While he must have been hoping to get some definitive proof to eliminate his doubt, what Nicodemus heard was mind-boggling. Yeshua, seemingly ignoring what the Jewish leader said, replied (John 3:3), “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again (or from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Clearly confused, Nicodemus challenged the thought with the obvious position that he was already born, and couldn’t go back into his mother’s womb to be re-born. That’s probably what I would have said if I were there with him.

In verses 5 & 6, Jesus digs deeper, explaining the Kingdom of God is reserved for those “born of water and the Spirit.” He further proclaimed, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

While there is a wide variety of interpretations for the phrase about water and Spirit, taken plainly, it means there are two kind of births. As Yeshua’s following statement explains, the first is physical, and therefore the water represents the amniotic fluid of the womb. The second is specifically not physical, but spiritual; thus to be re-born is a completely different experience.

So what does it mean to be spiritually born again? In Acts 2, the Jewish Apostle Peter tells the Jewish men gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot (Pentecost), it’s a result of believing in Jesus.    

In verse 38 he told them, “Repent, and let every one of you be immersed in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit enters into the hearts of those who repent and proclaim Yeshua as Messiah, bringing new life. As Jesus clarified in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” Spiritual regeneration brings new life, eternal life, not in the flesh, but in the spirit. So it is completely understandable why Messiah doubled down on the concept in John 3:7, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” Still, Nicodemus didn’t comprehend, asking, “How can these things be?”

Here’s where it becomes really interesting!

Yeshua confronts Nicodemus’s Jewish understanding in John 3:10, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?”

Wow! Jesus aligned the requirement to be born again with scriptural Judaism. Okay, we know the phrase “born again” is not found in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet the idea is presented in a number of instances.

While the Sadducees of ancient days did not believe in a resurrection, we know it is presented by the prophet Daniel. In 12:2, he wrote, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Although general in its application, this phrase points to a spiritual difference in life after death.

More specifically, we can see the setting of the stage for the need to be born again in the Garden of Eden. God instructed Adam in Genesis 2:17, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” 

Take note, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of that tree, and they didn’t die . . . physically. But they died spiritually. By their sin, they created a need for a Savior, one through faith in whom mankind could be re-born into spiritual life.

Speaking in Job 25:4, Bildad the Shuhite clearly states the issue of the need to have new life because of the sin committed in Eden, pondering, “How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?”

Ezekiel 37 contains the well known story of the dry bones. The prophet is shown a valley of bones with the instruction from the Lord to prophesy over them to bring them back to life. In verses 7 & 8 it came to pass, “So I prophesied as I was commanded . . . and the bones came together . . . and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over.” But there was something missing because, “there was no breath in them.”

In Hebrew, Ruach HaKodesh means the Holy Spirit. The word “ruach” is translated as breath or spirit. It is the Hebrew used in Ezekiel 37, which continues that God called for breath to fill the bodies. In verse 10, “So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived.”

The illustration shows the bones were born again, and it took the breath of the Spirit, some translations say the breath of life, to bring it to pass. Indeed, in verse 14 the Lord explains the allegory, “I will put My Spirit in you (Israel), and you shall live,” harkening to the day Messiah would come to offer the new life.

Similarly, the promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31 lays the foundation for people to be born again. That the promise was for the future is evident in verse 31, “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.”

God said this New Covenant would change His relationship with mankind, specifying in verse 33, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” That’s an act of the Holy Spirit.

He concluded in verse 34, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” The sin brought on by the spiritual death of Adam would be removed in an act of spiritual rebirth, which Yeshua announced at the Last Seder (Supper).

He revealed in Luke 22:20 He would shed His blood to enact the New Covenant. Jesus had to die for our sins so the born again concept presented in the Tanakh could become reality.

Thus Yeshua made known in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” And the Jewish Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Messiah, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”