To be aware of spiritual things is not necessarily to be identified with them. Something more is demanded of us than that. Nicodemus, observing that something was taking place in his environment which neither human experience nor human reason could account for, knew that this indicated the presence of God. He therefore sought Jesus, assuredly not in emulation, but in wonder and in reverence, for an explanation.
The history of the Jewish race had accustomed it to expect its prophets to do great works in evidence that God was with them. But it had not prepared the people for the exhortation to do more than hearken, repent, obey. It was something new to be told that men must be born again, born of Spirit, and that without this experience the kingdom of heaven could not be entered. For this was what Jesus demanded—not mere acceptance of or submission to the will of God, but complete and radical reidentification. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit," he told Nicodemus.
Fundamentally and inalienably are spiritual things identified with Spirit alone, and men lay hold of them in practical expression in the degree that they put off all belief in material selfhood, and see what it was that Jesus meant when he said to Nicodemus, "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again."
