“The Wind Blows Where It Wills”: The Meaning of Jesus’ Teaching in John 3:8

What did Jesus mean when he said: “The wind blows where it wills. You hear its sound, but do not know where it is coming from and where it is going. Thus is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8)?

To understand the meaning of Jesus’ teaching in this verse, we need first of all to recognize that there is a play on the double sense of the noun πνεῦμα in this verse. πνεῦμα can be translated as wind or spirit. John is deliberately playing on the dual sense of πνεῦμα as wind or spirit, drawing an analogy between the wind and the Holy Spirit. Wind is considered in the Bible to be a phenomenon that, like the waves of the sea, is beyond the control of human beings (e.g., Job 38:24; Ps 107:25; Prov 30:4). Just as the wind blows wherever God wills, so also God’s Spirit blows wherever God wills. That is to say, God’s Spirit works in a sovereign way.

Just as people cannot see the wind but can hear the sound of the wind blowing, so also the Spirit of God cannot physically be seen with human eyes but we can perceive his effects on the objects which he touches. The concept of the sound of the wind as an image of the movement of the Spirit finds an echo in the events of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, when the sound of a mighty rushing wind from heaven was heard as the Spirit came down upon the early church (Acts 2:2). The movement of God’s Spirit cannot be predicted or controlled by human beings, but we can perceive his effects as people’s lives are transformed by the power of God’s Spirit.

The point of Jesus’ analogy between the wind and the Spirit is stated in the final clause of the verse: “Thus is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The point of the wind/spirit analogy is that the beneficiaries of rebirth by the Holy Spirit are not determined by human beings. In the context of the concern on the Gospel of John with the ethnically universal nature of salvation provided through Jesus, and given that Jesus was currently directing this teaching to Nicodemus, a representative of the teachers of Israel (John 3:9–10), the implication of Jesus’ analogy in this verse is that it is not right for Jews to think that the saving work of the Spirit is solely limited to Israel.

Although covenant membership is inherited according to physical descent—a principle which applies under the new covenant as well as the old (Acts 2:39; 1 Cor 7:14)—the work of the Spirit during the new covenant age exhibits a greater scope compared to the situation under the old covenant. Under the old covenant, the work of God’s Spirit was limited to operate primarily within the boundary of covenant membership in Israel. But under the new covenant, God’s Spirit operates not just within Israel, but extensively beyond the borders of Israel. Furthermore, even within the constraint of covenant membership, it is not the case that everyone in covenant with God is a recipient of the saving work of the Spirit. The determining factor for salvation under both the old and the new covenants is not formal covenant membership but whether or not a person has experienced the work of God’s Spirit writing God’s word upon one’s heart. Those who have God’s law written in the heart are those who are right with God and who therefore experience salvation (e.g., Ps 37:29; Isa 51:7; Rom 2:28–29).

Regeneration by the Spirit, therefore, remains a sovereign act of God. God has mercy on whomever he wills, the implication being, that he has mercy on “everyone,” which is to say, on Gentile as well as Jew. This is the sense in which the Spirit blows where he wills.

Born Again or Born from Above? The Concept of Spiritual Rebirth in John 3:3

When Nicodemus came by night to visit Jesus, he had only just offered his greetings to Jesus when Jesus spoke to him about the condition for salvation in the kingdom of God. Jesus said: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). As a pious Jew, Nicodemus would have been greatly interested in this issue; but Jesus’ raising of this topic so early in his conversation with Nicodemus definitely highlights the importance of it in Jesus’ thinking.

Unpacking the meaning of Jesus’ statement, the expression truly, truly, I say to you occurs 25 times in John’s Gospel, where it usually introduces sayings of Jesus of particular significance. The use of this expression by Jesus also highlights the fact that Jesus has come into the world to speak the truth (e.g., John 8:40, 45–46; 14:6; 17:17; 18:37).

The word ἄνωθεν, which is often translated as again as in the phrase born again also means from above. In a Jewish context it would be most natural to take ἄνωθεν as being a Jewish circumlocution for from heaven or ultimately from God. It is clear from Nicodemus’s response in John 3:4, however, that ἄνωθεν could also mean again, and this is primarily how Nicodemus understood it. As far as Jesus’ use of ἄνωθεν is concerned, it is likely that Jesus used the word in John 3:3 with deliberate ambiguity but at the same time with the sense of from above primarily in mind. This is apparent from the substitution of the expression by water and spirit for ἄνωθεν in Jesus’ explication of his statement in John 3:3 in John 3:5. The concept of being born again in a spiritual sense should have been familiar to Nicodemus as a reference to conversion, given that Jewish rabbis spoke about Gentile conversion to Judaism as the beginning of a new life.

The expression to see the kingdom of God simply means to experience, to be a part of, the kingdom of God. It is a synonymous concept with entering the kingdom of God (see John 3:5). New birth, a spiritual rebirth engineered from above, is the condition of salvation. This teaching could have been rather controversial for Nicodemus, had he understood Jesus’ intended meaning, because the implication of Jesus’ teaching was that more is needed for the Jews to be right with God than adherence to the law of Moses. A new birth, connected with faith in Jesus, is what is needed in order to experience salvation in the kingdom of God.

In terms of the wider context of the Jewish-Christian polemics relevant to John’s readership—where Christian Jews were facing opposition from many non-Christian Jews—Jesus’ teaching would clearly have been quite controversial. In effect, Jesus was stating that Jews need to be converted out of Judaism (symbolized in its purest form in Jesus’ day by Pharisaism, of which Nicodemus was an adherent) to Christianity, which was distinguished from traditional Judaism by the belief that Jesus is the Messiah.

A Summary of the Bible: Generator, Generation, Degeneration, Regeneration

How to summarize the story of the Bible?

A handy way of thinking about the message of the Bible, or what Christianity is on about, is that the Bible tells a story of the history of the universe that revolves around four basic facts. These basic facts are: God, creation, sin, and salvation. Put another way, this gives us the following four basic facts: Generator, generation, degeneration, and regeneration.

God, Creation, Sin, Salvation