- [Tim Keller] Let me
read this famous chapter. I'm just going to read down to verse 16. "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're a teacher who has come from God for no one could perform the
miraculous signs you were 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 of 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, the 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.' 'How can this be?' Nicodemus asked. 'You are Israel's teacher,' said Jesus,
'and you do not understand these things? I tell you the truth, we speak of
what we know and we testify to what we have seen. But still, you people do
not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly
things and you do not believe. How then will you believe
if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except
the one who came down from heaven. The Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the
desert so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may
have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only
Son. And whoever believes in Him shall not
perish but have eternal life.'" Now I could preach to you for a while or I
could read you an epitaph which is on a particular gravestone, in St. Mary's
Church, Everton, Bedfordshire, not too far west of Cambridge.
The vicar there, the pastor there, John Berridge, died and the famous
Charles Simeon came and did his funeral in the churchyard. And this is on
his gravestone, which you can still read today, this
is on the gravestone. So, I could just read you this,
and then, close in prayer. Listen, "Here lies the earthly remains of
John Berridge, late Vicar of Everton. Reader art thou born again? No salvation without the new birth. I was born in sin February 1716,
remained ignorant of my fallen state until 1730, lived proudly on faith and
works for salvation till 1754, was admitted to Everton vicarage,"
the pastor there," 1755, fled to Jesus alone for refuge 1756,
fell asleep in Christ January 22nd, 1793." Let us pray... Because there it is. Or, we got some time so let's go ahead. The new birth. Who is it for? Where is it from? What does it do? How does it come? How can you tell? So, first of all, who is it for? Now, it's typical today that,
if you say to most Americans, "I'm a born-again Christian," or "those
are born-again Christians," or you use the term born again, they immediately
have a type of person in mind. They have a type of person in mind. Some Americans might think, "Okay,
you're the emotional type. I understand you're the kind of people
that want an emotional experience, and you want to wave your hands, and cry,
and close your eyes when you sing your hymns.
Okay, you're a born-again type." Others would say, "Well, born-again
types are people who have had very broken, messed-up lives,
I have heard about this. They need to go to these very conservative
churches with lots of moral structure because, they've been drug
addicts or they've been alcoholics. And so, they need moral structure." So people who've had broken lives,
you might need born-again kind of religion. So, there's emotional types,
there's broken types. And another way Americans think, is
they say, "Oh yeah, born-again types, they're knee-jerk conservatives." And so, generally, when people
in America hear the term born again, they think it's for a type
of person, it's a kind of person. This text indirectly and directly
undermines that completely, that patronizing idea, completely. First of all, it indirectly does it just
by giving us Nicodemus. Who's Nicodemus? Well, first of all, he was a member
of the Council, the ruling Sanhedrin. He would've have been a very
high-status figure, a wealthy figure. By no means an emotional person. You know, a Jewish male, a
ruler, a very wealthy person. By no means an emotional type. Secondly, he was not a broken type person. He was a Pharisee, he wouldn't
have needed more moral structure, Pharisees were the epitome of moral
authority and structure. But then, thirdly, when you hear the word
Pharisee, you say, "Oh yeah, knee-jerk conservative,
Pharisee. Right." Except, listen to this guy,
he comes to Jesus. Jesus who has no pedigree,
did not come up through the ranks, hasn't studied under any rabbis,
has no credentials, we don't know who this person is, and yet he comes
and he respectfully says... He calls him rabbi? And then, he clearly
wants to enter into a dialogue with him. This is one of the most open-minded men
you'd find in the Gospels. Here's a man who, even though he comes
from the upper echelons of the elite, he is very open to new ideas. He's open to radical new ideas. And he comes and he speaks
so respectfully to Jesus. No-no-no, look, this guy is not emotional
type, this guy does not need a moral structure, and this guy is not a
knee-jerk conservative. In all these ways, he's nothing
like it at all. Let's put it together. Being born again cannot mean you need
more morality and religion in your life. In fact, the way Jesus is saying this to
Nicodemus, the new birth is a challenge to morality and religion. It's saying, "You've got all the morality
and religion in the world, Nicodemus, and you need to be born again." He doesn't say, "Born again?" We're going
to keep looking at this metaphor, he doesn't say, "Well, you know,
you're an awfully, awfully moral guy. You're at least three-quarters of the way
to heaven but you can't make it all the way, you need some kind
of spiritual vitamin supplement." Now most people are back, like,
only a quarter of the way to heaven. "No, no. You must be born again. Nothing you have done counts." See, this is not a call to more
moral and religious structure. This is a challenge to that.
And you see what the good news is? No matter how good you are,
no matter how pulled together you are, you must be born again. But it also would
mean, no matter how messed up you are, no matter how broken you are,
you can be born again. Because Jesus also directly just says,
"I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they're born again. No one can enter the kingdom
of God unless they're born again." So, who's the new birth for? "Listeners, art thou born again?
No salvation without the new birth." So, that's who it's for.
But where is it from? Now that's maybe an odd question to ask
and, in some ways, it's only hinted at here, but the rest of the New
Testament tells us where is it from. In verse 3, Jesus says,
"You must be born again to see the kingdom." Verse 5, he says, "You
must be born again to enter the kingdom." What's remarkable about this is,
as some of you know, unlike the synoptic Gospels,
unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John very seldom uses the term
kingdom of God, very rarely. In fact this is virtually, almost,
the only place where it even comes up, in the Gospel, and
therefore, that's significant. What would Nicodemus have thought of when
Jesus said, "You must be born again to see and to enter the kingdom of God."? It would have been very striking to him
because, as a Pharisee, he would have thought of the kingdom of
God as something in the future. And that's right, he would have thought of
the resurrection, at the end of time. He would have thought about the new
kingdom of God that the Messiah was going to bring in at the end of time,
when everything was going to be made right. The Greeks, many of the Greeks,
believed that history was not linear, going someplace, but it was cyclical and
it repeated itself and, every so often, there was a kind of conflagration
in which the world was purged. It was regenerated. It
burned or something. And then, history would start all over and
of course it would just decline down to the place when that
would be regenerated again. And they had a technical term for it,
the palingenesia, the regeneration of the world. But, in the
Greek way of thinking, it was something that happened cyclically
and just made things a little better, you know, where the
world was sort of reset. It's the way you always fix your computer,
it's all messed up so you unplug it, you plug it in again, it's reset. But it basically goes back to being,
you know, what it was before. Then Jesus Christ, in Matthew 19,
says something remarkable. He says, "At the renewal of all things,"
which is the word palingenesia, "at the renewal of all things,
at the palingenesia, then, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious
throne, everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters,
or father and mother, or children, or fields, for my sake, will receive
a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." At the palingenesia, when the
Son of Man sits on his throne, when the kingdom of God
comes, he uses a Greek word, which was a technical term,
but he uses it in a completely different way. What he's saying is,
the philosophers got it wrong. There is only one palingenesia,
there's one regeneration of the world. And it won't be just a reset
of history just to go on declining, there'll be one regeneration and that will
be the end of all death, end of suffering, end of sin, end of evil,
end of all those things. All evil and suffering, every tear
will all be wiped away when the kingdom of God returns in fullness. Then Paul, in a remarkable little
aside, almost, in Titus Chapter 3, Paul is talking about the new birth. And he talks about the new birth and then
he says, "He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the
Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus
Christ our Savior." But that first term, he says,
"Through the washing of regeneration," is the word palingenesia. See, what this text here, in John 3, is
hinting at, but which Paul says directly is this, where's the new birth from? It's from the future. The new birth is the power that God is
going to use to regenerate the world, brought into your present. It's not complete of course,
it's only partial. But, didn't you always like time-travel stories? I love time-travel stories,
I love getting into some machine or something and going to the future. Well, this is kind of like that only it's
the reverse, it's the future coming into you. It's God's future present
in your heart now. It's that renewing, regenerating power by
which God is going to heal everything and remove all evil and all sin and everything
but it comes into your heart now, only partially, but actually.
And that's what it means to be born again. Now that may sound pretty...
how do I say it? Esoteric. But let me be as practical as I possibly
can be, don't you ever underestimate the power of the new birth to change somebody. Never underestimate that power. Look, here's Peter. Peter was soft, squishy, and impulsive. Too much so. Here's Paul, almost the opposite, hard,
over controlled, abrasive, harsh. But they were born again and they were
turned into world-changing Christians. And they were not made of any more
promising material than you. There is no fear, there is no guilt,
there is no hurt, there is no flaw that the new birth can't,
at least partially, repair. So where is the new birth from? From the future. It's the power of God to regenerate the
entire world coming into your life and your heart now.
That's amazing. Don't underestimate its power. Don't settle for a little change
if you are born again. Number three, so who's it for? Where is it from? What does it do? Now, that's another way of saying,
"What is it," and, "what does it do." Now, it's fairly clear from the metaphor
that it is the implantation of new life. It's the divine life implanted in you. Now, one of the most controversial parts
of this passage is where Jesus says, "You must be born of
water and of the Spirit." And, as a lot of you know,
there are certain churches that say, "Ah, that means if you want to be regenerated
and you want to be saved, two things have to happen,
you have to have the Holy Spirit and you have to be baptized."
Now of course the problem is that the word water,
it doesn't say baptized, it says water, "Ah, well,
it's a metaphor for baptism." Well, it's probably more likely that the
water is a metaphor for the Spirit. It's more likely that the background of
Jesus' statement is Ezekiel 36 where Ezekiel talks about the Spirit
of God as water in a desert. Because, you know, in a desert,
in those arid places, water wasn't just life-giving, in
a sense, water was life itself. And so, it's a metaphor for the Spirit. So, what we're hearing here
is the new birth means having the Spirit implanted in you. But Jesus could have used the
metaphor of a seed being planted. Now, elsewhere, like 1 Peter,
it talks about being born again of imperishable seed. So, you could talk about the new birth as
the implantation of divine supernatural life and use the metaphor of a seed. He doesn't, he uses the
metaphor of a baby being born. And therefore, if we want to
understand what the new birth does, what does the new birth do,
let's stick with that metaphor. Now, I'm going to suggest two… There's
a lot of them actually, if we had the time, we could go into a lot of them,
but I believe what it means to be born again, at least means new
sensibility and new identity. That's what the new birth does,
it gives you a new sensibility and identity.
Now, what do I mean by sensibility? Well, all living things sense their
environment, they sense something about what's in the environment,
even the simplest living things. And a baby being born immediately
sees for the first time, hears really, almost for the first time. At least when they're brought out into the
world, they're brought into a world of amazing sensations. And, one of the things that all the great
theologians of the soul, over the years, have observed is, to cross from death to
life, to be born again means that, suddenly realities, spiritual realities
that you could not sense before, that were either invisible to you or maybe
you could say, inaudible to you, suddenly you can sense them because
you're given a new spiritual sensibility. One man who's written on this very well,
and actually I'd suggest this book to everybody here, it's a book by
Archibald Alexander called <i>Thoughts</i> <i>on Religious Experience</i>.
It's really rather unique. It's uniquely helpful. He was the first
teacher at Princeton Theological Seminary, in the very, very beginning
of the 19th century. And he spends a fair amount
of time asking this question, "What does the new birth do?" or "what does it give you?
What does it do for you?" And one of them of course is this,
what he says is, "Everyone on whom this divine operation has passed," and he's
talking about the new birth, he says, "experiences new views of divine truth." Now, by the way, Jesus says,
"If you're born again, you see the kingdom of
God." Why did he use that? Why did he say that? You can't even see the kingdom of God.
You can't sense it. It might have been an abstraction,
you might have heard about the kingdom of God all your life, but now you see it. And he goes on and says,
"The soul that sees," that gets spiritual sight, "though it may
have not discerned it before, it now discerns in the truth of God,
a beauty and an excellence of which it had no conception until now. Whatever may be the diversity and the
clearness of the views of different persons or, in the particular truths
brought before the mind, they all agree in this that there
is a new perception of truth, the beauty and excellence of truth. Whether you ascribe it to the
head or to the heart, I care not." Now, I would like to say it's both,
and I think he means that too. In other words, the way you know you're
born again, one of the things it gives you, is both your mind is illumined,
and your heart is moved, and spiritual truth that you might have
actually heard before but didn't make sense to your mind, or it certainly didn't
touch your heart, now it does. So, for example, let's
start with the heart. I cannot tell you how,
after years and years of ministry, when somebody who's come to
church all their life starts to say, "Something has happened. I knew these biblical texts all my life
but now they just seem almost like somebody turned the lights on," or,
"I've read this," or, "I heard this first, but now, suddenly, it's just
hitting me, I don't know why. I never saw this before.
I don't know why I never saw this before." But more than that, what they usually mean
is, "I always knew God loved me but I'm actually starting to sense that. I'm actually starting... It's
starting to actually become real. It's starting to convict me,
it's starting to feed me." Now, here we are, in the realm
of St. Augustine, and St. Augustine would say, "The
mark of a truly born again," a truly regenerated Christian,
"was the loves of your heart are being reordered." What means is it's one thing to say, "Oh,
I believe that God loves me," and it's just up here, that's all. Meanwhile,
the main thing that's driving you is to get this person's love,
this man or this woman. Or the main thing that's driving you
is to have a successful career, to have everyone love you because
you've got status and money. And no matter what you try, you say,
"I'm a Christian, of course I'm a Christian, I go to church and I believe
God loves me," but the love of fame and the accolades, the love of romance
and maybe sex, is much more real to you than God's love. God's love is in the
abstract. God's love's in the abstract. Or another way to put it is,
have you ever tried to watch something on a screen and listen to
something at the same time? Whatever is up there on the
screen always wins, you know. And what happens is career,
and maybe something else in your life… Something in your life is on video. And, until the new birth,
even if you go to church, God's love and His holiness
and just God is on audio. And you say, "Oh, of course I've always
believed that." Then the lights come on, or maybe you'd say, "the sound comes on,"
and suddenly, God goes on video. And when God's love in Christ becomes more
real to your heart, then the fame and status that you get in a career,
are even more real to your heart than your family's love, your loves get reordered. It creates changes.
It just creates changes. Unless I love my wife less than I love
God, or better yet, love God more than I love my wife, I won't love my wife right. I'll crush her with my expectations. I'll crush her with... She has to affirm me at every point,
she can't get sick, she can't have a bad day, she's got to affirm me. As a result, I'm just going to be
upset, I'm going to be angry at her, we're going to get into conflict.
Unless I love God more than I love Kathy, I'm never going to love Kathy well. And see, the new birth starts to reorder
the loves of your heart because, these things that you might have read in
the Bible, you might have heard about all your life, which were nothing but
abstractions, become realities. But that's just the heart. There's also something
that goes on in the mind. There's an awful lot of truths in the
Bible that just don't make sense to the unillumined mind. They don't
make sense. Some years ago, I'll never forget this, as you can tell,
because it happened many years ago. I was in a room with a number of ministers
and we were actually evaluating candidates to be church planters in my denomination. So, we were all in this room and people
would come in, men would come in, and they were giving their testimonies and
we were trying to decide which ones we should approve to be church planters.
We always asked for their testimony. And every testimony it seemed like… Back
then, this was a long time ago, I don't think this would be true anymore…
But almost everybody came in and said, "I was raised in the church but I never
heard the Gospel in that church. And then, this or that happened," very
often, "I became a Christian in college." And when about the eighth guy in
a row came in and started saying, "I went to church all my life but I never
really heard the Gospel in that church," after he left, one of the older ministers
said, "You know, I think we better just keep something in mind…" because we were
talking about the fact, "…isn't that interesting? They all went to these horrible churches
where they didn't preach the Gospel." And this guy told his story,
he said he'd grown up in the church, not only had he grown up in the church but
he actually started to think about going into ministry and actually
had taken some Bible courses. And then he was, I think,
put into the military, he might have been drafted. But in the military,
a chaplain led him to Christ. Showed him that you're not saved by being
a good person, going to church, being a nice guy, you're not
saved by those things. You're saved by grace alone,
through faith alone, through Christ alone. And all of his life he had always thought,
"Well, being a Christian means you ask Jesus into your life." But he
always thought that meant you try harder than you've ever
tried to be a good person. He tried to live like Christ.
Suddenly, the penny dropped. It just dropped and everything changed. And so, the chaplain was discipling
him and, one day, this man...now, this is the man telling the story,
this older minister, but he said, one day, he was talking to the
chaplain and he says, 'You know, I don't know why nobody's ever told me the
Gospel before.' And he said, 'What I really don't understand is why
Martin Luther didn't understand the Gospel?'" The chaplain says,
"Martin Luther didn't understand the Gospel. What makes you say that?" He said, "Well, I took a course and I read
parts of this book he wrote on Galatians and there was no Gospel in it." The chaplain said, "You know what?
Now, that you've been born again, why don't you go back
and look at the book." He said he went back to the book and,
you know, he was the kind of person that would highlight and underline things,
he said, "I would open the book and I started going through it and,
on every page," he said, "almost every page, underlined,
highlighted there was the Gospel." And how did he conclude this little story? He said, "Right now, there are
young men and women growing up in my church, under my preaching,
and they're not hearing the Gospel. Because you have to be born again
to even see the kingdom of God." Now, by the way, which
leads immediately to the... Before we get to the next
point, let me just say this. If you read Archibald Alexander's great
book on religious experience, spiritual experience, when
he gets to the new birth, he points out that there's a danger that,
when we're trying to share our faith with people and trying to see people come
to faith, there's a danger that we might actually develop in our mind,
especially when we've seen a couple people get converted, we develop a little
template a, kind of like, you know, sort of an informal outline of what
happens when you're born again. And, we try to make anybody who's born
again fit that template, fit that set. And he says, "You got to keep in mind that
people come into this sensibility in very, very different ways." In fact, I saw all
three of my sons, I have three boys, three children, three sons, and I saw
every one of them born, I saw them come out. And I want you to know
they came out really different. And so, one of them came
out barely looking alive at all, like, "Wake up," and one of them
came out kicking and screaming. And Archibald Alexander
says, keep that in mind. Keep in mind the fact that that
sensibility, sometimes it's like this, and sometimes, you know, it's more like a
lamp that shines more and more unto the perfect day and it takes a
lot longer. So, keep that in mind. But the other thing, and it's
implied in what it means to be born again, we're asking,
"What does the new birth bring?" I said sensibility but also identity. Now, the reason I mention the word
identity here is because Jesus doesn't use the impersonal term of the new
life being implanted like a seed, he says the new life comes into
you as like a baby being born. And babies are born into families.
And if you're reading John 3, you've already read John 1, and
John 1 puts the identity and family very, very closely, it's very
closely tied to the new birth. So of course, in Chapter 1, very famously,
it says, "For all those who received him, who believed in his name, He gave
the rights to be children of God who are born not of natural descent or of
human decision, but born of God." Now notice, as soon as it starts
talking about the new birth, it talks about the fact,
the rights of the children of God. It makes sense because, when you're
born, we're using the image of a baby, you're born into a new family,
into a new name or into a name. Now, what does that mean? I'm sure that when John wrote these
words, in John 1, where he says, "We're not born of natural descent or of
human decision," he didn't have this in mind, but keep this in mind.
What is your identity? Your identity has to
be rooted in something. Your identity is a sense of
self and a sense of worth. If you're from a non-Western part
of the world, non-Western country, probably your identity is basically rooted
in your family. Probably your family. Because, in that part of the world,
you are a good person, you can feel good about yourself,
you can know that you're okay as long as you are fulfilling your family's
responsibility, is pleasing your family, as being a good son or daughter,
a good husband or wife, a good, you know, mother or father. And, as long as you are living up to your
family's expectations, you can feel good about yourself.
Now, there's pressure there. Your family can control you,
it can be pretty suffocating, it can be exploitative. But if you're in the West,
you don't have that kind of family-oriented identity. How do you feel good about yourself? Well, we live in an individualistic
culture where you decide who you want to be, and you determine
who you want to be. It's your will that matters. And you decide, "I want to do this,
and I want to do that," and then, you go out and you do it. But, of course, that's putting a
lot of pressure on you too. Enormous pressure.
But don't you see? Interesting, that to be born again,
to be born of God, is not to be born by family descent, it's not of natural
descent or of human decision. I'm sure that it's only an accident
perhaps that the two things that are mentioned there are Western and
non-Western identities, but don't you see what it means to be… To
receive rights as children of God? You're not on this spectrum,
you're off the spectrum. Your identity is received, not achieved. Your identity is rooted in God's love for
you, and the fact that God is now your father, not your boss,
not just your boss, not just your king, he is though, that.
But He's your father. And there's an unconditionality,
as it were, to His regard for you. And that is so different than any other
kind of identity. So, you get a new identity. And it's remarkable and it's nothing like
anything that you've ever had before. And just to get this across, one
woman once told me that she had five identities in her life. And then, she told me, she said,
"When I was a young girl, I grew up in a very conservative
church and I felt good about myself because I'm a good person,
because I'm very moral. Very moral. I'm one of the good people," but she said,
"it turned me into something of a self-righteous Pharisee and it
also put a lot of pressure on me. And finally, I broke out
and I left the church." And then, she started dating and she
started getting into romantic relationships which very
often were very heady. And she went on and she said, at first,
she felt good about herself because she was so moral, now, she said I feel pretty
good about myself because somebody loves me. You know, there's a 1940s song,
it was originally written in the '40s and sung by Frank Sinatra then in the '50s
and '60s. It's called... it was redone many times... "You're Nobody
Till Somebody Loves You." The song says, "You could be a king and
you could have all the gold in the world but if nobody loves you, you're
nobody till somebody loves you." And she said that was the second phase of
her life, she felt, "As long as I've got a guy who really thinks I'm great,
as long as I got a man on my arm or I'm on his arm and he's on my
arm, then I know I'm okay." But of course, that turned into something
bad because she found herself sticking in relationships that were sometimes
kind of bad, or even abusive, too long because she felt like, "I'm
nobody unless somebody loves me." And some of her girlfriends came along,
said, "You need to be liberated, dear. You cannot build your identity on morality
and you cannot build your identity on men. You need to get a career and you need
to be proud of the fact that you are an independent career woman." And she said, so she did,
and she got an education, and she went into a career,
and then she realized, she said, "I got just as destroyed when my career
had a bump as when I broke up with a guy. You know, my heart was still
not really safe at this point. You know, now I felt good about
myself because I was, you know, a successful career woman." And somebody came along and said,
"Oh, honey, you know, this is what you really need, you know,
you're working too hard, you need to start to care for people,
you need to start to help people." And she got involved in all sorts of good
deeds, she said she started to volunteer and she got involved working with women in
prison, and working with the poor, and doing all this stuff.
And then, she said, "I was exhausted." Until, finally, she said, and
this is her words to me, "First, I thought I was somebody because I was
moral, then I thought I was somebody because I was beautiful, then I
thought I was somebody because I was successful, then I thought I was
somebody because I was helpful." And then she heard the Gospel message
and she realized, "I've been trying to save myself. These
identities don't work." And she gave herself to Christ,
and she said, "God loves me because of what Jesus has done,
not what I have done." And every other identity she had tried had
been based on her own performance, and all the ups and downs or the
whiplashes she was experiencing during all those efforts at a different identity,
and finally, finally she could rest. Becoming a Christian is not just
self-renunciation, but it's not self-realization. It's not
another way to get self-esteem. It's self-transformation. You lose yourself to find yourself. You don't lose yourself,
you don't find yourself. You lose yourself in service to Christ,
you get your identity in Christ, and then, you become, you realize,
you become who you are, who you really are, who
you were made to be. What does it do? New sensibility, no identity. Okay. Fourth, how does it come? Now, up to now, up to now,
I've been talking about the new birth as if it was really pretty much
the same thing as conversion. You need to know that Reformed theologians
have always made a very warranted and important distinction between what we do,
which is repentance and faith, say, we turn, we turn away from
sin and turn toward God. That's what we do, repent and believe,
and what God does, which is the new birth. There is a certain sense in
which, if somebody says to me, "How can I be born again?" technically, the right biblical answer is,
"There is nothing you can do." The text talks about that, at one point,
where it says, "The 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." That's not really under your control. And also, these two things, what you do,
repent and believe, and what God does, which is open your heart to new life,
open your eyes, it's the new birth, they are inextricably linked.
And if anything, Reformed theologians would say, it's the new birth
that causes the conversion. Because, did you see? Jesus says, "You have to be
born again to see the kingdom." In other words, for the Gospel,
the kingdom, to make any sense to you at all, there's already got to be
some work of God in your heart. Having said that though,
they're so inextricably linked that if somebody says to me,
as they have over the years, "How can I have eternal life?" which is what the new
birth is, it's the life of God, "how can I have eternal life?" what the Bible tells you pretty
clearly, and it tells you right here, you repent and believe. Now, the text actually, the text
in front of us, gives us some interesting ways of thinking about those
two things, repent and believe. When you hear, "Repent and believe,"
you're probably thinking, "repent means, 'I'm sorry for my sins,' and believe
means, 'Yeah, I believe that Jesus died on the cross.'" Let's drill a little
deeper here. What does it mean to repent? Of course, it means to
be sorry for your sins. But this text uses a fascinating
illustration of what it means to repent and believe. And it's down here, it goes
by pretty quickly, verse 14, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert
so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes
in him will have eternal life." "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the
desert," it's a fascinating reference and, of course, we could actually preach
an entire message just on that. But what happened in the desert,
if you find it back in the book of Numbers, is that the children of God
had sinned, Israel had sinned, and God sent a plague of snakes,
venomous snakes, and they bit them and they were dying. And, in a sense, the venom represented sin
in their life, basically the venom represented in their bodies,
what was killing them in their soul. And what Moses was told to do was to take
a bronze serpent, an image of the thing that was killing them,
put it up on a pole, you know, as Moses lifted up the serpent,
and all they had to do was look because, some of them were so sick and so
immobilized, they couldn't possibly go over to it and rub it or touch it or any
of that, all you have to do is look. And this text says, "That's an image of
what it means to repent and believe." By far, the most memorable exposition of
this whole idea is Charles Spurgeon's conversion story.
You know it? When Charles Spurgeon, who
became the great Baptist preacher in London, in the 19th century, when
he was just a lad pretty much, well, he was an adolescent, he was a teenager,
and he was struggling to be a Christian, he was struggling to
figure out Christianity. And, one Sunday, he wanted to go to church
but there was a massive snowstorm. And he could only get to a little
primitive Methodist Church in London, around the corner. He wasn't a Methodist
but he went there, and, when he got there, there was virtually no one there,
and also the minister couldn't get there because of the snow. And a layman got up and he began
to preach. And Spurgeon said... Fortunately, he was such a poor preacher,
he didn't do much other than read a text, and then, just exhort. But listen, the text was Isaiah 45,
verse 22, "Look to me and be saved all the ends of the Earth." And the man began to explain the text,
he says, "You know, you don't even have to lift a finger to look," Spurgeon
remembers him saying, "You don't have to be worth £1,000 a year,
you don't have to make £1,000 a year in order to look. You don't have to have anything true about
you to look, you don't have to be good or bad to look." And then, he said, "Don't
look to yourselves, there's no hope there." And then, finally, he lifted up
his voice and he put the words in Jesus, he put the words of Isaiah 45:22 in
Jesus' mouth and he said, "Look to me. I am sweating great drops of blood. Look to me, I'm hanging on the cross. Look to me, I've died and I'm buried. Look to me, I'm risen and I'm ascended and
I'm going to the right hand of the Father. Look to me." And then, he looked out,
there were only three or four people there, he looked out and he saw
Spurgeon, and he says, "Young man, you look miserable. And
you're going to be miserable. You're going to be miserable in life
and death if you don't obey my text." And, at that moment,
this is what Spurgeon said, he suddenly realized, he said,
"I was ready to have somebody tell me to do 50 things in order
to get salvation." He was looking for something
to do in order to get salvation. I guess he probably thought of God as,
you know, the Wizard of Oz. You know, "Go get me the broomstick of the Wicked
Witch of the West," or something like that. He said, "I was ready to be
told, 'You have to do these 50 things,'" and suddenly, he realized,
"I just have to look," and he realized he'd been looking to himself. And this is what he says, "Oh, I looked,
and I looked until I almost looked my eyes away."
See, what is repentance? Yes, of course you are sorry for your sin,
the repentance that brings eternal life is not just asking God's
forgiveness for your sins. He'd already done that,
he'd been doing that, and doing that, and doing that. He had to repent of
trying to save himself. This is what it means, this is
the repentance that brings eternal life to say, "Father, I not only
repent for all the bad things I've done, I repent for all the bad
reasons I did all my good things, all the good things I've done I've
been doing them to control you, or to feel good about myself or to get
other people to look at me. I've done bad things,
and even the good things I've done for bad reasons, and therefore,
I am spiritually bankrupt. I'm totally spiritually bankrupt,
I admit my total absolute helplessness, moral bankruptcy, and
need for sheer grace." That's the repentance. And then, there's the faith. Faith. Well, "I believe Jesus died for me." Well, you have to rest in him. Let's consider this again, this metaphor. When Jesus Christ says, "You
must be born again," and he says, "You're like a newborn baby," you just
think, "how much effort on the part of the baby does it take to be born?" Does a baby have to do this? What's the baby have to do? Nothing. The baby doesn't do anything. The baby contributes nothing to its birth. Okay? Does that mean then, "Oh," you know,
"the new birth, you're not born by your good works." Right, but you are born again
by somebody's works because that baby is born and somebody's doing a lot
of work for that baby to be born. I told you, I watched all three of my sons
born and there was somebody in that room who was doing a lot of work. There was somebody in that room
who was in a fair amount of pain. Now, I think one of the reasons we don't
completely understand this metaphor and the implications of it...though Jesus,
I'm going to show you in a minute, in John 16, he spells it out. I think we don't understand the
implications metaphor because we live in a time of hospitals, and
anesthetics, and epidurals. By the way, if you're a young single male
and you don't know what an epidural is, ask a woman nearby. But let's go back to no hospitals,
and no anesthetics, and no epidurals, and every child born into the world is
being born through the pain and suffering of somebody else, the mother. At the risk of her life and,
in many cases, the cost of her life. Read the history books, you know
how often people were born at the cost of the mother's life? In John, Chapter 16,
Jesus is talking about going away. Right? He said, "I'm
going to go away." And then, suddenly, he says, in verse 21,
"A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her hour has come,
but when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy
that a child has been born into the world."
It's a remarkable statement. First of all, if you are a student of the
book of John, you know that that word, hour, I mean it's odd to say,
"When her hour has come, the baby is born and, in spite of
all her anguish, she has joy." It's odd to talk about a woman's hour
coming but, in the book of John, every time the word hour is brought up,
it's usually, over and over again, it means the hour of Jesus' death. Remember when he said to Mary, in Cana,
"Woman, my hour has not yet come," it means, "it's not time for me to die." What is Jesus saying? He's identifying with a woman in labor. He's saying, "I'm like a woman in labor. You will be born again but not just
through my pain and my suffering, not just at the risk of my life,
at the cost of my life, and I'm going to have such joy to
see your life coming from my death." That's beautiful. To believe… Repent, to repent,
the repentance that brings about eternal life, repentance that's
consonant with a new birth, is repentance that doesn't just say,
"I'm sorry for my sins," but also, "I'm sorry for all the things I thought
were righteous but really were just filthy rags." And faith, the faith that brings eternal
life, the faith that's consonant with the new birth, is to see the costly
grace of Christ and to rest in it. To see that it's his works
that have saved us. And the results of his suffering
he shall see and he'll be satisfied. Repent and believe and you will
be saved, all ye ends of the earth. Here's one last question. How do you know it's happened?
Well, there's a sense in which... I don't know, if you go back through
everything else we've talked about here, there's a lot of ways of having some
understanding of what the new birth is, and what it looks like,
and what it brings. But I think it's fair to go to the end of
the book, at least, the end of this talk, is going to go to the end of the book of
John because Nicodemus shows up again. And, we have to ask ourselves,
"What is the sign of the new birth? How can you tell somebody's
been born again?" Every theologian who understands anything
about the Bible has always said, "Changed life." We're saved by faith alone,
but not by faith which remains alone. We're saved not by our works,
we're saved by faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. But if you really are saved,
that always results in a changed life. Always. Now, when you get to the end
of John 19, what do you see? You see Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea
asking for the body of Jesus Christ, and then, personally dressing
the body for burial. And you start to ask yourself,
"Wait a minute, what's going on here?" Now, this is no proof. I am not trying to say that this is proof
that Nicodemus was born again, but there's something going on. Maybe let's call this evidence or maybe
let's say, "Here's the kind of thing that has to happen in your life if you really
can say yes, he/she/I, born again." When Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus,
who were members of the ruling council, asked for the body of a man who has just
been executed... He was the leader of a movement, he's just been executed. Who wants to be seen to be
a follower of him at this time? How dangerous would that be? Very boldly. In fact, one of the gospels says the word
boldly, "Very boldly they went and they asked for the body." But then, when they dressed it for burial,
you know, only women and slaves did that. I heard somebody once preach on this and
say, "Something's happening to these men." In some ways, because they're very
bold, because they're very tender, and in some ways this was the most
masculine and most feminine thing they've ever done in their lives. They seem to have lost their
class pride, their male pride. At the same time, they're
filled with courage, a courage that you would
not have expected of them. And you see, if you're saved by your good
works, then you're bold as long as you feel like you are living up to your
standards, but of course, you're not humble, you're condescending
toward everyone else. Or, if you're saved, you think
you're being saved by works and you fail your standards, then
you'll be humble and you're very down on yourself and very humble,
but of course you're not confident. If you're saved by your works,
you're either bold but not humble or you're humble but not bold. But if you're a sinner saved by grace,
the Gospel takes you into the dust, and then, lifts you to the skies. There's a boldness and a
humility that work together. And it can change you,
it will change you culturally, you will not be the same. Your masculinity will not be the same,
your class consciousness will not be the same, your racial consciousness will
not be the same, your femininity will not be the same.
Got that? It's going to change.
And that's scary, right? Get ready.
It's also wonderful. At the very end of
C.S. Lewis' radio talks, which were published as
<i>Mere Christianity</i>, he talks about how scary it is to let God come into
your life and change you like this. But he says, "There's really no
alternative." And here's what he says, this is the very last
words of those radio talks. He says, "The principle runs through
all of life from top to bottom. Give up yourself and you
will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions
and favorite wishes, every day, and death of your whole body in the end,
submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given
away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died
will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find,
in the long run, only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him,
and with him everything else thrown in." Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for the new birth. Thank you that you did not call us simply
to live in a particular way and hope that perhaps, at the end, we might
make the cut and go to heaven. Thank you for giving us new life,
new sensibility, and new identity now. Thank you for the power of your
future in our life now, for change. Thank you for the supernatural
nature of our salvation. Thank you for the new birth. And I pray that everyone listening here
will either have experienced it or will ask themselves the question,
"What must I do?" Help us all to look to you and be saved. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
