That this is essential and vital is very evident from the plain words of our Lord: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” and again: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3, 5).
This was said to Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, evidently a man of position and uprightness, and yet for him the ground was cut from under his feet in one stroke. No reformation, no patching up of the old, no mixing of the old and the new would do. The flesh will not do for God, and whether it be refined or coarse, cultured or rude, religious or irreligious, matters not. Nothing will do for God save a new start.
An illustration will help here. A belated traveller in Italy was obliged to seek shelter for the night in the cottage of a goatherd. The floor of his room was filthy, and he was on the point of requesting the goatherd’s wife to clean the floor, when he discovered it was a mud floor. He reflected that hot water, soap, flannel and scrubbing brush applied to a mud floor would only make matters worse and produce a muddier floor. That which is mud is mud, and our Lord said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (v. 6).
How could the traveller get a clean floor? By getting a new floor, made of clean materials and capable of being kept clean.
So in the spiritual realm. There must be a new floor as it were—a new nature—a new man.
It is interesting that another translation of our Lord’s words, “Ye must be born again” (v. 7) is, “Ye must be born from above.” This is clearly right for the word, anothen, translated again, is the same word used in the following Scriptures. “He that comes from above (anothen) is above all” (John 3:31). “Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above” (anothen) (John 19:11). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (anothen) (James 1:17). “Behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top (anothen) to the bottom” (Matt. 27:51).
The question then arises, Is the sinner born again in order to believe? Or, Does the sinner believe in order to be born again? The latter belief is that which is widely held among evangelical Christians. But it is evidently not a true belief. See what such a belief leads to. It means in plain English that the flesh is capable, as the flesh, of faith and belief in the Lord. It is the direct contradiction of Scripture, which says, “They that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). Surely to believe on the Lord Jesus is pleasing to God. Scripture declares that “the carnal [fleshly] mind is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). Not that it is at enmity. In such a case reconciliation might be effected. But it says the carnal mind is enmity, and adds “it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Surely this is final.
The writer, the Apostle John, confirms fully what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8. He says, “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the Sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). Here it distinctly predicates that those who believe were already born again—born not or blood, that is we are not born Christians because our parents are such; nor of the will of the flesh, the sincerest desires of relatives and friends cannot bring it about; nor of man, no priest dropping a few drops of water on to the brow of an unconscious infant can bring it about; but it is OF GOD, and OF GOD alone, “born from above.”
That it is God’s sovereign act is again clearly stated by our Lord. “The wind blows where it lists, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it comes, and whither it goes: SO is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). If this verse is true, and it is, how can anyone believe in order to be born again, especially in face of John 1:12-13, just quoted, where it is distinctly stated that those who believed were those who were already born of God? How blessed this is! What a sure foundation new birth has. For what can be surer than the sovereignty of God? What God does He does for ever in this particular. “The gifts [including the gift of life as in the new birth] and calling of God are without repentance” [that is there is emphatically no change of mind on His part] (Rom. 11:29).
Whilst we urge what we believe to be the true teaching of Scripture, that new birth precedes belief in Christ, or else it is the flesh that believes, an utter impossibility, it may be urged by some that we teach a man can be born again, and not be saved.
That is so, and we can give a plain Bible example of this. Take the case of Cornelius. We read in the Scriptures that he was “a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people and prayed to God alway” (Acts 10:1). Here is a man most evidently born again. A man devout, fearing God, which is the beginning of wisdom, and prayerful is surely not marked by a carnal mind which is enmity against God.
And yet this born-again man was told by the angel in a vision “send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter; who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house SHALL be saved” (Acts 11:13-14). Then evidently Cornelius was not saved, though devout and fearing God and prayerful, till he received the gospel at the lips of Peter.
The fact is the new birth is the moral preparation in the heart, which leads to repentance and belief. The man is passive in new birth. He is active in repentance and belief. At new birth a new clean cut unsought by him enters into his life. He does not understand it at the moment, any more than a new-born child realises that it has entered upon a new environment in coming into the world, “Born of water [the word of God] and the Spirit” (John 3:5). Who can tell how that is accomplished? We only know that it is so, and that by some means God uses His word by the Spirit to bring it about.
The new birth, we may say, is God’s secret. Repentance and faith we can take cognizance of. We are never told to have faith in order to be born again. Point to any Scripture that says so, and we will gladly bow to it. But such does not exist. We can however, point you to Scripture that exhorts men to repent. “God … now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30) We can point to Scripture that exhorts men to believe. Our Lord said, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
We cannot account any man a Christian until he has received the gospel and trusted Christ as Saviour, but we may thankfully see traits in a man such as were seen so blessedly in Nicodemus and Cornelius that would give us confidence that God had begun a good work in him, and that the initial stage of that was the sovereign act of God in producing the new birth, and if a good work has begun we can be “confident of this very thing, that He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6), that is, God will finish the work He begins. Thus falls to the ground the argument that a born-again man might die before he could receive the gospel and would therefore perish in his sins. We can thankfully and gratefully leave God to do His own work in souls, and we may well leave speculation alone.