Basically, you would agree that there is nothing that man can do, via emmersion into or sprinkle of water, that would magically save a man correct? With that statement, here are some interesting commentaries (though some very old ones
:>) ) on John 3:5.
From
Wessley's expanation notes:
Except he experience that great inward change by the Spirit, and be baptized (wherever baptism can be had) as the
outward sign and means of it.
John Gill's Exposition
John 3:5
Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee
Explaining somewhat more clearly, what he before said:
except a man be born of water and of the Spirit:
these are, (twnv) (twlm) , "two words", which express the same thing, as Kimchi observes in many places in his commentaries, and signify the grace of the Spirit of God. The Vulgate Latin and Ethiopic versions read, "the Holy Spirit", and so Nonnus; and who doubtless is intended: by "water", is not meant material water, or baptismal water; for water baptism is never expressed by water only, without some additional word, which shows, that the ordinance of water baptism is intended:
nor has baptism any regenerating influence in it; a person may be baptized, as Simon Magus was, and yet not born again; and it is so far from having any such virtue, that
a person ought to be born again, before he is admitted to that ordinance: and though submission to it is necessary, in order to a person's entrance into a Gospel church state;
yet it is not necessary to the kingdom of heaven, or to eternal life and salvation: such a mistaken sense of this text, seems to have given the first birth and rise to infant baptism in the African churches; who taking the words in this bad sense, concluded their children must be baptized, or they could not be saved; whereas by "water" is meant, in a figurative and metaphorical sense, the grace of God, as it is elsewhere
John Darby Synopsis
The Lord explains Himself. Two things were necessary-to be born of water, and of the Spirit. Water cleanses. And, spiritually, in his affections, heart, conscience, thoughts, actions, etc., man lives, and in practice is morally purified, through the application, by the power of the Spirit, of the word of God, which judges all things, and works in us livingly new thoughts and affections. This is the water; it is withal the death of the flesh. The true water which cleanses in a christian way came forth from the side of a dead Christ. He came by water and blood, in the power of cleansing and of expiation. He sanctifies the assembly by cleansing it through the washing of water by the word. "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." It is therefore the mighty word of God which, since man must be born again in the principle and source of his moral being, judges, as being death, all that is of the flesh.
Commentary was prepared by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown and published in 1871.
5. of water and of the Spirit--A twofold explanation of the "new birth," so startling to Nicodemus. To a Jewish ecclesiastic, so familiar with the symbolical application of water, in every variety of way and form of expression, this language was fitted to show that the thing intended was no other than a
thorough spiritual purification by the operation of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, element of
water and operation of
the Spirit are brought together in a glorious evangelical prediction of Ezekiel (
Ezekiel 36:25-27 ), which Nicodemus might have been reminded of had such spiritualities not been almost lost in the reigning formalism. Already had the
symbol of water been embodied in an initiatory ordinance, in the baptism of the Jewish expectants of Messiah by the Baptist, not to speak of the baptism of Gentile proselytes before that; and in the Christian Church it was soon to become the great visible door of entrance into "the kingdom of God,"
the reality being the sole work of the Holy Ghost (
Titus 3:5 ).
Dr. J. Vernon McGee Commentaries
http://www.blueletterbible.org/audio...SeriesOrder=26
Chuck Missler Commentaries
http://www.blueletterbible.org/audio...commTopic=John - [1990's]&SeriesOrder=3
Originally Posted by Guisslapp
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