Unless One Is Born From Above

Before the throne, the One announced as the Lion of the tribe of Judah stood as a Lamb that had been slaughtered, and the song sung to Him said that He had purchased people for God by His blood. The kinsman who paid the price is the King of the inheritance He bought back. All of that is what He did.

If He is the goel who has already paid, how does a person come to take hold of Him? Scripture does not leave this to guesswork. When the passages are read in the tense and voice in which they were written, they set out an order of four steps: new birth, forcing, the door, and remaining. The first step is the one most readers would be tempted to move further down the list.

The Step That Is Easy to Skip

The temptation comes from Jacob himself. At the Jabbok a man wrestled with him until the dawn came up and Jacob would not let Him go. It is a powerful scene, and it is easy to turn it straight into a command: take hold of God, cling to Him, do not let go until He blesses you. The wish behind such a command is a good one, and the scene is in Scripture for a reason.

But to draw the command “take hold” directly out of Jacob’s refusal to let go is to break the order that Scripture itself sets. There is a step that comes before any taking hold, and Yeshua named it in a conversation at night with a teacher of Israel named Nicodemus.

John 3:3 Yeshua answered and said to him, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born anothen(from-above, again), he cannot see the kingdom of God."

Not Even to See

Yeshua does not say, at this point, that one who is not born from above cannot enter the kingdom of God. He says that such a person “cannot see the kingdom of God.” Entering is the word He uses two verses later, when He goes on to speak of water and spirit. But the first thing He says is about seeing, and seeing comes before everything else.

This is where the order begins. A man cannot take hold of something he cannot see, and he cannot press toward a kingdom that is hidden from his eyes. Before there is any question of forcing, of entering a door, or of remaining, there has to be a birth that gives sight. Taking hold is real and has its full place, but it belongs after this verse, not before it.

A Verb in the Passive

The verb Yeshua used is gennethe (γεννηθῇ), “is born.” Three things about its form matter for our question.

First, it is passive. In a passive verb the subject does not act; the subject is acted upon. The person in this sentence does not bring himself to birth. He is brought to it. In being born there is nothing active on the part of the one born. The new birth is not something achieved but something received.

Second, it is aorist, the tense that looks at an event as a single point rather than as a long process. Birth happens. It is not a course of training that a person completes in stages.

Third, it is subjunctive, because it stands inside an “unless” clause. The sentence lays down a condition: unless this happens, the seeing does not happen.

No child arranges the day of his own birth. He does not choose his parents, decide the hour, or push himself into the world by his own planning. Everything that he will later do with his hands and his feet begins with an event in which he did nothing at all. That is the picture Yeshua chose, and the grammar holds to it.

John had already written the same thing at the beginning of his Gospel, when he described those who received the Word and believed in His name.

John 1:13 who were born, not of blood nor of the thelema θέλημα thel'-ay-mah(will) of sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh) nor of the thelema(will) of man, but of God.

The new birth has its source outside the one who is born.

From Above, and Again

The other word in Yeshua’s sentence is anothen, which the YLV keeps in the text with both of its senses: “anothen(from-above, again).” The word can mean “from above,” from a higher place, and it can also mean “again,” a second time. Both are true of this birth. It comes from above, from God, and it is a second birth after the first.

Nicodemus heard the word in its second sense, and he answered with a question that shows it.

John 3:4 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?"

He was thinking of a second birth of the same kind as the first, a grown man somehow going back to his mother’s womb. The double sense of anothen explains how he could hear it that way. Yeshua’s answer turns him toward the other sense: the birth He is speaking of comes from above. It is not a second attempt by a man at his own beginning. It is a beginning given to him by God.

Why the Order Matters

It may seem a small thing whether we put the new birth first or the taking hold first. It is not small. If taking hold comes first, then a person’s own grip becomes the way into the kingdom, and the strength of his hands decides whether he sees it. The record of Jacob argues against that: as Chapter 7 showed, the night he would not let go ended with a limp, not a trophy.

When the new birth comes first, the order agrees with what Revelation 5 showed. The Redeemer paid the price before anyone reached for Him. The Lamb was slaughtered and purchased people for God by His blood, and the song that names people from every tribe and tongue sings about what He did, not about what they did. Salvation rests on what He has done, received by grace through faith, and the one who receives it is born from above as a gift and not as a reward.

That does not make the later steps unimportant. A person who has been born will take hold, will enter, and will remain, and Scripture has a great deal to say about each of these. But each of them is the life of one who has already been born. None of them is the price of being born.

The first step, then, is settled by a verb in the passive. One question remains. If a person is born from above, what is he born of? Yeshua spoke of water and spirit. Peter, writing to scattered believers years later, gives the answer in one word, and that word takes us back to the first promise in Scripture.