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.