Born from Above: Surrendering to the Wind
John 3:1–17
Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. The detail matters. He is a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews, a man with a reputation to protect. He cannot be seen visiting this unauthorized rabbi from Galilee. So he comes under cover of darkness—and in John’s Gospel, darkness always carries symbolic weight. Nicodemus comes out of the darkness of his understanding into the presence of the Light.
Jesus wastes no time: Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.
The Greek word anothen means both again and from above. Nicodemus hears again and stumbles: How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb? He is thinking literally when Jesus is speaking cosmically.
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." —T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
To be born from above is not to repeat childhood. It is to be remade at the deepest level—to have one’s origin relocated from flesh to Spirit. The wind blows where it chooses, Jesus says, 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. The spiritual life is not a program you can manage. It is a wind you cannot control.
This was the central insight of the desert contemplatives. John Cassian taught that the goal of monastic life was not to accumulate spiritual achievements but to become so transparent to the Spirit that God’s life flows through us unobstructed. You cannot manufacture this. You can only remove the obstacles—which is precisely what Lent is for.
The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus culminates in the most quoted verse in Christianity: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. But the verse that follows is equally important and far less famous: God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through it.
Not condemnation. Salvation. This is the message Nicodemus receives in the dark. The God he thought was keeping score—the God of rules and requirements—turns out to be a God of wind and birth and extravagant, world-encompassing love.
Nicodemus appears twice more in John’s Gospel: once defending Jesus before the Sanhedrin, and finally at the cross, bringing seventy-five pounds of spices to anoint the body. His faith grew slowly, in the dark, the way seeds grow underground before they break the surface. If your own faith feels halting, incomplete, still forming in the darkness—you are in good company. The wind is blowing. You may not see where it goes. But you can hear it.
The wind of the Spirit resists our attempts to domesticate it. We build theological systems, liturgical calendars, spiritual programs—all good things—but the Spirit refuses to be contained by any of them. Nicodemus represents every sincere religious person who has learned the rules and followed them faithfully and still feels that something essential is missing. The missing element is not more knowledge or more obedience. It is surrender—the willingness to be carried by a wind whose destination you cannot predict. This is terrifying for the Pharisee. But it is the only way to be born.