The translation ‘born again’ is incorrect. The Greek text does not contain the term ‘born again’. It is based on the church dogma that humans do not have the spirit of God and that, just as their flesh was born of a woman, their spirit must also be born of the Spirit. Literally translated, Jesus says: ‘Unless someone is born from above’. This is not about a new birth, but about birth in general. Humans must be born from above; they do not need to be born again. This sentence was addressed to Nicodemus, a learned Pharisee whom Jesus refers to in verse 10 as a ‘the teacher of Israel’. So where does the idea that humans must be born again come from? Let us read the text (John 3:3-10):
‘Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born from above he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the spirit.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?’
Jesus is surprised that a scholar like Nicodemus does not understand what he is talking about. His question about whether one must return to his mother's womb to be born again was meant rhetorically. He wanted to say precisely that it is not possible to be born a second time. The idea of rebirth is absurd, and Jesus could not understand how a scholar could not know something that is so obvious throughout the Old Testament. The Church has taken up an absurd idea based on a rhetorical question whose answer was obviously negative. Take a deep breath, pause and reflect. Jesus' astonishment is based on something that is easy to verify. His words were absolutely nothing new, because anyone who was supposed to know the Old Testament should have known this easily. Tell me, where in the Old Testament is rebirth mentioned? I remember my old role model, the professor of theology, master of fidelity to the Word of God, mocking Nicodemus from the pulpit. I sat in the congregation and had to laugh too. But for years I kept asking myself the same question: Where in the Old Testament is rebirth mentioned so clearly that Jesus has to marvel at the ignorance of a learned Pharisee? Since I had attended Bible school, I should have been able to answer such a basic question easily. The answer is simple: rebirth is not mentioned, not even once.
Let us return to the point: we have seen that St Augustine assumed precisely that human beings no longer had a spirit. By linking John 3:3 to this idea, Augustine concluded that human beings were spiritually dead at birth and therefore needed to be reborn. A physical birth and a spiritual birth. We have also seen that according to Genesis 6:3, every human being has the spirit of God, even the wicked. In fact, human beings die without the spirit of God. Incidentally, it is equally easy to prove that human beings also have a spirit, for example here (Zech 12:1):
‘The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. Thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him.​​’

The meaning of the term ‘spirit’

The Old Testament is written almost exclusively in Hebrew, while the New Testament is written entirely in Greek. In both languages, the term spirit (רוּחַ ruach in Hebrew and πνεῦμα pneuma in Greek) is a very vague concept, but their meanings generally overlap. Thus, the Greek translation (LXX) of the Old Testament usually translates ruach (spirit in Hebrew) as pneuma (spirit in Greek). However, depending on the context, ‘spirit’ can have different meanings, as the following (incomplete) list shows:
It suffices to go through these Bible verses and compare them in different translations to become aware of the diversity conveyed by the term ‘spirit’. I will content myself here with citing just one Bible passage as an illustrative example. The list is by no means complete, as this is a word that is frequently used in the Bible.
So how is it that in the New Testament the term ‘spirit’ suddenly becomes a person? In the first centuries of church history, the Spirit of God thus took on a very specific meaning: the Spirit of God is a person of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Why? Because the Spirit repeatedly exhibits the characteristics of a person. One can lie to him (Acts 5:3), tempt him (Acts 5:9), grieve him (Eph 4:30), he guides (Luke 4:1), he teaches (John 16:12), etc. But it's not that simple. Revelation speaks of the seven spirits of God (3:1, etc.). Should I write ‘the seven spirits’ with a capital or small letter now? However, we must not forget that it is not only the Spirit of God who has the characteristics of a person. The wisdom of God also has them. She calls (Prov 8:1), she stands up (Prov 8:2), she has something to say and teaches the right way (Prov 8:6), she possesses counsel and success (Prov 8:14) and she builds her house (Prov 9:1). Job 28 speaks of this in similar terms. I give these examples only for illustration and have no intention of compiling a complete list. If the church hadn’t formatted my mind to Trinity, looking back now I can’t see how I could reduce God to a triune entity. Does God consist of three persons? Only three? I dare to doubt that. In Hebrew, the term Elohim (God) is almost always in the plural, but the verbs are often in the singular. Incidentally, the term ‘Trinity’ is not used anywhere in the Bible, and nowhere in the New Testament is it explained that God is a unity of three persons. Throughout church history, several people have pointed this out, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Why am I saying all this? For whilst the Spirit of God sometimes possesses the attributes of a person, at other times it does not: It is poured out (Isaiah 44:3), one can be filled with it (Eph 5:18), it is a power (Acts 1:18), etc. For years I have wondered how I can be filled with the Holy Spirit. For if it is a person, either I have it or I do not. Let us take the opposite example: the New Testament regularly speaks of possessed people. One can be possessed by a demon (Matthew 15:22), one can be possessed by several demons (Mark 5:9), one can be possessed by a somewhat evil demon or by more evil demons (Luke 11:16), but never is a person possessed by a demon to a lesser or greater degree. How does this same Spirit operate in such a diffuse manner that there are Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant churches? If the Spirit of God is a person, how is it that the right wing of the evangelical movement fights against the left wing, and vice versa? At the time, the answer seemed simple to me. The others do not have the Holy Spirit, or only a little of it. However, I could not resolve the following problem: How can someone have only a quarter or a tenth of a person? How is it that some half-hearted Christians barely reach 12.34 per cent, whilst others are so overflowing with the Spirit of God that even the apostle Paul would be jealous? Could it be that the authors of the New Testament had a more comprehensive concept in mind than just a person when they used the term ‘spirit’?
Of course, the Spirit of God is a supernatural concept: love, faithfulness, loyalty, mercy and so on are all metaphysical concepts, true powers. A stone cannot love; it cannot persevere, and so on.
‘But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter.’ Romans 7:6
I think the following example illustrates the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. Hillel, the most prominent Pharisee of his time, died when Jesus was a teenager. During Hillel's lifetime and even after his death, his most bitter rival was Shammai. Hillel had been president of the Sanhedrin, the high court of Israel, and Shammai—originally vice-president—succeeded him after his death. There were many disputes between them, including one about divorce. However, to illustrate the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law, I will use another dispute as an example: during the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the three major Jewish festivals, Moses had decreed that the entire people should live in huts for a week. These were temporary leaf booths. This festival was intended to commemorate the exodus from Egypt, because when the Hebrews were finally driven out by Pharaoh, they lived in temporary huts. The reason given by Moses was (Leviticus 23:43): ‘So that your generations may know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt.’ When his daughter-in-law gave birth to her child during this festival, Shammai – the strict Pharisee – opened the roof of her room to cover it with branches for fear of violating this law. Shammai required all people to live in huts. He also forbade the booths from being kept from one year to the next. ‘You shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days,’ Moses had commanded the Hebrews for this festival, ‘you shall suffer under your yoke when you are sick,’ Shammai turned it into. Hillel, on the other hand, made reasonable exceptions for children and the sick and had no objection to the materials for a hut being kept from year to year. You see, for Shammai, the law concerning the Feast of Tabernacles was an end in itself. Hillel, on the other hand, understood that the spirit of the law was not to make the sick even sicker, but that a healthy person should remember the liberation from slavery in Egypt and rejoice in it.
This example illustrates the problem with the law: one can violate the spirit of God's law in order to obey its letter.

The spirit in the Old Testament

What all the prophets of the Old Testament have in common, what Nicodemus should have known without thinking, is summarised in the following passage (Zechariah 7:8-12a):
‘Then the word of the Lord came to Zechariah saying, “Thus has the Lord of hosts said, ‘Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.’ But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing. They made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets.​​’
There are many such passages in the Old Testament. This theme was taken up by all the prophets. Here is another example (Amos 5:21–24):
‘I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.​’
And while the law regulated rituals, sacrifices and purification rites, its spirit never had anything other than morality in mind. In a specific context, the law of Moses was intended to express the will, nature and spirit of God. Animal sacrifices and purification laws had an educational purpose. At the time of Jesus, however, there were many religious leaders who had made the law an end in itself. I repeat: the law was never about religion, but always about ethics. The spirit of God is not concerned with musical style, liturgy or religious matters (whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian or otherwise); the spirit of God is concerned with ethics. If your religious convictions lead you to commit acts of terrorism, you have renounced the spirit of God. Alexander Jannaeus, one of the last Hasmoneans to hold the offices of both high priest and king, had eight hundred Pharisees crucified in the very heart of Jerusalem, because they had sought the aid of the Seleucids to overthrow him. (According to Jewish law, these two offices could not be held by the same person: the king had to be a descendant of David, and the high priest a descendant of Aaron). He then had their wives and children slaughtered before their very eyes, whilst he lay, a cup in his hand, surrounded by his concubines. But there were also fanatical Jews (the Sicarii) who in turn massacred their fellow countrymen. Like today’s suicide bombers, these assassins combined brutality with the element of surprise. Their knives earned them a certain reputation on the streets and no doubt enabled unscrupulous leaders to demand ‘protection’ from wealthy targets. As is the case today, their revolutionary charisma attracted young people and the unemployed, as well as religious fanatics; it also served as a cover for thieves and extortionists. Their groups were united solely by the desire to overthrow the ruling junta and usurp its powers. In a nutshell: terrorism was not invented in the twentieth century. Some seemingly anti-jewish texts in the Bible make more sense when viewed in context.

The Spirit in the New Testament

The Apostle Paul put it this way (Galatians 5:22–23):
‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.​​’
The ultimate aim of the law is the fruit of the Spirit. Here is a Bible verse that has troubled me for years (Romans 8:16):
‘The Spirit himself confirms to our spirit that we are children of God.​​’
The translation quoted here (LEB) is based on the idea that, following rebirth, the Spirit of God (a person) confirms to my spirit that I am a child of God. This idea has occupied my mind for years. From a theological perspective, then, there is a kind of supernatural interaction between God and me. But how can one be certain of this? Now, when translated literally, this text has a different meaning (contrary to many French and German Bible translations, most English Bibles correctly translate as follows):
‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.​’
The original meaning of the verb summartureô (συμμαρτῠρέω) is ‘to bear witness together’. It is a verb composed of martureô (to bear witness) and the prefix sun (together), which becomes sum before the letter μ (the equivalent of the letter m in our alphabet). We find this prefix in the Greek word ‘sun-thesis’, meaning a ‘putting things together to form a whole’. See, the magic vanishes into thin air. The German translation Gute Nachricht is revealing. It reads: ‘Thus his Spirit assures us in our innermost being that we are children of God.‘ It translates the Greek term pneuma (Spirit) once with the meaning ‘person’ (his Spirit) and once with the meaning ‘being’ (in our innermost being). Why should the same term have two different meanings in the same sentence? I like the idea that the Spirit is a being. As I said, the term ‘Spirit’ has several meanings, but as a synonym, ‘being’ in this context might help the Christian reader to understand what Paul meant. Thus, our ‘being’, our ‘innermost self’, our ‘spirit’ either confirms that we are children of God (provided we bear the fruits of the Spirit), or it refutes it, for example if we were willing to walk over dead corpses to gain or retain power. In my life, I have met several Christians who doubted their salvation precisely because they did not feel this metaphysical miracle—that the Spirit of God testifies to our spirit that we are children of God. In church jargon, this is called ‘assurance of salvation’. The tragedy is that it is usually very sensitive and extremely honest people—who should have the least cause for concern about their status as children of God—who doubt it the most or lack this ‘assurance of salvation’. For those affected, this is a tragedy, and pastors do not know what to do, for this is not a matter of intelligence with which one could reason with sensitive souls, since it is supposedly a spiritual matter. Paul, however, did not describe a metaphysical process accessible only to particularly devout people. He wanted to assure his readers that this was something that was extremely easy to verify. Indeed (Rom 8:9b):
‘But if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.’
It's so simple that even a child can understand it!

The Book of Life

If you have read the Bible carefully, you may have noticed that the Book of Life, from which people can be blotted out, is mentioned as early as the Old Testament. The first reference to it is found in the book of Exodus, where, following the incident of the golden calf in Exodus 32:32, Moses asked God to blot him out of the Book of Life instead of the idol-worshippers – a request that was not granted. The Book of Life is also mentioned in Psalm 69:28:
‘May they be blotted out of the book of life and may they not be recorded with the righteous.’
This idea also recurs in the New Testament, for example in Revelation 3:5. Have you ever wondered why people can never be written into the Book of Life, but can only be blotted out of it? People do not have to do anything to go to heaven; they have to do something to go to hell!

Salvation (to be saved)

A mission I know well has adopted 1 Timothy 2:4 as its motto:
‘God... desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’
However, in evangelical circles it is understood and interpreted as follows:
‘God wants all people to come to the knowledge of the truth and (thereby) be saved.​’
The order of the verse is reversed. Salvation is interpreted as the result of recognising the truth. First one recognises sin, repents, believes as one ought to (with all that this may entail, depending on the church), and (only) then is one saved. In ecclesiastical circles, faith is seen as a set of requirements, a program (comprising devotional practices and creeds that vary from one movement to another) that must be followed in order to be saved. However, biblically speaking, knowledge of the truth is not a prerequisite for salvation; having the Spirit of God is. Thus there are many passages in the Bible to which 2,000 years of church history have imparted a distinctly ecclesiastical flavour. Here are a few further examples: Paul opens the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans with the following words:
‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.​​’
The Church goes on to say: ‘So there is only damnation for everyone else’. John 3:16-18
‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’
I will go into more detail on this in my book. By way of a brief summary, let us take a closer look at the meaning of three verbs in their original language, Greek:
  • Apollumi – according to KJV, ‘to perish’
  • Krinô – according to KJV, ‘to condemn’
  • Sôzô – according to KJV, ‘to save’
In John 3:16–17, the three verbs imply that human beings are currently neither ‘lost’ nor ‘judged’, but simply ‘living’. Then, surprisingly, the perspective shifts in verse 18, and human beings are – because of their unbelief – ‘already judged’. This sits poorly with the church’s assumption that man is spiritually dead by nature. I was always taught that I was born dead with a black soul and that I must be spiritually reborn through faith, conversion and new birth in order to receive a snow-white heart. In John 3:16–18, however, Jesus reverses this order. Man is not born dead in order to be born again through faith, but he lives in order to be ‘judged’ because of his lack of faith. So that ‘whoever believes in him may not perish’, we read in John 3:16. The verb apollumi used here essentially means ‘to lose one’s life’. According to John 3:16, therefore, humans come into the world ‘alive’, spiritually speaking, for only living people can lose their lives. Let us consider the term sôzô, which theologians often translate as ‘save’ (it also means ‘heal’), but which presupposes that one is alive. I cannot save a dead person; I would have to revive him or her. According to Augustine, even more would be required: since one is spiritually dead, one must receive the breath of life in order to live for the first time. In other words, a new birth, except that neither ‘new’ nor ‘again’ appears in the Greek text. However, since Jesus could speak of nothing other than a new birth, our Bibles add what is obviously missing.
There is much more to all these topics. But as a quick overview, let's turn to the final missing piece: Faith! 
By Chris Zürcher. Page updated on 15 March 2026