Friends.
Megan (J. Conner) makes some excellent points, and I appreciate her encouragement to trust when everything feels difficult. While it is a warm and noble sentiment to minister to saints who find themselves in difficult situations, the passage Megan is referencing however is not really suggesting the principles that she is deriving from it.
It is a common misunderstanding (IMHO), mostly because the metaphor is too often taught erroneously. In the passage she references, Jesus is not telling Nicodemus that The Spirit of God can be perceived in a similar way as one would feel the wind, even though He uses the same word, “pneuma”, for both. Jesus is not suggesting, that “The Spirit can be felt like a fragrant breeze.” or that we should “Open our hearts, and follow the wind”. Even if these sentimentalities resonate positively, and some comfort can be found in these ideas, they simply are not contained in the text.
Jesus is actually teaching Nicodemus about the possibility of being “born from above” (heaven-born). Jesus uses the wind in his teaching metaphor by saying every person who is born from above is like the wind in that you don’t know where they are from, and you don’t know where they are going. Jesus is giving a direct response to Nicodemus’s original statement: “we know you must be from God”. Jesus is saying: “Unless you are born from above, you can’t actually know that”.
Allow me to offer the referenced passage is a very literal 21st century paraphrase, for your critical consideration. (I trust the noble exegetes on this platform will kindly set me straight if I veer off course here.) Here goes.
Paraphrase of John 3:1-8
Nicodemus, a member of the supreme judicial and ecclesiastical national council of Israel, (Sanhedrin - congress of seventy) came to Jesus unofficially, secretly, and under the cloak of darkness. He sought to personally ask Jesus for more information about himself, specifically “where He comes from”. Nicodemus opens the conversation with a statement that he hopes Jesus will either refute or confirm: “Teacher, we are aware that you are a good teacher, and that you must have come from God, because no one can do the miracles that you do unless God is with him.’
Jesus confirms his statement by saying, Amen, Amen, or That’s right, That’s right! Then Jesus explains: “Look Nick, unless a person is born from above he can never perceive anything of the kingdom of God simply because unless a person is born from above he has no spiritual senses to take in spiritual information. Unless a person is born from above they cannot actually know what you just stated."
Nicodemus responds with an obvious problem with what Jesus just said to Him, “How can a man be “born again” when he is already grown? Can he reenter the water of his mother’s womb and be born a second time?”
Jesus answered, “Amen Amen! (Right, Right.) But I’m saying, unless one is born through the “metaphoric” amniotic water of The Spirit of God he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh will always only be flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is forever only Spirit; the two realms are very different, each require their own kind of birth. Relax Nick, you don’t need to be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ It’s like this: The Spirit of God is a bit like the wind in that The Spirit also “blows” wherever He wishes. You may hear the sound of the physical wind, but you still don’t know where it comes from, and you don’t know where it is going. It is like that with are all who are of The Spirit, all who are “born from above”. Unless one is born from above, they cannot know where those born from above come from, and likewise they cannot know where they are going.
Can you see the big difference between what Jesus is actually saying, and what Megan was suggesting He was saying to Nicodemus? Meghan was saying: “We feel the Spirit of God in a similar way to how we feel the wind”. Jesus is saying: “Unless one is born from above, they cannot know where we are from or where we are going.” Things of The Spirit are not perceived through physical senses, so we should stop expecting things of the Spirit to feel a certain way, or to be perceived in the same way we perceive out physical world; and we should stop teaching people perceiving spiritual reality with our physical senses is normative.
KP
(more)
