Justified in Jesus

Breath + Water = Life

John 3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. ² He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, 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." ³ In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." ⁴ "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" ⁵ Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. ⁷ You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' ⁸ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." ⁹ "How can this be?" Nicodemus asked. ¹⁰ "You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? ¹¹ I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. ¹² I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven-- the Son of Man. ¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶ "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

The parents were in the delivery room of the hospital. This was an exciting time. Their first child was about to be born!

The previous nine months, the drive to the hospital, the walking in the hallways, the breathing exercises, the pain medication – everything seemed to be going so well … until it wasn’t.

Suddenly, nurses filled the room. Monitors were beeping. The doctor came rushing in. There was a problem with the baby. It had to be delivered – now!

Mom and Dad are panicking. They don’t understand what is going on. When the baby is delivered, they discover the problem – the baby isn’t breathing! The doctor quickly clears the airway and then breathes into the infant. He does compressions on the baby’s heart. Then goes back to giving CPR.

It works! The baby starts breathing on his own! The doctor has breathed life into the baby.

Then the baby is taken by the nurse, she takes some warm water and washes him clean. He is put on monitors and they are keeping a close eye on him. But he’s going to be fine.

The pastor rushes to the hospital. He greets the relieved parents. They don’t want to wait. The pastor fills a bowl with warm water. Dad holds the infant in his arms as the pastor sprinkles water over the child’s head and says, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Now, that is a story that I’ve made up. But, it is also true story that has happened countless times. An infant is born dead, but receives the breath of life and then is washed clean. Then the pastor comes with the sacrament of Baptism. The infant who is born dead in sin is washed clean with the waters of Baptism and then receives the breath of life from the Holy Spirit.

This may be a story that I’ve made up, but it is a true story that has happened countless times. It has happened to every single one of us. We may have looked good coming out of the womb. Our heart may have been healthy and our breathing was fine. But, each one of us was born dead – dead in sin and dead in unbelief. Our heart was corrupt. We were lacking the breath of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible speaks of this birth to death numerous times: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me,” David confessed (Psalm 51:5). “The wages of sin is death,” Paul states clearly (Romans 6:23). We confess weekly that we are dead in our transgressions and sins. “[Sinful] flesh gives birth to [sinful] flesh,” Jesus teaches in the Gospel (John 3:6).

A new birth needed to take place. The doctor brought the infant back to life with breath and then he was washed. Our Triune God works in a similar, but much more miraculous and mysterious way. The infant whom is born dead in sin is first washed with the water and the Word of the Trinity. Then He has the breath of the Holy Spirit breathed into Him. For an older child or adult, the Holy Spirit breathes life into him through His Word and then he is washed with the waters of Baptism.

This is what Jesus explains to His clandestine visitor, Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a rabbi who comes to see the Rabbi, Jesus. He comes in the darkness to the One who is the Light, for he is seeking light. He doesn’t really know what to ask Jesus. His head is full of questions. He breaks the ice by saying a few flattering things to Jesus. “Rabbi, 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.” Nicodemus has heard stories – about water turned to wine, the deaf hear, the mute speak, the demons cast out. He wants to ask Jesus something, but he doesn’t know what it is or how to ask it. His religion is so tidy, neat, organized. Every doctrinal duck is waddling nicely in a row. And then there’s Jesus, this man from God who acts like God. Who on earth is He?

But before Nicodemus can even formulate a question, Jesus throws him a curve ball. “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” What does that mean? Jesus must have known that Nicodemus, like the rest of the Pharisees – like the rest of us – thought he was living a pretty good life on his own. That he could reach God and acquire the Kingdom of God by living an outwardly good life. But Jesus says, “No way. If you want to see the Kingdom of God, you need to be recreated, reborn from above.”

Jesus is teaching all of us that if we are to be born of God, God must do it. If we are to have eternal life, God must give it. If we are going to rise to God, God must first come down to us. When it comes to your spiritual life, you had nothing to do with it.

But Nicodemus doesn’t get it. “How? How can an old Jewish rabbi like me be born a second time? Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born? What are you saying, Jesus?”

You can’t really blame Nicodemus for not getting it because Jesus hasn’t really taught too much about Baptism yet. But now He does. “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

A little aside – the Greek word pneuma is translated in the Bible as Spirit, breath or wind. So, Jesus is saying, “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the breath.”

How can you tell when someone is dead? The eyes aren’t moving; the heart isn’t pumping; but the easiest way to check is if the corpse is not breathing. So, how do you tell if someone is alive? If he’s breathing!

In the beginning, when God made the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty, a chaos of watery nothing, and the Spirit of God was a breath of wind over the waters. When the Lord made Adam, he formed him out of the dust of the earth. But there was no life in him. Why not? He had no breath. So the Lord God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7) In the valley of dry bones, Ezekiel was told to prophecy to the bones. The bones rattled, tendons and flesh formed on the bones, but they remained lifeless. Why? Because they had no breath in them. Then the wind of the Holy Spirit came and breathed life into the vast army in the valley. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit blew the wind of His breathe through the Church, giving them the ability to speak in foreign languages and preach with power and conviction.

The wind of God blew across the Red Sea, as the children of Israel passed through the waters. That was their baptism. The breath of the Holy Spirit descended as a dove upon the Son at Jesus’ Baptism. At Pentecost, after the preaching of the apostles, 3,000 souls were baptized in water. Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” The Spirit and water. Wind and water. Breath and water. They go together to create life.

It is this breath and water that has created life in you. It is what caused you to be born again. But Nicodemus is puzzled. “How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!” Nicodemus is thinking of human births and earthly things. But Jesus is teaching about heavenly things. Jesus is teaching Nicodemus, and all of us, that we don’t need just a little work, a little revision, a little improvement. We need a new birth! A whole new start! A death and a resurrection!

The Father formed us in the womb. But because we were born of our parents, we were born sinful, born corrupt flesh and dead. The Father loved us enough to send His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. The Son is lifted up, like the bronze snake that Moses put on the pole to save the snake bitten camp of Israel. Lifted up with our sin; lifted up on the cross; lifted up from the grave; lifted up to the right hand of the Father. From the right hand of the Father, the Son sends the Holy Spirit to work through Word, water, bread and wine to recreate, renew, and give us a rebirth. The wind of the Spirit breathes life into us. 

We cannot come to faith on our own. A corpse cannot make itself alive. A person cannot crawl back into his mother’s womb. An infant does not decide when he will be born. Those are all things that are done for us.

We are so sinful and so dead in that sin that we must be reborn. Your first birth was a stillbirth, spiritually speaking. You were born in the darkness, like Nicodemus. All the sins that bug you, or don’t bug you, those are the symptoms of your stillbirth. You may have topped the charts when you were born. You may have been bigger, longer, smarter, brighter, and cuter than all the babies in the nursery, but you were born into the death of your father Adam. And you inherited your father Adam’s sin. Flesh begets flesh, and sinful flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And you can’t fix it. You must die and rise. You must be born anew.

You must be born from above. Not a second birth in the flesh (who would want to go through that a second time?). But a new, heavenly, spiritual birth, this time of the Holy Spirit. You must be born from above, where Christ came. Your first birth made you a child of father Adam. Your new birth in Jesus makes you a child of God.

This whole conversation leaves poor Nicodemus in the dark. “How can these things be?” he asked. Who can blame him? How was Nicodemus to know that the One he was talking to in the night, rabbi to Rabbi, would one day hang in the darkness, in day turned to night, to take the sin of the whole world into His dark death? How was Nicodemus to know that three days later, the same Jesus would rise from the dead, to bring the world into the dawn of the first day of a new creation?

Somewhere along the way, the Spirit’s breath and Jesus’ words had their way with old Nicodemus. He and Joseph of Aritmathea were the ones who took the body of Jesus from the cross and buried Him.

The breath of the Spirit plus water equals life. What Christ accomplished for all the world in His cross and resurrection, He does for you personally in the water of Baptism. If you are baptized, cherish your Baptism. You have irrefutable evidence that the Spirit has made you a child of the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son. If you or your child are not yet baptized, don’t delay. Receive this wonderful gift of water and the Spirit. “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.”

God the Father is in the waiting room. It is an exciting time. But it is also a time of despair and death. For you were stillborn. But Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, has rushed in. He has placed his nail pierced hands over you. He has poured His Word and His water over you. He has opened your mouth and breathed the Spirit of life into you. Because, when it comes to our Triune God, breath plus water always equals life. Amen.