skip to content
Buy Gene’s Books Search

Nicodemus Didn't Get it Either • Jul 01st 1984

Born Again or Born From Above? The Hidden Meaning of John 3 Explained (DCLC 1984)

Before the Beginning First Century New Testament The Gospels

What did Jesus really mean when He told Nicodemus that he must be “born again”? In this message, Gene Edwards explores John 3 and argues that the passage opens up more fully when Jesus’ words are understood as being “born from above.”

Beginning with Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, Edwards focuses on the relationship between spiritual birth, the heavenly realm, and the believer’s union with Christ. Nicodemus was an educated, religious and influential man, yet Jesus told him that his natural abilities and religious accomplishments could not enable him to see the kingdom of God. Something entirely different was necessary: he had to receive life originating from above.

Edwards connects this conversation with Jesus’ striking words about the Son of Man being in heaven. He presents Christ as living in the earthly realm while simultaneously enjoying fellowship with His Father in the heavenly realm. This becomes an important foundation for understanding what happens to a believer through spiritual rebirth.

The message also examines Jesus’ illustration of the wind: “The wind blows where it will.” Edwards develops the imagery of the Holy Spirit as the “holy wind” and describes new birth as the human spirit encountering the Spirit of God. He connects this with the biblical declaration that the person joined to the Lord is “one spirit” with Him.

From there, the teaching moves beyond the question of how a person becomes a Christian to explore what the believer possesses in Christ. Edwards emphasizes fellowship with Jesus Christ and the Father, the believer’s relationship to heavenly places, and the possibility of learning to live from the spiritual life God has placed within.

Rather than treating John 3 simply as a familiar passage about conversion, this message invites Christians to reconsider the extraordinary spiritual reality behind Jesus’ words to Nicodemus.

What does it mean to be born from above? What changes when the human spirit is made alive? And what does it mean for believers to recognize their inheritance in heavenly places?

Read More
Download Transcription Play Audio

If you would allow that which is eternal in you and that which is without dimension and that which does live outside of time and space just to take the hand of that which lives in time and space and say, “Come here just one moment and stand in God, in Christ inside Him and look around and watch the Father fellowship with the Son”. Then the soul can come back and say, “Well, I’m still worried, but not as much.” The soul can return to this material abode and say, “I have seen the Father in communion with the Son.”

You start trying to locate that eternal place within you. You start finding out how to get there. And once you’re there, you figure out where that door is and get through it and go there and do what, Gene? Watch the angels flip around? No, just watch the Lord fellowship with His Father.

Will you stand up with me? In Christ, O Lord, that the God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, might open your eyes and see your inheritance in heavenly places. Open our eyes to see where we are in Christ, having inherited the heavenly realm. In Him, in Him, in Him. Lord, open our eyes. Open our eyes. Yes, God. Amen.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

More from the archives