How Are We Born Again?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | We end week number 500 on the podcast today.

00:00:08.680 | And we end it with a sharp Bible question

00:00:10.400 | from a listener named Derek, who lives in Seattle.

00:00:13.800 | Pastor John, hello.

00:00:14.840 | I have a Bible question for you about the new birth.

00:00:17.840 | Peter wrote that believers are born again,

00:00:20.200 | not of perishable seed, but of imperishable

00:00:23.240 | through the living and abiding word of God.

00:00:25.920 | That's 1 Peter 1.23.

00:00:28.680 | In the gospel of John, Jesus says,

00:00:30.600 | "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit,

00:00:33.480 | he cannot enter the kingdom of God," John 3.5.

00:00:37.040 | Can you help me understand the truth

00:00:38.320 | that these verses are totally compatible?

00:00:41.120 | Romans 10.17 and James 1.21 also mention

00:00:44.400 | the saving power of the word heard and implanted,

00:00:48.200 | but surely not in a way that minimizes

00:00:50.160 | the work of the Holy Spirit.

00:00:52.520 | The question then follows, how do the Holy Spirit

00:00:55.520 | and the word of God collaborate in the new birth?

00:00:59.760 | Great question. Yeah.

00:01:01.880 | Well, let's start by reminding ourselves

00:01:04.960 | that the reason we must be born again,

00:01:08.400 | however it happens, the reason we must be born again

00:01:12.360 | in order to see the kingdom of God, like Jesus says,

00:01:17.880 | is because by nature, by birth,

00:01:21.960 | we are all spiritually dead.

00:01:25.480 | This is the way Paul describes it in Ephesians 2.4,

00:01:30.120 | where he says that even when we were dead in trespasses,

00:01:35.120 | God made us alive in Christ Jesus.

00:01:39.520 | Now, that making alive is the same as the new birth

00:01:44.520 | in different language.

00:01:47.120 | Every human being has fallen in Adam and Eve,

00:01:53.760 | in Adam and comes into the world

00:01:56.720 | without any saving spiritual life at all.

00:02:00.280 | We are dead.

00:02:01.120 | We are by nature resistant to God.

00:02:05.000 | We do not submit to him by nature.

00:02:07.480 | We value things that he has made more than him by nature.

00:02:12.480 | And we do not have the spiritual capacities

00:02:15.680 | to see Christ as supremely valuable and true

00:02:19.560 | and better than anything in the world.

00:02:21.320 | Nothing of that do we have by nature.

00:02:24.800 | Unless we feel the weight of the lostness and fallenness,

00:02:28.480 | deadness of all humans, especially ourselves,

00:02:33.480 | nothing about the new birth is gonna make sense

00:02:36.120 | in the New Testament.

00:02:37.960 | So all of that means if we're gonna live,

00:02:40.920 | if we're gonna know God,

00:02:41.920 | if we're gonna be happy forever,

00:02:43.840 | we must have new life.

00:02:47.220 | That is new birth, new creation.

00:02:49.920 | So what Derek is asking now is how

00:02:53.400 | the Spirit of God and the Word of God function together

00:02:59.640 | to bring us out of this deadness

00:03:02.240 | into new eternal life of knowing and enjoying God forever.

00:03:07.240 | And Derek refers to the words of Jesus in John 3,

00:03:13.280 | so let's start there.

00:03:14.840 | Jesus said to Nicodemus, John 3, verse 3, we'll start there.

00:03:19.280 | "Truly I say to you, unless one is born again,

00:03:23.720 | he cannot see the kingdom of God."

00:03:26.120 | Then I'll jump to verse 6.

00:03:28.000 | "That which is born of the flesh is flesh,

00:03:29.840 | that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

00:03:32.560 | Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again.

00:03:36.640 | The wind blows where it wishes, you hear the sound,

00:03:39.840 | but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

00:03:43.240 | So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

00:03:49.240 | So to be born of the flesh is the first birth

00:03:54.160 | that we've all experienced.

00:03:55.400 | If you're alive, you were born.

00:03:57.320 | And he says that to be born first in that way

00:04:01.720 | that we've all been born is to be no more

00:04:05.600 | than a fallen human being.

00:04:08.040 | That which is born of the flesh is flesh.

00:04:11.120 | That's all it is.

00:04:12.320 | Something more must happen for us

00:04:15.120 | if we are to enter the kingdom of God.

00:04:18.360 | And Jesus describes that more as a birth by the Spirit.

00:04:23.360 | And then he compares the work of the Spirit

00:04:27.080 | in the new birth to the blowing of the wind.

00:04:30.600 | The wind blows where it wishes,

00:04:32.760 | and you hear the sound of it,

00:04:34.840 | and you don't know where it comes from or where it goes.

00:04:36.960 | So it is with everyone born of the Spirit,

00:04:39.000 | which means the Spirit is as free

00:04:42.800 | in his regenerating new birth work,

00:04:45.880 | and he's as mysterious in that work as the unseen wind.

00:04:51.760 | You don't control the wind.

00:04:53.160 | You don't make the wind come.

00:04:54.960 | You don't make the wind go.

00:04:56.840 | It just comes, it goes, it does what it does,

00:05:00.440 | and that's the way it is with God's sovereign Spirit

00:05:03.800 | in whom he makes alive and gives new birth.

00:05:08.320 | We didn't make our first birth.

00:05:10.400 | We don't make our second birth.

00:05:12.240 | We don't raise ourselves from the dead.

00:05:14.080 | We don't create new life in our souls.

00:05:16.280 | It is a gift.

00:05:17.600 | It's a miracle of God.

00:05:20.120 | We don't initiate it.

00:05:22.000 | We don't control it.

00:05:23.920 | It's the sovereign, mysterious work

00:05:26.400 | of the Holy Spirit of God.

00:05:29.200 | Our first conscious, conscious experience

00:05:33.840 | of this new birth is the arising in our hearts

00:05:38.840 | of faith in Christ.

00:05:41.880 | You might say that the first cry

00:05:44.240 | of the newborn Christian infant is the cry of faith.

00:05:48.200 | Instead of, "Wah, wah, wah,"

00:05:50.000 | the heart feels, "I see him.

00:05:52.800 | "He's beautiful.

00:05:53.760 | "I love him.

00:05:54.600 | "I want him.

00:05:55.440 | "I need him.

00:05:56.280 | "He's my Savior."

00:05:57.120 | That's the cry of the new birth.

00:05:59.320 | Then Paul says, "Nobody can say Jesus is Lord

00:06:03.840 | "except by the Holy Spirit."

00:06:07.200 | So that baby cries, "Jesus is my Lord."

00:06:11.520 | And he says that the evidence of the Holy Spirit

00:06:14.200 | coming into our lives is that we cry, "Abba, Father."

00:06:18.320 | So even though the work of the Holy Spirit is unseen

00:06:23.320 | and outside our control,

00:06:27.160 | the evidence of his work is manifest.

00:06:31.400 | We see the glory of Christ as desirable and believable,

00:06:36.720 | and we embrace him as our Savior, our Lord, our treasure.

00:06:41.640 | That's the evidence of the new birth in our life.

00:06:45.320 | Christ is now real to us and precious to us

00:06:49.040 | and trustworthy to us and authoritative for us.

00:06:53.240 | We have been made alive, born again.

00:06:57.440 | That's the work of the Spirit.

00:06:59.920 | But now you can see right away,

00:07:04.760 | by the very nature of what's happened,

00:07:07.040 | that this implies something about the Word.

00:07:10.040 | If we are now believing in Jesus because of our new birth,

00:07:16.080 | and that's the first cry of the newborn instant,

00:07:20.680 | then we're seeing him as true and real and valuable.

00:07:26.880 | Where?

00:07:28.240 | Where do we see him?

00:07:29.840 | The Holy Spirit does not whisper the gospel in our ear.

00:07:33.600 | We have to hear about him in the gospel.

00:07:37.640 | So Paul says in Romans 10 that faith comes by hearing

00:07:42.440 | and hearing by the Word of Christ.

00:07:45.080 | So what we learn then is that faith is a work

00:07:49.720 | of the Holy Spirit in new birth,

00:07:52.680 | according to Ephesians 2, 8, and 9,

00:07:54.480 | and faith is the effect of hearing the Word of God.

00:08:00.360 | Faith comes from the new birth by the Spirit,

00:08:04.240 | and faith comes from the Word.

00:08:08.040 | And that's where 1 Peter 1, 23 comes in,

00:08:11.920 | to connect Word and Spirit in the new birth.

00:08:16.160 | Peter says, "You have been born again,

00:08:20.600 | not of perishable seed, but of imperishable."

00:08:25.600 | That's the Spirit of God.

00:08:28.400 | Through, he says, through the living

00:08:32.560 | and abiding Word of God.

00:08:34.960 | So born of the Spirit, born through the Word.

00:08:39.960 | So what we see is that the sovereign Spirit of God

00:08:46.160 | binds himself to the Word of God because his work,

00:08:51.880 | his primary work, as Jesus said in John 16, 14,

00:08:55.680 | is to glorify the Son of God who is manifest

00:08:59.760 | in the preaching of the Word of God.

00:09:02.480 | The Holy Spirit does not move willy-nilly,

00:09:07.480 | randomly, through the world, touching random people

00:09:12.280 | with the new birth who've never heard the gospel

00:09:15.480 | without any reference to the Word of God at all.

00:09:18.000 | No, he doesn't do that.

00:09:19.680 | He moves in tandem with the preaching of the gospel

00:09:24.680 | and the reason he does is that his primary mission,

00:09:29.440 | according to John 6, 14, is to glorify the Son of God.

00:09:33.840 | And if he just made people alive who've never heard

00:09:37.920 | of the Son of God, they wouldn't be glorifying

00:09:41.280 | the Son of God with their new life.

00:09:44.680 | New life is bound to the Word of God

00:09:49.080 | because new life is meant to glorify the Son of God

00:09:53.560 | and we hear about the Son of God

00:09:56.320 | in the Word of God, the gospel.

00:09:59.560 | We see an example of this in Acts 16, 14,

00:10:02.160 | where Paul is preaching to Lydia

00:10:04.960 | and the other women there by the river

00:10:07.520 | and it says, "The Lord opened her heart

00:10:12.520 | "to give heed to what was said by Paul."

00:10:19.280 | So you have the Word spoken, preached by a human being,

00:10:24.080 | Paul, and you have the divine work of God

00:10:27.840 | opening the heart to give heed and to give new life

00:10:32.840 | so that she can understand and receive

00:10:37.080 | the preciousness of the gospel.

00:10:40.080 | So the implication for us is that our essential role

00:10:46.640 | in salvation is to speak the Word of God

00:10:51.640 | and then trust the Spirit of God to do the work,

00:10:57.160 | the heart work called the new birth.

00:11:01.080 | We don't cause the new birth in ourselves

00:11:04.240 | or in anybody else and we don't cause it

00:11:08.160 | in those we're preaching the gospel to.

00:11:12.960 | The role we have, and it is an absolutely essential role,

00:11:17.960 | is to speak faithfully the Word of God.

00:11:22.320 | Paul asks in Romans 10, verse 14,

00:11:26.920 | "How are they to believe in him whom they've never heard?

00:11:32.960 | "And how are they to hear without someone preaching?"

00:11:39.680 | So faith comes from hearing

00:11:42.360 | and hearing through the Word of Christ, he says.

00:11:45.760 | So my prayer for us is, may the Lord give us great boldness

00:11:50.760 | and faithfulness and confidence

00:11:57.880 | that when we speak the Word of God,

00:12:02.100 | the Spirit of God will give life

00:12:06.940 | and glorify the Son of God through the awakening of faith.

00:12:11.640 | - Yeah, thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:12.800 | And thank you all for joining us today.

00:12:14.520 | You can ask a question of your own,

00:12:15.760 | search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast,

00:12:17.920 | all at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:22.620 | And with that, week number 500 on the podcast

00:12:25.640 | comes to an end, amazing.

00:12:28.320 | Thank you for supporting us and for listening to us

00:12:30.720 | and for making it all possible.

00:12:32.520 | It's not possible without you, your time, your listens,

00:12:36.600 | your subscribes, your emails, your support.

00:12:39.560 | So thank you.

00:12:40.400 | On behalf of a very grateful John Piper,

00:12:42.720 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.

00:12:44.080 | We will see you back here on Monday

00:12:45.820 | for the beginning of week number 501.

00:12:50.200 | We'll see you then.

00:12:51.160 | (upbeat music)

00:12:53.740 | (upbeat music)

00:12:56.320 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Are We Born Again?

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