What Does John 1:13 Mean?
Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.THE KEY
This birth begins beyond inherited bloodline and human desire: its source is God.
THE MEANING
Your birth from God does not come from family lineage, bodily desire, or another person’s intention. The verse locates its source in God, beyond what human beings can produce or pass down.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that life from God can be secured by ancestry or generated by human desire.
THE ROOT
ἐγεννήθησαν
egennēthēsan
GROWS FROM
γενν- (γεννάω)
To beget, bring forth, or give birth.
The verse’s “were born” is passive: those named do not beget themselves; they come from a source. After excluding bloodline and human desire, the verse names that source as God.
ALSO GROWS
anagennáō: Beget anew; cause to be born again.
ἀναγεννάω
The phrase “born again” in 1 Peter 1:23 uses this compound of the same birth verb and describes birth from an incorruptible source.
génnēsis: Birth; the act of being born.
γέννησις
This noun makes explicit the birth event carried by the verb, showing that the verse speaks about origin, not a status someone earns.
THE PATTERN
Life that comes from God has its source in God’s begetting, beyond human lineage or self-determination.
You have looked away from the Rock who bore you, and you have forgotten the God who labored you.By his own will he bore us forth through the word of truth, so that we might be a kind of firstfruit of his created things.Having been birthed again, not from seed that can be ruined but from what cannot be ruined, through the word of God, living and remaining for the ages.THE THREAD
What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of breath is breath.The same birth verb appears in both verses, and John 3:6 makes the source distinction plain: flesh gives rise to flesh, while what is born of the Spirit belongs to the Spirit. It opens “of God” as the source of this birth, beyond ancestry or human intention.
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