New Birth (Part 1)

"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)

The Lord Jesus Christ - Who is God's Word incarnate and only-begotten Son - reveals Who God is through His Person, works and words. It is true that certain aspects of God's glory as the Creator of the universe is revealed through the heavens and all His handiwork, such as His eternal power and Godhead, yet it is also true that it is only through the Word incarnate (Christ) that God reveals Himself fully and personally.

God's revelation of Himself through nature manifests His infinite wisdom, power, and Deity that makes every soul inexcusable in their failure to recognize Him as the One from Whom they owe their existence, life, and everything. This failure to really acknowledge God as their Creator makes apparent the fact that man's spiritual vision had been darkened by sin.

God, in His sovereign grace, must first impart spiritual life to a man before he or she could begin to see and enter the truth that alone God's spirit reveals. That's why the Lord says, "Except a man be born again, he CANNOT SEE the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)

He also says, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he CANNOT ENTER into the kingdom of God." (3:5) Now being "born again" is not something that any man (or woman) does to himself or to his fellow human being. The very words "CANNOT SEE" and "CANNOT ENTER" reveal man's total inability to see, and gain entree to, the spiritual realm of God. Man simply CANNOT. Seeing and entering are beyond his own fleshly power.

To say therefore that being "born again" is accomplished by joining a certain church or religious organization, or undergoing a certain ritual, is a total misunderstanding of Christ's teaching. Likewise, to say that it is attainable through the exercise of the human will (or "free will") is way out of mark of Scriptural standard. Equating being "born again" with anything fleshly is self-delusion.

Saint James wrote in his letter: "Of HIS (God's) OWN WILL begat He us with the word of truth" (James 1:18). The Apostle Peter agrees: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to HIS ABUNDANT MERCY hath begotten us again unto a lively (living) hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3)

Being "born again" is therefore NOT of our own will, but "OF HIS OWN WILL"! It is NOT something that take place according to our own self-worth or self-effort, but according to "HIS ABUNDANT MERCY"!

It is God's own decision, in His sovereign grace, that the spiritual birth (or the impartation of new life in Christ) comes to a man's experience. Man's will has nothing to do with it. Repentance and faith are both THE BY-PRODUCTS of new birth, and NOT its cause.

Its only cause is God's sovereign will: "But as many as received Him (Christ), gave He power (right) to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name: which WERE BORN [spiritually], NOT of blood, NOR of the will of the flesh, NOR of the will of man, BUT OF GOD." (John 1:12-13)

Man's physical birth illustrates this fact. Isn't it true that the birth of a child in a family is the sole decision of his/her parents? The child's will (or personal decision) has nothing to do with it. A mother may even decide against her child in the womb, and in the darkness of her heart get an abortion to kill her child. It's clear therefore that no one child, in the physical realm, decides for himself regarding his birth. His birth is totally OF HIS PARENTS' WILL and according to THEIR MERCY! He is literally at the mercy of his parents!

The same is true of spiritual birth into the spiritual realm! Being born again is absolutely OF GOD'S OWN WILL and according to HIS ABUNDANT MERCY! Our own decision or self-effort has nothing to do with it. Our need of God's mercy implies our own misery. And what we need is not just a little mercy from God for our extreme misery and helplessness, but His ABUNDANT mercy.

The fetus (or child) in the womb is helplessness itself.
The fetus' life is totally dependent on his mother. The umbilical cord (his lifeline) that connects him to his mother shows his total helplessness and dependency. What a picture of our spiritual condition before God extends His grace and regenerates us. We are (before God saved us) absolute helplessness, dependency, and even misery itself - all in one. And we don't even know our miserable condition like the fetus floating helplessly in his mother's sac.

No, our own works (or self-will) has nothing to do with the new birth that Christ speaks of. It is all of God's will, in His abundant mercy, because we ourselves cannot do it to ourselves. God must give us spiritual life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead for salvation to become our experience.

The former fanatical Pharisee who became the Apostle Paul puts it this way: "For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.

"But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, NOT BY WORKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS which we have done, but according to HIS MERCY He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being JUSTIFIED BY HIS GRACE, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." (Titus 3:3-7)

You and I cannot do a single thing to merit or to get the new birth that God alone has the power to impart as a gift of His grace and mercy. The new birth is not a reward for something that we ought to do or have done. No, no, absolutely no.

Let's now return to the Epistle of James, and this is what we find: "Every GOOD GIFT and every PERFECT GIFT is from above, and comes down FROM THE FATHER OF LIGHTS, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. OF HIS OWN WILL BEGAT HE US with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." (James 1:17-18)

Isn't it that it's clear, from the above passage, that EVERY good gift and EVERY perfect gift comes from God as THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. Included in those good and perfect gifts of the Father is the new birth (or spiritual life)that He imparts. And it is absolutely free as sunshine and the air we breathe.

God doesn't give new birth in exchange to something that we first must have done. Whether praying, or getting baptized in water, or giving tithes, or trying to obey the ten commandments, or anything like that that comes from our own effort. No, no, absolutely no.

"...for there is no difference: for ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:22-23)"For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed (repaid) unto him again?" (11:34-35)

No, we cannot give anything to our Creator, Who gives us everything, to merit anything from Him. David said in one of his prayers, "For all things come of Thee (God), and of Thine own have we given Thee." (1 Chronicles 29:14)

The new birth therefore is absolutely free grace that comes from God. I don't have to do anything for God to give it to me. Likewise, I can't do anything to merit it. You can't and don't as well. But God does give it freely out of His sovereign will.

The new birth is NOT A REWARD that must be purchased by our good works. It is a free GIFT of the Father of lights to those whom He regenerates to become His children of light. And that OF HIS OWN WILL, not ours. And the divine objective is "that we should be a kind of FIRSTFRUITS of His creatures," or, blood-purchased members of that "church [ecclesia = out-called] of the FIRSTBORN ones" (literal translation of the Greek of Hebrews 12:23)

The result of this spiritual birth is that we become a part of God's vast family. A family composed of renewed beings both "in heaven and eath" (see Ephesians 3:15).

God's firstfruits and firstborn ones then become the beginning of something grand that will ultimately lead to the reconciliation of the entire universe to God. "And, having made peace through the blood of His (Christ's) cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven." (Colossians 1:20)

No one therefore will be left out, because God will become All in all as He had intended.

The Pursuit of God

A.W. Tozer, a respected evangelical writer and Christian mystic, gave his first memorable and edifying book the title "The Pursuit of God." Tozer's focus in that book is on the essential importance of personal relationship with God, by grace, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul, quoting the Hebrew Scriptures, in his description of the Jews (representing all religious peoples) and of the Greeks (representing philosophically inclined and intellectual peoples), wrote: "There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God." (Romans 3:10-11)

The pursuit of God is therefore something not true in the natural experience of both the Jews and the Greeks; of either the religious man or the philosophical (intellectual) man. Man, in his or her fallen condition, may search or pursue a system of belief, an idea, a group, or organization that may offer him a sense of belonging or acceptance. But the pursuit of God is something entirely foreign to him until his Creator, in grace and mercy, begins to draw him spiritually through an inner work that's nothing less than a new life from the dead!

Christ puts it this way: "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, comes unto Me." (John 6:44-45)

It is therefore true that when a heart begins to seek and yearn for God that such a spiritual thirsting is an evidence of the dawn of God's inner work in that soul. "When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face; my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek." (Psalm 27:8)

First is God's gracious Word calling on the lost soul to seek Him - when Thou saidst, Seek ye My face. That is, God's inner call is THE CAUSE. It is God Himself Who initiates everything. And it's only when God speaks His sovereign will that a response from the soul can follow as an EFFECT (or result) - my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek."

Acts 16:14 provides another illustration of this truth: "And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things, which were spoken of Paul."

Note that between Lydia's hearing of Paul's speech and her attending unto (heeding) the things spoken by Paul, something happened that only God alone is capable of doing. That is, God Himself opened the heart of Lydia!

This gracious, inner, heart work of the Lord is THE CAUSE of Lydia's spiritual conversion. And her response of heeding God's words is THE RESULT.

Saint John shows this fact from another perspective: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins...We love Him, because He first loved us." (1 John 4:10, 19)

We, who have now come to know God by faith in Christ, should realize that our pursuit of God is but the result of God's pursuit of us. It is the Lord, Who is the good Shepherd, that tirelessly, in endless compassion, sought and found His one lost sheep, and brought it safely home with joy!

The good news is that God will never stop looking for the last of His lost sheep, lost silver coin, and lost son (all symbols of lost mankind, Luke chapter 15), until He brings each one back home to His loving embrace!

God may have already begun manifesting His eternal love to you, through His beloved Son (Jesus Christ) Who died for your sins, and you should be ever praiseful and thankful to Him daily for His saving grace.

Or, you may still be in the dark right now. Full of doubt and unbelief. Sunk in the mire of sin. Hopeless. Full of hatred. Hating yourself. Hating your parents. Hating your circumstances. Hating the world around you. Hating God. Full of bitterness. Miserable. Lost...

But I have a good news for you. God is not yet over with you. God loves you. God gave His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to redeem you from sin and death. Your time will soon come. God will reveal Himself to you, as He did to the chief of sinners - Saul of Tarsus - who became the Apostle Paul.

Yes, each of us has his (or her) appointed time, according to God's own plan and timetable. God has saved many others in the past. God is still saving more now. And yes, God will ultimately save all in the future. Nothing is impossible with God. God will save you!

"For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." (1 Timothy 2:3-6)