Born of the Spirit

Jesus said, "The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." -John 3:8

Like the wind, the role of the Holy Spirit in our salvation can seem mysterious to us.  This is what the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary says about this verse:  The laws which govern the motion of the winds are even yet but partially discovered; but the risings, failings, and change in direction many times in a day, of those gentle breezes here referred to, will probably ever be a mystery to us: So of the operation of the Holy Ghost in the new birth.

In the verses leading up to this one Jesus said, "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.  You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'"  In explaining to the people their need to be born again Jesus uses the wind to explain the role of the Holy Spirit in their new birth.

The Amish harness the wind to draw water from the earth.  This is a perfect analogy of our birth by water (the amniotic fluid in which we are all born into this world) and our spiritual birth through the Holy Spirit--pneuma:  "that which is breathed or blown."  The Holy Spirit breathes life into us--eternal life--the life that our souls were created for.  Having been given earthly life through water, we must be born again by the Spirit.  Furthermore, our bodies are dependent on water for life, but our souls are dependent on the Spirit for eternal life.

I am grateful for the Holy Spirit through whom I have eternal life.