New Life in the Spirit!

Monday, April 28, 2025

Acts 4:23-31; Jn 3:1-8

Today’s Gospel highlights the new life in the Spirit as the requirement for entering God’s Kingdom. 

Though a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, Nicodemus believed in Jesus’ heavenly origin, and for him, the signs that Jesus performed confirmed his heavenly identity. Hence, unlike others in his camp, Nicodemus acknowledged who Jesus was and revealed his high regard for him. 

Nicodemus makes use of his nocturnal encounters with the Lord to grow more enlightened about his faith in Jesus. 

Here, we find Jesus offering a corrective to Nicodemus regarding the new life in the Spirit. 

As such, Jesus’ statements, ‘being born from above’ and ‘being born of water and spirit,’ address the taken-for-granted side by which we believe that by virtue of our baptism we will be redeemed.

While it is true that the baptismal waters symbolize the mysterious cleansing activity by God’s Spirit, the responsibility to live the new life in the Spirit lies with us.  

God does not help us with what we can do for ourselves. Hence, the statements of Jesus point to our response to the inward cleansing of the Spirit through our baptism. Therefore, our new life in the Spirit requires that we behave as people born of the Spirit while shedding the life in the flesh, as it symbolizes human weakness, sinfulness, and alienation from God.

Some scholars also believe that the Johannine use of ‘from above’ is often the synoptic variants about ‘becoming like a child to enter the Kingdom.’

For Jesus, we safeguard our baptismal grace when we strive to justify it through our transformed living. Anything less only means that we take our baptism for granted. 

Let us pray that our changed lifestyle becomes a worthy response to the baptismal call of the new life in the Spirit. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar