<p>3:2 <i>The same came to him by night, and said to him: Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God. For no one can do the signs you do, except God be with him</i>- Although miracles do not lead to permanent faith, the Lord's miracles all the same demonstrated that He was from God. Even His hardest enemies could not deny that His Spirit could produce notable miracles (Acts 4:16). &quot;<i>We</i> know...&quot; may well be a tacit admission that even the Pharisees recognized the Lord's connection with God. The fact many Pharisees later &quot;became obedient to the faith&quot; would suggest that their madness against Him was a function of their bad conscience. &quot;This is the son, come let us kill Him&quot; likewise reflects their passive, maybe subconscious, recognition that He was from God.</p><p>Nicodemus says that he perceives that Jesus is &ldquo;from God&rdquo; because of His miracles. But the Lord replies that only if a man is born again can he see or perceive the Kingdom of God; and only if he is born again by baptism of water and spirit can he enter into the Kingdom. It&rsquo;s easy to overlook the fact that the context of the Lord&rsquo;s comment was about His being Messiah, and how men could perceive / recognize that. If we read &ldquo;the Kingdom of God&rdquo; as a title of Himself, all becomes clear. Through baptism, birth of water and spirit, we enter into Christ. He was then and is now, the very essence of the Kingdom; the ultimate picture of the Kingdom life. There was a perfect congruence between His message about the Kingdom, and His own character. And this is what will give our preaching of that very same Kingdom a like power and convicting appeal to men and women.</p>