Born Again with R. C. Sproul, “What Does It Mean to be Born Again?,” 2

In our first session, in our study of what it means to be born again, I tried to focus our attention on Jesus' teachings to Nicodemus of the absolute necessity of spiritual rebirth for entering into the kingdom of God.

The Mysterious Character of Regeneration

What I would like to do in this segment is to discuss another aspect of rebirth, and that is its mysterious character. So that the point I was trying to make the first time was that regeneration is necessary.

Now I would like to turn our attention to the second point, which is that regeneration is mysterious. A few weeks ago, I had an experience, an opportunity to talk privately with a gentleman for one hour whom I had met just very briefly only once in my life before that and never had the opportunity for one-to-one conversation, and it was Billy Graham.

And I had the opportunity to eat dinner with Dr. Graham in Asheville, North Carolina, and we discussed several things on that occasion, but in the middle of our discussion, I don't know how we got on to it, but we each told to the other one our own conversion experiences, and Billy began to relate to me what had happened to him as a young man when he came under the influence of the preaching of a man by the name of Mordecai Ham, who was doing a series of services in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And Billy went through this episode for me privately, which he has preached about many times and written about in his books, but to hear him tell it one-on-one after all of these years was a very humbling experience for me to sit there and listen to this because what came across in his story was that it seemed to me that he was as excited about it as if it had happened last night, that he was still filled with a passion and a flame that had been kindled years and years and years and years ago in that moment when he met Christ.

And he was describing for me all the different things that he went through as he was drawn to these services and listened night after night after night until he finally was irresistibly drawn to Christ.

In fact, Billy looked at me and he said, the Holy Spirit did it all, and he was talking about being born of the Spirit. And I remember vividly my wife's conversion to Christ. I was converted to Christ a few months before Vesta was, and she was coming to our college campus, and we were going to have a meeting with our Christian organization there on the campus, and I was in a real moral dilemma.

Vesta and I had gone together at that point for about five years, and it was our desire and our plan to be married. We were engaged, and suddenly I found myself a new Christian. And I was told very early in my religious experience that as a Christian I was not permitted to marry a woman who was not a Christian.

But this is the woman that I wanted to marry, and this is the woman I was engaged to, and this was fierce conflict for me at that point in my life. And so that's what I was struggling with while I was away from Vesta.

Back at the ranch, Vesta was struggling with this strange behavior that had taken over her fiancé, who had been indeed absent from any serious religious persuasions prior to whatever it was that had turned him upside down, and she didn't know whether I was losing my mind or what.

And so what I did the day that she was to arrive, I skipped classes that day and got alone in my room and locked the door, and I got on the ground beside my bed, and I prayed like I never prayed. I prayed like an Arminian, to tell you the truth.

I would say, Hey God, I don't know what the eternal decrees are, but if You have one that doesn't fit my preference here, You better change it, because I wrestled with God for hours for that occasion and made this commitment that if Vesta did not become a Christian that weekend that I would break up with her, and I put it on the line.

And you know, we had this meeting, and I did not tell Vesta, Look, if you don't make it this weekend, I want the ring back, you know. There was none of that. I didn't let her have any idea of the prayers, and not only was I praying, but other people were praying as well.

She came to that meeting, and quite apart from me, she met Christ in that meeting, and she came out of that meeting, she was so excited. She had, she was like Archimedes coming out of the bathtub screaming, Eureka, I have found it.

She knew what every Christian knows, the joy of her redemption. But when she went to bed that night, she told me the next day, she said that all night long she kept waking up, and she kept pinching herself and said, Is it still there?

Do I still have it? And then she would sort of check with her internal feelings and say, Yep, it's still there, and she'd roll back over and get back to sleep. Well, the next morning when we got together, she told me about how she kept waking up and asking herself if it was still there, and then she made this comment to me, which I'll never forget.

She said, Now I know who the Holy Spirit is. For the first time in her life, she had a personal understanding of the identity and the character of God the Holy Spirit. And she said, you know, she had heard the name of the Holy Spirit.

She wasn't totally devoid of activities and religion. She had been reared in the church, and she had gone there regularly and attended church, and they would say their prayers, and they would pronounce the benediction in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

But it was all ceremony to her, and there was no personal substance of application involved in this religious background that she had. And then she said, Now I know who the Holy Spirit is. But how easily do you think she could have articulated that to somebody at that point?

I had been going crazy trying to tell her, and it was like a blind man, a person trying to explain a rainbow to a blind man. And it's one of the most difficult things in the world to articulate what it means to have a spiritual experience that changes your life, that really changes your life.

Regeneration is a mystery, and it's not simply a mystery to those of us who experience it, but it is also an impenetrable mystery at the bottom line, even for skilled theologians, as it was for Nicodemus.

Jesus and Nicodemus on Being Born of the Spirit

I want to take you back now to that conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, where Jesus said to him, Unless a man is born of the Spirit, he can't see the kingdom of God, and he can't enter the kingdom of God.

What did Nicodemus say? Do you remember? When Jesus said those words to him, Nicodemus looked at Jesus and said, How can these things be? Jesus, what are you talking about? How can these things be? Does a man have to enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born anew?

Now, that is one of the most crass comments that anybody ever made to Jesus, talking about a grown person trying to squeeze himself back into the birth canal so that he could undergo this second birth that Jesus says is a requirement.

That's why Jesus talked about this concept of regeneration. Notice the prefix, re, something that has to happen again, and the word to generate in the ancient world, in the Greek world, the word that they're using here means to be become or to be happen, and so Nicodemus is confused here.

He said, What do you mean born a second time? How can that be? It can't be possible for somebody to be born a second time. He missed the point that Jesus was trying to make, that Jesus was talking about a second birth that is a real birth, but it's not a mere repetition of the first birth.

Now, to try to explain something of this mystery to Nicodemus, you know, Jesus, Nicodemus says, How can these things be? How can a man be born when he is old? Jesus gives this word of explanation, That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

Now, Jesus again seems to have a tremendous grasp of the obvious, but it is an obvious point, an elementary point that bears repeating for the ears of this theologian. You know, where most professional theologians go astray is not at some technical point of theology, but at a foundational point, at an elementary point, a point that should have been mastered many, many years ago.

In fact, later on in this text, Jesus rebukes Nicodemus mildly, but He rebukes him. He says, Nicodemus, are you a teacher of Israel, and you don't understand these things? It's as if Jesus says, Shame on you.

You should know these things. This is the ABCs of biblical religion. This is no startling, esoteric, arcane innovation that I'm making now in the first century here. This is something that is at the root of the Judeo-Christian faith.

The reason it's necessary is because that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and you can't get Spirit out of flesh. You want to have an oak tree, you've got to plant an acorn, not a strawberry. The flesh only yields flesh, and everyone is born in the flesh.

That's not new, Nicodemus. The Old Testament teaches that concept on every page. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit, and we're talking about spiritual birth. Don't confuse it with a mere repetition of a biological process.

I'm talking about something far more mysterious than that. Lest one is born of water and the Spirit, he can't enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.

Then he says, do not marvel that I say unto you, you must be born again. Boy, if there's ever an injunction that was uttered by Jesus of Nazareth that His people have ignored, it's that one, because people still get astonished and uptight and nervous if somebody suggests that, again, that it's necessary to be reborn.

Jesus said, don't be amazed by that, don't marvel at that. And then He begins to answer Nicodemus' question about how. But in answering the mystery, He continues the mystery. What does He say? The wind blows where it wills.

You hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it comes from, and you don't know where it's going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. There's a play on words here that's marvelous with Jesus.

In the Old Testament, when we meet the Spirit of God for the first time, the Spirit of God is called the Ruach of Yahweh. And the word ruach in Hebrew is used for three different concepts. The same word is the word for spirit.

It is the word for breath, and it is the word for wind. And that's one of the strange aspects of language, that that same phenomenon of the same three words being communicated by one word is found not only in the Hebrew language, but also in the Greek language.

That the word pneuma in Greek is the Greek word for spirit. It's the Greek word for breath, and it is the Greek word for wind. So that when Jesus in the upper room breathes on His disciples and says to them, Receive the Holy Spirit, the word for breath there is pneuma.

He pneumatizes them and says, Receive the Holy Pneuma. Just that in creation, when God creates man in the original act of creation, the way in which this narrative gives as an account is that God reaches down and takes the mud from the ground, the dust of the earth, and He molds it, and He shapes it as a sculpture would a piece of clay.

But when the world's greatest sculptor is finished with a piece of clay, that beautiful piece of art still remains inert and lifeless. But when God finishes shaping and forming the figure of a man, He puts that piece of mud to his mouth, and what does the Scripture say?

He breathes into that form the breath of life, and man becomes a living nephesh, a living soul. The breath of God creates the spirit of man. So Jesus plays with this language that He is, of course, certain Nicodemus understands the play on the words.

He said, Do you want to know how regeneration takes place? What's the process? He said, Nicodemus, the pneuma blows where it will. You hear the sound of it. You hear the wind. You see the effects of it.

You can perceive with your eyes the influence of the wind. You can see the trees starting to bend. You don't know where it comes from or where it goes, and that's the way the pneuma is. That's the way the spirit works.

His work of rebirth is mysterious. Now why is it mysterious? There's a lot of mystery associated with the person of the Holy Spirit. I go back to what I said about Vesta the night that she became a Christian.

Now I know who the Holy Spirit is. One of the greatest works that's ever been written in the history of the church on the person and the work of the Holy Spirit was written by the prime minister of Holland, who was also a theologian, and his name was Abraham Kuyper.

In Abraham Kuyper's classic work, he starts off that work on the Holy Spirit by saying the Holy Spirit never leaves footprints in the sand. The reason why regeneration is mysterious is because regeneration is invisible.

I can't see God doing something in your soul. That's why we can fool each other about this business, can't we? I can claim to be reborn. I can profess to be regenerate and not be. And by the same token, what?

I can say I don't think I'm regenerate and actually be regenerate. That's why we're warned in the Scriptures that man looks on the outward appearances but God looks on the heart, that regeneration, rebirth, is a spiritual reality that takes place inside a person that transforms that person, meets that necessary condition of which we have spoken, but is invisible, like the wind is invisible.

The Invisible Work of the Holy Spirit

Last week, they had an artist on television, and he was doing some sketching and some painting before the camera, and as he was painting, he was explaining the techniques that he was using. Now, I'm going to try to illustrate that for you without the ability or the tools to do it.

So we're not going to be able to duplicate what he did, but he started off by painting some clouds, some nice billowy, aren't they nice, billowy clouds on the canvas. And he showed how he used this particular brush to shade them and how which kind of swirls he put on the canvas as he painted these clouds.

But when he was finished with the first point of his, the first part of the clouds, he put this particular brush down, and he took out this great big thick brush, and he said, now if you look at those clouds, they look like clouds, like these clouds back behind us, but they are frozen on the canvas.

They're still as if they were paralyzed, but real clouds are always in motion because clouds not only have moisture, but they are being blown by the wind. And he went on to do this whole thing about air currents and how clouds are blown, and so then he went over and he took this big brush, and he took it in such a way where he moved his hand around and sort of took it up like that and again like that so that at the top of the clouds, there was not a symmetrical, pure, straight line that clearly delineated the edge of the cloud, but the clouds were moving and swirling up, and you could almost feel the wind in the picture as a result of this technique.

And then he went on to say, he said, you know, he said, it used to take me two weeks to get that effect, he said, until I found this brush that I can just do it like that. But we see those effects of the wind.

We can see the results of the wind, but the wind is invisible to the naked eye. You can feel it. You can sense its presence. You know when it's windy, and you know when it's calm, and you know when there's just a zephyr in the air.

Jesus says that is analogous to the secret inward work of spiritual rebirth. It's like the wind. If you want to see the evidence, the tangible manifestation of rebirth, what has to happen? You have to look for the fruits of a changed life.

I can't see your soul. All I can see is your behavior. And that's what causes so much problems for us because we can see changes in our lives for the good, but we also see what? The same old stuff. We see the things that we don't want to see, and we don't want anybody else to see.

And so the question that you have to ask yourself as you're analyzing the state of your own soul is not where were you when you were born again, you know, how did it happen? But the question is this. Is there any evidence of a change in my inner direction, out of my disposition, of my attitude towards the things of God?

The unregenerate person is at best indifferent about the things of God, really doesn't care. And isn't it funny that you come, if you are reborn, so many people seem to forget what they were like beforehand, and they get real, nothing worse than a Reformed drunk or a Reformed person, and they get real puffed up and arrogant and judgmental about people who are not born again, and that's bad.

You have to remember who you are and where you came from. But you know what I think is one of the hardest things for a Christian to endure with grace is to hear the name of Christ mutilated publicly. Does that get to you?

Does it go right down to your spine? It gets up and down my spine, and I always try not to let people know that that really gets to me like that, because it's not our job to be their policeman about that.

They don't realize. They don't realize what that is. But see, to use the name of Christ in cursing, in a sense, tells us the state of our innermost affections with respect to God. But as I say, we're at best indifferent, and at worst, openly hostile towards God when we are unregenerate, because the first thing that changes when you are changed inwardly is not even your behavior.

It's the internal disposition of your soul. It is the attitude of your heart that is the first change of spiritual renewal. You now have an affection for God that you never had before. It is not perfect, and it's far from being perfected, but it is there, and it's real, and it's working.

You'll not be able to locate it on an x-ray. Its origins and its power will probably remain mysterious to you until the day you die, but the undeniable reality is that your heart is beating where it never did before.