1) Take time and have fun thinking about and sharing how meanings of words have changed over the years.

I am fascinated by how meanings of words change over time. There was a time when ‘dough’ was something you made bread out of. Now it is used to refer to money. “He’s got a lot of dough”. There was a time when ‘high’ referred to a direction. Now it is used to refer to what you do on a drug trip. “I got high”. ‘Gay’ used to refer to a person who was happy and jovial. Now it refers to a homosexual person. “He’s gay”. Words and phrases meant something in the past but mean something very different today.

As we move on in our fall series on The Life of Christ and look at the beginning of Jesus’ teaching ministry today, we are going to consider a phrase Jesus used that has come to mean something quite different than what he meant by it. It is the phrase “born again”. It is important that we understand what Jesus meant by these words because so much of his teaching and our relationship with God is dependent upon it.

2) What thoughts and feelings come to mind when you hear the phrase “born again”?

Now in recent years this idea of a new birth has been used in presidential campaigns. It’s been highlighted on T.V. This past week President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, has been cited as a “born again evangelical”. I’m sure you have seen ‘born again’ bumper stickers. And I’m sure if you went to the right place you could find a yoyo with ‘born again’ on it. This ghastly commercial things. Some time back Time Magazine told us that the California Statehouse in Sacramento was ‘born again’ because it had been redone architecturally inside and outside. It has become something of a spiritual slogan. It’s a phrase that’s just been bounced around tremendously. It’s become something crass. It’s sometimes used as a sort of pass-word among Christians. The question, “Are you a born-again Christian” may have much more to do with somebody’s jargon than with their relationship with God.

3) How important would you say the new birth is for the Christian’s life?

But in spite of being a term that has been tremendously misused and misunderstood, it is nevertheless a very basic and elementary teaching in Jesus’ ministry. It refers basically to a change at the very start of the Christian life which is so great that it can’t be described in any other way than being born anew – or better from the Greek, born from above. We humans might be tempted to think that there is no such need, that really there is enough good inside of us, and that we will be all right. But Jesus says, “one cannot even see the Kingdom of God without being born again” (John 3:3).

4) Discuss what being “born again” means and what it does not mean. Read John 3:1-15 and John 1:12-13.

Now since this is such a misused and misunderstood phrase today, let’s learn from John’s Gospel what being ‘born again’ is not. It is not a change from within. It’s not sort of turning over a new leaf, something originating within us. Look at John 1:12-13, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God”.. Being born again is not of blood – not by inheritance or pedigree. One was not born again just because one was a literal blood descendent of Abraham. We would say today, one is not ‘born again’ just because one is born to Christian parents. One is not ‘born again’ by the will of the flesh nor the will of man, i.e. not by specific human choice. The emphasis is clearly on it not being something from within man or by man in any way. The new birth is not the result of our human choice or achievements. Jesus says in John 3:6, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit”.. What we can produce is just what we can produce – from below. What is of God is entirely different! It is from above.

So what is clear is that we cannot produce the new birth from within ourselves. It would be like flogging a dead horse. Nothing new can come from it. Now you see Jesus knows us very well. He knew Nicodemus very well. Nicodemus was a Pharisee whose religion was entirely rooted in what you achieve. Their stance before God depended on their accomplishments. So in saying to Nicodemus “You must be born again”, Jesus is sweeping away everything he would have stood for as a Pharisee. So this is what the new birth is not. It is not something from within us.

What then is the new birth? John 1:13 says it is something from God, a gift from God, and it’s the power to become children of God. It’s the power or authority to join God’s family. An orphan can’t just decide to be adopted into somebody’s family. He can’t take such initiative. The initiative has to come from the family itself. So it is with being born into God’s family. The new birth is entirely God’s initiative.

5) If one cannot see the Kingdom of God without being born again, how does one get the new birth?

So now the question is – how do we get it? That was what Nicodemus himself was concerned about. He says in v. 9, “How can this be?”. It is a very good question. How can this happen? Jesus response I believe comes down in v. 14-15, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”.. Jesus is in essence saying you cannot be born again yourself, but you can believe in me. You are not responsible for being born again, but you can respond to the gift of the new birth that God gives you. You can believe – you can have faith. Back in John 1:12 we read, Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Believing is receiving Christ which is being born again. Rebirth is God’s work within us. The believing is the human response that receives the gift of the new birth from above.

This is really incredible! The wonder of the Gospel is that anybody who asks God to forgive them, trusting in the death of Christ for them, and committing themselves to serve God as best they can – anyone who asks this of God is born again! They are a Christian. God has done something absolutely radical in them. That person then has eternal life.

6) How is the work of the Holy Spirit in the new birth like the wind?

There is something else that is very powerful here in this passage. In John 3:7-8 we read, “You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. YOU hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”.. Here Jesus describes and parallels the work of the Spirit of God and the new birth to be like the wind. You can see the results of the wind but you can’t see the wind itself. There is a mystery to the wind. Wind can be refreshing and cool you off or it can freeze you. It can be very peaceful and just flutter the leaves up at the top of a tree or it can reach 150 mph hurricane force. Have you tried hanging onto even a little sailboat on a dock when the sail is actually filled? You cannot hold it. It looks like jut a little light breeze, but if the sail is filled, you will never hold on to it because the wind is so powerful. “There is a mystery to the wind,” says Jesus to Nicodemus, “and so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit”.

7) Discuss different ways the Holy Spirit works in bringing people to Christ. Take time to share how you where brought to Christ.

I think one of the most powerful things here is that we need to see that the work of God bringing people to himself is a work of the Holy Spirit and we cannot put it in a box. You can’t package it. And so we must never slip into wanting everything packaged and taped and organized and saying this is the way it has got to be. This is what leads up to someone’s conversion. This is what is meant to happen in a conversion. This is what is meant to happen after a conversion. No, God works in as many different ways as there are people in whose lives he works in. The way he brings people to faith is far more mysterious than the wind.

Let me give you a few different scenarios. Some people will be baptized as an infant when God’s covenant promise of forgiveness, life and salvation is given to the child. They grow up in a Christian home and there is never a time when they cannot remember loving Christ and not believing. They have always trusted Christ as their Savior. There is never a time when they feel uncommitted to Christ. They have always believed Christianity to be true. There is no conscious time of praying to receive Christ or anything like this. In this case, the wind of God’s Spirit gave the gift of the new birth in their baptism and faithfully kept them in the covenant of that baptism. Such a one has been a Christian from the moment of their baptism. This would be my own experience.

Or there are some people who have lived apart from God for a long time and then later in life turn to Christ. Their turning to Christ might be prompted by an intense time of suffering where everything is stripped away – all the props are kicked out from under them. or it might happen in the face of danger. Our Marine son Mark tells me that God has come really close to some of his Marine buddies. He was in a convoy this last week where the tank in front of him hit a improvised explosion device and blew off the tank’s track and later a mortar blew up 40 feet from his tent and one of the guys was hurt by flying shrapnel. That will make you think of life and death pretty quickly. When Mark had previously asked if some of his buddies wanted to do some Bible study, one of them said “Yeah, I think I need to get closer to God.”. Or for your next door neighbor it may be that everything in their life was sailing along smoothly, but it was only when everything was in order that he realized that he had nothing. There were no great crises or trauma or time of difficulty. It was having achieved all the goals he had set for himself that he suddenly realized it was worth zilch – nothing and then he turned to Christ. That is psychologically completely different. Christ was the only one who could give him meaning. Someone else may have a neighbor who will come to Christ out of a life of real comfort and apathy. Suddenly Christ becomes a cause worth living for. For them becoming a Christian will most likely turn everything upside down and they will be far less restful as a Christian than they were before they became a Christian for all kinds of reasons. For one person it may be at the end of a long, long search – years and years of searching for the truth. For another person it may come as a complete accident, as if it was an accident.

Look at the Apostle Paul. He was knocked to the ground, blinded for three days. At the end of the three days he suddenly emerges preaching Christ with such power that nobody can believe it. Compare that to Timothy of whom it is said, “Having known the Scriptures since your youth, I trust that the faith that was in your mother and grandmother is also in you”. Or compare it to C.S. Lewis who described himself as the most reluctant convert in all of England. He sort of gave in to God as a last resort after finding out that everything else had failed.

In John 3:8 we read, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”.. The Spirit works in us making each person more and more whole through God being more and more the center of their lives. But I think we must respect the sovereignty of God’s Spirit and the individuality of people and not try to cram others into our mold or into the mold of our particular Christian tradition. So this is the work of the Spirit of God in rebirth.

8) What is the significance of the different WAYS the call to believe is presented to us in the Bible? (i.e. as invitation or promise, commandment, and protest)

Then I notice with interest Jesus’ words in John 3:7;, “You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again”.. Jesus didn’t say, “Don’t marvel that I said to you, “You can be born anew as though it is something optional – well, yes, you may like this way of approaching religion or you may not like this way”. Jesus says you MUST be born anew. Let me say a word about the WAY the call to believe is presented to us in Jesus’ ministry and in the Bible as a whole. It comes to us in three ways:

1 It comes to us as an invitation or a promise. This is what we see all the way through the Gospel of John. For example, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.. That is a promise. Or again in 3:36a , “whoever believes in the Son has eternal life”.. That is a promise. Or we think of Jesus saying, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). That is an invitation.

2. The call to believe also comes to us as a commandment. The Bible doesn’t function as some do today that have one basic message: “You must be lonely. You must have an emptiness in your life without God and you must be blue and need a friend. Here’s Jesus, he will be your friend and he is going to fill the void.”. As though the main thing is a person’s felt need. So what do you say to a person who isn’t particularly lonely or feeling hollow, who is happy and content and for whom all is going fine who apparently doesn’t really need Christ? That is not the way the Bible presents it. The Bible says everyone needs Christ and it’s presented as a command. I John 3:23 says, “This is his commandment that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ….”. Christianity isn’t just for those who feel the need. It’s not an option. It’s an obligation.

3. Finally, the call to believe comes to us in the form of a protest. A protest against those who would reject God’s free gift, who would reject it, ignore it, resist it. Against such ones – God protests. I think of Ezekiel 18:31-32, “Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!”.. Do you see what he is saying? God is saying, “Why will you die? I don’t want you to die. I don’t get any pleasure out of your death, out of you abandoning me and being destroyed. Turn and live! God is protesting in this way. Or Isaiah 55:1-2, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters: and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare”.. God is reasoning with them. He is protesting human foolishness. He is saying, “I don’t understand. I am giving you this gift absolutely free. It’s yours for no money at all and at the same time it’s priceless. You reject the free gift and spend your money rather for what doesn’t satisfy you anyway”. You see his reasoning. You see the logic of God’s protest.