John 5:1-5 The New Birth & Its Effects

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan.

Thank you guys, appreciate you leading us in worship this morning. Good morning, Recast. My name is Spencer, and I am the associate pastor. If you are new, we are glad to have you join us for worship this morning.

Pastor Don is out of town. Does that seem loud, or is it just me? Seems a little loud. But Pastor Don's out of town this week. He's vacationing. I think they're still in the Smoky Mountains. Looks like they've been having a great time.

Jonathan Edwards and the Problem of Mere Religious Affection

So I get the opportunity to share God's Word with you this morning. To get us started and to introduce our text for this morning, I want to read to you some excerpts from the Journal of perhaps America's greatest theologian of all time.

In these journal entries, he's describing his journey of faith. And as I read this, I want you to pay attention and notice a few things. I want you to listen first for how he describes his attitude toward faith.

And then I want you to listen to hear what he does in his spiritual life. So let's listen in here. He writes, I had a variety of concerns and exercises about my soul from childhood, but had two more remarkable seasons of awakening before I met with that change by which I was brought to those new dispositions and that new sense of things that I have since had.

The first time was when I was a boy, some years before I went to college, at a time of remarkable awakening in my father's congregation. I was then very much affected for many months and concerned about the things of religion and my soul's salvation and was abundant in duties.

I used to pray five times a day in secret and to spend much time in religious talk with other boys and used to meet with them to pray together. My affections seemed to be lively and easily moved, and I seemed to be in my element when engaged in religious duties.

And I am ready to think many are deceived with such affections and such a kind of delight as I then had in religion and mistake it for grace. But in process of time, my convictions and affections wore off, and I entirely lost all those affections and delights and left off secret prayer, at least as to any constant performance of it, and returned like a dog to his vomit and went on in the ways of sin.

Indeed, I was at times very uneasy, especially towards the latter part of my time at college, but God would not suffer me to go on with any quietness. I had great and violent inward struggles, till after many conflicts with wicked inclinations, repeated resolutions, and bonds that I laid myself under by a kind of vows to God, I was brought holy to break off all former wicked ways and all ways of known outward sin and to apply myself to seek salvation and practice many religious duties.

But without that kind of affection and delight which I had formerly experienced, my concern now wrought more by inward struggles and conflicts and self-reflections, I made seeking my salvation the main business of my life.

But yet, it seems to me, I sought after a miserable manner, which has made me sometimes sense to question whether it ever issued in that which was saving. Being ready to doubt whether such miserable seeking ever succeeded, I was indeed brought to seek salvation in a manner that I never was before.

The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived in much sense was upon reading those words from 1 Timothy 1 .17. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. As I read the words, there came into my soul a sense of the glory of the divine being, a new sense quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did.

I thought with myself how excellent a being that was and how happy I should be if I might enjoy that God and be wrapped up with Him in heaven and swallowed up within Him forever. I went to pray to God that I might enjoy Him and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do, with a new sort of affection.

From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehension in ideas of Christ and the work of redemption and the glorious way of salvation by Him, an inward sweet sense of these things at times came into my heart and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them.

Those are journal entries from Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan, probably one of the most famous Puritans of all time. I share those with you because this morning we're going to talk about the topic of regeneration.

We're going to talk about the new birth this morning. I think that Edwards is a perfect example of the importance of regeneration. By all accounts, Edwards grew up with a correct understanding of God and of Christ.

His dad was a pastor. His mom was a pastor's kid. He grew up in church. He strived after holiness. He sought salvation. He practiced spiritual disciplines. At times, he seemed to have affections toward God.

And yet, by his own account, it wasn't until his college years that he was born again. How can that be? The term born again is a common one used in Christian circles and it's used by the broader secular culture quite often to describe evangelicals.

The terms born again and evangelical are often used interchangeably by our culture. And that presents to us a problem. And I want to show that problem to you. In his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World?

Ron Sider points out some interesting things. He points out that self-described born-again believers are more likely than their secular neighbors to divorce. They engage in domestic abuse as often as their neighbors.

Only 6 of them tithe. He found that white evangelicals are more likely to object to having black neighbors than Catholics and mainstream Protestants. He found that 80 of evangelical youth have had premarital sex, whereas the broader culture, that figure was only 88%.

Only an 8 difference. And he found that 46 of evangelicals think that premarital sex is okay as long as it's within committed relationships. Hopefully the problem is pretty apparent to you. As his title points out, if these people are Christians, then Christians don't live differently than the world.

And those statistics seem to suggest that most evangelicals find themselves in the same place as Jonathan Edwards. They have religious duties, as Edwards says, but they apparently lack a real religious affection and love for God in His commands.

The New Birth as God's Supernatural Work in John 3

Now as we take up the topic of being born-again this morning, let me start off by saying that the way that Sider and Barna and Pew Research and all these other kind of polling groups present someone who is born-again is vastly different than the way the Bible presents it.

If someone's life is indistinguishable from that of the rest of the world, if they sin as much as the rest of the world, if they are as greedy and covetous as the rest of the world, then they haven't been born-again.

To suggest otherwise is to suggest that regenerate hearts have no more victory over sin and no more Christ-likeness than that of unregenerate hearts. And that is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that being born-again causes a radical change in the hearts of people.

And so you have this tension between what we see and what seems to be realities in this research and in our churches and what the Bible presents a born-again life looking like. One author I read summarized the tension between the Bible and this research well.

He wrote, The Bible says that the research is not finding that born-again people are permeated with worldliness. The research is finding that the church is permeated with people who are not born-again.

The church is permeated with people who are not born-again. Ultimately, my goal for this morning is to explore that tension. What exactly does it mean to be born-again? What is regeneration? And what are some of the effects of being born-again?

Now, this is a huge topic. We could spend months doing a sermon series on regeneration, and so we're not even going to begin to scratch the surface of it this morning. We're not going to answer questions like, Why do we need to be born-again?

Or, How are we born-again? But hopefully, by the end of this morning, you'll have an idea of what it means to be born-again, and what it looks like. We're going to spend most of our time in 1 John chapter 5 looking at some of the effects of the new birth, but I want to start off by defining regeneration.

There are four key elements of regeneration that I want to draw out using John chapter 3. So, if you have a Bible, why don't you turn in it to John chapter 3. That's where we're going to start off this morning.

The apostle John is fascinating. Between his gospel and his epistles, he talks more about the new birth than really any other biblical writer. But in chapter 3 of John, we have what is perhaps the most famous statement of being born-again.

So, we're going to start in John 3 verse 1. Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? How can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. 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.

I'm not going to unpack these verses in detail this morning. We just don't have time to do that, but let me make a few observations to help us define the new birth. First off, notice that the new birth is something done to us.

It's not something that we do. In verse 8 there, John says that the wind blows where it wishes and you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Just like we don't have any control over the wind, we don't have any control over being born again. It's a work of God and a work of the Spirit. 1 Peter 1 .3 tells us the same thing. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

So that's the first thing that we learn about the new birth. It's something done to us. It's not something that we do. The second thing that we can learn about the new birth from this text is that the new birth results in new life.

In verses 1 -3, John tells us that Nicodemus was a Pharisee. And that might be an easy detail to kind of gloss over, but it's quite significant. Pharisees were the most religious of the Jewish groups.

Nicodemus would have had his own set of religious duties. He would have been very well versed in the Old Testament law, and he likely would have been quite disciplined. But when Jesus comes to him, He says, hey, you don't need new religion.

What you need is a new life. He tells him that you must be born again, right? And the idea behind being born again is that of life. Now, as evangelicals, we believe that life begins at conception, and they did back in this time as well.

But even though we believe that, all people celebrate a birth because it's the entrance of a new life into the world. So for Nicodemus, this was quite a shocking statement. How could he be born again?

He was already alive, right? True, he was already alive. He was standing there talking to Jesus. But he was spiritually dead. He was spiritually dead. You might remember Luke 9, verse 60, where Jesus says, leave the dead to bury their own dead.

What's he talking about? How can dead people bury dead people? It just doesn't make sense. But what he's saying is that spiritually dead people can bury the physically dead people. Despite Nicodemus' religious duties and all of his works and his prayers and all these different things that he was engaged in, despite his knowledge of the law and his study, he isn't spiritually alive.

He's spiritually dead, and he needs new spiritual life. And so that's the second part of our definition. The new birth results in new spiritual life. Third, the new birth results in a new nature. Look with me at John 3, verse 5.

Jesus says to Nicodemus here, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of the water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Now, there's a lot of ideas floating around there about what is meant by the phrase born of water and born of spirit.

We don't have time to unpack that in its entirety this morning. But I want you to notice that Nicodemus himself was confused about that statement, and he asks Jesus to clarify it. And Jesus' response, I think, helps shed a little light on what the phrase probably means.

If you look down in verse 10, Jesus answers him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Jesus expected Nicodemus, as a student of the law, to understand what he was referring to.

That seems to indicate that Jesus was referencing something from the Old Testament that Nicodemus would have been familiar with. I think he's referencing Ezekiel, chapter 36, where water and spirit are closely linked in the new covenant promises.

So if you have a Bible, turn back. It's not super far into the Old Testament there. But turn back to Ezekiel, chapter 36. If you don't have a Bible, I believe we're going to have it up here on the screen for you.

There we go. We're going to read verses 25 to 28. 24 to 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 uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

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. Notice there you have all of these elements from John, chapter 3, coming together under the new covenant God promises to sprinkle clean water on you, cleansing you from all your uncleanness and your idols.

Then he promises to give you a new heart and a new spirit. And so you have all these references to water and spirit here, but more than that, if you remember, Jesus had told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again in order to what?

In order to enter the kingdom of God. If you look at verse 28 there, those people that are sprinkled with clean water and given this new heart and this new spirit are those who dwell with God as his people.

In other words, they enter into the kingdom of God. And so when Jesus tells Nicodemus that he needs to be born of water, I think he's saying that Nicodemus needs to be cleansed. His guilt and his sin need to be washed away.

He needs to be forgiven. And when he speaks of Nicodemus being born of the spirit, I think what he means is that Nicodemus needs a new heart and a new spirit. That heart of stone needs to be removed and it needs to be replaced with a heart of flesh.

I want you to think about that for this morning. I brought with me a stone that is about the closest shape and size to a heart that I could find. Now, notice the thing about a rock is that it's not responsive, right?

I can talk to it. Hey, rock, was it cold outside this morning? Nothing, right? No response. I can squeeze it. I can poke it. I can hit it. I can drop it on the ground and he's still entirely unresponsive.

It's unfeeling. It doesn't do anything. This rock's even cold because I brought it in from outside this morning. This rock is your heart prior to being born again. You can't respond to God. You can't respond to spiritual stimuli.

You are dead and cold. But when the spirit of God comes and causes you to be born again, he replaces this heart of stone with a heart of flesh. He replaces it with a heart that's alive, a heart that's different, a heart that feels, a heart that's responsive to God.

The two are vastly different. They don't look the same. They don't function the same. And so all that to say the new birth is radical. God not only gives you a new supernatural spiritual life, but he cleanses you and then he gives you this new heart and a new nature that is radically different from the one you had before.

There's no mistaking the difference between a rock and a fleshly heart. And that is the difference between someone who has been born again and someone who has not experienced the new birth. So that's the third part of our definition.

The new birth results in a new nature. Our final observation from John 3 about the nature of the new birth is that it results in eternal life. It results in eternal life. We briefly touched on this reality earlier, but notice in verse 3 that Jesus tells Nicodemus he needs to be born again in order to enter the kingdom of God.

Now we don't have time to unpack all the realities that surround the kingdom of God, but what that means is that unless a person is born again, they will not be saved. They will not experience eternal life.

They will not go to heaven. The person who is not born again will suffer the eternal wrath of God in hell. But to enter the kingdom of God is the opposite of that, right? It's to be saved. It's to be given eternal life.

It's that picture from Ezekiel 36 of God dwelling with his people. So those are the realities I wanted you guys to notice from John 3 about the new birth. So if we were to sum all those up and answer those questions, what is regeneration?

What is the new birth? We would say this. It's a supernatural work of God upon a spiritually dead person where he gives to them spiritual life, replaces their heart of stone with a heart of flesh, gives to them his spirit, and ultimately gives to them eternal life.

Faith, Love, and Obedience in 1 John 5

So now that we've kind of uncovered a working biblical definition of regeneration, I want you to turn to the epistle of 1 John. This is where we're going to spend the rest of our time this morning exploring the effects of the new birth.

What happens to a person that is born again? We've talked about how there's these radical changes and radical differences, but what are some of those differences? John's going to answer those questions for us in his epistle.

Now, 1 John's a fascinating book, and it deals extensively with this reality of the new birth, but I want to camp specifically in chapter 5 this morning. We're going to look at verses 1 to 5, so why don't you read those with me?

John writes, Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? We see the first effect in verse 1. This one's pretty straightforward. The person who has been born again believes that Jesus is the Christ.

As I mentioned earlier, John teaches that spiritual birth seems to come before and ultimately create faith. Now, that may seem strange to you, but I think it must be true, right? If you have a heart of stone that is completely unresponsive to God, how do you ever get to a point where you express belief?

If something's unresponsive to stimuli around it, how can it respond? So it seems to make sense to me that regeneration would logically, notice that term, logically precede faith. Now, there may not be a discernible time difference from a human perspective, but regeneration logically precedes belief.

So there isn't a believing person who hasn't been born again, and there isn't a born again person who doesn't believe. So that's the first effect of the new birth, and it precedes all other effects. Let's move on to the second effect now.

We see the second effect of the new birth here in the second half of verse 1. Speaking of the same group of people, John says, everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. Whoever loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him.

Essentially, what he's saying here is that the believing person who has been born again loves not only God, but His people. Loves His people as well. We should expect this, right? If someone's been born again and they've been given a new spiritual life, they've been made a new creature, they've been given a new nature, it just seems natural that their affections would be affected.

Their affections, in this case, are reoriented. And notice, the affections are reoriented in two directions. They're reoriented both vertically and horizontally. The new birth results first in love for God, right?

That's your vertical orientation. And secondly, it results in love for God's people, other people who have been born again. That's your horizontal orientation. But John doesn't end this thought there.

He goes on to explain a little bit more thoroughly in the next couple of verses. And notice there in the beginning of verse 2, he uses the phrase, by this at the beginning of it. That's indicating to us that these next couple of verses are explaining the statement he has just made about loving others.

And so he goes on and he explains first what it looks like to love God, God's people, in verse 2. And then in verse 3, he goes on and he explains what it looks like to love God. So if we pick up in 2 there, he starts off and he says that a person knows they love the children of God when they love God and obey His commandments.

Huh? That doesn't seem to make sense, right? That's opposite to what we just read in verse 1 and opposite to what he said at the end of verse 4. If you're anything like me, that was not what I expected to read.

And so there's got to be a reason for it, right? Why didn't he just say if you love God, you love people? He has an idea in mind. And I want to unpack that. I think he makes that, phrases it that way in order to protect us from some false understandings about love, right?

Having a sentimental understanding of love isn't a 21st century invention, right? Society has been redefining love since the beginning of time to the point where now it's often just watered down as either romance or taking care of other people.

But according to this verse, you can't truly love someone if God isn't a part of the equation. This is why it's so important to understand that love as an effect of the new birth must come after faith.

It must come after belief. If you don't have this new spiritual life from God, if you don't have faith, if you don't love Him, you can't really love anyone. Now sure, you can do nice things for people, right?

You can go out and shovel people's snow in the morning. You can give them food if they're hungry. You can clothe them if they're needy. You can even give them a comfortable place to stay. But if all you're doing is keeping people comfortable on their way to hell, are you really loving them?

Don't get me wrong here. Love does all of those things and it does other things as well. Love is a very active verb. But if you don't know God, this verse says you can't love others in a way that makes a difference for eternity.

And so John corrects those potential misunderstandings and says that true love for others expresses itself in love for God and obeying His commands. It's a striking thought. In verse 3 then, he picks up and he explains what it looks like to love God.

And there's really two aspects to this. First, a person who loves God keeps His commands. He reiterates what he has just said in verse 2, but in relation to love for God here. In other words, another result of the new birth is a love for God that expresses itself in obedience to Him.

Now, I want to clarify a few things before we go any further because there's the potential here to get really, really confused. First off, love is not only obedience to commands. But John's point is that it is not less.

It is not less. Love is more than obedience to commands, but it's not less. John seems to point out here that the born again person is going to be obedient. Now, American Christianity seems to have a very large category of people according to those statistics who are born again, yet they aren't obedient.

And that's just not a biblical idea. The person whose heart has been changed from stone to flesh is going to keep God's commands. He's going to keep God's commands. Now, let me clarify something else here.

I'm not saying, and John's not saying, that if you are born again, you are perfect. You don't get born again and become sinless, right? The Christian life is characterized by ongoing struggle with sin.

You're going to sin every day of your life from now until the time that you die. And John recognizes that, right? He says in 1 John, verses 8 and 9, though, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, though, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You see, you can't perfectly keep God's commands. So the question here is really, is the pattern of your life one of command-keeping, where when you fall short, you turn to God in confession, you receive His forgiveness and cleansing and move forward with Christ, or is your life characterized by sinfulness without a consistent turning to Him afterwards?

If that's the case, then that's probably a good indicator that you may not be born again. So that's the first aspect of loving God, is keeping His commands. The second aspect to loving God is that keeping His commands is not burdensome.

Have you thought about this? This is a reality that I had not thought a lot about until I started to study this passage, but I think it's quite significant for us. Keeping His commands is not burdensome.

This is really an attitude thing, right? If you think back to Jonathan Edwards' testimony, there was a period of his life where he was practicing his religious duties with no affection or delight, and his life was characterized by this inward struggle and misery.

Do you just do what God asks you to do because you know it's the right thing, or because you feel like you have to because you're in Christian circles? Are you following God's rules begrudgingly? Do you spend a lot of time wishing you could do something that God prohibits?

If so, those might be indicators that you find following God's commands burdensome. But if keeping God's commands isn't supposed to be burdensome, what is it supposed to be, right? I think the new birth, when it gives you this new life and this new nature, and it changes your affections, it makes it desirable to keep God's commands.

The psalmist says in a variety of different places, but he says in Psalm 119, verse 24, your testimonies, that's another word for laws, are my delight. They are my counselors. Psalm 119, verse 35, lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.

Remember, a lot of us have been studying the book Gentle and Lowly. Jesus himself, in Matthew 11, verse 30, says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. See, Jesus does not weigh his people down with meaningless commands that do not affect the heart.

Sure, God has high standards, right? But he gives us grace to be able to live up to that standard. If keeping the commands of God feels burdensome, then you might be trying to keep those commands under your own strength rather than by and through the power of the Spirit that is given to people who are born again.

And the final effect of the new birth that we see in this text is essentially that idea, that idea that God gives us power to obey his commands. It comes from verse 4. Look at verse 4. John writes,. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.

So the final effect of the new birth this morning is that the person who has been born again overcomes the world. Now I think this is really cool. I might be off in left field here by myself, but I think this is neat.

He had just described that love for God involved keeping his commands without a burdensome attitude. And that can seem like a daunting task because there are a lot, there are a lot of commands, right?

But he says that the born again person can keep those commands because in the new birth they are given power by God to overcome the world. The person who is born again never strives for godliness alone under their own power.

This is not an exercise in self-discipline and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, right? God is always working in and through the person who is born again to overcome the world and obey his commands.

Now this is another simple phrase that I think we can kind of take for granted, right? But what does John mean when he uses the term world? If you look at 1 John 2, verse 16, I think he helps us to understand this a little bit better.

That verse says,. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. You see, he's essentially using in a positive there to describe the world.

He says that the world is the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. One commentator I read said that that could be summed up as desires for what we don't have and pride in what we do have.

When we don't have what we want, the world corrupts us with covetousness. But when we do have what we want, the world corrupts us with pride. The world corrupts us with pride. The world's constantly telling us to desire new things, right?

Now these may be material things, they may be experiential things, or they may be relational things, but whatever they are, they are contrary to love for God. You can't love idols and love God. And the only solution to that problem is the new birth.

Because it overcomes the world. The supernatural power of the Spirit breaks the powers and the chains of desire and of pride. But how does the new birth do that? It's one thing to say that it does it, but how does it do it is a totally different thing.

Look at the rest of verse 4. He writes,. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? It is belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of the world that ultimately overcomes the world.

It's faith that gives us victory over sin. It's faith that allows us to keep God's commands. And it's faith that leads you to love others. But that faith is grounded first and foremost in the new birth.

You see what John has done here? He has brought his argument full circle back to what he said in verse 1. The new birth results in faith and faith leads to love. Love for God and love for others. Those are the effects of the new birth.

Faith and love for God and love for others. That expresses itself then in keeping God's commands and overcoming the world. My hope this morning is that you walk out of here wrestling really with this reality of the new birth.

The new birth isn't a set of religious duties. The new birth isn't church attendance. The new birth isn't prayer rituals. It's not adopting some sort of an ethic. It's not even a set of affections. You can be just like Jonathan Edwards and go through a set of religious duties for years.

You can go to church for years and maybe even enjoy it and not be born again. And in a church this large I have no doubt that there are likely some people here who are doing just that. They're going through the religious motions having never been born again.

They've never been given a new heart, a new life and a new spirit. They may even intellectually understand the gospel. Nicodemus and Jonathan Edwards understood the Bible. They knew the answers to the questions and yet they were far from God.

And if that's you, what do you do? What do you do though? Because we've already said that the new birth is not something that you do. It's something that is done to you. So what do you do? You wait on God.