Belief and Rebirth

[A reflection on the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 1, 2026, which may be found at https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/lent-2a/]

Much has been made of the third chapter of St. John's Gospel, but two texts get trotted out frequently within the consciousness of Western Christianity, Protestant Christianity in particular:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (Jn. 3.3 KJV)

..and...

 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (Jn. 3.16 KJV)

I quoted both from the 17th Century Authorized Version of the Bible as that is what people in the English speaking world are used to hearing, and as translations go is still fairly intelligible. These form the fundament of many denominations' doctrine of salvation, particularly regarding the application of eternal life to the human individual. It is presented as simple: just believe in Jesus and you will be born again and you will have eternal life.

Yes, but...

This view reduces a fundamental change for the individual to a formula: just acknowledge and accept the truthfulness of the statement that Jesus died for you and your sins and you are reborn, whatever that means. It becomes a magical formula, particularly among denominations that turn the formula of belief into an actual spell with specific words that must be repeated (and meant with full intention behind every syllable) to effect the permanent "born again" experience.

Now, God is gracious. God is merciful. God loves His creatures. God certainly isn't going to ignore someone because they pray the "Sinner's Prayer" in all sincerity. However, that isn't exactly how the regeneration of human nature quite works, and we need further to plumb the Scriptures to unlock that meaning, an investigation that Our Lord hinted that Nicodemus should not have had to do because he was already familiar with the Law and the Prophets.

Jesus stresses that this rebirth is by water and the Spirit. In John's Gospel, free-flowing water ("living" water) is used, as it is elsewhere in the Scriptures as a symbol or metaphor for the Holy Spirit. By saying "water and the Spirit" He is emphasizing that this is purely the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the rebirth of the person wishing to see (that is, be part of) the Kingdom of God. When Nicodemus asks how this action of the Spirit takes place, it is then that Jesus speaks of belief in Him.

Here is where many get it wrong. Many think that belief in Jesus is merely acknowledging several statements about him to be true. While that is important, it is not what He means. After all,

Thou believest that there is one God; thou dost well; the devils also believe, and tremble." (Jas. 2.19 KJV)

Just acknowledging the truth is insufficient for true, salvific belief. Time and again in the accounts that follow Jesus stresses that it is the transformative action of adopting the values of the Kingdom of God, internalizing them, and then acting them out that is the foundation of true belief. Just as God loves us as outlined in Jn. 3.16-17, so we must also love God AND love our neighbour with the same level of all-giving, self-emptying love. The inconvenient, unselfish, unconditional love for each other that the writer of this Gospel states in his epistles that if we don't have, then we have no part in Jesus at all (read the whole epistle of 1 John, and I mean really read it and put yourself in the seat of the one who really needs to learn it). This means we provide love, sacrificial love, for people regarless of whether they agree with us, whether they are of the same ethnic group or race as us, whether they are of the same orientation as us, whether they are of the same religion as us, whether they are in a different state of grace than us (and don't ever make the mistake of trying to figure that one out, for therein lies hubris and self-deception, like the Pharisee of the Publican and the Pharisee). If we don't have that love, if we don't structure our lives to a righteousness that embodies that love, then we cannot expect the Spirit to effect a transformative rebirth of our nature, because clearly we don't want it.

The crux of the matter is that God does offer us eternal life by giving us a new nature, uncorrupted by that death which infects us all. The crux of the matter is in the adoption of the lesson and the miracle of another crux, the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the embodiment of His selfless and self-emptying love for us. It is the adoption of that same love for God and for those whom God loves, everyone else around us, that brings it home to us, and allows the Spirit to transform us truly into the immortal image of God. That is what it means to believe and be born again.