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You must be born again!
God has caused us to be born again. And it must be that way. We must be passive in this way, in terms of initiation and causation, if we affirm the scriptures teaching on the inability of sinners to do anything toward saving themselves, including the exertion of their wills, which are enslaved to sin.
Psalm 58 3 tells us that the wicked are estranged from the womb. The scriptures declare that just as the leopard cannot change his spots, so the natural man can do no good. Jesus says in John 6, no one is able to come to him unless the father draws him.
That is why we we read those texts like John 1 12, but as many as received him to those who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become the 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.
Or Romans 9 16. So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. Sinners are dependent upon God's causation power. This word cause is in the aorist tense because regeneration is a definite historical act that God accomplishes in the soul of the sinner.
John Owen says. All, indeed, confess that God is the only author of our salvation, but many afterwards invent extraneous causes. Which take away so much from his mercy, but Peter commends mercy alone.
Are you sitting here this morning and you have not been born again? It is not that you must believe in Jesus in order to be born again. That you must have faith and not only have faith that you find springing up from within yourself, but exercise it appropriately in order to be regenerated.
This text declares to your powerless soul that you must be born again in order to believe in Jesus. That regeneration precedes faith, that you need him. Utterly and completely, the busy evangelist George Whitefield would preach the new birth from town to town to thousands of people for months on end, and I believe it was a lady came up to him one time and said, Why are you always telling us the same thing over again?
Every time we hear you preach, we hear the same thing. You must be born again. You must be born again. Why not a different message? Why are you always telling us that you must be born again? As it goes, Whitefield paused for a moment and he looked at her, said, Because, madam, you must be born again.
Some of you sitting here, maybe you attend your church week after week and hear the gospel preached and you have some doctrine, but you do not know the great mercy of God. And with what doctrine you do have, you have no doxological capacity of soul because you have not been born again.
Realize this today. It is God who causes you to be born again and you must be born again.