The Jewish nation was a consecrated nation, a covenant people. They were all baptized into Moses in the sea and in the cloud when they left Egypt. God accepted them in Moses, the mediator of their covenant at Mt. Sinai but, at the time Jesus was speaking, they had forgotten their covenant, some were openly living as publicans and sinners, and many others were self-righteous hypocrites. John's ministry, therefore, was repentance and baptism for the remission of sins–a return to God and to a recognition of the repentance and reformation of heart and life. Nicodemus was a Jew, and no Jew could become a follower of the Lord Jesus and enter into the kingdom, until first of all he had experienced this reformation and had been baptized, "born of water," in addition to this there must be the begetting of the spirit, and then in the resurrection, the birth to the spirit nature–"born of the spirit." Only those who experience this complete reformation of heart and mind, and who are "changed" in the resurrection, will ever enter into the kingdom of God.
