You Must Be Born Again

Be born again. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, rabbi, you know that you are the teacher come from God, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? 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 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. Nicodemus said to him, how can these things be? Jesus answered him, are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who has descended from heaven, the son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the son of man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him might have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Let's pray before we get into God's word together. Heavenly father, we pray this morning that by your spirit, you might give us the eyes of faith so that we might behold wonderful things in your word.

We pray that you might incline our hearts towards you, that we might see your son Jesus lifted up and glorified in our own hearts and lives. And it's in his name we pray. Amen. Well, without a doubt, the single most important question that you can ask about yourself, about your life is, have I been born again? That is a question that is infinitely more important than the question of who you marry or what career path you follow or how much money you make in life.

Unless you are born again, you will not get into heaven. You will not experience salvation. You will not experience forgiveness of sins. In John 3, that we just read, Jesus says to a man called Nicodemus, not once but twice, unless a person is born again, they cannot enter or even see the kingdom of God. And so this question is deeply important.

Have you been born again? We're going to attempt to answer that question really this morning by asking three other questions. What does it mean to be born again? Where does this new birth come from? And how is it brought into effect?

The bulk of John 3 is based around a conversation that a guy called Nicodemus has with Jesus. Notice that Nicodemus is called a man of the Pharisees and a ruler of the Jews. He's a religious guy. He's a guy who has devoted much of his life to studying the scriptures and following the rules. He's a guy who had a lot of knowledge and a lot of power.

He's a guy who people would have looked up to as a community leader, one of the good guys. And he comes to Jesus and he says, rabbi, which means teacher, we know that you are a teacher come from God for no one can do these signs that Jesus had been doing, turning water into wine and so on. No one can do these signs unless God is with him. This opening line kind of hints at the fact that Nicodemus has some idea, some insight into who Jesus is, but he wants to know more. Essentially, the question underneath his opening line is, who are you, Jesus?

Who are you? And so the response that Jesus gives is a bit surprising. He says to Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. What has that got to do with Nicodemus' question about who Jesus is? Really, it's a not so subtle dig.

Nicodemus has come to Jesus claiming to be able to see something of who Jesus is, but Jesus says, no, you can't see. No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. Before we get to that question of what it means to be born again, we need to see quickly the question of what the kingdom of God is. And there's a lot that could be said about what the kingdom of God is, but basically the kingdom of God essentially refers to the rule and the reign of God.

And to be in the kingdom of God then is to be someone who recognises and submits to God's rule and reign in your life. So for Nicodemus, to be in the kingdom of God, to see the kingdom of God would mean the ability to see that Christ is the king of that kingdom, Christ rules over this earth whether we like it or not, but only those who have been born again, John says, are those who gladly see that Christ is king and submit to his rule over their lives. So that brings us to the question of what does it mean to be born again? There's a couple of hints in the passage itself and we'll go elsewhere in the Bible to kind of really flesh out an answer to this question. We'll do a bit of theology this morning.

The first hint though is that that word again has something of a double meaning. It could also mean to be born from above, which really means that being born again is something supernatural, something which God makes to happen from above if you like by the work of his spirit. The second clue is found in verse 5 if you've got your Bibles open, which is a parallel to verse 3. To be born again is to be born of water and the spirit.

Water and spirit. To be born again is to be born of water and spirit. Now water and spirit, does that mean the waters of physical birth first and then later the spirit causes our second birth? Is it talking about baptism?

You must be baptised and so therefore receive the Holy Spirit, or is it something else? I want to show you that it's language that refers back to the Old Testament. In particular, a prophecy in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 36, where water and spirit are kind of used to describe different aspects of one singular event. So Ezekiel 36:25-27, God is promising that a time will come when he will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you, 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. See how there's two things happening in the one event? The first is the idea of being cleansed or washed. And the second is renewal, receiving a new heart, a new spirit, God's spirit, and a heart that wants to obey God and walk with him. Washing and renewal.

You've got those two ideas there. Now look with me at some other passages of the Bible, or another one in particular, Titus 3:4-6, which also puts these same ideas together, washing and renewal. It says, when the goodness and loving kindness of God our saviour appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our saviour. Notice there again how washing and renewal are placed side by side referring to the one single event. So to be born again is to be born of water and spirit, and it is washing and renewal.

And then I want you to notice too that language of regeneration. Regeneration means something very similar to being born again. And I want to show you something really cool. Stick with me. I want to show you that the language of regeneration is used to describe something that doesn't just happen to individual people, but it's something that God is gonna do for the whole world, the whole cosmos, the whole creation.

Look with me at Matthew 19:28. Jesus said to them, at the renewal, that is his disciples he's talking to, at the renewal or the regeneration, it's that same word as Titus 3. At the renewal of all things, when the son of man sits on his glorious throne, everyone who has left brother and sister and father and mother will receive a hundred times what they have given up to follow me. Jesus is talking about a day that is coming when all things will be renewed, regenerated, made new. That day is in the future, but that work is something that has already started in the hearts and lives of someone who's been born again.

Hopefully, this diagram can help to illustrate that. The regeneration of sinners is the start of what God is gonna do for the whole creation. If you are born again, regenerated, you are the first fruits, the Bible says, of God's new creation. What's happened in you is something that is gonna last into eternity. One more thing before we bring it all together.

Notice Christ there in the middle. None of this is possible without the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Actually, to be born again is to be given the resurrection life of Jesus. Ephesians 2:4 tells us that God has made us alive together with Christ and first Peter 1:3 tells us that God has caused us to be born again into a living hope. How has he done that?

Through the resurrection of Christ Jesus. To be born again then is to be given new life. It's to share in the eternal resurrection life of Jesus Christ. Is that cool? That is cool.

It's quite a lengthy explanation, but what I've hoped to show is that the Bible speaks about being born again in a variety of ways. What does it mean to be born again? Well, it means to be washed, forgiven, cleansed from sin. It also means to be made a new creation with a new heart, to be regenerated. And it means to be made alive, to be given the eternal resurrection life of Jesus Christ.

J. C. Ryle, who was an Anglican bishop in the eighteen hundreds, written a lot of really wonderful devotional sort of literature. He puts it like this. He says, the new birth is a thorough change of heart, will, and character.

It is a resurrection. It is a new creation. It is a passing from death to life. It is the implanting in our dead hearts of a new principle from above. It is the calling into existence of a new creature with a new nature, new habits of life, new tastes, new desires, new appetites, new judgements, new opinions, new hopes, and new fears.

All this and nothing less than this is implied when our Lord declares that we all need a new birth. You must be born again, Jesus says. And this is what he's referring to. It's interesting in the passage that Nicodemus' response was basically one of confusion. How was it even possible to be born again, he says.

Can someone reenter their mother's womb? Ludicrous really, but it shows that he just didn't quite get it. And look, maybe that's you. Maybe this stuff is just kind of weird to you like a foreign language. But wherever you're at this morning, can I encourage you that the proper response to this statement of Jesus is to ask yourself the question, have I been born again?

Have you been born again? How can you tell? Well, J. C. Ryle is really helpful. He gives us almost like a series of test questions. If we would go back to that quote of his, notice all that new stuff that he talks about, new creature, new nature, new habits, new taste, new desires, new will, new opinions, new habits, and so on.

And so the test goes, do you have new desires? In the past, perhaps you really had no desire for spiritual things, no real desire to know God or his word. But now that's changed. You can genuinely say the words of Psalm 42, as the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you, O God.

Or the words of Psalm 119, how I love your law, your word, O God. It's my meditation all the day. Of course, none of us can say this perfectly all the time, but is there something of that new desire for God in your life? Even if it's just a small beginning. Do you have a new will? That is have the things that you most want to do changed?

In the past, perhaps the things that you most wanted to do were contrary to God and his will and his ways. Your will was basically hostile to God, but now that's changed. You find in yourself a desire to obey God, to live the kind of life that he's called you to live, a life of godliness and holiness and obedience to him. Of course, you don't always get it right, but that's what you want. You wanna see that fruit of the spirit born out in your life.

Do you have a new will? Do you have new appetites or opinions? Maybe you used to find sinful stuff really enticing. Perhaps you used to really enjoy certain kinds of movies or music or conversations even, but now that's changed. You find those same kinds of music, movies somehow distasteful and dishonouring to God.

You're not interested anymore. If a conversation leans towards dirty jokes or gossip, then you want out. You've got a new appetite for more wholesome, godly, edifying sort of things. Do you have new hopes and fears? Perhaps in the past, you put your hope in the things of this world, money or relational security or success or power or influence or personal happiness.

You just deeply feared losing any of those things. But now your hope is firmly fixed in the things that are above. Your hope is found in Jesus, in his resurrection, in eternal life, a future that can never be snatched away from you. And that has a way of putting your hopes and fears in perspective as well.

All these questions are by no means an exhaustive test, and of course, we all answer them imperfectly. But if you find in yourself even the smallest beginnings of that new desire, new will, new appetites, new hopes, new fears, then be encouraged. You can know that what's taken place in your life is nothing less than a powerful and sovereign work of God. That's what Jesus goes on to explain next. Where does the new birth come from?

This is the second question he deals with. And basically, his answer to that question is that the new birth blows in on the wind. In verse 8, he says, 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. There's an interesting play on words here where the word for wind and the word for spirit in Greek are the same word, pneuma.

So when Jesus says that the wind blows where it wills, really he's saying that the spirit of God moves wherever he wills, granting new birth to whoever he wills. Two things about the wind, it's mysterious and it's powerful. It's mysterious because you really don't know where the wind comes from and where it goes. And it's the same with the new birth. We don't really know the mind of God when it comes to the work of his spirit in causing people to be born again.

Why is it that you can have twin brothers growing up in the same Christian home who both go to church every Sunday, who both hear the same gospel every single week, one of them grows up to believe and one doesn't? Where does that come from? It's because God's spirit has blown where God wills. I wonder, have you ever asked the question, why me? Why has God chosen me to put my trust in Jesus, to call me one of his?

None of us could really say that it's because I'm somehow smarter or better or wiser than the people around me. Absolutely not. It's because God's spirit, like the wind, has moved where he wills. There is something mysterious about the wind. There's also something powerful about the wind.

Wind is powerful to make waves and to rip trees out of the ground and knock down houses and blow roofs off. We've seen something of that in the past fortnight. There are some winds that you can't stand against. And so it is with the spirit of God when he gives new birth, something irresistible and powerful happens at that moment. Again, I wonder if you know something of that to be true in your own life.

When you look back at how it is that you became a Christian, how it is that you were born again, you realise it wasn't really your own doing, of course, but it was God working all along in a way that you couldn't really resist even if you wanted to. For no other reason than the fact that God chose you, you found yourself being drawn to him, drawn to Jesus, drawn to the message of the cross, and perhaps in a dramatic way on a particular occasion that's really memorable or more slowly over time, you found yourself again irresistibly coming to a point of putting your faith in Jesus. Friends, whether it's possible to pinpoint the moment of new birth or not, the fact that you found yourself irresistibly drawn to believing in Jesus is evidence of the new birth in your life, a new birth that is not your own doing, but the mysterious and powerful work of God, which of course is a reality that's deeply humbling. The reality that left to my own devices, I would still be spiritually dead, unborn.

It robs me of being able to take any credit whatsoever for my salvation or even my faith. I've got no reason to boast or brag or feel as though I'm better than anyone else because the change that's taken place within is not a change that has come from within, but it's a change that has blown in on the wind. The spirit of God has blown new life into dead, dry, old bones. That's humbling and it's also reassuring because if it's God who's begun this new work in you, then it's a safe work. It's a secure work.

It's a work that God is gonna bring to completion in your life. If you've been born again, then you've been born into eternal life, a life that goes beyond the grave and into eternity. Your new birth is secure. So to be born again, that's why we've seen that it's to be made new, to receive new spiritual life, given the ability to trust in Jesus as saviour and lord. The new birth is something that comes from the spirit of God, blows in like the wind, comes from outside, is mysterious and powerful.

But that still leaves the question of exactly how the new birth happens. How does a person get born again? At a kind of deep subconscious level, it's a mysterious powerful work of God. But what actually happens at the conscious level, the level of human intellect and decision?

Does anything happen at all? There's a whole bunch of questions really, which I suppose you could say get summed up by Nicodemus in verse 9. He says, how can these things be? How does the new birth happen? Again, Jesus answers slightly cryptic.

He essentially rebukes Nicodemus for not understanding what he's talking about. That's because really Nicodemus ought to have understood what Jesus was talking about when he said born of water and spirit, that connection back to places like Ezekiel 36. Nicodemus would have known the Old Testament like the back of his hand, and Jesus essentially says that you should be able to put the pieces together. But he couldn't because at heart, he couldn't truly see the significance of who Jesus was. So he came to him saying, who are you?

Jesus goes on to say in verses 13 and 14 that he is the one who is descended from his home in heaven, the one who must be lifted up just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. There's a bit going on there in Jesus' answer. When he says that he's descended from heaven and that he's the son of man, basically, he's making a claim that he is divine and that he is the person who's gonna usher in the kingdom of God. How is he gonna do that? Well, he must be lifted up like Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness.

That's a story in Numbers 21 in the Old Testament where God had rescued his people from slavery in Egypt, and he was bringing them into the promised land and providing for all of their needs, but they just kept complaining and grumbling. They didn't want to be there. They said to Moses again and again, take us back to Egypt. We should have died in Egypt. As a judgement for their ungratefulness and all their complaining, God sent poisonous snakes into their camp.

The snakes began to bite them and some of them were dying. They came to Moses and confessed that they'd done wrong, and so God told Moses to make this bronze snake and stick it on a pole and lift it up so that everyone could see it, and then the people who had been bitten by the snakes and dying, if they would only just point their eyes to the snake on the pole, they would be healed and live. I guess you see where this is going. Jesus is saying that just like the snake in the wilderness granted physical healing and life, he is the one who brings spiritual healing and eternal spiritual life, new birth. And he achieved those things by being lifted up.

Lifted up on a cross where he took the curse and the punishment for the sin that we deserve. And later after he rose again, he was lifted up again into heaven where he now rules the world. All of which is to say that the new birth is made possible, it's unlocked if you like by the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Through his death, he brought about forgiveness and cleansing from sin, which is applied by his spirit to everyone who believes in him. Through his resurrection, he defeated death and he shares his new resurrection life with everyone who believes in him.

That new life, new heart, new spirit, new desires, new will, new appetite is granted as a gift by the Holy Spirit to everyone who believes in Jesus. You see the connection there between belief and new birth? Here's the key takeaway, I guess. The new birth is something that ordinarily happens when someone hears the message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and believes in him.

Yes, it's mysterious because a lot of people hear that message and they aren't born again. But through the proclamation of that message, through the preaching of the gospel, God calls some of the people who hear that message out of death and into spiritual life. The good news gets in, something awakens inside of them, and they are enabled to believe.

Again, I wonder if that's true for you. Are you like so many others who perhaps grew up in church, heard the gospel Sunday after Sunday, but never really heard it until one day you did. I heard the gospel for nineteen years. And then when I was nineteen years old, I heard it for the first time. I was sitting up the back in church where I'd sat for so many years and I distinctly remember the pastor was preaching on first John 1, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and he will cleanse us and forgive us from all unrighteousness. And it clicked. Really for the first time. Jacob, you're a sinner. Stop trying to run away from God.

Come back to him. Confess your sin to him. Believe in Jesus for forgiveness because he has paid for your sins. I'm quite sure that that's the moment I was born again. Where did that change come from?

It blew in on the wind. How did it happen? Well, I heard the gospel. The same gospel that I'd heard a thousand times before. It suddenly became precious and real to me.

Jesus became precious and real to me. What about you? What's your story? Have you been born again? Can you remember a time or season in your life where the good news of Jesus became real and precious to you?

What is that good news again? We saw it at the end of our reading, those well known words from John 3:16. God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. It's no mistake really that these famous gospel words come at the end of a conversation about being born again. It's because it's these gospel words that are powerful to save dead sinners like you and me as God grants us new life, new birth by his spirit.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we want to thank you so much for the gift of new birth. Lord, this is a gift that none of us in and of ourselves deserves or have earned, but Lord we can only really accept by faith that you have done this work in our hearts and lives, that you have caused us to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you've opened the eyes of our hearts by the power of your spirit, the same power that called light out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give us the eyes of faith, to make us new. Lord, how could we ever thank you enough? How could we ever praise you enough?

Lord, we pray that you would cause us to be humble, thankful, confident in this gift that you have given us. And, Lord, we pray that by the power of your spirit, you would move in and among the people amongst us to call people to faith in Jesus as the gospel is proclaimed, yes, from the pulpit on Sundays, but also in our conversations with people around us during the week. Lord, we eagerly desire to see more and more people put their faith in Jesus, but we are humbled to know that that is a work of your spirit. But we pray that you'd make us faithful, faithful in making Jesus known, faithful in sharing our faith, making the gospel known.

Depending on your spirit. Lord, we pray all of this in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.