Jesus' teaching on new life in the Gospel of John

(Continuing the current series ...)

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all repeat at least some of Jesus' parables of the seed, but the entire Gospel of John has no seed parables at all. There is majority agreement that the Gospel of John was the last written of the four gospels in the canon of Scripture. In some ways it skips (or assumes) material covered by the earlier gospels. And so rather than telling us about the disciples hearing parables and later asking questions in private, the fourth gospel tells us about one of the Jewish leaders visiting Jesus at night to ask questions in private. Here the Gospel of John recounts Jesus' teaching about the new life: 

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’  (John 3:3-7)

I know some televangelists gave the phrase "born again" a bad taste by using it in a way that seemed fairly far from Jesus' original spirituality. But Jesus' point remains -- as does his choice of description. We are not in need of an information transfer from God. Instead we are in need of a life transfusion, a spirit transfusion. We are born of flesh, and flesh is perishable. To be children of God, we need a spiritual life -- not in the sense of an emotional life, not as a euphemism for an intellectual life, but the particular type of spiritual life that brings the Spirit of God to us as a living force in our own lives.