“born again”

The full passage

John 3:1-10 (BSB):

1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs You are doing if God were not with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” 4 “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time to be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh is born of flesh, but spirit is born of the Spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I said, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

The KJV at verse 3 reads: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The ambiguity at the centre

The Greek phrase Jesus uses is gennēthē anōthen (γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν) — “be born anōthen.” The word anōthen has two equally legitimate meanings in Koine Greek:

• From above — its spatial sense, used elsewhere in John for divine origin
• Again, anew — its temporal sense, used in classical and Koine literature for repetition

BDAG s.v. anōthen lists both senses. Neither is primary. The word is genuinely ambiguous, and a competent first-century Greek speaker would have heard both.

Why Nicodemus’s question is not stupid

Nicodemus replies in verse 4: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time to be born?” Many sermons treat this as comic incomprehension — Nicodemus the slow student, Jesus the patient teacher.

This is not what is happening. Nicodemus has heard anōthen in its temporal sense (“again”) — which is a perfectly legitimate reading. The question he asks is the literal-minded follow-up to that reading. He is not stupid; he is pinning down which sense Jesus intends. The Greek does not specify on its own.

Jesus’s response in verses 5–8 does not explicitly correct the reading. Instead he expands the metaphor: “born of water and the Spirit,” then the wind/Spirit wordplay (the same Greek word pneuma means both “wind” and “spirit”). He builds further wordplay on top of the original ambiguity rather than resolving it.

The third use, in the same chapter, that resolves the question

John 3:31 uses the same word — anōthen — in a context where the temporal reading is impossible:

The One who comes from above [anōthen] is above all. (John 3:31, BSB)

Virtually every English translation renders anōthen in 3:31 as “from above.” Eight verses earlier at 3:7, the same translations render the same word as “again” — even though the spatial sense is at least equally available.

The translators are making a choice the Greek does not make. They are picking one face of an ambiguous word and presenting it as if it were the only meaning.

What the wordplay is doing

John’s Gospel is full of intentional wordplay that operates at the level of double meaning. Pneuma in 3:8 (wind / spirit). Hypsoō in 3:14 and 12:32 (lift up / exalt — the verb is used both for the physical lifting of the cross and for honour). Anōthen in 3:3 (again / from above).

In each case, the ambiguity is the point. The word covers two related but distinct meanings, and the conversation operates across both at once.

What the phrase does not specify

The phrase “born again” / “born from above” does not, in John 3, define what the experience involves. Jesus’s continuing explanation in verses 5–8 uses water, Spirit, and wind imagery, but does not describe a specific procedure or moment. The English-language evangelical tradition has frequently identified “born again” with a specific conversion event — a particular prayer, decision, or moment. The Greek text does not specify any of this.

Whether “being born from above” is an event, a process, or a sustained relationship — and how a reader recognises whether they have undergone it — are interpretive questions the text does not directly answer.

Translation history

Most English translations choose “again” at John 3:3, 3:7. This includes the KJV, BSB, NIV, ESV, NASB, NLT, and CSB. A small number of translations (NRSV, NET) footnote the alternative; the NRSV explicitly notes the dual sense in its footnote at 3:3.

The choice is not a translation error in either direction. It is a choice between two grammatically valid readings of an ambiguous word. The Greek itself preserves the ambiguity; the English does not.

Read on Bible1.org

Read the full chapter on our companion site: John 3 on Bible1.org → — BSB text in context, all verses.