When Jesus tells the religious leader Nicodemus that he must be “born again” in John 3:1-17, he means that Nicodemus must reject the imperial ideology that sustains his privilege. He must gaze upon the Christ who was crucified by the very empire Nicodemus serves. He must acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit to move outside sanctioned hierarchies of power. To be born again is to reject the ideology of the Empire in order to embrace the boundless love of an uncontrollable God.

The Illegitimate Authority of the Religious Establishment

When Nicodemus comes to Jesus to confess that Jesus must be “a teacher who has come from God” (John 3:1), he comes in the dark of night. No one can hear him say it.

Nicodemus’s confession is dangerous, not because he is a Jew recognizing Jesus as a godly teacher. Such a thing would be completely reasonable. The real scandal of Jesus is not that he is an authoritative teacher, but rather that he is an authoritative teacher outside the religious establishment. If Jesus, who has no formal training and no official status, is a teacher sent by God, then the established religious authorities lose their power. If God works outside of the religious establishment, then the official religious authorities, such as Nicodemus himself, have no real standing. Their official status counts for nothing.

Jesus confirms Nicodemus’s suspicions. He describes the Holy Spirit as being like a wind that blows wherever it chooses (3:8). When the Holy Spirit moves, people can hear it. They can see its effects in the world. They can try to keep up with it. But no one can control the wind. And no one can control the Spirit—most especially not the established religious authorities like Nicodemus.

Seeing Heaven in Our Midst

Jesus tells Nicodemus that only certain people can perceive God at work in the world. Only certain people can recognize the kingdom of Heaven that is already active in our midst. These people are those who are “born again” (3:3). The Greek gennethe anothen can mean either mean “born again” or “born from above.” Elsewhere Jesus describes these people as being “born of the Spirit” (3:6).

The phrase asserts that only those who have had a rebirth in the Spirit can perceive the kingdom of heaven all around them. Only those who have shed the illusions of this world can recognize the kingdom of God unfolding in their midst.

The implication, of course, is that Nicodemus is not one of these people. He can’t even grasp the concept of being “born again.” When Jesus tells him he must be born again, he replies, “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” (3:4). Nicodemus, the establishment religious leader, simply can’t comprehend the possibility of a spiritual awakening.

Imperial Ideology and Heavenly Reality

Jesus replies to Nicodemus that “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (3:6). We can think of this distinction in terms of the “natural” ideology of the Empire and the “born again” reality of the kingdom of Heaven. When we are born into the Empire, we come to think of the Empire’s ideology as completely natural. We don’t realize that we are living within a constructed system of values that support the status quo, preserving the power of the powerful. We believe that Rome is the great bringer of peace, that Caesar is a god, that aristocratic hierarchies are divinely ordained, and so on. We are blind to the possibility that it could be otherwise.

This is especially true of those of us who ourselves have a vested interest in the power structures of the Empire. Those of us for whom the Empire works well are less likely to see through its ideological façade. So it is with Nicodemus, a religious leader invested in the status quo. So also it is with many of us, bearing our various forms of privilege in the Empire of our own time.

To be born again of the Spirit is to awaken to the falsity of imperial ideology. It is to recognize that the Spirit of God moves outside of official structures and hierarchies, infusing the world with the power of resurrection life that withstands all attempts of the Empire to dominate and control it. To be born again is to step outside of our “natural” flesh and to inhabit the world of the Spirit, uncontrolled by the ideology of the Empire.

The Son of Man Lifted Up

But how does one achieve such a spiritual awakening? How can one be born again from above?

Jesus famously tells Nicodemus that one can only receive a spiritual awakening by believing in him. He says,

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish
but may have eternal life. (3:16)

Yet, contrary to popular interpretation, believing in Jesus isn’t simply a cognitive act. It isn’t saying a prayer inviting Jesus into our hearts.

Rather, as Jesus explains to Nicodemus, one must believe in Christ lifted up on the cross:

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14–15).

Here Jesus draws a connection between his own crucifixion and an Old Testament story about Moses lifting up a serpent in the wilderness, found in Numbers 21:4-9. In that story, Moses and the Israelites have been wandering in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt, eating manna and quail provided by God. Yet the people have begun to grumble against Moses and against God. God responds by sending poisonous snakes, which kill many people.

When the people cry to God to save them, God instructs Moses to fashion a serpent out of bronze and lift it up on a pole. After that, the story tells us, “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live” (Numbers 21:14). In order for them to be saved, God requires the people to gaze upon a symbol of the very problem that threatens them. Healing resides in conscious awareness of the threat.

Becoming a Born Again Christian

According to Jesus’s words in John 3:14-15, the crucifixion of Christ serves the same function. In order to receive eternal life—in order to be saved from the powers of death—one must gaze upon the crucifixion of an innocent man. To be saved from death—to receive life—one must have conscious awareness of the way the Empire wields death against the innocent. Only in that way can we recognize that the ideology of the Empire is unnatural. Only in that way can we recognize the peaceful pretensions of the Empire as false. Only in that way can we recognize that the power of the Empire is not the power of abundant life but the power of state-sanctioned death. Only in that way can we imagine that another way is indeed possible.

Only when we free ourselves of the false ideologies of the Empire can we be born again from above. Only then can we perceive the power of God working outside the boundaries of sanctioned hierarchies. Only then can we perceive the Holy Spirit invigorating the world with new life. Only when we realize the illusory nature of imperial power can we begin to perceive the true power of the God of Love, who rushes into the world like a mighty wind, renewing the face of the earth.

For us, to gaze upon the crucified Christ means to recognize and reject the particular forms of violence that undergird the prosperity of our own Empire. It is to acknowledge the genocide of native peoples that accompanied the founding of America. It is to face the facts of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the inhuman exploitation of life and labor from which our wealth has been extracted. It is to bear witness to the innocent men, women, and children who died on lynching trees across the American South, perceived as a threat to white privilege.

To gaze upon the crucified Christ is to face the addiction to violence that pervades our national consciousness. It is to see his face among those gunned down in Newtown and Columbine and Parkland and Houston. It is to say his name along with those unarmed innocents killed by officers sworn to serve and protect. It is to recognize his lifeless body in the rubble of drone strikes that protect our national interests abroad.

Being born again from above means acknowledging and repenting of our complicity in acts of violence perpetrated in our name. It means exposing the powers of death that preserve our way of life. It means turning our backs on the politics of fear and anxiety that execute innocents in order to preserve the peace.

Only then can we perceive the power of resurrection. Only then can we be born again in the Spirit.