matrix theology

One night, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who had quite the reputation among the Jews, came to Jesus in the middle of the night with some concerns.

“Look, rabbi, we all know that you are a teacher from God because nobody can do the stuff you do unless God is with him.”

Jesus looked at him and said, “Yeah? Here’s one for you. Unless a man can be born again, he cannot see God’s kingdom.”

Now it was Nicodemus’ turn. “What? How can you be born again when you’re already old. You can’t just get back into the womb and be born again!”

So Jesus answered him, “Look. I’m telling you that unless you are born of water and the RUACH, you cannot enter God’s kingdom. If you are born as flesh, then you are flesh; and what is born of the RUACH is RUACH. So don’t be surprised that I am telling you that you have to be born again.

“The RUACH blows wherever it wants, and you hear the sound but can’t tell where it came from or where it is going. That’s how it is with people who are born of RUACH.”

Nicodemus said to Jesus, “WHAT?!?”

Jesus answered him by saying, “You claim to be a teacher of Israel and do not know this? Why am I not surprised? We can only speak about what we know, what we see; so you can’t receive my witness. If I tell you about the earthly RUACH and you do not believe, how can I explain the heavenly RUACH? No one explain heavenly things if he has not been to heaven, except the Son of Man, who is in heaven.

“Look, Moses lifted up the brass serpent in the wilderness, right? That is what the Son of Man must be – lifted up – so just like the snake, if you believe in him, you can have eternal life and not die. You think the brass serpent was about love and life?

“God loves the people of the earth so much that he gave his only Son so whoever believes in him can not die and instead will have eternal life because God didn’t send his son into the world so it could be condemned. He sent him so the world could be saved through him.”Believe, and you are not condemned. Don’t believe and you are condemned already because you don’t believe in the name of God’s only son. Here’s the condemnation – light has come into the world but men love darkness because they like to do evil stuff and hide it. If you do evil you hate the light and you certainly don’t rush out into the light because it makes what they do very obvious. On the other hand the person who does true things comes into the light so what he does can be seen as what they are – God things.”

[John 3:1-20]

When John sat down to write about Jesus’ clash with the old religious world, there must have been a ton of stories he could have told. How many people did Jesus tick off by challenging their world views, by condemning their legalism, by pushing and shoving them into active, living faith? And he chose this particular one to illustrate just how different Jesus was from the other rabbis of his day.

It is an interesting choice for a lot of reasons. This is not really the place to dive into that particularly part of the story, but think a little about the way that Jesus challenged Nicodemus’ thinking from the very beginning. He uses this term born again over and over – almost clubbing Nicodemus with it. And in evangelical Christianity, the term has been so overused that it carries little of the meaning that Jesus charged it with on that night.

John chose these Greek words carefully. The idea of born again is two Greek words, ?e???? ????e? (pronounced hen-naO anO-then). The second word, which will will transliterate as anothen, is a complicated concept. It can mean “again” but its more literally meaning is “from the top,” “from the beginning,” or “from above.”

In fact, the context of what Jesus says, when he starts talking about heaven, seems to indicate that John wants us to take it as the last – “from above.” In other words, Jesus says “you have to be born from above to see God’s kingdom.”

Jesus seems to be saying that there are two ways of looking at the world – from the point of view of earth/flesh and the point of view of above/heaven. If you want to see God’s kingdom, you’ve got to take God’s perspective. And the only way you do that is to listen to the one who has the perspective of heaven, namely Jesus. He refers to himself as “the son of man” and “God’s son” repeatedly. There’s no doubt that he is referring to himself – John makes sure things are phrased in such a way that you have to see that.

For me, what Jesus is saying is pretty simple. Faith is not about “born again” experience. Instead, it is about looking at Jesus and recognizing who he is and listening to him like he is who he says he is. It starts there, not with some prayer we pray. Faith starts and ends with Jesus.

If you want to see the kingdom, if you want to know God, you have to start by recognizing your own earthly perspective, that everything we know – even religion – is man’s point of view. It is earth/flesh. But the RUACH point of view, the Spirit point of view is Jesus. How did he view things? Accept his viewpoint as the better one, especially when it conflicts with your own. That is being reborn.