A Supernatural Birth

Today, on Renewing Your Mind... You need to become a new creature. You need to start all over.

You don't need just an upgrade in your life. You don't need just a plus on your F. You need a whole new life to be given to you like that which you have never experienced before. What does it mean to be born again? That was the question that puzzled Nicodemus in his conversation with Jesus. We read about that dramatic encounter in John chapter 3. Because the new birth is such an essential Christian doctrine, we need to make sure that we get this right.

That's why we're airing today's message from Ligonier Teaching Fellow, Dr. Stephen Lawson. We want to continue our discussion on the new birth, and I can't think of anything more exciting in life than the birth of a child. Just the joy that surrounds new life being birthed into this world. I remember when my wife and I first had our children. We began with twins. That was an incredibly exciting moment for us to go from no children to two children, and I remember the waiting room and the whole church was there, and it was just almost like a pep rally. And I remember after my wife delivered the twins, Andrew and James, I remember coming back out into the waiting room at the hospital and just, yes, and everyone just bursting into applause and excitement.

I'm sure you can remember the birth of your children and the happiness that surrounded that occasion. The Lord then gave to us a daughter, Grace Ann, and then a son, John. So, Andrew, James, and John were into discipleship at our house, and my daughter, Grace Ann. Just the excitement and the joy of new life being born into this world. Well, I want to say that I think even more exciting because of the eternal significance is when we see someone who is born again into the family of God, and sometimes God lets us have a secondary role in that. Perhaps we prayed for them. Perhaps we were able to tell them about the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps we were able to witness to them or to help build that bridge towards them and carry the gospel with them.

I think the greatest thing in all the world is to know Christ, and the second greatest thing is to be used by Him to help others know Christ. Well, I want to talk about the joy of the new birth and nothing more exciting than seeing people come alive in Jesus Christ. Sometimes the term is used, born again Christian. That's very redundant because if you are a Christian, you are born again. And if you're born again, you're a Christian.

And so, to say born again Christian is like saying Christian, Christian because everyone in the kingdom of heaven is there by virtue of the new birth. Now, in this second session, I want to talk about the fact that the new birth is a supernatural birth. In the first session, we said that it's a necessary birth. Now, I want to talk about the fact that it is a supernatural birth. We've all had our first birth.

That was a natural birth. But Jesus said we must have a supernatural birth from above. I want you to look at verse 3 again. We're in John chapter 3. We will be in John chapter 3 for this entire series of messages. But I want to look now again at verse 3, which is such an important text. Notice, Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you. In other words, don't miss this.

This is of extreme importance. Truly, truly, I say to you. It was as if Jesus took out a yellow highlighter and just highlighted what He is about to say, that it would leap off the page to us 2,000 years later. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. So what does this mean, to be born again? Well, the word again, in the original language, in the Greek with which John wrote this gospel, it really has two basic meanings.

And I want to lay both of these out. The first is, as it is translated in most of our English Bibles, it means again, to be born again, meaning a second time. For example, in Galatians 4 verse 9, Paul writes, How is it that you turn back again, referring to turning back to legalism now that you are saved? And so, the word does mean, as it is translated here, again, a second time. In other words, there was something desperately wrong about our first birth. We were conceived in sin, the psalmist says, and we went forth from our mother's womb speaking lies, the psalmist says. By virtue of Adam's sin, we have fallen in Adam, and we must be born again. We need a new birth to reverse the effects of the sin nature and the total depravity that has been passed down to us in the first birth. So, in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, we must be born a second time.

We must be born again. But there's a second meaning of this Greek word, and it means from above. In fact, the other times in the New Testament that this word is used, it is translated from above, referring to heaven and where God is.

Let me give you these cross-references. In John 3 and verse 31, later in this very chapter, Jesus said, He who comes from above is above all, referring to His own entrance into this world. He has come from above, He has come down from another realm, from another world to enter into the human race in this fallen world. In John 19, verse 11, when Jesus stood before Pilate, He said, You would have no authority over Me unless it had been given you from above.

In other words, the authority that Pilate had was a delegated authority. It had been granted from God above. It's the very word that Jesus uses here when He says, You must be born again. He is saying, You must be born from above.

Two other verses, really three other verses. James 1, verse 17, Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above. And then James 3, 15, This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, verse 17, but the wisdom from above is, and He goes on to say, is peaceable, etc. When Jesus said that you and I must be born again, the truest meaning of that, the fullest range of that meaning is that in being born again, we must be born from above. To be born from above means to be born of God.

In fact, it is mentioned that way later in John's gospel and in 1 John. It is simply said that we are born of God. The idea is that we are born from heaven above, from God above, where God dwells. This birth has nothing to do with this world. This birth, this new birth is not drawn from anything in this world. It has nothing to do with dead religion in this world. It has nothing to do with man's world. It has nothing to do with man's traditions. It has nothing to do with man's activities. It has nothing to do with man's morality or man's efforts or man's strivings or anything on this horizontal level. This birth is exclusively vertical.

It is from above. It is from God acting upon our dead soul. Nicodemus understood that Jesus was talking about a totally different birth, another birth when he said in verse 4, how can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

Nicodemus caught the implication of what Jesus was saying when he said, you must be born again. And Jesus then answered and said, you don't need another physical birth. You don't need to crawl back into your mother's womb, if that were even possible, because still that's just going to be on a natural level.

Even if you could, it's only on a worldly plane. You need a birth from another dimension, from another realm, from another kingdom, from another realm. You must be born from above.

So he says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. You need more than a natural birth. You need a supernatural birth.

You need more than a physical birth. You need a spiritual birth. What you need is a new life. You need a new start. You need a new mind, a new heart. You need new desires. You need a new will. You need a new beginning. You need a new destiny. You need to become a new creature. You need to start all over. You don't need just an upgrade in your life.

You don't need just a plus on your F. You need a whole new life to be given to you like that which you have never experienced before. What Jesus is talking about here is regeneration, to become a new creature in Christ Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5, 17, Paul would say, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.

The old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. It is a birth that only the Holy Spirit of God can give. Jesus said in verse 6, that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. In other words, you need two births.

Let me tell you this. If you've only been born once, you will die twice. If you've been born twice, you will only die once.

You understand what's being said? That if you are only born once of a physical birth, there is a second death that will be awaiting you on the other side of physical death and a descending down into the bowels of hell. But if you are born twice, you will only die once.

You will die physically, but though you die, you will live forever with God. Verse 7, Jesus said, do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. The new birth is not receiving mere religion. It is entering into a relationship with God through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is entrance into the family of God and coming to know God and know His Son, Jesus Christ.

It's not participating in ritual and going through some kind of routine. It is entering into life that only God can give. 1 John 5, 12 says, He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son does not have life. If you've not been born again, you're just a dead man walking.

You're just a dead person walking. You have existence, but you do not have life. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, not a life, the life.

The only life that there is is found in Jesus Christ, and it comes to us by the new birth. And this supernatural birth, it takes place in the very depths of our soul. It's not a superficial work that just lays on the outside of our life. It's not something that is shallow, that is merely redecorating the exterior of our life. It's not just a repackaging of the outside, that now we are more religious on the outside. Oh, there will be fruit, and there will be a change on the outside, but the new birth takes place at the root.

It takes place at the very core of our being, in the innermost recesses of our soul, down at the division of soul and spirit. The new birth is not turning over a new leaf. It's receiving a new life. The new birth is not a reformation of our lives. It's a regeneration within our lives. It's not a boost from below. It's a birth from above.

This is the new birth. It's not getting back to church. It's not getting religion. It's not joining a Bible study.

It's not behavior modification. I mean, some of these things will occur in our lives and should, but that's the fruit. That's what's produced the new birth is Christ in you.

It is the life of God in the soul of a man. George Whitefield is one of the great evangelists that God's ever given to the church. I made mention of him at the end of our last session. When George Whitefield went to college, he was lost. He went to Oxford. He joined a small Bible study called the Holy Club. In that Holy Club was John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, was Charles Wesley, the great hymn writer. Not a bad little Bible study to join in college. Not a one of them knew the Lord.

They were all unregenerate. And in the course of that study, they were all striving by their own efforts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to make themselves somehow commendable to God that they could earn acceptance with God. And the more Whitefield strived, it seemed the further away he was drifting from whatever that standard of perfection is that he was striving to meet. And then one day someone handed him a book written by Henry Scruggel, a young Scottish man from the previous century. The title of that book, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. It was a book about the new birth, that God must invade the soul, that God must speak life into the dead soul, that God must initiate the new birth, that God must bring forth life where there is death. And as Whitefield read this book, he came to the understanding that it was not by his efforts and striving that he would enter into the kingdom of God, but that it must be a supernatural birth from above.

And as a result of reading that book and calling upon the name of the Lord, George Whitefield was born again. He was birthed into the kingdom of God. John Wesley would continue to serve the Lord. He would graduate, go to the mission field, be a preacher, cross the Atlantic Ocean, come over here to the colonies, serve the Lord. He still didn't know Christ.

It would not be until he would return later back to England and go to another small group Bible study and there have read the introduction to him of Luther's commentary on Galatians. Would he come to understand what it is to be born again from above? What did you do to be born the first time?

Nothing. You and I simply appeared, and it was a sovereign work of God, was it not? None of us were able to pick our parents or to choose what decade or century we would be born in or what continent. It's what God acted and did in our lives, and we were birthed into the world. So it is spiritually.

It is a supernatural birth. There is nothing that we can do to cause ourselves to be born again. God must do this, and exclusively God must do this. 1 Peter 1 verse 3 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who called upon us to be born again. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who caused us to be born again, unto a living hope through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

No, we were passive. God was active. God was the initiator.

It was so supernatural. It was all of God, and we give him the glory for it. You remember the testimony of Martin Luther, how Martin Luther went into the priesthood, became a monk, trying to commend himself to God by his own efforts, and he could not work his way to acceptance with God.

And then that day as he was in the tower there in Wittenberg, he gives his testimony. He says, Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated, meaning satisfied by my satisfaction.

I did not love. Yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners. I was angry with God. And he goes on to say that there is this fierce, troubled conscience within him. He said, I was reading Romans 1, verse 17, The just shall live by faith. And Martin Luther said he came to an understanding that it is a foreign righteousness, an alien righteousness outside of himself that must be given to him, and it is given to him by faith.

And it was as though the scales fell off of his eyes. And Luther said, Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. Martin Luther was born again by his own admission. That's the supernatural birth. We go from being God haters to God lovers. We go from those with a troubled conscience of guilt to those who have peace with God and who have the peace of God. It is the birth that only God can give.

I trust that you have experienced this supernatural birth in your life and that you know what it is to have the life of God in your soul. That's the difference the new birth makes. As you just heard Ligonier teaching fellow Dr. Stephen Lawson say, being born again brings about a radical change in our lives. It rearranges our priorities.

This is why it can only come from a divine source. And that's a key lesson from today's program taken from Dr. Lawson's teaching series, The New Birth. We'd like to send you this DVD series for your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. There are a couple of ways you can reach us. One is by phone at 800-435-4343. You can also make a request online at renewingyourmind.org. As a reminder, it is your financial support that enables us to continue providing trusted teaching like we heard today. So we thank you in advance for your generous donation.

Once again, our phone number is 800-435-4343. When Dr. R.C. Sproul founded this ministry 50 years ago, he wanted to provide trustworthy Bible teaching. And that remains our goal today as we strive to continue the rich legacy that Dr. R.C.

Sproul left. One of the many ways we do that is through our interactive online forum, Ask Ligonier. If you've been wrestling with a deep theological question, or maybe you're leading a Bible study in your home and there's a passage of Scripture that you want to make sure that you're teaching accurately. And Ask Ligonier, we have trained team members right now waiting to answer your questions.

Just go to ask.ligonier.org. As we close today, let me pose this question to you. Where do you turn in times of despair, or even when you're simply discouraged? I hope you'll be with us tomorrow as we begin an in-depth study of the benedictions and doxologies that we find in Scripture. It's a study we call Blessings and Praise, Benedictions and Doxologies in Scripture. And Dr. H.B. Charles Jr. will lead our study. So, I hope you'll make plans to be with us tomorrow for Renewing Your Mind.