The phrase “and now is” occurs twice in the Gospel of John but can be easily overlooked. Seeing the Kingdom of God Now (John 3:3) is a matter of spiritual perception. Entering into it, however, can come only through physical resurrection (John 3:5). It is good to be able to see it now, but we will need a new body to see it then, in the fullest sense!
The first occurrence of “and now is” is in John 5:25: “Truly, truly, I say to you, ‘The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and those who hear shall live’.” This verse refers to spiritually ‘dead’ sinners hearing the voice of the Son speaking to their hearts, and in responding to it, come to life!
Three verses later, Jesus says: “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming when all who are their graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth…” (John 8:28) Note the absence of “and now is”: Jesus is no longer referring to spiritually dead people coming to life as they respond to the voice of Jesus, but to physically dead people rising from their graves in the Great Judgement.
One of the other uses by the Lord speaking in this natural/spiritual way is John 11:11, where Jesus states that Lazarus is sleeping but that he is going to wake him up. His disciples respond with: “Lord, if he sleeps, he will recover”. Jesus then states plainly: “Lazarus is dead.”
Jesus uses the “and now is” phrase again in John 4:23, where he refers to the “hour” coming in which worship would no longer take place in this or that location but instead “in spirit and in truth”.
These are the only two instances of “and now is” in the Gospel of John, but the Lord’s binary way of speaking is found in less obvious ways throughout this beloved book. A case in point is the above-stated inability of the Pharisee Nicodemus to get his mind around the difference between being “born of water” — the breaking of the about-to-be mother’s water that precedes the birth of a baby — and being “born again” (NT Greek: “born from above”) spiritually.
In truth, the Gospel of John is a devotional rather than a narrative, and we would do well to treat it as such by not trying to get our minds around it by learning but rather by allowing it to seep into our hearts through prayer, reading through it and meditating on it.