in alms giving, in acts of righteousness, that quickly displaces genuine piety and a real knowledge of God. In that framework, it’s important not to think God is some sort of genie in a kind of pious bottle.

You rub the bottle and out pops the genie. You turn the prayer crank and you turn it long enough and hard enough and fast enough and you get whatever you want. If you don’t get what you want, pray some more. “He’s the genie. He has to provide, doesn’t he? I’m pretty good at my prayers, too. You should hear them!”

Within that kind of framework, it is important to say, “Do you think God is stupid? Do you think he’s just a magic genie who pops out of a bottle? He’s intelligent. He knows what you need before you ask him. He wants you to enter into relationship with him. Keep it short. If you pray too long to God, you may, in fact, be getting preachy when you should be a little more silent.” Within that kind of framework, the message there makes perfect sense and there is no necessary contradiction between the two perspectives at all.

The real problem comes practically when we try to apply the wrong text to the wrong person. Most of us are sufficiently hardened sinners that we can justify our prayerlessness by appealing to Matthew 6, and those who have overzealous consciences, very delicate and high-intensity types who feel they have let down the side if they don’t have an all-night prayer meeting at least once a week, can justify their approach by appealing to Luke, chapter 18.

Sooner or later, doesn’t the Word of God say to them, “A plague on both your houses”? You’re not listening to the right parts. You’re not applying the right part to you. The part that hurts the most is the part, in general, you should apply the most strongly, not justify your own particular sins by appealing to the bit you simply prefer to justify your own outlook.

What is the hermeneutical interpretive principle that has governed how we have interpreted those texts? Focusing on the immediate context, the context of Matthew 6 and Matthew’s gospel, Luke 18 and Luke’s gospel before we’ve tried to reconcile them together and make a larger picture. There are many other examples of the same sort of thing. Turn to Matthew, chapter 3.

We are told, “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’ ” Chapter 4, verse 17: “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’ ” Exactly the same words in both Greek and English.

This has generated endless essays and arguments in books to the effect that basically at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry Jesus and John the Baptist were essentially preaching the same thing. They were both desert itinerant preachers doing roughly the same thing. Then, in the passage of time, one got killed and the other one, in still longer time, got killed, too, but he lasted a little longer and that’s why some of his teachings have come down to us to form a new religion.

The proof they basically taught exactly the same thing is right here in the text. When the first one is introduced, his message is summed up with this one line: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” When the second one is introduced, exactly the same words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

Again, it is very important to examine immediate context. As soon as you do that, you discover, although the words are the same, the overtones in the surrounding context are very different. Later on this afternoon we’ll see also there are later comments on John the Baptist in Matthew that need to be borne in mind. We’ll turn to that later.

Look at Matthew 3 at the beginning. When John the Baptist starts to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” Matthew identifies him as the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah. Then Isaiah is quoted. Isaiah, chapter 40: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord.’ ” He is announcing one who is still to come.

Then when there is a greater record of his preaching in verses 7 and following, he tells people how to repent, but then he also says (verse 11), “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

Within that framework, therefore, when John the Baptist preaches, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” it is cast in a framework that means nearness in time. “This is coming up. I’m announcing someone who is coming after me. He is so far ahead of me in intrinsic worth that I’m not even worthy to unlatch his sandals. Repent, because this great day of the Lord is coming. Prepare to meet your God. Repent, the kingdom of heaven is near.”

Now read the same words in Matthew 4:17. Begin at verse 12. “When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali—to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: ‘Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.’ From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’“

Of course, those words from Isaiah are inevitably going to call forth from biblically literate people the entire context. That is Isaiah 9. “Unto us a son is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called the Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

This is the one who is now being announced, and he is coming in Galilee where Jesus begins his public ministry in the record of the Synoptic Gospels. “At that time, Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’ ” Now the entire framework casts the words a little differently. It’s not simply coming, although there is something of that, too.

It is, “Draw near with the coming of the King.” It is, “Draw near with the Light that is now shining.” It is, “Draw near, not in looking forward to someone who is still to come but in the One who now claims to be the promised hero.” Within that framework, therefore, the entire bifurcation of the ministries of the Baptists and of Jesus begins their divide that goes right through the entire gospel.

John is the forerunner. We’ll see that later. Jesus is the one to whom he points. To argue they had exactly the same ministries at the beginning merely on the basis of one line that is repeated to summarize both of their ministries is a failure to read the respective contexts closely. Let’s take another example.

John 3. This is the famous interview with Nicodemus. Verse 3: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Verse 5: “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” Those of you who have read commentaries know this expression born of water and the Spirit has generated no small controversy across the history of the church.

There are some who think water refers to baptism. Unless you are born again or begotten again of baptism and the Spirit, sacrament and Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom. There are others who remember what Titus says about the washing of water through the Word. What they say water here refers to is Word. You must be begotten of Word and Spirit. Still others argue along a host of other lines that need not be pursued here.

How do we go about resolving this sort of thing? The fact of the matter is water clearly is tied to baptism in some contexts regardless of your views of baptism. It is also clear, at least in Titus, regeneration is tied to the Word under the rubric of water. The washing of the Word. How do we decide between those two or others?

Leon Morris in his commentary suggested perhaps water is a symbol for sperm. This is not born again but begotten again, and God begets through a kind of spiritual sperm, if you like. A metaphor. He finds some passages in late rabbinic writers where droplets of water have that symbolic force. How do you decide? Could that be the correct interpretation?

This one is more difficult, quite clearly, and I doubt if what I say this afternoon will convince everyone, but let me try. I think, again, it is possible to be reasonably certain in this area if we start from the immediate context and work out. In the immediate context, then, Jesus is cast as talking to a rabbi. He’s not called a rabbi, but that’s what he is. He’s a learned leader of the Jews.

He is called in verse 10 the teacher of Israel (it’s probably titular: Grand Mufti, the Regius Professor of Divinity), and Jesus bawls him out for not understanding what Jesus was talking about. “You are the Regius Professor of Divinity and you don’t know what I’m talking about?” The question must be asked, “What, then, does Jesus presuppose that Nicodemus should have understood?”

Of course, the answer to that is he should have understood the Hebrew Bible and undoubtedly some Jewish traditions since then, but that was his primary area of expertise. This is not cast as someone talking to a mature Christian this side of Pentecost who knows something about Christian baptism, nor can we be sure John is using language exactly the way Paul uses language, for however we understand inspiration, God by his Holy Spirit used the biblical writers within the framework of their own choice of language apart from places of absolute dictation.

Thus, for example, Paul can refer to the called of God, and every time he uses the called of God he means people who are saved. When God calls, in Paul’s use of call, people are converted. Paul’s call is God’s effectual call. If God calls, you’re in. You answer that call. But in the Synoptic Gospels, when the verb to call is found, it is more like invitation. Many are called but few are chosen.

The same notions of God’s choice are there but with different verbs. All I have to say, however, is that you cannot go to Paul to find out what the verb to call means in order to find out what the verb to call means in Matthew. So also here, when you come across the word water in a context of being born again, you cannot immediately go to Titus to determine what is meant in John.

The immediate context takes precedence over the more remote context. There are biblical links. We’ll come to more of those later in the week. There are inner-canonical links where one biblical author cites another biblical author or where there are whole canonical themes that build up and build up and build up. We’ll come to those in a later day.

In the first instance, one begins from the local context and gives precedence to the local context before one appeals to the more remote context. In this framework, then, what is quite sure is as the argument is cast Jesus is addressing a great biblical scholar who should have understood the Old Testament and related materials and in Jesus’ teaching, he didn’t.

That means, therefore, Jesus is referring to something to do with the Old Testament. Otherwise, the accusation doesn’t make any sense. Now back off a bit and follow the line of the argument. “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.” Almost certainly the Sanhedrin, a body of 70 or 72 men, a mixture of Sadducees, Pharisees, and landed elders (aristocrats).

“He came to Jesus at night and said …” Let’s stop there for a moment. What does that mean? “He came to Jesus at night”? Most of us, I suspect, have been Christians long enough to have heard sermons that tell us at night means Nicodemus was a bit embarrassed to approach Jesus with the hoi polloi (the common folk, the plebs), so he sought out a private interview where he wouldn’t be embarrassed and wouldn’t have to stand with a great body of the unwashed.

That’s all possible, but the question still has to be asked, “What is the warrant for that conclusion?” Does Nicodemus as he appears in Scripture strike you as the sort of person who is too desperately concerned about public opinion? He crops up again in chapter 7, and he’s contradicting the entire Sanhedrin. He crops up again in connection with Joseph of Arimathea going to the tomb taking on, again, public opinion. He does not strike you as the sort who cares too much what people think of him.

Ask yourself another question. “What does John do with the theme night?” Does night show up anywhere else in John’s gospel? At the risk of a very bad pun, a light dawns. Night is an important theme for John, as are light and darkness generally. At the very end of this section (chapter 3, verses 19 to 21), we read these words: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”

Do you remember in John, chapter 13, after the foot washing Jesus insists one of his disciples will actually betray him? Then he finally gives Judas the order to leave. We are told Judas got up and went out, and John remarks, “And it was night.” What is he saying? Is this merely a chronological marker? No, of course not. Not in a writer as skillful as John. He’s playing on the whole theme of light and darkness.

Judas gets out, and chronologically and undoubtedly it was the night, but John sees in the brute fact a symbol-laden significance. In the brute fact, Judas goes out into the chronological night. Spiritually he goes out into the night of darkness for which he was prepared as the son of perdition. It is a terrible scene.

Earlier on in this gospel we read, “Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.” Undoubtedly, it was simply nighttime, but again, John sees in the brute fact a symbol-laden significance, so he plays with the theme of light and darkness, and in fact, that is how he ends up the whole section (verses 19 to 21).

Judas is, thus, rebuked in verse 10 as someone who does not understand what he should have. That is, he is in darkness. Some people don’t accept the truth, according to verses 19 to 21, because they love darkness rather than light. Oh, he came at night, all right, in more ways than he could possibly understand.

That shapes how we read the rest of the chapter. He says, “Rabbi …” At that time, rabbi was not a technical term like reverend. It was an informal term. It did not become a technical term until the next century, so although Jesus never went through the rabbinic schools, some people do respectfully address him as Rabbi without any overtones at all that he was “revved up,” as they say.

“We know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” This is fairly respectful, but listen to the tone very carefully because it, too, is picked up a little later in the chapter. Does he approach Jesus with a certain kind of humility? Only a show of it with the, “Rabbi.”

The actual words are a kind of truth claim, are they not? “Rabbi, we know you’re something pretty special. We’ve investigated these miracles and these are not fraudulent. This is not your average street-market stuff. This could only be done by God. We know this much.” That’s the tone.

In other words, Jesus is approached by Nicodemus, but when Nicodemus starts to speak, he speaks from the position of someone who is making a judgment of Jesus. That theme becomes very clear later on in the chapter, as we’ll see. Just stick it in the back of your minds. Think, then, how Jesus answers. Verse 3: “In reply Jesus declared, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’ ” Many people ask, “How do you move from verse 2 to verse 3?”

Nicodemus hasn’t even asked the question yet, so many interpreters at this point think, “Probably, you see, Nicodemus was about to ask a question and Jesus sort of answered it before Nicodemus got to the point. Nicodemus was going to say something like, ‘Rabbi, we know you are a teacher sent from God, for no one could do these miracles unless God were with him. Since this is the case, tell us quite frankly whether or not the kingdom of God is about to come and whether you are or are not the promised Messiah,’ and then Jesus responds with his words about the kingdom of God.”

What that presupposes, of course … let us be quite frank … is Jesus is one of these people who, in a conversation, cannot bear to wait for the other person to finish his words before he has to blurt out his own comments. That interpretation, quite frankly, simply casts a picture of Jesus as being rude. No, no, no. Jesus’ answer is far more immediate and far more profound.

Nicodemus has come to Jesus and said, “We know certain things. We know this is God at work in you. This is God’s rule.” Jesus says, “Nicodemus, you don’t know a thing. You can’t see the rule of God. You can’t see the reign of God. You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you’re born again. You see power shows and you see power displays, but you do not see the reign of God and you cannot see the reign of God unless you’re born again.”

In other words, he is challenging the claim with which Nicodemus has approached Jesus in the first place. That’s why it is the immediate answer. You cannot approach Jesus standing in judgment of him. It’s like the well-known story of the young smart aleck who goes to The Louvre and is making snide comments on the paintings here and there. The curator comes up behind him and says, “Sir, in this museum it is not the paintings that are being judged.”

Just so, when you come to Jesus you do not evaluate him. You are yourself evaluated, and Jesus will not allow people simply to stand in judgment of him. That is a constant theme throughout the whole book. I could deal more with Nicodemus’ response and so on, but in verse 5, when Jesus repeats his words, if you compare what Jesus says here in verse 5 with what he says in verse 3 and take out the common bits, you see something very interesting.

“I tell you the truth” in both verses. “No one can enter the kingdom of God …” or “No one can see the kingdom of God …” Roughly the same thing. “… unless he is born again,” or “… unless he is born from above.” The expression could be either. “… unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” Born of water and the Spirit is parallel to born from above or born again.

If that’s the case, then born of water and the Spirit does not refer to two births but to one. In the next verse, which we haven’t gotten to yet, Jesus does make reference to two births, but so far he hasn’t. He has talked about being born from above, and what that looks like is born of water and the Spirit.

Remember Jesus had rebuked Nicodemus for not understanding what he was talking about and this presumably on the basis of what he should have known from the Old Testament. What, then, should he have known? Where in the Old Testament is there mention of birth from above or birth from water and spirit?

The short answer is nowhere, but if you start looking up passages in the Old Testament where water and Spirit come together, there are only a handful, and they are in extremely important contexts. The most important is Ezekiel, chapter 36. It’s a new covenant passage. God says, “In those days …” That is, in the days of final restoration. “… I will pour out my Spirit and I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean.”

In other words, he looks for a time of new covenant blessing when there will be spiritual renewal (new life) and when there will be fundamental cleansing. All that Jesus has done to that sort of promise is added the metaphor of birth. That’s all he has done. That’s not the only passage like that.

In one way or another, Joel 2 looks to the same sort of spiritual renewal. Jeremiah 31 looks to the time under the new covenant when God will write his law on their hearts. Countless Old Testament texts look forward to the time when God’s Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. Zechariah mentions the same kind of thing. There is a vision of that at several points in Isaiah, in Ezekiel, in Jeremiah.

This man, Nicodemus, should have known these things. Why didn’t he? The answer was, of course, he along with most others was so bound up with an expectation of a political kingdom that they didn’t focus enough attention on those kinds of texts that talked about moral, spiritual, personal transformation. In short, new birth.

In other words, when we come to verse 5 and we read, “Unless he is born of water and the Spirit,” I don’t think we have to bring in Paul and Titus. I don’t think we have to bring in baptism. I don’t think we have to bring in sources centuries later where sperm equals water. None of those. We go from the immediate context and work back from that context and conclude the antecedent thought here is biblical. It’s Ezekiel, and this man, Nicodemus, should have known it.

That’s why a little farther on he is so strongly rebuked. “You are Israel’s teacher,” Jesus says, “and do you not understand these things?” Then verse 11: “I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know.” Notice that first person plural? That’s on purpose as well. It’s not because Jesus is linking his thoughts here with the disciples. The disciples at this point do not come off very well.

Rather, this is how the conversation has gone. Nicodemus has come along to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher sent from God. We do. No one could do these miracles you’re doing unless God were with him. We’ve come to that point in our cogitations.” Jesus says, “We know one or two things, too. We do. We’ve come from heaven.” That’s why he then switches in the next verse to the first person singular. This is part of the rebuke of verse 10.

John is the most literary of the gospel writers, full of these stylized bits to catch exactly the flavor of the scene. Jesus says, “You are Israel’s teacher and do you not understand these things? I tell you the truth. We speak of what we know, too, we do, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe. How, then, will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”

All I’m saying is all of that comes out of a study of the text from within (that is, from the immediate context) and works out rather than appealing too quickly to the outside.