“Unless one is born again”
Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. (John 3:3–8 BSB)
What it sounds like today
'Born again' is now a fixed religious label; the conversation's wordplay is invisible.
The cultural key
The adverb anōthen means both 'again' and 'from above,' and the double meaning is the engine of the scene. Nicodemus hears 'again' and asks the absurd question about re-entering the womb; Jesus means primarily 'from above,' a birth worked by the Spirit, as his restatement shows ('born of water and the Spirit… The wind blows where it wishes'). The pun works in Greek but not in Aramaic, a wink that John has crafted the telling. Staging matters too: Nicodemus comes 'by night,' and in John's light-and-dark scheme that is a spiritual timestamp as much as a clock time.
Recovered meaning
Not self-improvement and not a second try at the same life: a new origin entirely, from above, as unearnable as one's first birth. Nicodemus, the credentialed teacher, is told he must start from zero.