John 3
The full text of John 3 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Greek. Free to read.
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
2 He came to him by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him."
3 Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can a person be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter his mother's womb a second time and be born!"
5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."
6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 Do not marvel that I said to you, "You must be born from above."
8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
9 Nicodemus answered him, "How can these things be?"
10 Jesus answered him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?"
11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.
12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
13 And no one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
16 For God loved the world in this way: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.
20 For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his works will not be exposed.
21 But whoever does the truth comes to the light, so that it may be revealed that his works have been done in God.
22 After these things Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and there he spent time with them and was baptizing.
23 And John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and people kept coming and being baptized.
24 (For John had not yet been thrown into prison.)
25 Now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew about purification.
26 And they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness — look, he is baptizing, and all are coming to him."
27 John answered, "A person can receive nothing except what is given him from heaven."
28 You yourselves bear me witness that I said, 'I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent before him.'
29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and listens to him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now full.
30 He must increase, but I must decrease.
31 He who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth is earthly and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all.
32 He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony.
33 Whoever has received his testimony has set his seal that God is true.
34 For he whom God sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.
35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Translation notes (24)
- John 3:2a The Greek word nyktos means "by night," which is a recurring theme in John's Gospel. Nicodemus comes to Jesus in darkness here, but in John 19:39, he comes openly to bury Jesus. This progression from night to day illustrates his journey of discipleship.
- John 3:3a Greek ἄνωθεν is deliberately ambiguous: 'from above' (its primary spatial sense — used elsewhere in John for heavenly origin, e.g., 3:31, 19:11) AND 'again / anew' (the temporal sense Nicodemus hears in v.4: 'how can a person be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb a second time?'). Jesus uses the first sense; Nicodemus mishears the second. NIV/KJV use 'born again,' anchoring to Nicodemus's misreading; ESV/NRSV use 'born from above'; NET notes both.
- John 3:3b ἀμὴν ἀμὴν 'truly, truly' — Johannine signature double-amen, found 25 times in this Gospel alone.
- John 3:5a ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος ('of water and Spirit') is contested: (1) Christian baptism + the Spirit (sacramental, common in patristic readings); (2) natural birth (water = amniotic fluid) + Spirit (regeneration — the 'physical then spiritual' contrast continued in v.6); (3) Ezekiel 36:25-27 echo ('I will sprinkle clean water on you... I will put my Spirit within you'), where eschatological cleansing-water and indwelling-Spirit are paired. Reading (3) fits Jesus' rebuke in v.10 ('Are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things?') — Nicodemus should recognize the Ezekiel allusion. TBV preserves 'water and Spirit' literal so all three readings remain available.
- John 3:6a Greek πνεύματος is anarthrous in both occurrences. Translation choice: TBV capitalizes the first (the divine agent: 'born of the Spirit') and leaves the second lowercase (the produced quality: 'is spirit' — i.e., spiritual rather than fleshly). Both-uppercase ('is Spirit') over-claims; both-lowercase ('of the spirit') under-claims. The capitalization gradient mirrors the Greek's contextual play between divine source and resulting nature.
- John 3:7a Greek ὑμᾶς is plural — Jesus shifts from singular 'you' (Nicodemus) at the beginning of the verse to plural 'you' in the quoted statement, widening the audience beyond Nicodemus. English second-person hides the shift.
- John 3:8a Greek πνεῦμα names both 'wind' and 'spirit' — Hebrew רוּחַ likewise. The verse turns on this double meaning. The first πνεῦμα ('blows') = wind; the last πνεῦμα ('born of the Spirit') = the Holy Spirit. The whole analogy works in Greek because one word names both the weather and the divine agent: invisible, audible, sovereign in motion. English needs two words and so loses what the Greek gains.
- John 3:10a Greek ὁ διδάσκαλος (with article) — 'THE teacher of Israel,' not 'a teacher.' Suggests Nicodemus held a recognized role of teaching authority. The article sharpens Jesus' question: the very man whose role is to teach Israel does not recognize his own prophets (the Ezekiel 36 'water and spirit' allusion in v.5).
- John 3:11a First-person plurals: 'we speak of what we know,' 'we testify to what we have seen,' 'our testimony.' Jesus shifts mid-sentence from singular 'I say to you' to plural 'we know / we have seen.' Possibilities: (1) Jesus identifying with the future apostolic witness; (2) the prophetic 'we' that includes God / the Spirit; (3) emphatic singular. NIV/most translations smooth to singular 'I'; TBV preserves the shift.
- John 3:13a A significant block of later manuscripts (A, Θ, Ψ, the Byzantine majority + KJV) add at the verse's end: 'who is in heaven' (ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ). The earliest manuscripts (P66, P75, ℵ, B, L, W, plus Coptic versions) omit. NA28/UBS5 omit.
- John 3:14a Allusion to Numbers 21:8-9: Moses raises a bronze serpent on a pole; Israelites bitten by snakes are healed by looking at it. Greek ὑψόω 'lift up' is a Johannine signature — its double sense ('crucified, raised on the cross' AND 'exalted, glorified') runs through 8:28, 12:32, 12:34. Jesus' lifting up on the cross IS his exaltation; the same act crucifies and glorifies. The typology: as the bronze serpent healed snake-bite by being lifted up, so the Son of Man heals sin by being lifted up.
- John 3:15a Manuscripts split between ἐν αὐτῷ ('in him,' P66, ℵ, A, B, K, NA28) and εἰς αὐτόν ('into him,' D, Θ, some minuscules). The εἰς αὐτόν reading harmonizes with v.16. Either way, the English 'believes in him' covers the meaning. NA28 reads ἐν αὐτῷ.
- John 3:16a Greek οὕτως is an adverb of manner ('in this way / thus / so'), not magnitude. The verse points forward: God's love is shown by what he did — 'he gave his only Son.' KJV's 'For God SO loved the world that he gave...' lets English readers hear 'so' as 'so much' (degree), which is grammatically possible in English but is NOT what οὕτως means in Greek. Modern critical scholarship is unanimous on the manner-sense (NET, NRSV, REB render it; NIV/ESV preserve traditional 'so' for cadence).
- John 3:16b Greek μονογενῆ ('only / unique'). KJV's 'only-begotten' is Latin-mediated drift via Vulgate unigenitus (Latin gignere/genere = 'to beget'); the Greek root is γένος ('kind, species'), not γεννάω ('beget'). 'Only Son' preserves the Greek's emphasis on uniqueness rather than biological begetting.
- John 3:17a Greek κρίνω carries both 'judge' (neutral assessment) and 'condemn' (negative verdict). Most modern translations render 'condemn' here because the contrast with 'be saved' makes the negative pole clear; NET uses 'judge' to preserve the wider sense.
- John 3:18a Greek κέκριται is perfect passive: 'has been (and is now) condemned.' The unbeliever's condemnation is not a future event but a current state. The verb's perfect tense matters: condemnation is the existing reality of unbelief, not a postponed sentence.
- John 3:21a Greek ποιῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ('does the truth') is a Hebraic-Johannine idiom (cf. 1 John 1:6 'if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not do the truth'). Truth is something done, not just believed. NIV's 'lives by the truth' flattens to a metaphor; TBV preserves the Hebrew construction.
- John 3:23a Aenon ('springs') near Salim — exact location uncertain; possibly in the Beth-Shean valley or in Samaria. The detail 'much water there' implies running springs, supporting immersion baptism.
- John 3:25a Manuscripts split: Ἰουδαίου ('a Jew,' singular, NA28) vs Ἰουδαίων ('the Jews,' plural, ℵ*, Θ). Singular is better attested. The discussion is one-on-one between John's disciples and an individual.
- John 3:29a Greek ὁ φίλος τοῦ νυμφίου 'the friend of the bridegroom' = שׁוֹשְׁבִין (shoshbin) of Jewish wedding custom — the trusted attendant who arranged the marriage and presented the bride. John casts himself in this role: he prepared the way, he is not the bridegroom; his joy is in serving, not in being the central figure.
- John 3:31a ἄνωθεν 'from above' — echoes v.3's.
- John 3:33a Greek ἐσφράγισεν ('set his seal') is the legal/commercial idiom for authenticating a document — pressing one's seal into wax to ratify. The believer authenticates God's truthfulness by receiving Jesus' testimony. NIV's 'certified' is the modern equivalent but loses the seal-imagery.
- John 3:34a Greek subject of δίδωσιν ('gives') is unstated and ambiguous. Two readings: (1) God gives the Spirit without measure to the Sent One — most modern translations (NIV: 'God gives the Spirit without limit'); (2) the Sent One gives the Spirit without measure to others — some patristic readings. Reading (1) better fits the immediate context (Jesus' words ARE God's words because Jesus has the Spirit fully). TBV preserves the subject ambiguity with 'he'; footnote surfaces both options.
- John 3:36a Greek ἀπειθῶν (from ἀπειθέω): 'disobey, refuse to be persuaded, refuse to believe.' The verb fuses unbelief and disobedience — refusing to trust the Son is itself an act of disobedience. NIV smooths to 'rejects'; ESV/NASB use 'does not obey'; KJV 'believeth not.' TBV's 'disobeys' captures the act-of-rebellion sense.
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