John 6:45

6:45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ ¹  Everyone who hears and learns from the Father ²  comes to me.

John 6:65

6:65 So Jesus added, ³  “Because of this I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has allowed him to come.” ⁴ 

John 3:3-7

3:3 Jesus replied, ⁵  “I tell you the solemn truth, ⁶  unless a person is born from above, ⁷  he cannot see the kingdom of God.” ⁸  3:4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time, can he?” ⁹ 

3:5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, ¹⁰  unless a person is born of water and spirit, ¹¹  he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 3:6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, ¹²  and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 3:7 Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all ¹³  be born from above.’ ¹⁴ 

Matthew 11:25-27

Jesus’ Invitation

11:25 At that time Jesus said, ¹⁵  “I praise ¹⁶  you, Father, Lord ¹⁷  of heaven and earth, because ¹⁸  you have hidden these things from the wise ¹⁹  and intelligent, and revealed them to little children. 11:26 Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will. ²⁰  11:27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father. ²¹  No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son decides ²²  to reveal him.

Matthew 16:17

16:17 And Jesus answered him, ²³  “You are blessed, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood ²⁴  did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven!

Ephesians 2:4-10

2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! ²⁵  – 2:6 and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 2:7 to demonstrate in the coming ages ²⁶  the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward ²⁷  us in Christ Jesus. 2:8 For by grace you are saved ²⁸  through faith, ²⁹  and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9 it is not from ³⁰  works, so that no one can boast. ³¹  2:10 For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them. ³² 

Philippians 1:29

1:29 For it has been granted to you ³³  not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him,

Colossians 2:12

2:12 Having been buried with him in baptism, you also have been raised with him through your ³⁴  faith in the power ³⁵  of God who raised him from the dead.

Titus 3:3-5

3:3 For we too were once foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to various passions and desires, spending our lives in evil and envy, hateful and hating one another. 3:4 ³⁶  But “when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 3:5 he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit,

[6:45]  ¹ sn A quotation from Isa 54:13.

[6:45]  ² tn Or “listens to the Father and learns.”

[6:65]  ³ tn Grk “And he said”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[6:65]  ⁴ tn Grk “unless it has been permitted to him by the Father.”

[3:3]  ⁵ tn Grk “answered and said to him.”

[3:3]  ⁶ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[3:3]  ⁷ tn The word ἄνωθεν (anwqen) has a double meaning, either “again” (in which case it is synonymous with παλίν [palin]) or “from above” (BDAG 92 s.v. ἄνωθεν). This is a favorite technique of the author of the Fourth Gospel, and it is lost in almost all translations at this point. John uses the word 5 times, in 3:3, 7; 3:31; 19:11 and 23. In the latter 3 cases the context makes clear that it means “from above.” Here (3:3, 7) it could mean either, but the primary meaning intended by Jesus is “from above.” Nicodemus apparently understood it the other way, which explains his reply, “How can a man be born when he is old? He can’t enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?” The author uses the technique of the “misunderstood question” often to bring out a particularly important point: Jesus says something which is misunderstood by the disciples or (as here) someone else, which then gives Jesus the opportunity to explain more fully and in more detail what he really meant.

[3:3]  ⁸ sn What does Jesus’ statement about not being able to see the kingdom of God mean within the framework of John’s Gospel? John uses the word kingdom (βασιλεία, basileia) only 5 times (3:3, 5; 18:36 [3x]). Only here is it qualified with the phrase of God. The fact that John does not stress the concept of the kingdom of God does not mean it is absent from his theology, however. Remember the messianic implications found in John 2, both the wedding and miracle at Cana and the cleansing of the temple. For Nicodemus, the term must surely have brought to mind the messianic kingdom which Messiah was supposed to bring. But Nicodemus had missed precisely this point about who Jesus was. It was the Messiah himself with whom Nicodemus was speaking. Whatever Nicodemus understood, it is clear that the point is this: He misunderstood Jesus’ words. He over-literalized them, and thought Jesus was talking about repeated physical birth, when he was in fact referring to new spiritual birth.

[3:4]  ⁷ tn The grammatical structure of the question in Greek presupposes a negative reply.

[3:5]  ⁹ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[3:5]  ¹⁰ tn Or “born of water and wind” (the same Greek word, πνεύματος [pneumatos], may be translated either “spirit/Spirit” or “wind”).

[3:6]  ¹¹ sn What is born of the flesh is flesh, i.e., what is born of physical heritage is physical. (It is interesting to compare this terminology with that of the dialogue in John 4, especially 4:23, 24.) For John the “flesh” (σάρξ, sarx) emphasizes merely the weakness and mortality of the creature – a neutral term, not necessarily sinful as in Paul. This is confirmed by the reference in John 1:14 to the Logos becoming “flesh.” The author avoids associating sinfulness with the incarnate Christ.

[3:7]  ¹³ tn “All” has been supplied to indicate the plural pronoun in the Greek text.

[3:7]  ¹⁴ tn Or “born again.” The same Greek word with the same double meaning occurs in v. 3.

[11:25]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “At that time, answering, Jesus said.” This construction is somewhat redundant in English and has been simplified in the translation.

[11:25]  ¹⁶ tn Or “thank.”

[11:25]  ¹⁷ sn The title Lord is an important name for God, showing his sovereignty, but it is interesting that it comes next to a reference to the Father, a term indicative of God’s care. The two concepts are often related in the NT; see Eph 1:3-6.

[11:25]  ¹⁸ tn Or “that.”

[11:25]  ¹⁹ sn See 1 Cor 1:26-31.

[11:26]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “for (to do) thus was well-pleasing before you,” BDAG 325 s.v. ἔμπροσθεν 1.b.δ; speaking of something taking place “before” God is a reverential way of avoiding direct connection of the action to him.

[11:27]  ¹⁹ sn This verse has been noted for its conceptual similarity to teaching in John’s Gospel (10:15; 17:2). The authority of the Son and the Father are totally intertwined.

[11:27]  ²⁰ tn Or “wishes”; or “intends”; or “plans” (cf. BDAG 182 s.v. βούλομαι 2.b). Here it is the Son who has sovereignty.

[16:17]  ²¹ tn Grk “answering, Jesus said to him.” The participle ἀποκριθείς (apokriqeis) is redundant, but the syntax of this phrase has been modified for clarity.

[16:17]  ²² tn The expression “flesh and blood” could refer to “any human being” (so TEV, NLT; cf. NIV “man”), but it could also refer to Peter himself (i.e., his own intuition; cf. CEV “You didn’t discover this on your own”). Because of the ambiguity of the referent, the phrase “flesh and blood” has been retained in the translation.

[2:5]  ²³ tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).

[2:7]  ²⁵ tn Or possibly “to the Aeons who are about to come.”

[2:7]  ²⁶ tn Or “upon.”

[2:8]  ²⁷ tn See note on the same expression in v. 5.

[2:8]  ²⁸ tc The feminine article is found before πίστεως (pistews, “faith”) in the Byzantine text as well as in A Ψ 1881 pc. Perhaps for some scribes the article was intended to imply creedal fidelity as a necessary condition of salvation (“you are saved through the faith”), although elsewhere in the corpus Paulinum the phrase διὰ τῆς πίστεως (dia th" pistew") is used for the act of believing rather than the content of faith (cf. Rom 3:30, 31; Gal 3:14; Eph 3:17; Col 2:12). On the other side, strong representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts (א B D* F G P 0278 6 33 1739 al bo) lack the article. Hence, both text-critically and exegetically, the meaning of the text here is most likely “saved through faith” as opposed to “saved through the faith.” Regarding the textual problem, the lack of the article is the preferred reading.

[2:9]  ²⁹ tn Or “not as a result of.”

[2:9]  ³⁰ tn Grk “lest anyone should boast.”

[2:10]  ³¹ tn Grk “so that we might walk in them” (or “by them”).

[1:29]  ³³ tn Grk “For that which is on behalf of Christ has been granted to you – namely, not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him.” The infinitive phrases are epexegetical to the subject, τὸ ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ (to Juper Cristou), which has the force of “the on-behalf-of-Christ thing,” or “the thing on behalf of Christ.” To translate this in English requires a different idiom.

[2:12]  ³⁵ tn The article with the genitive modifier τῆς πίστεως (th" pistew") is functioning as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[2:12]  ³⁶ tn The genitive τῆς ἐνεργείας (th" energeia") has been translated as an objective genitive, “faith in the power.”

[3:4]  ³⁷ tn Verses 4-7 are set as poetry in NA²⁶/NA²⁷. These verses probably constitute the referent of the expression “this saying” in v. 8.