You Must Be Born Again Part 2 What Happens At The New Birth? John 3, Ezekiel 36:24–28 Pastor Barry Kerner
You Must Be Born Again
Part 2 What Happens At The New Birth?
John 3, Ezekiel 36:24–28
Pastor Barry Kerner
Today we complete last week’s message on what happens in the new birth. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:7, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” And in verse 3, he told Nicodemus — and us — that our eternal lives depend on being born again. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” So we are not dealing with something marginal or optional or cosmetic in the Christian life. The new birth is not like the makeup that morticians use to try to make corpses look more like they are alive. The new birth is the creation of a new spiritual life, not the imitation of life.
We began to answer the question What happens in the new birth? last time with two statements. First, what happens in the new birth is not getting new religion but getting new life, and second, what happens in the new birth is not merely affirming the supernatural in Jesus, but experiencing the supernatural in ourselves.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee and had lots of religion. But he had no spiritual life. And he saw the supernatural work of God in Jesus, but he didn’t experience the supernatural work of God in himself. So putting our two points together from last time, what Nicodemus needed, Jesus said, was new spiritual life imparted supernaturally through the Holy Spirit. What makes the new life spiritual and what makes it supernatural is that it is the work of God the Spirit. It is something above the natural life of our physical hearts and brains.
In verse 6, Jesus says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The flesh does have a kind of life. Every human being is living flesh. But not every human being is living spirit. To be a living spirit, or to have spiritual life, Jesus says, we must be “born of the Spirit.” Flesh gives rise to one kind of life. The Spirit gives rise to another kind of life. If we don’t have this second kind, we will not see the kingdom of God.
Then as we closed last time, we noticed two very important things. We saw that there is a relationship of the new birth to Jesus and the relationship of the new birth to faith. In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” In 1 John 5:11-12 the apostle John said, “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” So on the one hand, the new life we need is “in the Son” — Jesus is that life. If you have him, you have new spiritual, eternal life. And on the other hand, in John 6:63, Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life.” John 3:5 tells us that unless you are born of the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
So we have life by being connected with the Son of God who is our life, and we have that life by the work of the Spirit. We concluded, therefore, that the work of the Spirit in regeneration is to impart new life to us by uniting us to Christ. The way John Calvin says it is: “The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself” (Institutes, 3.1.1).
And then we made the connection to faith like this. John 20:31 says, “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” And 1 John 5:4 says, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.” Being born of God is the key to victory. Our faith is the key to victory. Faith is the way we experience being born of God. To sum up the last message, in the new birth, the Holy Spirit supernaturally gives us new spiritual life by connecting us with Jesus Christ through faith.
This brings us now to the third way of describing what happens in the new birth. What happens in the new birth is not the improvement of your old human nature but the creation of a new human nature — a nature that is really you, and is forgiven and cleansed; and a nature that is really new, and is being formed in you by the indwelling Spirit of God.
In John 3:5, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” What does Jesus mean by the two terms “by water and the Spirit”? Some denominations believe that this is a reference to water baptism as the way the Spirit unites us to Christ. For example, one website explains it like this:
Holy Baptism is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit and the door which gives access to the other sacraments. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God; we become members of Christ, are incorporated into the Church and made sharers in her mission: “Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration through water in the word.” Millions of people have been taught that their baptism caused them to be born again. If this is not true, it is a great and global tragedy. And I do not believe it is true. So what then does Jesus mean?
Here are several reasons why I think the reference to water here is not a reference to Christian baptism. Then we will see where the context leads.
First, there Is no mention of baptism in the rest of the chapter. If this were a reference to Christian baptism and it were as essential for new birth as some say it is, it seems strange that it drops out of what Jesus says in this chapter in telling us how to have eternal life. In verse 15 Jesus says, “Whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” In verse 16: he says, “Whoever believes in him [will] not perish but have eternal life.” And, in verse 18, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned.” It would seem strange, if baptism were that essential, it would not be mentioned along with faith.
Second, the analogy with the wind in verse 8 would seem strange if being born again were so firmly attached to water baptism. Jesus says, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” This seems to say that God is as free as the wind in causing regeneration. But if it happened every time a baby is sprinkled, that would not seem to be true. In that case the wind, would be very confined by the sacrament.
Third, if Jesus is referring to Christian baptism, it seems strange that he would say to Nicodemus, the Pharisee in verse 10, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” That makes sense if Jesus is referring to something taught in the Old Testament. But if he is referring to a baptism that will come later and get its meaning from the life and death of Jesus, it doesn’t seem like he would have scolded Nicodemus that a teacher in Israel does not understand what he is saying.
Finally, that same statement in verse 10 sends us back to the Old Testament for some background, and what we find is that water and spirit are closely linked in the New Covenant promises, especially in Ezekiel 36. So let’s go there together. This text is the basis for the rest of this message.
Ezekiel is prophesying what God will do for his people when he brings them back from exile in Babylon. The implications are much larger than just for the people of Israel, because Jesus claims to secure the New Covenant by his blood for all who will trust in him (Luke 22:20). And this is one version of the New Covenant promises like the one in Jeremiah 31:31–34. Let’s read it together. Ezekiel 36:24–28.
“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 uncleanliness, 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. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
I think this is the passage that gives rise to Jesus words, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” In verse 28 Jesus says, “You shall be my people, and I will be your God.” Who was he talking to? To the ones to whom he says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness.” And, to the ones to whom he says, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.”
In other words, the ones who will enter the kingdom are those who have a newness that involves a cleansing of the old and a creation of the new. So I conclude that “water and Spirit” refer to two aspects of our newness when we are born again. And the reason both are important is this: when we say that a new spirit, or a new heart, is given to us, we don’t mean that we cease to be the human being that we have always been.
I was the individual human being Barry Kerner before I was born again, and I am the individual human being Barry Kerner after I was born again. There is a continuity. That’s why there has to be cleansing. If the old human being, Barry Kerner, were completely obliterated, the whole concept of forgiveness and cleansing would be irrelevant. There would be nothing leftover from the past to forgive or cleanse.
We know that the Bible tells us that our old self was crucified (Romans 6:6), and that we have died with Christ (Colossians 3:3), and we are to “consider ourselves dead” (Romans 6:11), and “put off the old self” (Ephesians 4:22). But none of that means the same human being is not in view throughout life. It means that there was an old nature, an old character, or principle, that needs to be done away with.
So the way to think about your new heart, new spirit, new nature is that it is still you and so needs to be forgiven and cleansed — that’s the point of the referring to water. My guilt must be washed away. Cleansing with water is a picture of that. Jeremiah 33:8 puts it like this: “I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me.” So the person that we are — that continues to exist — must be forgiven, and the guilt washed away.
But forgiveness and cleansing is not enough. I need to be new. I need to be transformed. I need life. I need a new way of seeing and thinking and valuing. That’s why Ezekiel speaks of a new heart and a new spirit in verse 26 and 27: “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.”
Here’s the way I understand those verses: To be sure, the heart of stone means the dead heart that was unfeeling and unresponsive to spiritual reality. It could respond with passion and desire to lots of things. But it was a stone toward the spiritual truth and beauty of Jesus Christ and the glory of God and the path of holiness. That is what has to change if we are to see the kingdom of God.
So in the new birth, God takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh. The word flesh doesn’t mean “merely human” like it does in John 3:6. It means soft and living and responsive and feeling, instead of being a lifeless stone. In the new birth, our dead, stony boredom with Christ is replaced by a heart that feels or spiritually senses the worth of Jesus.
Then when Ezekiel says in verses 26 and 27, “a new spirit I will put within you. . . . And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes,” He means that in the new birth, God puts a living, supernatural, spiritual life in our heart, and that new life — that new spirit — is the working of the Holy Spirit himself giving shape and character to our new heart.
So now let’s step back and sum up these last two weeks. What happens in the new birth? In the new birth, the Holy Spirit supernaturally gives us new spiritual life by connecting us with Jesus Christ through faith. Or, to say it another way, the Spirit unites us to Christ where there is cleansing for our sins, and he replaces our hard, unresponsive heart with a soft heart that treasures Jesus above all things and is being transformed by the presence of the Spirit into the kind of heart that loves to do the will of God.
Since the way you experience all of this is through faith, I invite you now, in the name of Jesus and by the power of his Spirit, to receive him as the sin-forgiving, transforming Treasure of your life.
2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
There is a certain truth about the new creation in Christ which, as Christians, we must be conscious of and live by. These are not promises but they are the truths in the word of God which are realities. If you’ve received Christ into your life, you’ve become new. The Bible says “if any man is in Christ, he ‘is’ a new creation.” That passage is talking of the “present” not “later,” it means you become a new creation immediately.
Another truth is that the word of God is an agent of cleansing, it purifies and makes all things new. John 15:3 says “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” By his words, we are made clean from all that might have stained us which includes our terrible past. We should then not even think of the old but of the present because Christ has made us new and that alone should give us joy. Now that we are a new creation, we are in Christ. And, if we are in Christ, that which is true of Jesus Christ is true of us as well.
Today, think of yourself as a new creation and never let your past slow you down but let Christ move you forward and faster.
Let us pray.
Father, your Word says, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) Because Christ lives in us, we can live our lives differently as we put our faith in Jesus and in His power to work in us and through us. Jesus, thank you for giving your life for us so that we are new creations in Christ! Continue to speak to our hearts through your Word today and help us live like new creations in Christ. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.