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Joh_3:6. A more minute antithetic definition of this birth, in order further to elucidate it.
We have not in what follows two originally different classes of persons designated (Hilgenfeld), for the new birth is needed by all (see Joh_3:7; comp. also Weiss, Lehrbegriff, p. 128), but two different and successive epochs of life.
τὸ γεγεννημ .] neuter, though designating persons, to give prominence to the statement as general and categorical. See Winer, p. 167 [E. T. p. 222].
ἐκ τῆς σαρκός ] The σάρξ is that human nature, consisting of body and soul, which is alien and hostile to the divine, influenced morally by impulses springing from the power of sin, whose seat it is, living and operating with the principle of sensible life, the ψυχή . See on Rom_4:1. “What is born of human nature thus sinfully constituted (and, therefore, not in the way of spiritual birth from God), is a being of the same sinfully conditioned nature,[154] without the higher spiritual moral life which springs only from the working of the divine Spirit. Comp. Joh_1:12-13. Destitute of this divine working, man is merely σαρκικός , ψυχικός (1Co_2:14), πεπραμένος ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (Rom_7:14), and, despite his natural moral consciousness and will in the νοῦς , is wholly under the sway of the sinful power that is in the σάρξ (Rom_7:14-25). The σάρξ , as the moral antithesis of the πνεῦμα , stands in the same relation to the human πνεῦμα with the νοῦς , as the prevailingly sinful and morally powerless life of our lower nature does to the higher moral principle of life (Mat_26:41) with the will converted to God; while it stands in the same relation to the divine πνεῦμα , as that which is determinately opposed to God stands to that which determines the new life in obedience to God (Rom_8:1-3). In both relations, σάρξ and πνεῦμα are antitheses to each other, Mat_26:41; Gal_5:17 ff.; accordingly in the unregenerate we have the lucta carnis et MENTIS (Rom_7:14 ff.), in the regenerate we have the lucta carnis et SPIRITUS (Gal_5:17).
ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος ] that which is born of the Spirit, i.e. that whose moral nature and life have proceeded from the operation of the Holy Spirit,[155] is a being of a spiritual nature, free from the dominion of the σάρξ , and entirely filled and governed by a spiritual principle, namely by the Holy Spirit (Rom_8:2 ff.), walking ἐν καινότητι πνεύματος (Rom_7:6).
The general nature of the statement forbids its limitation to the Jews as descendants of Abraham according to the flesh (Kuinoel and others), but they are of course included in the general declaration; comp. Joh_3:7, ὑμᾶς .
In the apodoses the substantives σάρξ and πνεῦμα represent, though with stronger emphasis (comp. Joh_6:63, Joh_11:25, Joh_12:50; 1Jn_4:8; Rom_8:10), the adjectives σαρκικός and πνευματικός , and are to be taken qualitatively.
[154] The sinful constitution of the σάρξ in itself implies the necessity of a being born of the Spirit (vv. 3, 7); comp. 1Jn_2:16. The above exposition cannot therefore be considered as attributing to John a Pauline view which is strange to him. This is in answer to Weiss, according to whom Jesus here merely says, “as the corporeal birth only produces the corporeal sensual part.” Similarly J. Müller on Sin, vol. I. p. 449, II. 382. See on the other hand, Luthardt, v. freien Willen, p. 393.
[155] The ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος , implying the ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος (after ver. 5), and the meaning of which is clear in itself, is not repeated by Jesus, because His aim now is simply to let the contrast between the σάρξ and the πνεῦμα stand out clearly.