Interpretation: what it meant then

What it meant to them

Observation sees what is in a passage, and context sees where it stands. Interpretation now asks what it meant to the people it was first written for. John tells us why he wrote his Gospel: "But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:31). To interpret is to look for the meaning the author meant his first readers to grasp.

There are five ways in. We look at words as they are actually used, not only as a dictionary lists them; we follow the grammar and the flow of the sentences; we notice the kind of writing; we ask about the historical setting; and we let other parts of Scripture shed their light. Reading by kind of writing is the work of the third unit, and Scripture explaining Scripture was the subject of Reading with the church. Here we use them together on one conversation in John 3.

The teacher who came at night

Begin with the people and the setting. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and "a leader of the Jews" (John 3:1). He comes to Jesus at night and speaks for others as well as himself: "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher who has come from God" (John 3:2). Jesus calls him "Israel's teacher" (John 3:10). A learned man is speaking with someone he takes for a fellow teacher.

Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time to be born?”

John 3:3-4

Next, the word. Behind the BSB's ‘again’ stands the Greek anōthen. Tap verse 3 in the reader, open the Original tab under Study, and tap the word: its dictionary entry opens. The dictionary gives it three meanings, from above, from the beginning, and again, placing verse 3 under ‘again’, and lists all thirteen verses of the New Testament where it is used. Elsewhere in John it describes "the One who comes from above" (John 3:31), authority "given to you from above" (John 19:11), and a tunic "woven in one piece from top to bottom" (John 19:23). For John the word usually points upward.

Nicodemus heard it as ‘again’, a second birth from his mother. But what Jesus says next points upward: one must be born of water and the Spirit, what is born of the Spirit is spirit, and the Spirit's work is like the wind that blows where it wishes. So many interpreters think John means both senses at once: we must be born again, and that new birth comes from above, from God. Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople at the end of the fourth century, already set the two readings side by side: "The expression, From above, means, according to some, from heaven, according to others, from the beginning" Chrysostom.

That does not mean every sense in a dictionary belongs in every verse. In Luke 1:3 the same word means ‘from the beginning’, and to read ‘from heaven’ into it would make Luke say what he did not say. In John 3 we see both senses because the passage itself shows them: Nicodemus's misunderstanding, the words that follow, and John's own use of the word.

Then the flow of the sentences. Verses 3 and 5 are built alike: "no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again" becomes "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5). The second explains the first. Last, other Scriptures. Jesus' question in verse 10 implies that Israel's teacher should have known these things from the Scriptures. The Cross-refs at verses 5 and 10 lead to Ezekiel 36:25-27, where God promises to sprinkle clean water on his people, give them a new heart, and put his Spirit within them. The doctrine of the new birth, and how the churches have read the ‘water’ of verse 5, are taught in the doctrine course's New birth and the indwelling Spirit.

One meaning, read humbly

The Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches says that the true and full sense of any scripture is ‘not manifold, but one’ ch. 1.9. The Reformers called the sense its author intended the literal sense, and held that from that one meaning many applications follow for us today; application is the subject of the next lesson. Some Catholic and Protestant scholars speak of a fuller sense (sensus plenior): a deeper meaning God placed in a text beyond what its human author saw, made plain by later revelation. Others explain that depth as the one meaning read within the whole of Scripture, or as typology.

Interpreting, we also meet places that do not yield all their meaning. Moses says:

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.

Deuteronomy 29:29

Peter, too, found some things in Paul's letters hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). In such places, hold firmly to what is clear and lightly to what is not. In John 3 what is clear is this: we enter God's kingdom only by being born of God, and that birth is the Spirit's work. Just as we do not know where the wind comes from or where it goes, we do not know all the ways of the Spirit. If you want to learn more of the original languages, start with the Greek course's lesson Using the Original panel.

Try it

Open John 4 on the map. In the map under the Jesus tab, open John and tap chapter 4: it has a ‘One-line summary’ and ‘Notes’. ‘Read John 4’ opens the text. As in chapter 3, someone here takes Jesus' words in another sense.

Read verses 7 to 15, and keep apart what the woman hears and what Jesus says. Find in verses 11 and 15 what she takes the ‘living water’ to be, and in verse 14 how Jesus describes it. Write it simply: ‘v. 11: she thinks of water from the well’, ‘v. 14: a fount springing up within’.

Find John's own explanation through the Cross-refs. Tap verse 10, open Cross-refs, and read John 7:37-39. See how John explains the living water there; then write one line on what the living water meant to the woman that day, and one on what John meant by it. Last, write a one-line summary.

Practice