3 Ways No One is Born Again

John’s Prologue and the New Birth in Verse 13

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 1, returning again to the book that we are taking verse by verse, looking through this book, and on several Sundays you will note that I will take larger chunks of the book, but there are times when I will simply stop at one verse.

It is not often, but it does happen from time to time, and today is one of those days. So while we continue our study through the prologue of John, we are going to look today at only verse 13. So let's stand together and read this passage.

For the sake of context, we will begin in verse 11, but our focus will be on verse 13. Verse 11 says, He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. I pray now that as I seek to preach Your word, and focus intently on just a few words from this gospel, that You would, by Your mercy and grace, and by the power of Your Spirit, keep me from error.

For the sake of Your name, for the sake of my conscience, for the sake of Your people and those who will hear this, Lord, it is a fearful thing to be a false teacher. A dreadful thing to be one of those who is not faithful to Your gospel.

And I pray, Lord, that You would keep me from that. And Father, as I preach, I pray that the Holy Spirit would be the one who teaches, that my words would simply be a vehicle, Lord, but that Your Spirit would take those words, mix them with faith, and take them not only into the ear or the mind, but into the heart of each person here, that the believer may be edified, and the one who is not yet a believer would be called to repentance and faith, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Lord, that all of us would know that our faith is not a byproduct of our own exertion or will, that our new birth is not a product of our familial line, or someone else's decision on our behalf. But Lord, if we have been born again by the Spirit of God, we have been born again of You and not of ourselves.

And so I pray, God, that I would be faithful to teach this truth, and Your people would be faithful to receive it. In Jesus' name, amen. One of the great debates of modern Christendom is the question of miracles.

There are those who say that miracles are happening all the time in churches and claim to have seen them and been a part of them. There are others who claim that there are no miracles happening anymore in the church, though they be relatively few.

There are some who say that. But I want to ask a question this morning, not one that I would encourage you to answer out loud, but simply to answer in your own heart and conscience. Have you personally ever seen a miracle?

Have you ever seen a miracle? Well, I want to tell you this morning that if you have ever seen someone come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have, in fact, witnessed a miracle. Many people think salvation is hard.

Salvation is not hard. It's impossible. It's impossible to do for yourself. It is impossible for us to come to salvation. God must come to us. And the act of salvation is not an act of the will. It is not a volitional choice.

But the Bible says salvation is an act of God whereby he does a work of spiritual resurrection. In fact, that's the picture that we're given of salvation. Buried with Christ, raised to new life. Christ, who was buried physically, was dead in the ground, and by the miracle working, was brought back to life.

We who are dead in our trespasses and sins have been, by the miracle of regeneration,.

Brought to new life.

Salvation is a miracle. It is spiritual resurrection. We call it regeneration. Salvation, regeneration, is the fancy theological term that Jesus simplifies for us when he simply says, born again. And John's gospel is the gospel that puts this idea of regeneration on display for us when Jesus, in that discourse with Nicodemus, says to the Jewish leader, unless a man be born again, he will not see the kingdom of heaven.

Unless he be born again, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is saying, unless a man is regenerated, unless a man is given life to his dead soul, unless a man who is dead in trespasses and sins is given a new life in Christ, he will not see glory.

It plainly tells us it is a miraculous work of God. Even in John's third chapter, which we will get to in whatever year I finish the prologue, as we've been here for a while now and will continue to be.

But when we finally get to chapter three, we're going to note that John, in his recounting of what Jesus said, Jesus even says, the wind blows where it wills, and we don't know where it comes from or where it's going.

So too is everyone who is born of the spirit. It's a work of God that we can't quantify. It's something that God does, not us. But the first reference in John's gospel to the new birth does not come in chapter three, though I would say that is the preeminent passage on the subject.

That is not the first time it is mentioned. The first time it is mentioned is in our passage today. The first time the idea of being born again is mentioned is when John is commenting on the reception and the rejection of Jesus Christ.

Speaking of him as the Logos, he says, he came unto his own and his own received him not. And we discussed last week that that is speaking specifically of the Jewish people who were his own people and yet did not receive him and even to this day do not receive him, as Mike said.

And brother, you go as long as you want. You know, you can always go as long as you want, but they're going to stay regardless. But what Mike said today, the Jewish people, generally and by and large, they don't see Christ in their texts, right?

Jesus came unto his own and his own did not receive him. But then the next verse, but to as many as did receive him, and then he defines what that means, who believed on his name. To them he gave, and there's different ways of translating it.

It could be power, right, authority, ability. I like the word authority because the idea behind the word is that he is the one that is granting this to them because it's his to give.

Right?

What do we talk about? Authorial intent, author. The word authority comes from the word author. It's his authority. To him he gave the authority to become children of God because it was his to give. But to as many as received him, to them he gave the authority to become children of God.

And then we get to our verse, the verse of today, and the verse says, who were born. There's the first reference to being born again because it's not referencing the birth that happens when you are brought into this world physically because he immediately gives us three ways that he's not talking about birth.

He says, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. If we take out the three negatives and just read the sentence without the negatives, it would say this.

He came unto his own, his own received him not, but to as many as received him who believed on his name, to them he gave the right or the authority to become children of God who were born of God. That's the point.

Who receives Jesus? Those who are born of God. Who is it that believes on his name? Those who are born of God. Who is it that are given the authority to become children of God? Those who are born of God.

That's the point of verse 13. But within that, there is also the negation, a threefold negation, because the writer John wants us to know not only that they are born of God, but he wants us to know how they're not born.

He wants us to understand that there are three ways that no one is born again. That's the title of today's message. And as I noted last week, I at times have engaged in moderated public debate. It's one of my, I don't know if you call it a hobby.

I just like it. I enjoy theological debate. And I think I've been in over ten public debates so far, and in almost every one I've cited this passage. Because often when I'm debating, it's either on the subject of how God saves, or the subject of the will in salvation, or the objects of baptism, which is a question of infant baptism versus believer's baptism.

And I'm going to show you guys today why this passage relates to all of those things. And that's why I've used it so many times, because it just comes out. I want to remind you again that this passage is falling in John's prologue.

John is laying the foundation for his whole book in these first 18 verses. He's laying the foundation for who Christ is, and he's laying the foundation for how Christ is in relationship to all others.

Christ's relationship to time in the beginning was the Word. His relationship to the Father, and the Word was with God. His relationship to divinity, and He was God. His relationship to creation, all things were made by Him.

His relationship to John. There was a man sent from God, his name was John. It goes on and on. The whole first 18 verses setting the stage of Jesus as the Logos, His relationship to all things. Next week we're going to see His relationship to the flesh, because it says the Logos, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us.

I look forward to that, especially since we're going through the Athanasian Creed. The Athanasian Creed is all about that idea, that the second person of the Trinity, God from God, light from light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, as the Nicene Creed says.

That God became flesh and dwelt among us. But He also shows us the relationship to His believers, those who follow after Him, His disciples. Because He says, those who rejected Him, He came to and they rejected Him, but then those who received Him, He gave the power to become children of God.

And they became children of God, because they were born of God. They were not born of the flesh or blood, they were not born of the will of the flesh, and they were not born of the will of man. So here is our outline for today.

No One Is Born Again by Bloodline or Inheritance

Well, actually, I'm going to give it to you one at a time. Our outline today is this. Regeneration is the gift of God, which takes someone from spiritual death to spiritual life. That is the new birth, and it happens because of God's will.

And there are three ways it does not happen, and the first one is this. It does not happen by earthly relationships or by inheritance. It does not happen by earthly relationship or inheritance. I want you to consider for a moment how hard it would have been for the Jewish ear to hear John's gospel when he says, it is not of blood.

The original language blood here is actually in the plural, but it's almost always translated in English in the singular, because the idea of bloods is the idea of bloodlines. It doesn't come from your...

You know how when you look at Jesus' genealogies in the gospels, there's all these names, right? And we see two different genealogies. We see one in Luke and one in Matthew, which many people interpret as being from one line of the father, one line of the mother.

There's other ways to interpret that to come to a right understanding of that, but ultimately, it's not from that. It's not from the bloods. It's not from the lines. And the Jewish person would have said, now wait a minute, that's exactly how we are made children of God.

Remember in John chapter 8 when they're talking to Jesus, what did the Jewish people say to Jesus? We have Abraham as our father.

Why did that matter?

Because they were arguing that the promises that they have from God are based upon their familial connection to their ancestor Abraham. Literally, they were arguing we are God's people by virtue of our blood, or our bloodlines.

But being a part of the family of God does not come by physical descendancy. Now, under the old covenant, there was a particular blessing that was given to those who were the offspring of Abraham. Paul recognizes this in the book of Romans when he says they are given the covenants, the scriptures, the blessings.

They certainly had a earthly blessing that came from being physically connected to Abraham. But something we need to recognize, and this is not universally agreed upon, but I want you to hear me because I believe this is the truth.

There is a distinction between the old covenant and the new covenant when it comes to the barrier of entrance. And the distinction is this. Yes, you could enter into the old covenant and receive the blessings of the old covenant by blood, by being born.

But the new covenant is entered into by being born again. The old covenant was entered into by blood of the womb. The new covenant is entered into by the blood of Christ. This is one of the reasons, and I know this may seem like a departure, so don't get too mad if you feel like I'm chasing a rabbit here.

But understand, this is one of the reasons why I remain a committed credo-Baptist. What is a credo-Baptist? A credo-Baptist is a person who believes that the only right candidate to receive the sign of baptism is a person who confesses faith in Jesus Christ.

Therefore, we do not baptize infants, but we baptize those who profess faith in Jesus Christ. The word credo comes from the Latin, I believe. Now, we cannot see a man's heart. We don't know if a man has been regenerated inside his heart, but we know that his confession is either for Christ or against him.

And therefore, that is why we are called credo-Baptists. You say, why does this even matter to bring up? Because some of my favorite people in the world are Presbyterians. I'm going to pick on them a little bit and they're going to have to give me a break.

Our Presbyterian brethren, and I do call them brethren because this is not a barrier for entrance to Christianity. This is a second-tier issue that we can disagree on and continue to be brothers in Christ, just to be clear.

But our Presbyterian brethren baptize their children because they believe that when their children are born into their family, they are part of the new covenant. This is why they call them covenant children.

I'm not making that up, just ask, they'll tell you. These are my covenant children, this is my covenant family. We are part of the new covenant because one parent believes. They base this on 1 Corinthians chapter 7, where the Apostle Paul says that if there is one believing spouse in a household, that that believing spouse sanctifies the unbelieving spouse and the children.

And they look at that passage and they say, see, this proves that the unbelieving spouse and the children are sanctified by the believing spouse, therefore we have a covenant family. All of these people are brought into the new covenant.

Well, here is my response to that. The old covenant was a mixed covenant. There were people in the covenant who were believers and unbelievers because they were brought in by blood, they were brought in by birth.

But the new covenant, according to the promise of the new covenant, which comes in the book of Jeremiah and is repeated in Hebrews chapter 8, the one distinguishing mark of the new covenant is all of the people in that covenant know God.

If you want to see it, just turn with me briefly to Hebrews chapter 8. People say, why are you a Baptist? I say because Hebrews 8 is still in the Bible. If you go to Hebrews chapter 8, we have a recitation of the new covenant, which we are told is a better covenant.

Why is it a better covenant? Well, it's a better covenant because it has a better priest, Jesus. It has a better promise, the promise of the new covenant, eternal life. And it has a better sacrifice, which is the sacrifice of Christ.

It's better in every way. But it's also better because everyone in it has eternal life. Read with me when it says, beginning in verse 7, it says, For if the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

For he finds fault with it when he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt.

For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law into their minds, I will write them on their hearts, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother. Know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. This passage tells us that in the new covenant, everyone knows the Lord.

They don't have to be evangelized because they've already been evangelized. They've come to know the Lord. And it is from the least of them to the greatest. And it goes on to say, For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

That's the blessing of the new covenant. Children brought into a family of believers are blessed. They're brought into a family of believers and they're blessed with community. They're in the Christian community.

They're blessed with a catechesis. They're taught the language of faith. They're blessed with having a father or a mother, or maybe both, that love the Lord and raise them loving the Lord. They're absolutely blessed to be part of a Christian family.

But they are not born again because they are born into your family. And they are not part of the new covenant until they are born again. That's the position that we hold. I believe that's the position of scripture.

Because again, going back to John, I know we ran to Hebrews 8, but going back to John, what does he say? He says they were born not of blood. Being a part of the family of God does not come by physical birth, familial relationship, or inheritance.

It comes by being born again. And actually, the order goes like this. We are born again, we believe, and we are adopted into the family of God. Now, there's more, what we call the ordo salutis. There's other things that happen, too.

We can go as far back as God foreknowing us and choosing us. We talk about election and predestination, and we can go forward to talk about sanctification and glorification. But in regard to this conversation, we are born again, we believe, and we are adopted into his family.

And upon our confession of faith, we're baptized as a sign of being brought into that family. So I say to you children, none of you are saved by virtue of your parents' faith. None of you are saved because your parents believe.

Now, you're blessed. You're blessed to be part of the community. You're blessed to have been catechized in one way or another. You are blessed by the fact that your parents love you enough to teach you about Jesus.

But until you come into a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, where his spirit opens your heart, and you believe and are adopted into his family, you are not part of the family of God. Now, you get angry with me, and I'm going to get some people to say ugly things because of what I just said, but that is what John is saying.

Not born into the family of God by blood. And now that everybody's uncomfortable, well, I mean, this is heavy. You're telling me my child's not part of the family of God? Your child is loved by this church, and we want them here.

But I know people whose kids grow up in church, and they have no love for the Lord, and they go out into the world and do their thing.

Okay.

Were they ever part of the family of God? This is where the real issue comes in, because you have to say they were part of the family of God, now they're not. And if that don't tickle your Calvinistic elbow,.

Something ought to.

At what point did they stop being part of the family of God? This is a lot to consider. That's why one verse can take a whole sermon, maybe two. No, no, no, we'll get moving. But the first one, no one is made a part of God's family by earthly relationship or inheritance.

You're not born into it, and your family cannot give it to you. It is a work of God. Number two, no one is born... no one is made part of God's family by earthly relationship or inheritance. Also, no one is made part of God's family by free will, choice, or exertion.

If I upset people before, this one's going to knock it out of the park, because it's the very next line of the sentence. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh. A very common idea in evangelical churches is the idea that we must choose to be born again.

The theological term for that is synergism. Synergism means to work together. And the idea is God does his part in you in drawing, you do your part in coming. And there's a working together, or what's known as a cooperation with grace.

This is classic Arminian teaching, that you cooperate with the grace of God. And in this system, God gives his grace to all men indiscriminately. I call it peanut butter grace. He just smears it everywhere.

And men must use their free will to cooperate with that grace to make it effectual. And as a result of that act of the will, a man is then born again. In this system, and many of you may have come from churches where that was the system.

In this system, the emphasis is placed on the individual making the right decision. Everything is based on making a decision. Salvation becomes a form of self-help where you better make the right decision.

Salvation comes down to an act of the will rather than a miraculous work of God. And over against synergism, there's another view, the view that we hold, and that is called monergism. Monergism means one worker.

Monergism says the one worker in salvation is God. We were not pursuing God, but God pursued us. That is monergism. Mono, or mono meaning one, ergos meaning worker. Synergism meaning grouped together, a group of workers or two working together.

Synergy, if you've ever been in corporate America, they talk all about synergy, working together. Monergism, God is the one worker. Salvation is of the Lord. Monergism says that the determining factor in regeneration is not cooperation, but an effectual operation of the Holy Spirit on our will.

Therefore, the act of regeneration.

Is not a result of a decision on my part, but rather it is a result of God's Spirit enabling me to come to faith. And this is key. We do make a decision. We do make a decision to believe, but our decision comes after being enabled by the Spirit of God.

That's the difference. I cannot will my own birth. I didn't will to be born of my mama.

I didn't will to be born in Jacksonville.

Who would do that?

I wasn't, I didn't will to be born on April 2nd, 1980. My will did not participate in my birth. Likewise, my will did not participate in my new birth. You know how the Bible described me before I got saved?

I got a list. Ruined, rebellious, and unrighteous, Romans 3, 10 to 18. Dead in sin and a child of wrath, Ephesians 2, 1 to 3. Unable to come to Jesus, John 6, 44 and 65. Unable to submit to God and unable to please God.

Hostile to God, Romans 8, 7 and 8. Unable to receive spiritual things, 1 Corinthians 2, 14. An enemy of God, Romans 5, 1 and 10. A slave to sin, John 8, 34 and Romans 6, 17 and 18. Jesus' own words said, I'm not good.

No one is good, Luke 18, 18 and 19. And even said we're evil, Luke 11, 13. And in John's own gospel that we're going to get to when we get to chapter 3, it says that men hate the light, the nature of man because of sin.

We read it this morning. Are we born, are we created unable to keep the law of God? No, but because of Adam and Eve rebelling against God, they have passed to us a sin nature, which now is unable to keep the law of God until we are unable to do so.

The Old Testament describes it this way. It says every intention of the heart of man was wicked. Genesis chapter 6, it says the heart of man is wicked. Who can trust it, Jeremiah 17, 9. It says our nature is wicked, Jeremiah 13, 23.

It even says that we can't change our nature. It says just as the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor can the leopard change his spots, neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. This is the description of man, and it's not a good one.

I don't have the power to change my heart, but God does. I can do moral things. I can have 12 steps to success, and I can have three rules for recovery. I can do all kinds of things, but I cannot give regeneration to my dead soul.

Ian Murray said this. He said, to teach men that they possess the ability to turn from sin when they choose to do so is to hide the true extent of their need. To teach men it's up to you, it's all up to you.

It's in your ability to do it. All you need to do is make a decision. It's to lie to men about the real condition of their heart. It is not about you mustering up enough ability to do it. It is about what only God can do.

Remember, salvation is not hard. It's impossible. Apart from the work of God. It is not of blood, and it is not of the will of the flesh. Finally, it is not a result of external coercion or manipulation.

If anything has rivaled the idea of free will conversion and evangelicalism, it is the idea that we can produce conversions through the use of well-articulated gospel proclamations and properly managed conversion experiences.

And if that sounded funny, let me say it another way. We believe we can get men to believe in Jesus as long as we make the atmosphere just right. We believe we can create conversions as long as we lower the lights enough and we raise the music enough and play just enough verses of Just As I Am.

The invitation system, which is practiced in many evangelical churches, is the focal point of the service. When I was in seminary, I was taught this. You must, in your sermon, give the last third of the sermon to building towards the invitation.

That was in our homiletics class. Thank God I wasn't a good student. But that's what they taught us. You must, at the last third of your message, build toward a moment of decision. I mean, they were just learning from the guys who came before.

This was the model that sprang up after the second great awakening. Men like Charles Finney, who was a master at producing emotionally wrought conversion experiences, he stole the bench from the Methodists.

It's called the mourner's bench. He put it up at the front of the church and he made the end of every service the focus was coming forward and getting down on your knees and putting your face on that bench and crying out to God.

Yeah, that hasn't been here for 2 ,000 years. Those benches that you see in a lot of churches, that hasn't been here for 2 ,000 years. It's been less than 200 years. That result, that's what preaching is about, building toward this moment of decision.

I mean, Billy Graham's magazine, what was it called?

Decision Magazine.

And hey, I was here when he came to town the last time. And I knew people who went to his event and were taught how to be counselors. One of the things they said, well, we're going to put you up in the audience so that when Billy gives the invitation, you guys get up and come first and that will prime the pump to get people to come.

Now, get mad at me if you want, but that's coercion. It's manipulation. It has the results, the intention of producing the desired result of coercion and the unintentional but yet nefarious byproduct of feeding a pastor's ego because he can boast about the number of decisions that were made when he preached.

And if you've never heard that, you've never been to a pastor's lunch. In certain denominations, those numbers of people coming forward are the very metric for institutional accolades and how men build their successful careers.

I remember walking into a church where my kids were in homeschool, we walked into the front foyer of the church and there was a giant trophy in the foyer of the church. I walked over to the trophy. It was the number of baptisms for the year.

They had won in all the churches in the area. Beloved, I have known men who told me, you give me enough time with anybody, I could get them to believe in Jesus. And I told that man, I said, Jesus couldn't get everybody to believe in Jesus.

What are you talking about?

This passage tells us that the new birth is not something that comes from someone else's will. The first one says, not of the will of the flesh. It's not of your will. But it's also not of the will of man.

It's not another man's will. Actually, the NIV translates it strangely. It translates it husband because the word is Andre here. That's typically translated husband. One woman, man, husband of one man.

Husband of one wife in 1 Timothy 3. That's the word Andre. So NIV translates it Andre. You say, why husband? The idea is the father, the husband does not have the ability to change the wife's heart or the baby's heart.

He doesn't have the power. I cannot save you. Your friends who are believers cannot coerce you to believe. I can't make it happen. I mean, if I walked around to any of you who know Jesus and I asked you, if you had the power to go to your family and make everyone believe, you'd do it in a second.

But you do not have that power. Now, you have the power to live a Christian life before them and proclaim the gospel to them. But you do not have the power to implant spiritual life within them. And I am not for a second saying do not evangelize.

We should evangelize. We should call people to faith and repentance. We must do that because the Bible commands us to and because that's the method that God uses to save souls. God uses the proclamation of his word to bring people to his, to believe in his son and be saved.

We have the power to preach, but not the power to change the heart. Paul said this very thing. He said, I planted Apollos, who was a better preacher. Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. Most of us would agree that forced conversions are ungodly.

Forcing someone to believe in Jesus at the edge of a sword or the end of a gun produces nothing but false conversion. Well, the same thing happens when we manipulate people to believe in Jesus. You see, the great thing about coming to a right understanding of this passage is this.

I can preach the truth and I can trust God to do what only he can.

Do.

I don't have to feel like I have to produce some type of experience for you to get saved. I remember years ago, a guy came up to me, he says, he said, your church doesn't do an invitation. When can someone get saved?