Recently, I was reading a passage from the third chapter of John, home of the world’s most familiar verse, and was struck by several verses that reflect God’s sovereignty in the choice of his elect.

Verse 19 says, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

The contrasting verse is verse 21, which says, “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

It seems to me that this is not a case of men seeing the light of Christ and then evaluating how they should respond.  It’s not like they were presented a choice and could go either way.  On the contrary, their response was predetermined by who they were.

Those who love the darkness do so because they are evil doers.  Those who accept Christ do not become lovers of truth as a result of coming into the light; rather, they come into the light because God has awakened them to the truth.

Going back up to verse 8 (and preceding), Jesus compares the Spirit (Gr., pneuma) with wind (also pneuma).  He says that a re-born spirit is the work of the Spirit, and the Spirit is like the wind in that it “blows wherever it pleases.”  The main point is that spiritual rebirth is a very real thing despite the mechanism being unseen.  However, the passage also implies that the Spirit is not only the “mechanism” that does the regeneration, but also the reason why regeneration takes place.

John 3:16 (and 15) is frequently read as if belief is the criteria for being born again, which is in turn the criteria for eternal life.  However, that is not what Jesus said.  He simply said that those who believe will have eternal life.  I contend that it makes more sense in the context of the chapter to think that those who have been born again are those who will believe.  In other words, spiritual rebirth is the criteria for belief, not the other way around.