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The Unpredictable, Uncontrollable Spirit
One intriguing tidbit in John 3 that won’t make this weekend’s message are these words from Jesus: “You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 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 3:7-8 (NIV)]
We have here a play on words … for the Greek word pneuma can mean in the New Testament context “Spirit,” “spirit,” or “wind.” How it gets translated depends on the context and in this section Jesus compares the work of the Holy Pneuma with the physical pneuma. For the ancients, winds were a matter of mystery. Today, we may better understand the meteorology of wind blowing from high pressure to low pressure areas. But there remains elements of mystery … for example, it isn’t completely clear to me why the area in front of Sacred Heart hospital is almost always windy (and cold!).
Jesus is using a comparison to paint a picture of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. The new birth of spiritual life in Christ is not of understandable, earthly origin. It is not ultimately about family of origin or social factors or a particular church ministry … however influential such forces are. It is about God doing a powerful (and I would call it, miraculous) work in the life of a person so that they can receive Christ, believe in him, confess him, and follow him.
Jesus may also be hinting at what Lutherans embrace as one of most important Biblical paradoxes: that God doesn’t force himself on people (we can reject the work of the Holy Spirit) and yet we can’t believe in Jesus without the Spirit giving us the gift of faith (“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– ” [Ephes. 2:8 (NIV)]) All of which is to say that if we are believers all the credit goes to God but if we aren’t, all the blame falls on us. There is mystery in all this as to why the Spirit breaks through resistance in one person and connects them to Jesus and why others continue to live apart from God. As Jesus puts it, “… the wind blows wherever it pleases.”
The implications of this for our own walk with Jesus and our desire to influence others are significant. We won’t always know in what circumstances that the Spirit is going to blow a fresh wind into our lives. But we continue to go to his Word, participate in worship, read Christian authors, get away for solitude and prayer, etc., trusting that the Spirit will work when and how he pleases to give us new and deeper experiences of life in Jesus. Further, we don’t give up on our efforts to influence others for Jesus despite weeks or even years of resistance. For we don’t have a full grasp on what God is up to or when a spiritual breakthrough will occur. Finally, we let God know how much we’re relying on him as we pray regularly that the unpredictable, uncontrollable Spirit would blow powerfully in and through us.
Pastor Mark
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