Charles Ellicott Commentary John 3:8

"The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." — John 3:8 (ASV)

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof.—Better (see Note below), the Spirit breathes where He wills, and you hear His voice. These words are an explanation of the spiritual birth, the necessity of which has been asserted in the previous verses. They must have come to Nicodemus, bringing in their sound echoes of the old familiar words, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).

These words would bring to mind thoughts of the human body: cold, lifeless, corpse-like; of the breath of life passing into it; of the beating pulse, the opening eye, the action of nerve, muscle, and limb, as, in obedience to God’s will, matter became the framework of spirit, and man became a living soul.

There are parallel thoughts of the spirit existing in capacity for life and union with God, but crushed beneath the physical life with its imperative demands for support, and the sensible life with its engrossing pleasures and pains, sorrows and joys; of the Spirit of God breathing upon it; and of the dormant power awakening into a new life of the noblest thoughts, hopes, and energies, when a person is born of the Spirit.

And yet the new spiritual birth, like the physical, cannot be explained. We can observe the phenomena; we cannot trace the principle of life. He breathes where He wills, in the wide world of humankind, free as the wind of heaven, bound by no limits of country or of race. The voice is heard speaking to the person himself, and through him to others; there is the evidence of the new birth in the new life. We do not know from where He comes, or where He goes. We do not know what its final issues will be. It is the beginning of a life that is a constant growth, and the highest development here is but the germ of that which shall be hereafter (1 John 3:2).

So is every one that is born of the Spirit.—The sense is, In this manner is every one (born) who is born of the Spirit. The universality is again emphatically asserted.

Individual spiritual life depends upon individual spiritual birth. The baptism of the Spirit is needed for all. Now, indeed, coming as a fire burning in human hearts, consuming the chaff of sin, while He purifies and stores up all that is true and good; now coming as in a moment, and arresting a person in a course of evil, revealing the iniquity of sin, and giving the power to reform; now coming as the gradual dawning of day upon the youthful soul who has never been wholly without it; here in a sermon or a prayer, there in the lessons of childhood; now by the example of a noble life or the lessons of history; again in the study of Scripture or the truths written on the page of nature—the Spirit breathes where He wills. We may not limit His action, but by His action every one must be born again. Compare the instances of what people call gradual conversion and sudden conversion, placed side by side in the same chapter, in Acts 16:14; Acts 16:29 and following.

The rendering of the first clause of this verse by the Spirit breathes for “wind bloweth” of the Authorised Version has met with so little support that it is right to state briefly the grounds on which it rests.