March 1, 2009

Dr. Ron Sumners

WHAT IS A BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN?

John 3

I want to ask you a very personal and pertinent question: Have you been born again? Notice that I did not ask “Are you a Christian?” or “Are you a church member?” or “Are you a good, moral person?” My question is whether you have had a definite, vital experience of spiritual rebirth.

If each of you answered honestly, some of you could answer “Yes,” some of you would respond “I’m not sure,” and some of you would have to say, “No.” Often people may have a connection with the church and live moral lives, but somehow are never confronted with the challenge of being born again. The great need among church members, religious people, as well as the lost, is for a transforming new birth experience.

Born-again Christianity was big news back in the 1980’s. It captured the attention of the press, merited headlines, and became a topic of conversation everywhere from church parlors to cocktail parties. Prominent political entertainment and sports personalities who claimed to be born again bombarded the American consciousness.

Why all this emphasis on being born again? Must you be born again to be a Christian? Do you have to have the same experience as some others you know who have been born again? All of these questions demand a straightforward response. I want to answer by describing what it means to be born again, how to be sure we are, and what the results are.

To do that, I want to clear away the brambles of misunderstanding and layers of confusion by going back to what Jesus actually said. There is no better way to do that than to go back to the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus as recorded in the third chapter of John’s Gospel. The natural unfolding of the account gives us a progression from the universal need for rebirth, to the crisis, which brings us to Christ’s explanation of how it happens, and then to what we can do to cooperate in being born again.

We all need to be born again. Nicodemus’ character, stature, position, learning, and religious life puts us all on level ground. It was clever of John to select this leading Pharisee’s conversation with Jesus to proclaim the necessity of new birth. We can be sure that Jesus talked about the necessity of new birth with many others.

Nicodemus was one of more than 6,000 Pharisees in Israel, known as the chaburah, the brotherhood. As such, he had pledged his life to studying, observing and enforcing every detail of the law. He was an impeccable moralist, seeking perfection in absolute obedience to all the rules and regulations. His learning (probably under Gamaliel, the great teacher in Israel who also taught Saul of Tarsus) had steeped him in tradition and the scriptures.

John tells us that he was a ruler of the Jews, meaning that he was one of the thirty-five Pharisees who, along with thirty-five Sadducees, made up the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court. As a Pharisee, he looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, longed for the coming of the kingdom of God and was fiercely patriotic. His whole way of life had made him defensive of the Law and tradition.

Nicodemus had something more, however. He had a longing for new truth and an inquiring mind that was open to what God was doing, as well as what He had done throughout Israel’s history. He had observed Jesus’ miracles, had listened to His message, and he wanted to find out who He really was. Setting aside caution and propriety, he came to Jesus to see and hear for himself. There is much made of the fact that he came by night, suggesting that he came secretly so as not to have his interest exposed to the rest of the Sanhedrin. That’s to miss the point that the evening hours were set aside by the Pharisees for study and reflection. John’s reference to the hour of the visit underlines the seriousness and intensity of Nicodemus’ purpose.

The first thing we learn from this background on Nicodemus is that, on a human level, no one could have had finer religious credentials or a more impeccable character. However perfect our performance, however advanced our spiritual learning, however much we have read and memorized the Scriptures, and however diligent our search to know God, we still need what was missing in this outstanding man. He knew about God, but he did not know God personally!

Secondly, a crisis brought Nicodemus to a realization of his need. There are two kinds of crisis: the crisis precipitated by a problem and the crisis brought on by a potential. Jesus Himself was the cause of the crisis in Nicodemus’ life. What he had seen and heard of the Master had created a disturbance within Nicodemus. Here was the power of God being manifested in word and deed. It brought both shock and awe to the Pharisee. To one whose life was devoted to preservation of what God had done, there was the shock of God’s immanent presence. Awe, aroused by what he had observed created a desire to experience the same present power of God in his own life.

Nicodemus said, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these things that You do unless God be with him.” He had seen undeniable evidence that God was working in Jesus. His statement borders on Messianic recognition. I have always wondered if Nicodemus was not really saying, “Are You the One?”

Then, as now, Jesus Christ precipitates a crisis. It is the crisis of potential for our problems. He disturbs us with not only how inadequate our lives have been, but with how great we are meant to be. In His presence, we yearn to experience His power. We feel our need for love. We face the broken pieces of our fractured lives and long to know His unbreakable peace.

Jesus’ response to Nicodemus must have been a lightening flash of challenge followed by a thunderclap of disturbance in the sensitive soul of the Pharisee. The shock and the awe he had felt observing Jesus was nothing compared to the turbulence created by what Jesus said to him about his own spiritual condition. Jesus did not respond to the accolade paid to Him by the Pharisee. Instead, He cut to the core of the religious man’s empty soul. “I say to you that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The word for again in the Greek means “from above” as well as “a second time.” Both are implied. The miracle of a totally new and radically fresh beginning is induced by God and is nothing less than starting all over again.

Nicodemus’ question about how a man could enter his mother’s womb to be born again and his later question, “How can these things be?” expose a deeper question. What he is really asking is – can a person after years of living, conditioning, habit-forming, mind setting, ever really start all over again?

Now Jesus hammers home the essential truth, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The key is what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. Perhaps the unrecorded part of this conversation includes what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. We know that the kingdom is the reign and rule of Christ in every heart. It includes all relationships. The kingdom is not political. It had nothing to do with the narrow nationalism of Israel. No Jew, even one as famous as Nicodemus, could enter into the kingdom without a new beginning.

The words, “born of water and of spirit,” press the point. Water baptism was the rite of initiation for a proselyte into Judaism. In effect, what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus was, “Unless you are willing to become a novice again, you cannot enter into true fellowship with God.”

The Pharisee’s learning and experience qualified him for the old idea of the kingdom of God, but not the new. Think of flesh as a synonym for humanity. Humanly we could enter a political, military, or geographical kingdom of God’s rule. We can, by human effort, accomplish a great deal in social causes and programs. In fact, what we are able to do in our own strength, without God, is sometimes a roadblock to discovering what He can do in and through us. Goodness often keeps us from grace. Religion can keep us from regeneration. Our own effort can keep us from the true kingdom. Being born again can only happen when God’s spirit creates a longing, a realization of our emptiness and a dominant desire in our spirit.

Jesus illustrates how this happens to bring about the miracle of new birth from above, from God’s Spirit. The movement of the Spirit in the human heart is like the wind. I have always imagined that the wind rustled the branches of the trees as Jesus and Nicodemus spoke. Jesus said, “Listen to the wind, Nicodemus. Do you hear it blowing through the trees? You cannot explain where it came from or where it is going, but its power and evidence are undeniable. The wind of the Spirit began gushing through your heart and mind when you saw what I did and heard what I said. Now God, Himself, is blowing on the self-confidence and legalistic assurances of the past. It is God’s Spirit that is creating the desire for rebirth and actually producing the willingness for the new beginning in you.”

What does that mean for us? It tells us of the mystery of the new birth. The Spirit of God is the prime mover. He is dealing with me as I speak to you and as you hear. These are not words of idle rhetoric. They are words of eternal truth! That is true because they are God’s words not mine. But before they can be truth, you have to hear them! I hope to cause a stirring in you that you cannot explain, dissatisfaction with your life and a readiness to walk in a new direction. Perhaps life has fallen apart for you; maybe your relationships are filled with discord and lack of love. Maybe for the first time in your life you might be able to really hear the “rustling of the wind of God’s Spirit.”

The wind is blowing! Like a sailor on the sea, you can’t explain the mysterious movement, but you can hoist the sail. The ceaseless action of the Spirit is stirring you. Just as the sailor knows the wind that fills the sails, so we know that right now the Lord has decided to fill the sails of our hearts to move us from where we’ve been to where He wants us to go. The wind is blowing! Don’t resist it. Turn into it and catch its power!

The very thing Jesus is talking about was happening to Nicodemus. For he asked, “How can these things be?” His first question had been one of confronting the impossibility; his second question asks how to appropriate what we have acknowledged as a possibility. How does this happen? Jesus answers by telling Nicodemus that it is exactly what the scripture had promised. This, the Pharisee should have known. “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?” Jesus asks.

The obvious reference is the promises God made through Ezekiel. “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). The learned leader had forgotten. Then Jesus goes on to give him the secret of how the promise is being fulfilled in Himself and what He came to do. He boldly speaks of the Spirit and Himself as one. It was as if Jesus said, “The new heart promised so long ago is why I came. Through what I will do, you will be given a new heart to be filled with a new spirit; God Himself. What you see happening in Me will then happen to you!”

Then in rapid-fire order Jesus predicts the cross and gives Nicodemus an undeniable revelation of His Messianic mission. “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The love of God in Christ is the motivating power for the new birth. The cross melts down our resistance and assures us that Christ died for us. There cannot be a new birth without forgiveness for an old life.

It was not until Nicodemus stood on Calvary watching Christ die that he remembered what Jesus had said. That windy night he had become a secret disciple of the Lord. He had defended Jesus in the Sanhedrin when the vicious anger mounted against Him. And he was with Jesus when He died.

Imagine what he felt, when along with Joseph of Aramathea, he prepared the Lord’s body for burial in Joseph’s garden. He had brought the myrrh and aloes and tenderly wrapped the nail-pierced body of his friend in linen strips. Did he remember then that the Lord had predicted what would happen that day?

Then picture what must have happened on Easter morning. The news that Christ had risen sealed Nicodemus’ belief that He was who he said he was. I have always counted Nicodemus among the followers of the Lord during the days of waiting between Calvary and Pentecost. I’m sure that he must have been among the 120 who waited in the upper room (Acts 1:13). When Christ returned in the power of the Holy Spirit with “a mighty rushing of the wind,” all that he remembered Jesus had said about the wind came true for him. On Pentecost, Nicodemus was reborn!

Now we can see the progression of being born again with undeniable clarity. First, the promise, then the cross to make it possible, and then the gift of a personal Pentecost to make it a reality. Jesus’ teaching about the new birth, His death to ensure the forgiveness of the past, and His infilling power are the three gifts He offers us. And what can we do to cooperate in being born again? Accept His diagnosis that our deepest need is to be born again; receive His complete forgiveness for all that is past; and surrender our new, ready, and receptive hearts to be filled with Christ’s Spirit.

Then your rebirth will issue forth into revision. The focus of your life, the purpose of your every waking hour, and the commitment of your will is to know and do His will! You will have a new set of heart eyes to see the kingdom of God, to realize His will and way in things. Out of your reborn heart will flow the rivers of Living Water Jesus talked about. Out of your words, attitudes, countenance, actions and new life will flow love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Have you been born again?