John 3:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"Are you a teacher of Israel, and do not know this? You do not know that without which all religion remains something dead. But if you do not believe Me concerning what every man living on earth can experience in his own heart, how will you believe Me when I speak to you of what lies beyond the sphere of human experience and beyond the limits of human reason? How will you believe when I reveal the hidden counsel of God concerning man's salvation, which human reason cannot grasp?"

This is already a transition to the subject chiefly occupying Nicodemus' soul when he came to Jesus: the question of the kingdom of the Messiah, how it must be revealed, and why it is revealed so and not as the Jews expected. By this the Lord hints at Nicodemus' very desire to know more closely the circumstances of the Messiah's manifestation and the opening of His kingdom. From his external standpoint, he had by no means considered these things so incomprehensible, deep, and all-embracing.

If you do not believe Me when I speak of what can be observed and felt, of divine actions revealed here on earth in men and accessible to their self-observation, how will you believe when I speak to you of realities and relations that exist only in heaven? Knowledge of these is just as necessary as birth from above, in order to be worthy of the Kingdom of God.

No man has ascended, or ever can ascend, into heaven, so that afterward he might tell men the mysteries of heaven. Therefore no man can tell them of this, except the Son of Man who came down from heaven and is in heaven, whom you nevertheless do not believe.

Thus Jesus Christ here already communicated to Nicodemus some conception of His own person. Further, the Lord reveals His relation to the messianic kingdom. At the same time He bears still loftier witness concerning Himself, revealing in Himself the Only-begotten Son of God.

The whole Old Testament, all the books of the Law and the prophets, contain descriptions of the visible actions of the Spirit of God and prophecies of His special manifestation at the coming of the Messiah. The Pharisees take pride in their knowledge of Scripture. They have appropriated for themselves the exclusive right to understand and interpret the mysteries of the Kingdom of God proclaimed by the prophets.

They have taken the keys of understanding these mysteries, and sadly they themselves have not understood them. They have shut themselves out of this Kingdom, and they hinder others from entering it.

If it is not so, and if this truly cannot be understood and explained, then is it so? Is it just? Is it possible? How can this be? Either this must be explained, or one must ask whether it is attainable at all.

This question expresses both distrust toward the words of the Lord Jesus and the pride of a rabbi. It is that learned pride which wished to understand and explain everything.

How, then, could a teacher of Israel prove not to know this? The Pharisees' dreams of an earthly kingdom of the Messiah, of Jewish power over the Gentiles, of earthly glory, and earthly wealth, were what closed Nicodemus off from truths revealed by heaven.

But Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, must understand that dreams are deception. Human opinions are not the will of God. "We speak what we know." Nicodemus himself acknowledged Jesus Christ as the Messenger of God. If Jesus is the Messenger of God, then He knows what He says. He bears witness only to what He has seen.

Therefore Nicodemus was contradicting himself when, while listening to the Messenger of God, he did not cease asking, how can these things be? Especially guilty was the Sanhedrin, with its stubbornness, unwilling even to hear the testimony of Jesus.

"We know, we speak" was said in correspondence to the Pharisaic "we know," in order to bring Nicodemus the Pharisee to self-awareness. "If I have told you earthly things, and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"

However lofty the teaching on rebirth may be, in relation to the mysteries Jesus desired to reveal, it stands as earthly to heavenly, and sensible to supersensible. If even what has been said seems full of offense and foolishness, how will they receive heavenly things?

The thought of the need for spiritual rebirth is not so distant from the human mind that, by observing the soul and the history of the human race, it could not make it its own. But the counsels and mysteries of the Godhead are another matter. The teacher of Israel became silent and humbled himself. During the rest of the heavenly Teacher's speech he no longer says a word, but only listens and listens.

Thus in the prophet Ezekiel we read that the Lord says: "I will put a new spirit within them"; "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be cleansed from your impurities"; "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will give you," Ezek 11:19; 36:26. Compare also in chapter 37 Ezekiel's vision of the dead bones. The prophet Jeremiah, Jer 31:31-34, speaks of a New Covenant that will place and inscribe the Law in the very heart of men. In the prophet Isaiah we read, Is 44:3-4: "I will pour water upon the thirsty land, and streams upon the dry ground. I will pour My Spirit upon your seed, and My blessing upon your offspring." And in the prophet Joel, Joel 2 and following: "I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh."

But the teachers of Israel, men chiefly of earth and flesh, searched in the books of the Law only for those expressions which, as it seemed to them, promised earthly greatness to the people. Therefore they did not understand ideas of a higher order, which the Lord was bringing into human thought. They neither received nor reflected this new light, which illumined hidden recesses of the human soul hitherto unknown to them. They did not understand the new spiritual life.

Ignorance is not counted as their fault. The Lord rebukes them for unwillingness to know, for deliberate evasion of the light, and for proud self-delusion that they know everything and have nothing to learn. "Amen, amen, I say to you," says the Lord, "we speak what we know, and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our testimony."

In these words, spoken by the Lord to Nicodemus, together with John Chrysostom and Theophylact of Bulgaria we see an utterance pronounced in the name of two Hypostases of the Holy Trinity. It is spoken in the name of the Father, as almighty God, and of the Son in His incarnate form, as the God-man. This is confirmed by other texts, for the Lord said: "I and the Father are one," Jn 10:30. In another place He says: "I do not receive testimony from man. The Father who sent Me has Himself borne witness to Me," Jn 5:34-37. And again: "If I bear witness of Myself, My testimony is true, for I know whence I came and where I am going. And if I judge, My judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent Me," Jn 8:14-16.

Therefore, in the name of almighty God and of God in the flesh, the Lord speaks not only to Nicodemus. He speaks to the whole Old Testament world, and chiefly to Jewry, hardened in its prejudices. In the Lord's words to Nicodemus, as Theophylact of Bulgaria indicates, following John Chrysostom, there is an indication of this. If the teacher of Israel cannot understand spiritual regeneration, which takes place within man while still on earth, then how will he understand and believe when the Lord reveals the mysteries of the heavenly and ineffable birth, by which the only-begotten Son was born of the Father?

In other words, how will a man understand and receive by faith the dogma of the all-holy and consubstantial Trinity, when he does not yet understand that man can be reborn by water and the Spirit, be renewed, and become a new man?