What you gotta like about this quote is the close proximity of justification and two-kingdom political theology. If water, the Spirit, and justification are what get you into the Kingdom of God, how exactly does that work for accounting? And the author even concedes that the claim is “hard” to accept, which might account for the popularity of that transformational “can do” spirit.
Do not think that you will enter the Kingdom of God unless you are first born anew of water and of the Spirit. That is a strong and hard saying, that we must be born anew. It means that we must come out of the birth of sin to the birth of justification; else we shall never enter the kingdom of heaven. Upon this birth or justification good works must follow.
Of these things the Lord Christ speaks much with Nicodemus, but Nicodemus cannot understand, nor can they be understood unless a man has experience of them and has been born of the Spirit. (Luther’s Exposition of John 3)
Old Life 