'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and them hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every
one that is born of the Spirit.'—JOHN iii. 8.
Perhaps a gust of night wind swept round the chamber where Nicodemus
sat listening to Jesus, and gave occasion for this condensed parable.
But there is occasion sufficient for it in the word 'Spirit,' which,
both in the language in which our Lord addressed the ruler of the
Sanhedrim, and in that which John employed in recording the
conversation, as in our own English, means both 'spirit' and 'breath.'
This double signification of the word gives rise to the analogies in
our text, and it also raises the question as to the precise meaning of
the text. There are two alternatives, one adopted by our Authorised and
Revised Version, and one which you will find relegated to the margin of
the latter. We may either read 'the wind bloweth' or 'the Spirit
breathes.' I must not be tempted here to enter into a discussion of the
grounds upon which the one or the other of these two renderings may be
preferred. Suffice it to say that I adhere to the rendering which lies
before us, and find here a comparison between the salient
characteristics of the physical fact and the operations of the Divine
Spirit upon men's spirits.
But then, there is another step to be taken. Our Lord has just been
laying down the principle that like begets like, that flesh produces
flesh, and spirit, spirit. And so, applying that principle, He says
here, not as might be expected, 'So is the work of the Divine Spirit in
begetting new life in men,' but 'So is he that is born of the Spirit.'
There are three things brought into relation with one another: the
physical fact; the operations of the Spirit of God, of which that
physical fact in its various characteristics may be taken as a symbol;
and the result of its operations in the new man who is made 'after the
image of Him that created him.'
It is to the last of these that I wish to turn. Here you have the ideal
of the Christian life, considered as the product of the free Spirit of
God, the picture of what all Christian people have the capacity of
being, the obligation to be, and are, just in the measure in which that
new life, which the Spirit of God bestows, is dominant in them and
moulding their character. So I take these characteristics just as they
arise.