Regeneration

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When Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, professing a desire to know more about Him on account of all the miracles He was performing, Jesus had a strange answer for Him. He did not shrug and say, "Aw, shucks!" He was not intimidated by this ruler of the Jews. Jesus knew who He was, and no earthly power could ever scare Him. He looked old Nicodemus right in the eye and said,

Nicodemus, who was a ruler of Israel, and a teacher of the Jews, did not know what Jesus was talking about. He should have known. Even today, many people do not have any idea what this term means. More than a few associate it with religious fanaticism. They believe that it is a term used by over-zealous Christians, and their hearts recoil when they hear it spoken. In the minds of the uneducated masses, it is identified with the use of sign gifts such as speaking in tongues and mass healings. Misunderstood, the term born again is repugnant to lost souls. Knowing that they are not born again, they fear the judgment of a righteous God.

What Jesus was telling Nicodemus was that man is born with a sin nature that can never be reformed. It is rebellious toward God, and can never be brought into conformity to His will. There is sin in the flesh and in the blood and in the heart of man that no amount of religion can cure. There is no priest to whom one may turn in confession, no penance that one may pay, no turning over a new leaf. We are all alike sinners, and incorrigible in our hatred of God. The only thing that can change who we are is a new birth. One cannot join a church and be saved. He cannot tithe or minister to the poor or be baptized; he cannot sing hymns or pray publicly or privately in order to effect his salvation. There is nothing that a man can do to be saved outside the experience of the new birth that will in any way gain him entrance into the kingdom of God.

What then are we to do? It is a reasonable question. The answer is to be born again. But how? It is so very easy. Jesus told Nicodemus how to be born again. He said,

After Moses parted the Red Sea and the Jews escaped from Pharoah and slavery in Egypt, they crossed into the Sinai peninsula, where they wandered for forty years. There were some two million of these Jews. They would set up camp and stay in one place for a time, and then they would be instructed by God to pul up stakes and relocate. Of course, this was a desert place, much as it is today. There was little food available, and less water. This is the time when God provided manna for the Jews to eat, and when Moses struck the rock, from which water flowed.

It was a healthy diet, providing for their every need. They did not have to run down to the heath food store for this supplement or that. But the Jews were not satisfied. They began to murmur against Moses, and against God, saying that it would have been better for them to have remained in Egypt, where they had onions and garlic and other tasty foods. They grumbled and complained and whined, until one day God sent a plague of snakes into the Jewish camp. These snakes began striking and killing the Jews by the score. The Jews began to fear that they would all be wiped out.

Moses fashioned a serpent out of bronze (the metal of judgment), and affixed it to a pole. He raised the serpent high into the air, and any Jew who looked on that serpent and trusted God was not struck by the serpents. Their physical lives were spared. They did not die in that plague.

Of course, the serpent was symbolic of sin, as he is ever the tempter. The altar of sacrifice in the tabernacle was made of bronze, whereon the sacrifices were made which made temporary atonement for the sins of the Jews. What Jesus was saying to Nicodemus was that He also must be lifted up, bearing the sins of the entire race of men. Anyone who trusted in the sufficiency of that sacrifice would not have his temporal life spared, but would receive eternal life.

One is born again by trusting in the sufficiency of the sacrifice of the Son of God to fully pay the penalty for his sins. But what does it mean to be born again? Nicodemus asked,

Nicodemus still did not understand. This is when Jesus used the illustration of Moses lifting up the snake in the wilderness. It is doubtful that Nicodemus understood even then that Jesus was prophesying His own crucifixion. Nevertheless, the context clearly shows that one is born again through believing in the sufficiency of Jesus' death on the cross to pay for his sins.

Now we begin to see what Jesus was talking about. He was not talking about the birth of the body per se. Rather, Jesus was talking about the birth of the person, who, in the flesh birth, is rebellious toward God. You are not the piece of meat that is sitting before your computer reading this material. You dwell in that piece of meat. You dwell behind the eyes, and you look out at the world through those windows. You are not the body, but the person, the character and personality. The nature that you are born with originally is the enemy of God, and can never please Him, no matter how many good works you do, for you remain a sinner.

In the new birth, however, a new nature is imparted. This new nature is not born of the seed of man, but is born of God, and can never sin. The life that is in that nature is not temoral, but eternal. It is the very life of God Himself, which He imparts to every believer the moment he believes. From that moment on the sinner has become a saint, and shall never die, though the body may yet die.

The new nature is sinless. It is perfectly righteous, as God is righteous. However, the old nature remains with us until either death or the rapture intervenes. Paul speaks of walking in the spirit and also of walking in the flesh. Whenever we walk in the spirit, we serve God, but when we walk in the flesh, we serve our old natures. Then we sin. But the new nature never does sin, and it is this which assures us of a place in heaven. Because the Seed of God remains in us, His righteousness is also charged to our accounts, and we are promised eternal life.

When Jesus hung on the cross, every sin that you or I ever committed or ever will commit was laid upon Him. He paid its penalty on our behalf. When we accept the payment that He made for our sin, we are born again, regenerated. Just as our sin was charged to Him, so also His righteousness is charged to us. Since it is impossible to be lost again once God's righteousness is charged to our account, we know that we have eternal life, just as Jesus promised. hear the words which Paul wrote to his dear friend Titus:

Our rebirth does not depend upon what we do, but upon what He has already done. We are saved by God's grace, through faith in the sufficiency of His work of redemption. This new birth is effected through the implantation of God's Word, as peter relates:

Thus we learn that the new birth, or the regeneration, is wrought by the Holy Spirit in the spirit of man, acting upon God's Word, in the implanting of the Seed of God, which bears the life of God, and is brought about by faith on the part of the sinner in the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross to pay the penalty of the Law for all our sins. It results in a new nature being born in the believer, which resides alongside the old fallen nature, and which can never sin, causing the righteousness of God to be justly charged to the believer's account. This new birth is the only right of admission into the kingdom of God, and it is only available through trust in the sacrifice of God on our behalf.