‘Nicodemus answered and said to him, “How can these things be?” '
Nicodemus still does not understand. ‘How can these things be?', he asks. What is clear to many a Christian child is a total mystery to the learned scholar. We must, however, remember that he has long cherished views. To him water is for outward purifying, and his religious agenda is found in seeking to keep God's laws assiduously and totally in order to be true to the covenant with God and achieve eternal life in the future. The thought of the freedom and new life that comes through the Spirit of God is foreign to him. He is baffled.