Continuing our series on Encounters with Jesus - this week: Jesus brings life. Having signalled his identity as both Israel’s and the whole world's messiah at the wedding at Cana and in the clearing of the temple, Jesus now signals his identity as the personal messiah to all individuals. In his interaction with Nicodemus, Jesus shows he has come to bring new life to every person, good and bad, righteous and not. All are welcome, everyone needs the new life he brings. The new life, indeed the whole of the Christian life, is the life of the Spirit. We are all are created for it, and cannot fully function without it. It is the life we must receive and continue to live in. It has been achieved for us by Jesus’ death and its healing power, but to enter into it always requires dying to ourselves. But having died, we can then be reborn - reborn into the cleansing, empowering, fulfilling, satisfying, freedom life of the Spirit.