<p>3:4 <i>Nicodemus said to him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?</i>- When Nicodemus asked &ldquo;How can a man be born again&hellip;?&rdquo;, he wasn&rsquo;t being facetious. He was asking a genuine question, which we&rsquo;ve all had in one form or another. Can a person really totally change? Aren&rsquo;t the influences of our past life, our humanity, simply too great to break totally? Aren&rsquo;t there human ties that bind, bind so closely that they can never be completely thrown off? &ldquo;Truly truly I say unto you&rdquo;, the Lord replied, &lsquo;Yes&rsquo;. There is a doctrine of a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), whereby we really can be made new people. This is a ladder to reach to the stars. We can overcome sin, bad habits and thought patterns. We may well think that we can&rsquo;t; the way was set, the die cast, the destiny mapped out, the genes determined; our background, upbringing, life path was as it was, and so we are as we are. But we <i>can</i> be made new. Sin need no longer have dominion over us, as Paul says in Romans 6; or as early Genesis put it, &ldquo;you shall rule over sin&rdquo; (Gen. 4:7).</p>
<p>The extent of grace is reflected in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching about being born again. A person neither begets nor bears himself; but the Lord says that this must happen. The born again person has to receive a new origin- evidently something we can&rsquo;t give ourselves. The new birth is therefore only possible through an acceptance of grace. Thus in Jn. 1:12,13 a parallel is drawn between &ldquo;all who receive him&rdquo; and those &ldquo;who were born&hellip; of God&rdquo;. Going even further, 1 Jn. 5:1 and 1 Jn. 4:8 noting the tenses and context suggest that faith and love are the evidence of this new birth rather than the cause of it.</p>
<p>Dodd in <i>The Interpretation Of The Fourth Gospel </i>shows how constantly John is referring to Philo- e.g. Philo denied any possibility of spiritual rebirth, whereas John (Jn. 3:3-5) stresses how needful and possible it is in Christ. The very abstract views of Philo are challenged when John comments that the <i>logos</i> has become flesh- real and actual, handled and seen, in the person of the Lord Jesus. Clearly those to whom John was preaching were influenced by Philo and he seeks to address their issues. Philo claimed that the <i>logos</i> was an Angel- whereas John effectively denies this by saying that the <i>logos</i> became a real and actual human being. Those Christians who claim Jesus was an Angel- and they range from Jehovah's Witnesses to those who claim Jesus appeared as an Old Testament Angel- should all stand corrected by John's argument against Philo. In chapter 11 of his book, Dodd makes the observation that there was a tension between Jewish monotheism, and the many gods of Greek mythology. He shows how these ideas were reconciled by bringing the gods into some kind of family relationship with each- thus Hermes and Apollo became sons of Zeus, and all were seen as emanations of the one God. This is highly significant for any study of how the Trinity came into existence- the stage was set for the idea of a small family of gods to develop, all supposedly emanations of one God. See on Jn. 5:39.</p>