What Did Nicodemus Miss?

Reader Question:

In Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, he admonished him: “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things? ” Jesus replied (John 3:10 HCSB) Is there a particular Old Testament passage that Jesus is referring to in this admonishment?

I love this question because it’s a sobering reminder that you and I can be knowledgable of Scripture and still miss important messages revealed to us in God's word. Such was the case for Nicodemus in John 3. The question is: what did he miss?

One suggestion is that Jesus is referencing Ezekiel 36:24-28. Admittedly, this passage does mention both a water cleansing and spiritual renewal. The prophecy is for Israel to once more inhabit the promise land, having been consecrated from the defilement of idolatry. One may ask why Nicodemus wasn’t aware of this passage when Ezekiel was such an important figure in Judaism. Let the reader remember Mark 8:28; 9:5; 15:35. It seems unlikely that a teacher of the law and the prophets would fail to connect these dots. Perhaps Nicodemus misunderstood the passage and so it hadn’t dawned on him that its fulfillment would occur in his own lifetime. Perhaps. Then again there is also the possibility that we’re reading this passage into John 3 out of convenience rather than necessity. I’d like to propose that Jesus isn’t referencing one passage in particular, but a theme woven through the Old Testament Scriptures: That God would create new life from water and spirit. We first see this in Genesis 1:1-2:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Notice that before the creation narrative unfolds - bringing forth life and order - there was God’s “Spirit hovering over the waters.” It might not register to the casual or first-time reader that the opening stanza of Scripture reveals the importance of this pattern, but the reader will see water and spirit a few other times in the Old Testament resulting in “new life.” It’s next observed in Genesis 8:1:

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 

You may be asking yourself what does the “wind receding the waters from earth” have to do with being born again of water and spirit? That is the question, after all. The answer is found in a linguistic phenomenon known as polysemy. A word is polysemous when it has the capacity of multiple meanings. Both the Hebrew and Greek words for “wind” and “spirit” are the same word in these respected languages. This may seem immaterial to us, but Israel’s teacher and students would have been familiar with the Hebrew, Ruach, meaning both ‘wind' and ‘Spirit.’ I know what you’re thinking, “boy that seems like a stretch.” Here’s why it may not be. Jesus uses this word while speaking to Nicodemus in John 3:8 in reference to both wind and Spirit (Gk. pneuma). Could it be that Jesus is hinting at the polysemous use of this word in Genesis 8? Is God once again demonstrating the use of water and spirit (metaphorically as wind) to bring about new life (2 Peter 3:3-7).

I’ve shared this possible solution to what Nicodemus might have missed to colleagues of mine over the years. I typically get a response, like, “well that’s interesting, but it’s just not…???” I can finish that thought. It’s just not our engrained westernized hermeneutic at work. Now, I’m not criticizing our hermeneutic. I am suggesting that we do have blind spots, however. This view of Scriptural analysis may not be what we’re accustomed to, but it was common in first century. In fact, this a category of interpretation was known as Pesher - which essentially connects prophetic texts of a former era to persons and events of the present. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this seems dangerous and almost impossible to corral into any semblance of order. But what if in our case Pesher is what Nicodemus needed to understand our water/spirit rebirth? The Apostle Paul might have answered this for us. In 1 Corinthians 10:1-2, he writes:

1 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

Paul calling the crossing of the Red Sea a baptism into Moses is a clear use of Pesher. And so, for at least this one instance, Paul gives merit to this ancient method of interpretation. What’s more, this example is related to our own question. As the Israelites passed through the sea on dry ground (Exodus 14), they were surrounded by walls of water to their right and left and God’s presence (or Spirit) above them. They emerged as a people reborn and liberated from their bondage in Egypt. Water. Spirit. New Life. This sounds a lot like being born again of water and Spirit (John 3:5). 

I can’t speak definitively on what Jesus thought Nicodemus missed from the Old Testament, but I do consider the pattern of water and Spirit producing new life to be a strong possibility.

Most importantly, may I encourage you to be born again of water and Spirit (Titus 3:5 & Acts 2:38).