I want to say loud and clear that when the Barna Group uses the term born again to describe American church-goers whose lives are indistinguishable from the world...the Barna Group is making a profound mistake. It is using the term born again in a way that would make it unrecognizable by Jesus and the biblical writers.
Introduction
[The New Testament] moves from the absolute certainty that the new birth radically changes people, to the observation that many professing Christians are indeed (as the Barna Group says) not radically changed, to the conclusion that they are not born again.
Introduction
No human makes the new birth happen. No preacher and no writer can make it happen. You can't make it happen to yourself. God makes it happen. It happens to us, not by us. But it always happens through the word of God.
Introduction
Some unbelievers look like better people than some believers. But that is because some pretty bad people have been born again, and the process of transformation is not always as fast as we would like.
Introduction
We will go to hell if we are not born again.
Chapter 1
The topic of the new birth is not marginal. It is central. Eternity hangs in the balance when we are talking about the new birth. Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Chapter 1
[John 1:13] refers to the children of God as those "who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." God causes the new birth; we don't.
Chapter 1
The new life makes the faith possible, and since spiritual life always awakens faith and expresses itself in faith, there is no life without faith in Jesus. Therefore, we should never separate the new birth from faith in Jesus. From God's side, we are united to Christ in the new birth. That's what the Holy Spirit does. From our side, we experience this union by faith in Jesus.
Chapter 1
[Referring to 1 John 5:4] "Born of God" is the key to victory. "Faith" is the key to victory. Both are true because faith is the way we experience being born of God. Being born of God always brings faith with it. The life given in the new birth is the life of faith. The two are never separate.
Chapter 1
The new birth is the creation of spiritual life, not the imitation of life.
Chapter 2
So we have life by being connected with the Son of God who is our life, and we have that life by the work of the Spirit. We concluded, therefore, that the work of the Spirit in regeneration is to impart new life to us by uniting us to Christ.
Chapter 2
In the new birth, the Holy Spirit supernaturally gives us new spiritual life by connecting us with Jesus Christ through faith.
Chapter 2
The Bible has a clear and devastating message about the state of our souls. And the reason it does is so that we will know what we need and shout for joy when God gives it to us.
Chapter 3
Apart from the new birth we are dead in trespasses in sins...are by nature children of wrath...love darkness and hate the light...have hearts that are hard like stone...are unable to submit to God or please God...are unable to accept the gospel...are unable to come to Christ or embrace Him as Lord.
Chapter 3
Love and hate are active in the unregenerate heart. And they move in exactly the wrong directions - hating what should be loved and loving what should be hated.
Chapter 3
Our ignorance is guilty ignorance, not innocent ignorance. It is rooted in hard and resistant hearts. Paul says in Romans 1:18 that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Ignorance is not our biggest problem. Hardness and resistance are.
Chapter 3
No one can say ["Jesus is Lord"] and mean it without being born of the Spirit. It is morally impossible for the dead, dark, hard, resistant heart to celebrate the Lordship of Jesus over his life without being born again.
Chapter 3
We were once so in love with sin that we could not leave it or kill it. Then something happened. The new birth happened. God caused us to get a new spiritual life, a new nature that hates sin and loves righteousness.
Chapter 4
The statement makes no sense - that there is no good in us before new birth - without the conviction that everything good that God has made and that God sustains is ruined when it is not done in reliance on God's grace and in pursuit of God's glory.
Chapter 4
Two times John tells us that Christmas happened - the Son of God became human - to take away sin, that is to destroy the works of the devil, namely, sin. (1 Jn. 3:5,8)
Chapter 5
When we ask why we need to be born again, the answer could look backward to our miserable condition in sin, or could look forward to the great things we will miss if we are not born again - like entering the kingdom of God.
Chapter 5
Consider that the aim of the new birth is to enable us to believe specifically in the incarnate Jesus Christ. If there were no incarnate Jesus Christ to believe in, then the new birth would not happen.
Chapter 5
That's the aim of the new birth. And so faith in Jesus Christ is the first evidence that the new birth has happened. "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God." Faith is the sign that the new birth has happened.
Chapter 5
Christianity is not a kind of spirituality that floats amorphously through various religions. It is historically rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Scripture says, "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life" (1 John 5:12).
Chapter 5
One of the unsettling things about the new birth, which Jesus says we all must experience in order to see the kingdom of God (John 3:3), is that we don't control it.
Chapter 6
We don't decide to make [the new birth] happen any more than dead men decide to give themselves life.
Chapter 6
Our condition before the new birth is that we treasure sin and self-exaltation so much that we cannot treasure Christ supremely...and we are guilty for this. This is real evil in us. We are blameworthy for this spiritual hardness and deadness.
Chapter 6
The way [the new birth] happens, is that the Spirit of God supernaturally gives us new spiritual life by connecting us with Jesus Christ through faith.
Chapter 6
Our first experience of this [new life] is the faith in Jesus that this life brings. There is no separation of time here. When we are born again, we believe. And when we believe, we know we have been born again. When there is fire, there is heat. When there is new birth, there is faith.
Chapter 6
The instant Christ commands Lazarus to rise, Lazarus does the rising. The instant God gives new life, we do the living. The instant the Spirit produces faith, we do the believing.
