Redemption: To Be Born Again

Today we are continuing our series on church doctrine.  We have been going over this series since Sept. 6, 2015 and we hope to complete it by May 1, 2016.  Today’s message is “To Be Born Again” which could be alternatively titled “The Doctrine of Regeneration.  However, I want to remind you that our purpose for sharing these messages on doctrine is not to make great theologians at CCC.  Rather, the purpose for these messages (and all Sunday morning sermons) is to help equip the saints for the work of service. 

Before I begin today’s message, I want to define a few terms and explain how they relate to today’s topic and to this series on doctrine. Doctrine by definition is a noun meaning a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church.  That is what this series is all about, a set of beliefs held by our church.  In contrast, dogma is also a noun meaning a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority that is unquestionably true.  That is not what this series is all about, although we may cover some of the principles in God’s Word that would be considered dogma as we discuss the different doctrinal topics.

Theology is a noun meaning the study of the nature of God and religious beliefs.  In preparing the message for today as well as in preparing each of the messages in this series we have referred to various books of theology.  Theologians refer to spiritual regeneration as being born again spiritually.  Theologically speaking, regenerate is a verb meaning to endow with a new and higher spiritual nature.  Regeneration, the noun form, refers to the process or action of regenerating. 

A.W. Tozer, in his book titled I Talk Back To the Devil, says the following about being born again:

“This is the wonder, the great miracle – that by one swift, decisive, considered act of faith and prayer, our souls go back to the ancient fountain of our being, and we start over again!  This means back beyond the angels, back beyond the beginning of the world, back beyond where Adam started –back to the glorious, flowing fountain we call the being of God, the Triune God!”

Today I am going to attempt to explain the doctrine of regeneration, and some of the material is taken from Wayne Grudman’s book Systematic Theology.

I began by giving you the definition of the terms, because in explaining the doctrine of being born again there is room for controversy on the subject with respect to when and how. This doctrine is unlike the doctrine of Jesus being fully God and fully man that I presented in November of 2015 which would be considered dogma. As you may recall from my teaching on Jesus being fully God and fully man, I noted that just about every major religion in the world other than Christianity believe and teach something about Jesus.  However, they don’t believe and teach as the Bible does that He is the only God and that it is by faith in Him alone that a person can be forgiven of their sins and have eternal life.  This belief by Christians that Jesus is both God and man would be considered Christian dogma because it does not leave room for argument or controversy.

However on today’s topic there is a little room for controversy about the time that regeneration takes place because the Bible is not explicitly clear as to when and how regeneration happens. Thus, there are differing theological opinions on whether regeneration happens just before, just after or at the exact same time as a person makes a decision by faith to accept Christ and His forgiveness sins and to live the rest of their lives in obedience to Him.

Paul tells us the following in Ephesians 2:1-9:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

How does this phrase “made us alive” relate to being born again?  To answer that question we have to look back at the passage in John 3 where the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, is recorded.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?”

Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”—John 3:1-21

The word “wrought” is the archaic form of the past tense of the word “work”.  The apostle Paul wrote the following in Ephesians 2:1:

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

So this last sentence in John 3 can be reworded:  “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been worked/prepared by God so that we would walk in them.”

Now as to what Jesus said about water and the spirit, we know that we were all born of water because in our mother’s womb we were incased in a sack full of fluid.  In order to be born, our mother’s water sack had to be broken.  Jesus said to the teacher in John 3,

“I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. ⁶Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

The question we may ask is how and when does the Spirit give birth to the spirit?  The answer to that question is, “We don’t know!”  However, we do know that the Holy Spirit is the one that regenerates us with a new and higher spiritual nature and because we have this new spiritual nature we are able to hear and believe the truth about Jesus and the gospel of salvation that He offers freely.  Thus we are able to have faith in Him for the forgiveness of our sins paid for by the work that He did on the cross.  Through this faith in Him we become born-again children of God and we inherit eternal life. 

This regeneration work does not come from us nor does the faith to believe the truth of the Gospel message come from us.   It is the work of the Holy Spirit.  Does that mean that we have no free will?  The answer to that question is a resounding “No!”  What it does mean is that unless the Holy Spirit regenerates us by giving us a new spiritual, we will not be able to understand the gospel.  As a result, we will not be able to have faith to choose to accept the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ even though we hear it and have a free will to accept it.  Thus, by choosing not to accept it, we will incur eternal damnation in hell.

So why do some Christian denominations teach that regeneration occurs at the point of having saving faith?  The answer is regeneration is a spiritual work and it cannot be seen or documented like our first birth when our parents received an official birth certificate from the doctor or the hospital.  Therefore, these denominations go by the testimony of the person who professes to have put their faith in Jesus for salvation. 

Other denominations teach as doctrine that when there is outward evidence of the fruit of the spirit publicly displayed and demonstrated by a changed life, then the person is truly born again.  However, this is not conclusive proof either because some people can demonstrate some of the qualities that are defined as the fruit of the spirit such as love, peace, patience and self-control outwardly to be seen by men but still practice acts of the sinful nature in secret and thus their fruits may not actually indicate spiritual rebirth.  These practicing sinners can and do appear to be very loving and lovable on the outside and appear to possess some of the fruit of the spirit all the while they are practicing sin behind the scenes or in their hearts.

We are now in the middle of a presidential race and we find the candidates using religious language to win votes from us and other Christians like us.  This is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, politicians have used religious language to win elections. One world leader was particularly good at it.  He said the following in one of his speeches:

"In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that He would give His blessing to our work, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right. I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty. No man can fashion world history unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence."

Those words may sound like words from an ideal Christian leader, but they were spoken in 1937 by the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. In his speeches, Hitler challenged people to love their neighbors, to care for the poor and sick, and to take a stand against violence.  We know from history that he neither believed this nor practiced this.  On the contrary, he put to death millions of people that were sick and poor and attempted to get rid of the entire Jewish race and replace Christianity with the religion of the Third Reich.

Politicians are not the only ones that give the appearance of being religious and possessing some of the fruit of the spirit.  A more current example of a person pretending to be good and loving and generous would be Bernie Madoff.  He was a man that everyone seemed to love.  He founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960 and was its chairman for nearly 50 years. The firm was one of the top money making businesses on Wall Street and bypassed "specialist" firms by directly executing orders over the counter from retail brokers.  Everybody seemed to love Bernie, until he was caught and convicted and sentenced to 150 years in prison for cheating all of his investors out of 20 billion dollars. 

There are churches in this country and around the world that are full of men and women that try to appear to be religious and good and holy but they have not been born again; hanging out with religious people does not make you born again.  Judas Iscariot was handpicked by Jesus as one of His twelve disciples.  Judas followed Jesus and the other eleven disciples as they went throughout the countryside preaching that the kingdom of God was at hand.  Judas was even in charge of holding the money box at the Last Supper, yet Judas was not born of the spirit.  Jesus even said he was a devil in John 6:70-71

Jesus answered them, “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?” Now He meant Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray Him.

The apostle Paul tells the church in Galatians 5:16-26:

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

2 Peter 1:1-9

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

Peter tells us to make every effort to add to our faith these qualities that are considered by Paul as the fruit of the spirit.  So our saving faith must come before the fruit of the spirit.  These qualities in some cases may be evidence of a person being born again, but in other cases they may only be false fronts that people put on to deceive Christians into believing that they are truly born again.

Wayne Grudman writes that genuine regeneration must bring results in life.  He says “when people are asked to characterize a regenerated person’s life, the adjective that comes to mine should not be ‘sinner’ but something like ‘obedient to Christ’ or ‘obedient to Scripture.’”

I wonder what people that know Fred Custer would say if they were asked to characterize my life.  Do you ever wonder the same about yourself?  If you were asked right now to characterize your own life would it be “sinner” or “obedient to Christ” or somewhere in between?  If it is anything but obedient to Christ, then you need to change today.

II Corinthians 6:1-2

And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation”

As the Lord says in this verse, He will help you but now is the acceptable time.

He also says in Psalm 95:8-9: Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did.

So being born again is having the power given by the Holy Spirit to repent of your sins and to accept by faith Jesus Christ’s payment on the cross for your sins and by saving faith to commit your life to obeying Christ and His Word. Remember He said, “now is “the acceptable time,” now is “the day of salvation”  “Do not harden your hearts”.  Let’s pray.