Born Again: What Jesus Told Nicodemus (John 3) and Why the Early Church Heard Baptism

An evangelical friend asks an Orthodox Christian a simple question: "Are you born again?" The Orthodox answer is yes, and the reason is the same passage the friend is quoting. Jesus tells Nicodemus that "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). From the first centuries the Church has understood that new birth to be given in baptism, sealed in chrismation and lived out in repentance and the Eucharist.

That answer will sound strange to many readers who were taught that "born again" names a moment of decision. This article does not ask them to throw out the sincerity of their faith. It asks what John 3 says, what the rest of the New Testament says about new birth and baptism, how the earliest Christian writers and the Reformers read the passage, and when and why "born again" came to mean something else.

In brief

In John 3 Jesus tells a Pharisee that he must be born anothen, a Greek word that can mean "again" or "from above," and that this birth is "of water and of the Spirit." Elsewhere the New Testament joins new birth to baptism: Paul speaks of "the washing of regeneration" (Titus 3:5), Peter says that "baptism doth also now save us" (1 Peter 3:21), and Paul says that we are "buried with him by baptism into death" so that we may "walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). The earliest Christian writers who comment on John 3:5, from St Justin Martyr to St John Chrysostom, understand the water as baptism. John Calvin admitted that "the greater part of expounders" agree with Chrysostom, though he disagreed. John Wesley taught that baptism is not the same as the new birth, but he also wrote that the Church of England "supposes that all who are baptized in their infancy are at the same time born again." The Orthodox Church holds that Christians are born again in baptism and chrismation, and that this birth must be lived out: its grace can be forsaken, but baptism is never repeated.

Thesis: New birth, in John 3 and the rest of the New Testament, is God's gift in baptism and the Spirit; it is not an experience that replaces baptism or a decision that can be dated by the believer.

What Jesus said to Nicodemus

Nicodemus, "a ruler of the Jews," comes to Jesus by night and says that no one could do these miracles "except God be with him" (John 3:1-2).¹ Jesus answers: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (3:3). The Greek adverb is anothen. John uses it elsewhere to mean "from above": "He that cometh from above is above all" (3:31), and Jesus tells Pilate that his power was "given thee from above" (19:11). Nicodemus hears the other sense, "again": "can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" (3:4). The Gospel plays on the double meaning, and the right reading keeps both: a birth that is a second beginning, and one that comes from above, from God.

Jesus does not correct the idea that the new birth is a real birth. He explains how it comes: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (3:5). "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (3:6). He compares the Spirit to the wind, whose course no one can chart (3:8). The next scene in the Gospel is a baptizing ministry: "After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized" (3:22). John adds that "Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples" (4:2). The sequence is not decisive, but a reader who has just heard "water and Spirit" meets baptism on the next page.

There is also an Old Testament background. Through Ezekiel God had promised: "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean," and "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you" (Ezekiel 36:25-26). When Jesus asks, "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?" (3:10), he implies that a teacher of Israel might have been expected to know that promise. Water and Spirit belong together in it. The Orthodox reading is that Jesus is announcing its fulfilment in the baptism he will give.

New birth and baptism in the rest of the New Testament

The apostles do not describe new birth and baptism as separate events. Paul writes that God "saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). The Greek is loutron palingenesias, "bath of rebirth."² Peter calls Christians "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God" (1 Peter 1:23) and a few lines on says that baptism "doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (3:21). Paul tells the Romans that "so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death," so that "we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4), and tells the Colossians that they were "buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God" (Colossians 2:12). On the day of Pentecost Peter preaches: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:38). To Paul himself Ananias says: "arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins" (Acts 22:16).

{{very-strong: The New Testament writers join the new birth to baptism and the Spirit.}} Baptists and many evangelicals answer from other texts. John 1:12-13 says that those who "received him" and "believe on his name" become sons of God, "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." First John 5:1 says: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Those are true, and the Orthodox Church affirms them. In the New Testament, faith, repentance, the Spirit and baptism are not rival ways of being saved. They are parts of one coming-to-Christ, and the text joins them. Mark 16:16, in the Longer Ending that the Church receives although some early manuscripts lack it, says: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."

The book of Acts shows the pattern clearly in a case where the order seems to run the other way. At the house of Cornelius "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word," and Peter did not conclude that baptism was now unnecessary. He asked, "Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" and "commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord" (Acts 10:44-48). The Spirit comes first; baptism still follows.

How the earliest Christians heard John 3:5

The earliest Christian writers make the same connection. St Justin Martyr, writing in Rome about 155, describes how converts are brought "where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated," because "Christ also said, Unless you be born again, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."³ The Eucharist is given only to one "who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration." St Irenaeus, about 180, says Christ gave the disciples "the power of regeneration into God" when He told them to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."⁴

Tertullian, about 200, writes in his treatise on baptism that without baptism "salvation is attainable by none (chiefly on the ground of that declaration of the Lord, who says, Unless one be born of water, he has not life)." He also records the evangelical objection in its oldest form: "Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith." His reply is that "now that faith has been enlarged" by the passion and resurrection, the Lord's command carries a new rule.⁵

St Cyril of Jerusalem, about 350, preaching to candidates for baptism, says: "the water cleanses the body, and the Spirit seals the soul," and "Unless a man be born anew... of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."⁶ St John Chrysostom, in his homilies on John in Antioch, takes up Nicodemus's mistake: Christ "more clearly reveals the manner of the Birth," and he adds that the new birth is "so absolutely possible as to be necessary, and that it is not even possible otherwise to be saved." He cites Cornelius to show "that the need of water is absolute and indispensable," and explains: "In Baptism are fulfilled the pledges of our covenant with God; burial and death, resurrection and life."⁷

{{very-strong: The early Christian writers who comment on John 3:5, from Justin to Chrysostom, understand "water" as baptism.}} The Protestant Reformers knew this. Luther's Small Catechism says baptism "works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe," and calls it "a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost," citing Titus 3:5.⁸ Calvin disagreed on John 3:5 but was candid about the weight of the older reading. He wrote: "Chrysostom, with whom the greater part of expounders agree, makes the word Water refer to baptism." He himself held that "water" and "Spirit" name one thing, "the inward purification and invigoration which is produced by the Holy Spirit," and that "water must not be separated from the Spirit."⁹ Calvin is a fair witness for the other side, and he does not claim the Fathers.

How "born again" became a decision

John Wesley, preaching on "The New Birth" in the eighteenth century, stated plainly that "baptism is not the new birth: They are not one and the same thing," and warned that a man can be "born of water" and yet not "born of the Spirit." Even so he granted that "our Church supposes that all who are baptized in their infancy are at the same time born again," and urged adults who relied on their baptism while living in sin to be born again in earnest.¹⁰ His concern was real: baptized people who live as strangers to God need to repent. The Orthodox share it.

As the site's articles on the awakenings explain, "born again" came more and more to mean a conversion that the believer could point to. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000) gives the modern form: "Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God's grace whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." Baptism is then "an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith."¹¹ The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association explains: "Only by God's grace through faith in Christ can this new birth take place."¹² For the history see the site's articles on the First Great Awakening, Wesley and Methodism and altar calls and the sinner's prayer.

These ministries have led many people to Christ, and their sincerity is not in question. The Orthodox objection is narrower. When the new birth is placed in an inward experience and baptism becomes a symbol of it, the New Testament order has been reversed: there the water and the Spirit come together, and the believer is told to be baptized, not told that baptism testifies to a birth that has already happened. The reversal also invites a worry: a believer may trust the new birth only as far as his own feelings last.

What the Orthodox Church means by "born again"

The Orthodox baptismal service speaks the language of John 3. At the blessing of the water the Church prays, "For this water, that it may be for him [her] a washing of rebirth for the remission of sins and the putting on of a garment of incorruption." The priest says to God, "You have bestowed upon us rebirth from on high by water and the Spirit," and in the prayer of chrismation, "You have now also been well-pleased to grant rebirth to this, Your servant, newly illumined through water and the Spirit."¹³ "Rebirth from on high" is the sense of anothen that Nicodemus missed.

The Orthodox Church baptizes by triple immersion in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and chrismates the newly baptized, so that the Spirit is given in the same service. The newly baptized then receive Communion, as in Justin's description. The Church also baptizes infants, as the site's article on early infant baptism explains, because the new birth is a gift, not a test of understanding.

That birth is not an end. St Paul says that those baptized "walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4), and walking can stop. An Orthodox Christian does not say "once saved, always saved." He lives the new birth daily in repentance and confession, in the Eucharist, in prayer and fasting, and in obedience to the commandments, and when he falls he returns. The Church speaks of salvation as healing and union with God (theosis) by grace, to which the baptized freely respond. The site's article Does Baptism Save? sets out the texts.

Orthodox Christians also speak, without embarrassment, of conversion. A person baptized in infancy may need to turn to Christ in earnest as an adult, and the Church has a word for it, metanoia, repentance. The case Wesley describes, of the baptized man who lives like a stranger to God, is familiar in every parish. What the Church denies is that the later moment replaces the earlier gift. It is the same new birth coming to its fruit.

Objections

"Baptismal regeneration makes salvation automatic, as if the water worked by magic." The Orthodox Church does not teach that. The washing comes with faith, repentance and the Spirit, and it must be lived. Paul says God saved us "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy" (Titus 3:5), which makes baptism a gift received and not a work performed. Chrysostom ties the water to the Spirit and to a changed life: those who have received the gift must "show forth a life worthy of the Gift." A baptized person who rejects Christ forfeits what he received.

"'Water' in John 3:5 means natural birth, or the Spirit's cleansing, not baptism." Both readings are held by serious scholars and churches. Calvin's argument that "water" and "Spirit" together describe the Spirit's cleansing has the support of Ezekiel 36:25-27 and is a respectable reading. The reply is not that it is absurd but that it is not how the Church read the verse for fifteen centuries, that the Gospel's next scene is baptism (3:22; 4:2), and that the rest of the New Testament connects the new birth to the washing (Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21). A reading that the Fathers held, that Calvin conceded was the majority view, and that Lutheran and Anglican baptismal teaching presupposes, deserves more than a footnote.

"What about the thief on the cross, or believers who die before baptism?" Christ told the thief, "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). The Orthodox Church does not say God is bound by the sacrament. She says that the Church is bound by the command, and she leaves those who could not be baptized to the mercy of God. The existence of exceptions does not make the rule optional for those who can obey it.

"First John says that everyone who believes is born of God." Yes, and the Church does not deny it. John 1:12 and 1 John 5:1 describe faith as the mark of those who are God's children. They do not say that baptism is unnecessary. Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38 and the case of Cornelius show faith and baptism together.

What we can say confidently

• John 3:3-5 speaks of a birth "again" or "from above," "of water and of the Spirit."
• The New Testament joins new birth, washing and the Spirit (Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21; Romans 6:3-4; Acts 2:38).
• The early Christian writers who comment on John 3:5, from Justin to Chrysostom, read "water" as baptism, and Calvin admitted that most expounders did.
• Wesley taught that baptism and the new birth are distinct, and also that the Church of England supposes infants are born again at baptism.
• The Orthodox Church teaches that Christians are born again in baptism and chrismation and live out that birth in repentance, the Eucharist and obedience.

What remains disputed

• Scholars differ on what "water" meant to the evangelist: baptism, natural birth, the purifying water of Ezekiel, or a figure for the Spirit. Some critical scholars think the phrase is the evangelist's addition to a saying about the Spirit alone.
• Protestants differ among themselves: Lutherans and Anglicans have held that baptism regenerates, Baptists and many others that it does not.
• The Longer Ending of Mark (16:9-20), which contains Mark 16:16, is absent from some early manuscripts; the Church receives it as Scripture, and the article uses it only as one witness beside many.
• Whether the Spirit's gift in the New Testament always follows baptism or can come before it (Acts 10) is a question of sequence, not of whether baptism is commanded.

Conclusion

An Orthodox Christian can answer a friend's question with a plain "yes" and with John 3. He was born again at the font, when the Church prayed for "rebirth from on high by water and the Spirit," and he is still being born again, as repentance and communion make the gift his own. He does not have to deny the faith of those who first trusted Christ at a revival. He can say that what they found was real, and that the Lord who called them also gave a washing, a seal and a table. For more on the Orthodox approach to salvation see Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (1769 text) as served by this site's Bible reader, https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/chapter?ref=JHN.3&v=kjv (and the same for other chapters).
2. Greek words are from the SBL Greek New Testament, same address with v=sblgnt (Titus 3:5, loutron palingenesias; John 3:3, 3:31 and 19:11, anothen). The gloss "bath of rebirth" is the article's own rendering.
3. St Justin Martyr, First Apology 61 and 66, trans. Marcus Dods and George Reith, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm. Justin's quotation of John 3:5 is freer than the canonical text ("kingdom of heaven," no mention of "water and the Spirit" in the quoted words), but the sentence before it is about baptism.
4. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.17.1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103317.htm.
5. Tertullian, On Baptism 12 and 13, trans. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm.
6. St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 3.4, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford, NPNF2 vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310103.htm.
7. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homily 25, trans. Charles Marriott, NPNF1 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/240125.htm.
8. Martin Luther, Small Catechism, Part IV on Holy Baptism, as published at https://bookofconcord.org/small-catechism/baptism/.
9. John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, on John 3:5, trans. William Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), vol. 1, https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom34/calcom34.ix.i.html (same text at https://bibleportal.com/commentary/section/john-calvin/20584).
10. John Wesley, Sermon 45, "The New Birth," part IV, sections 1-4, https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-45-the-new-birth/ (1872 edition).
11. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), article IV.A and article VII, https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/.
12. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, "What Does it Mean to Be 'Born Again'?", https://billygraham.org/answers/what-does-it-mean-to-be-born-again-3.
13. Order of Holy Baptism, in the English text printed by St Paul Greek Orthodox Church, Irvine, California (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America): the litany and prayer over the water and the Prayer of Chrismation, https://stpaulsirvine.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Baptism-Sevice-Rev-6-blank-w-cover-final-final-final-002.pdf. The PDF does not name its translator.

Bibliography

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1769 text); The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition.

Fathers and the Orthodox rite

• Justin Martyr, First Apology; Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Book 3. ANF vol. 1.
• Tertullian, On Baptism. ANF vol. 3.
• Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures. NPNF2 vol. 7.
• John Chrysostom, Homilies on John. NPNF1 vol. 14.
• Order of Holy Baptism, St Paul Greek Orthodox Church, Irvine.

Protestant and evangelical sources

• Luther, Martin. Small Catechism.
• Calvin, John. Commentary on John.
• Wesley, John. Sermon 45, "The New Birth."
• Southern Baptist Convention. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000).
• Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. "What Does it Mean to Be 'Born Again'?"