A New You

“Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God’ “ (John 3:3).

So we come to one of the most famous passages in John’s gospel, perhaps even in the whole Bible. Here is the essence of God’s assessment of the human condition: We are spiritually dead and must be born again from above. Without this heavenly gift, we simply cannot rise above our fleshly nature or attain spiritual life (John 3:6). Indeed, such is our lost condition; we cannot even see the kingdom of heaven much less enter it (John 3:3, 5), for it is easier to climb to the moon on a rope of sand than to climb out of our flesh into the Spirit by our own futile efforts. We must be born again. It is our only hope.  

Jesus describes this new birth as a process of being born of water and the Spirit. What does He mean? Most scholars believe that He is referring to Ezekiel 36:25-27. Many thematic parallels connect both passages, principally that of water and Spirit:

I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:24–27)

Sin has left us hard, dirty, and dead. There is nothing we can do to better our spiritual condition. God must do it all. Notice that God is the only One at work here. He is the One sprinkling and cleansing. He is the One giving a new heart and a new Spirit. He is the One removing the stone-like hardness. He is the One placing His Spirit deep inside, and He is the One causing a new obedience  to rise with the expulsive power of new life. Clearly, this is not something we can do for ourselves. In many ways, this is the message of the whole Bible. We can summarize it in three lovely words: God saves sinners. I love the way that J.I.Packer riffs on these words in his famous introduction to John Owen’s, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ:

God saves sinners. God - the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father's will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing. Saves - does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners - men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, blind, unable to lift a finger to do God's will or better their spiritual lot. God saves sinners.

An analogy is instructive at this point. Picture a patient dead on a gurney, one whose heart has only just stopped beating. With the defibrillator paddles in her hands, the physician standing over him holds the power of life and death. She is not waiting for the man to jerk in her direction or even twitch a muscle. She applies the paddles to the dead man’s chest and shocks him back to life. It is only as the shock courses through his body that his muscle jerks. So it is with the new birth. We are absolutely dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1ff). God is not waiting for us to believe or to repent. He is not even waiting for us to twitch in His direction. He makes us alive with the same sovereign and efficacious word with which he called Lazarus out from the clutches of death. Jesus spoke and Lazarus came to life. Just as the defibrillator paddles elicit a sudden reaction, so also does the Spirit enliven the dead and unregenerate soul, jerking it towards God in saving faith and repentance. Note, however, that this happens only after the shock of new life enters the soul, not before. Our faith is the evidence of the new birth, not its cause. We have nothing about which to boast, save the power and grace of God. We were dead and deserved to stay dead, but God brought the power of Easter down into our souls and made us alive in Christ Jesus. Praise His holy Name!