Nicodemus the Pharisee (Pt. 2)
On Second Birth and Second Life
Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:3-8 NRSVUE).
Throughout this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, it is almost as if Jesus seeks to intentionally obfuscate. Indeed, this is characteristic of his ministry throughout the Gospel of John. In response to Nicodemus’ initial statement of certainty that Jesus comes from God, Jesus uses intentionally ambiguous and confusing language: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born anothen (3:3).”
This last Greek word, anothen, has two possible meanings—either “from above” or “again”—and the double meaning is intentional. It is another one of Jesus’ teaching strategies to say something confusing or outlandish to provoke a reaction, and then respond to that misunderstanding with clarification. Nicodemus only picks up on the last possible meaning of anothen, and is understandably mystified: “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born” (3:4)? How can anyone be physically born twice?
Jesus reveals that the second meaning of anothen is more primary. What is required to see the kingdom of God is to be born “of water and Spirit” (3:5). All of us have been “born of the flesh,” but this second birth of which Jesus speaks is something different: it requires both a cleansing (“water”) and a new spiritual life (“Spirit”). It seems clear that Jesus is speaking here about baptism: the ritual by which followers of Christ are washed by water and receive the Holy Spirit. Nicodemus is focused too intently on things “below,” like flesh, blood, and lineage. Jesus is urging him to look beyond them, to look to things “above” and recognize that new life comes from God through the Spirit, not just from human beings through the flesh. God gives new life, and the beginning of this new life can be understood as a second birth.
I suspect that upon reflection, this image of second birth, birth “from above,” might strike some of us as rather familiar—even those of us who have not grown up in the faith. Many of us have had an analogous experience of new life, of emerging from the darkness into the light, an experience of the beginning of something new: coming out of the closet.
“Coming out of the closet” is a phrase drawn from two metaphors: the “skeleton in the closet” and the debutante ball (or “coming out ball”). So it is of course natural that the closet is typically understood along the lines of the tomb and resurrection. But I would suggest that it might also be understood along the lines of the womb and birth. The closet—like a womb, or like the darkness that allowed Nicodemus to approach Jesus—can afford the security and solitude one needs first in order to come out; in doing so, one expresses a new identity that has developed in secret. Coming out involves coming into oneself, coming of age, becoming mature. The closet can be a place of intimate encounter between oneself and God, an embryonic stage for learning, growing, and developing in preparation for entering a community.
I remember that a few years after coming out, I began to experience an overwhelming surge of emotions: obsessive crushes, intense feelings of shame and fear, perpetual awkwardness. I soon found out that this experience has a name: “second adolescence.” For most people these emotions usually accompany biological adolescence (adolescence “of the flesh,” if you will), but for many sexual or gender minorities, they are often stalled or put on the back burner while we focus on keeping our sexuality or gender identity from the broader world—and even from ourselves. Bringing that part of ourselves to light involves working through the emotions we did not work through as teenagers. This experience reveals that a real change has taken place.
Something like this is part of the instructive power of the image of “birth anothen” for us: what is required to enter the kingdom of God, Jesus is saying, is a kind of fundamental change, one so radical that it can feel like a truly new kind of life has begun—another, second birth.