" Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.' ”
John 3:3What does it really mean to be born again?
We have all heard the term 'born-again' Christian as it became popular during the Jesus movement of the '70's, but it was never really defined. Often it seemed to be used to describe a certain type of Christian -- 'A born again Christian,' as if to differentiate between born again Christians and other types of Christians. Gradually it seems to have lost it's meaning entirely to the point that the rebirth, or regeneration has all but vanished from the church's lexicon.
When Nicodemus came to Jesus he was obviously confused when Jesus said that unless you are born again you cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus explained that when someone is born again they become something that is completely new and completely different:
"Jesus answered, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.' ” - John 3:5-8
The first thing to notice is in verse three. The word for 'see' can be translated 'to perceive' or 'to understand.' What Jesus is saying is that without the rebirth the Kingdom of God is completely incomprehensible. In verse three Jesus isn't even talking about entereing the kingdom. The kingdom isnt something that can enter the un-reborn mind. Paul expressed it this way:
"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." - 1 Corinthians 1:18
To the unregenerate mind the gospel message is nonsense. I remember years ago talking to a man who had gone with his girlfriend to see The Passion of The Christ. I asked him what he thought about it. His response was, "It was OK if you believe all that stuff." Apparently he didn't believe it and it made no impact on him at all.
Paul also states:
"But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God." - 1 Corinthians 2:9-10
This passage has been grossly misused by many, particularly those in the word/faith and the health/wealth movements. It has been interpreted to mean that God has a wonderful plan for your life, to prosper you beyond your wildest dreams. This is a continuous thought from chapter one. Paul is talking about the gospel. The key is verse ten; "God has revealed to us through the spirit." Without the revelation of the Holy Spirit the gospel is nonsense.
In the mindset of Nicodemus' day, the idea was that Messiah would come and the 'kingdom' was going to be the restoration of the Israelite kingdom which all the people would participate in. So Jesus was explaining that the kingdom of God was something that could not be perceived, let alone entered into, with out being born again.
In verse six Jesus makes it apparent that there is a vast difference between the earthly birth and the spiritual birth. Paul explains the new birth as making us a completely new creation:
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." - 2 Corinthians 5:17
Verse eight explains that the wind blows but we cannot see it or know where it came from but can see the results. Unregenerate man can see that a born again individual has become very different but cannot understand what caused the change. The change from simply natural birth to spiritual birth is so radical that it is obvious to others around you but the cause is still a mystery... until they are born again as well.
The next point is a little bit puzzling because Jesus seems to imply that Nicodemus, being a teacher of the law, should have understood this. While the concept of rebirth or regeneration is not stated as such in the Old Testament, the process is explained in both Ezekiel and Jeremiah.
"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules." - Ezekiel 36:26-27
The contrast between a heart of stone and a heart of flesh is that one is inanimate, nonliving, or dead, and a heart of flesh is one that is alive. Spiritually, a person that is not born again is dead. What God is saying here is that he is going to remove the dead heart that cannot respond to God's call and replace it with a heart that is alive and can respond to God's call. He also says that he will put His Spirit in us and that His Spirit will cause us to be obedient. When Peter preached his first sermon on Pentecost it says that the people were cut to the heart and asked what they needed to do. Peter responded:
"And Peter said to them, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.' " - Acts 2:38
This indwelling of the Holy Spirit was foretold in Ezekiel. It was also foretold in Joel which Peter references in Acts 2:17-21. Jeremiah explains that God was going to make a new covenant with Israel in which he would write his law on their hearts. This is accomplished by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
"Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” - Jeremiah 31:31-34
Interestingly, these prophecies weren't always understood to mean the giving of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 19 Paul encountered some believers who had been baptized but had not received the Holy Spirit.
"And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John's baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.
There were about twelve men in all." - Acts 19:1-7
The Old Testament never explicitly calls Him the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is refered to as 'The Spirit of God' or 'My Spirit.' However, any Spirit of God would be certainly a very Holy Spirit. So the giving of the Holy Spirit is not a new idea. It was spoken about in the Old Testament centuries earlier.
WHEN DOES THE REBIRTH OCCUR?
This passage seems to imply that the rebirth and the receiving the Holy Spirit do not occur at the same time. As we have seen from 1 Corinthians 1-2, without the rebirth, the message of the gospel is foolishness. And in John 3, it is not something that the unregenerate man can fathom. Yet these men from Ephesus had embraced the gospel message but had not received the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:7 says:
"The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." (NIV)
Without the rebirth we will reject the gospel. Paul explains in Ephesians that we all were previously in that state.
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," - Ephesians 2:1-6
The word for dead is necros. It literally means 'dead.' Spiritually we were dead. Dead people cannot hear. That means in our deadness we cannot hear the gospel. In order for us to hear the gospel we need to be made alive. Ezekiel describes this in the well known passage about the dry bones in chapter 37. Ezekiel is shown a valley full of dry bones. These were not only dead but they had been dead for a long time. The bones had completely dried up. There was no way they were going to come back to life humanly speaking. But God demonstrated that it was possible with Him and only Him. Paul Washer stated in his sermon entitled 'Regeneration Versus The Idolatry of Decisional Evangelism' that this chapter describes the conversion of men. Just as it is impossible for these bones to live, it is also impossible for sinful man to respond to the gospel call. As unregenerate people we are just as dead as these dry bones. We are completely without hope. The only way we are going to come to Christ is if we are raised to life.
"And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD.” - Ezekiel 37:13-14
Notice in the latter part of these verses that God says he will put his Spirit in us. This is yet another prophecy of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The word 'and' seems to imply that it is after we have been raised to life that he will put his spirit in us. In order for us to respond to the gospel call we have to be made alive. Only once we are made alive are we able to hear the voice of our savior calling. Then once we hear and respond with true repentance we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
WHAT ABOUT FREE WILL?
Interestingly, the Bible never says we have free will. It actually says in Romans 8 that the mind governed by the flesh is death. Jesus said that no man can come to him unless the Father draws him in John 6:44. The word for 'draw' is the same word that was used to describe them pulling in the nets full of fish. It doesn't mean to entice or encourage. It literally means to pull or drag. We have free will in the sense that our will is not controlled by outside forces, but our will is controlled by our nature. Just like a lion will make a free-will choice to kill and eat sheep because it's his nature, we will make a free-will choice to reject the gospel because, in our unregenerate state, that is what our nature will cause us to do. unless... God raises us to life and gives us a new nature that desires to follow God instead of reject him.
But you say, aren't we told to 'choose? Yes we are told to choose life. But the Old Testament history demonstrated that unregenerate man will always make the wrong choice. Unless God removes the dead heart of stone and gives us a living heart of flesh and puts his Spirit in us, we will make the free-will choice to rebel. The very fact we were able to make the choice to follow Christ was because God raised us to life so we could choose to follow him.
CONCLUSION
Years ago I had a friend whose wife died very suddenly. Literally they were walking and she suddenly collapsed -- dead. It was determined that she had died of an aneurysm. The tragic thing was that the aneurysm was in a place that it could have been repaired, IF THEY HAD KNOWN IT WAS THERE.
That is the state of the unsaved world. Just like this woman who was completely unaware that she had a ticking time bomb inside of her, most of humanity is just going along like nothing is wrong not realizing that we all, apart from Jesus, have a ticking time bomb in us that could go off at any time. In the words of Martin Lloyd-Jones, "The gospel has one message for the unrepentant sinner -- JUDGMENT." x
"And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation.' ” - Act 2:40
The message the early apostles preached was one of warning. Judgment was coming. That message has largely been replaced by what God wants to do in your life; 'fill the emptiness,' 'heal your brokenness,' etc. Sin if it is mentioned at all is treated as something rather unfortunate and is rarely defined. Repentence has also largely disappeared from the church's lexicon.
The objection voiced by some is: But if you preach like that people won't come.
The response: True. Those who aren't truly being saved most likely won't stick around. But those who are being saved will be convicted and will be saved.
We must be careful that we aren't preaching a message that would appeal to an unrepentant sinner. Filling emptiness and healing brokenness sounds good to everyone. Preaching such a message will guarantee that our churches will be full of unrepentant sinners. Often these people find themselves in places of leadership. With a church literally around every corner it seems we should be having more of an impact on our culture. Maybe this is why. As one preacher said, "We don't have a lot of churches. We have a lot of pretty brick buildings with steeples and manicured lawns"
We need to get back to preaching the same gospel that the early church preached and not worry about making the message more appealing to the world. The message of the cross is always going to be nonsense to the dying world, but to the ones who are being saved it is the power of God to save. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
