If you want to enter a theme park, you have to do it their way. Any other way and you’re not getting in. It’s their park and they get to decide how someone enters. This is true for God as well. It’s His kingdom and He gets to decide how someone enters. God made this clear in John 3:5 (ESV) where Jesus states, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Thus, entrance into God’s kingdom centers on being born of water and Spirit. But what does that mean? D. A. Carson offers three helpful matters in our interpretation.¹

One Birth

What Jesus said in verse five is a reiteration of what He said in verse three. Look at these two verses side-by-side.

John 3:3
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

John 3:5
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Therefore, to be born again is to be born of water and Spirit. Water and Spirit are thus most likely not two separate births but one and equivalent to being born again. The following point bears this out further.

One Source

Both water and Spirit are governed by the one preposition “of”. The Greek text simply reads, “of water and Spirit” with no articles (no “the”). Consequently, water and Spirit are both connected and understood “as a conceptual unity.”² Thus, water and Spirit is best understood as “a water-spirit source.”³

OT Background

In verse ten, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” Verse ten implies that Nicodemus was supposed to understand this new birth of water and Spirit. But how could Nicodemus have understood? He must have been able to understand what Jesus was saying from the OT Scriptures. Nicodemus would have been able to discern this from Ezekiel 36:25–27.

“²⁵Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. ²⁶I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”

Ezekiel describes life transforming promises of God in these verses. God promised to cleanse people with water and give a new spirit as well as His Spirit. Thus, Nicodemus could have discerned that when Jesus said, “of water and Spirit”, that water pictured cleansing from sin and spirit pictured either the Holy Spirit or the new spirit change God gives. And this water-spirit cleansing and renewal would constitute a new birth whereby one could now enter God’s kingdom.

Conclusion

To be born from above/born-again (3:3) is to be born of “water-and-spirit" (3:5) as promised by God in Ezekiel 36:25–27.⁴ Being born again describes the “cleansing and renewing…role of the Spirit.”⁵ Thus, people, in order to enter God’s kingdom, must be born anew from the sin cleansing and life-giving Spirit. But how does that happen? It happens as God draws people to His Son (John 6:44) and works a trusting faith in the Lord Jesus’ saving work. Salvation is a work of God: the Father gives the Son; the Son sacrifices Himself as an atoning sacrifice; and the Spirit transforms our nature. Entrance into God’s kingdom is a work of God created by Him, accomplished by Jesus, and made a reality by the work of the Holy Spirit.