Marvel not that I said unto you, You must be born again.
Read Chapter 3
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Marvel not, &c. As S. Chrysostom says, "We are not disputing concerning flesh, but concerning spirit. Do not think either that the Spirit begets flesh, or flesh the Spirit." Therefore it is necessary to be born again of the Spirit, if thou seekest to become spirit or spiritual, and a candidate for heaven.
The Spirit bloweth where it willeth, &c Christ proceeds to unfold to Nicodemus the reason and nature of spiritual regeneration, and to take away his wonder how such a thing could be possible.
You will ask what Spirit is here to be understood1. Plainly and simply wind is the Spirit. For He compares the Holy Spirit to the wind, as is plain from what follows, So is every one that is born of the Spirit. The meaning Isaiah , As the wind blows where its own will, that Isaiah , its natural propensity to blow, leads it, and yet you can see neither it, nor its determined place, but only its effects, and voice, or sound; so much more neither thou, nor any one else, however clever and sharp-si...
It is the excellence of a teacher, to be able manifoldly to manage the mind of the hearers, and to go through many considerations, heaping up proofs where the argument appears hard. He takes then the figure of the mystery from examples, and says, This spirit belonging to the world and of the air, blows throughout the whole earth, and running where it listeth, is shewn to be present by sound only, and escapeth the eye of all, yet, communicating itself to bodies by the subtlest breaths, it infuseth some perception of its natural efficacy. So do thou, saith He, conceive of the new birth also through the Spirit, led on by little examples to what is greater, and by the reasoning brought forward as it were in an image, conceiving of what is above the senses.
For by saying, Marvel not, He indicates the confusion of his soul, and leads him to something lighter than body. He had already led him away from fleshly things, by saying, That which is born of the Spirit is spirit; but when Nicodemus knew not what that which is born of the Spirit is spirit meant, He next carries him to another figure, not bringing him to the density of bodies, nor yet speaking of things purely incorporeal, (for had he heard he could not have received this,) but having found a something between what is and what is not body, namely, the motion of the wind, He brings him to that next. And He says of it,
You hear the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it comes, and whither it goes.
Though He says, it blows where it lists, He says it not as if the wind had any power of choice, but declaring that its natural motion cannot be hindered, and is with power. For Scripture knows how to speak thus of things without life, as when it says, The creature was made subject to v...
