Born of Spirit

Introduction

Illustration: Makin’ brownies.

The story of the whole Bible is basically the conflict between a Holy God and a broken and sinful people that He loves. Because He loves us He is unwilling to just leave us, but because we are sinful and He is Holy and Just, He cannot let our sins pass. So we’re all like those brownies I made with the kids. What is the solution to this problem? How do we as messed up people come to a place where we can have a relationship with the God who made us and loves us?

Let’s see what Jesus has to say about this in our passage today. This is Sermon 6 in our series “Believe and Live: The Gospel According to John,” where we are walking through John’s Gospel carefully and asking ourselves what it teaches us about how to be disciples who make disciples.

In our passage today we have a conversation Jesus has with a man named Nicodemus, found in

John 3:1–21 CSB

There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” “How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus. “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied. “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven—the Son of Man. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”

So first of all, props to my guy Nicodemus. One of only a very small number of Pharisees who saw and heard what Jesus was doing and rightly recognized that He was sent from God. Also instead of just jumping to his own conclusions he goes right to Jesus with his questions and seems to be genuinely seeking answers.

So what does Jesus tell Nicodemus when he comes looking for answers? He tells him that he needs to be born again. Today we are going to take a close look at what it means to be “born again.” We’ll talk about how we can’t possible see and understand, let alone enter, the Kingdom of heaven unless we are born again. We’ll see that it’s not enough just to get a clean slate, but that we need to have a new birth by the Holy Spirit which results in true life change. And finally we’ll see just how high a price was paid for us to have access to God through being born again.

The Necessity of New Birth

Illustration: Imagine if you could start life over again, but with your memories intact. How would you do things differently? I would probably be very stressed trying to do things better but not accidentally prevent myself from important things that happened in my life.Well we can’t do that in the time travelling kind of sense, but we can do that in a Spiritual sense.

In some things we see that we reach a point where we need to start over. If you’re painting and you spill paint on the canvas. If you’re writing notes and your pen explodes. If you’re stacking wood and the whole pile falls over. That last one happened to me this year. When it comes to our spiritual lives the Bible tells us that before we come to Jesus we are at the point where we need to start over. The Bible says in Romans 3:23

Romans 3:23 CSB

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;

And like we saw in my object lesson with the kids, all it takes is a little sin to corrupt us and adding on righteous deeds does nothing to make us clean.

You see Nicodemus comes to Jesus in exactly the right frame of mind. Now there’s a lot of people who assume that because Nicodemus came at night he was afraid to be discovered or ashamed, but it was actually pretty common to meet people on the rooftop at night since it was cooler than during the day. It made a great time for calm and quiety conversation. So that might be the only reason that Nicodemus met Jesus at night. In any case, Nicodemus came to Jesus because he saw the things that Jesus was doing and knew what they meant. This Jesus must be sent from God if God is giving Him the power to do what He is doing.

His implied question in His statement is basically, “what is your teaching that God has sent you to teach us?” And His answer I think very much surprises Nicodemus.

John 3:1–3 CSB

There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

This is huge. You can’t even see let alone comprehend the Kingdom of God unless you are born again. Why? Because we are so broken. It’s like walking around with glasses so full of cracks that we’d be better off not wearing them. We need knew glasses, or in this case even new eyes, to see the truth that’s in front of us. My friends this is what we me when we call ourselves “born again Christians.” We mean that we’ve done what Jesus asked us to and been born again, started over with a clean slate.

The application to this point is simple. If you’re sitting here and you’ve never actually repented of your sins, in other words turn away from your wrong doing and ask God for forgiveness, then what’s stopping you? The Bible promises this:

1 John 1:8–9 CSB

If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we confess, He forgives. That’s a promise. For those of us who have already been born again and come to Jesus, than remember that your sins are forgiven and there is never any reason to doubt that God has forgiven you because of this strong promise of Scripture.

The Nature of New Birth

I think instead of coming up with my own illustration for this one, I’m going to steal one from Jesus. This is a parable He shares in Matthew 12:43-45

Matthew 12:43–45 CSB

“When an unclean spirit comes out of a person, it roams through waterless places looking for rest but doesn’t find any. Then it says, ‘I’ll go back to my house that I came from.’ Returning, it finds the house vacant, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and settle down there. As a result, that person’s last condition is worse than the first. That’s how it will also be with this evil generation.”

In studying this parable I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a metaphor for what happens to a person who repents without receiving the Holy Spirit. You see it’s not enough to kick the evil spirit out and clean up the house. If you leave it empty it can just come back. But if you invite the Holy Spirit to the house then the spirit will come back and find the house occupied.

This is why the Baptism of John wasn’t enough. Remember this from Acts 19:1-7

Acts 19:1–7 CSB

While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and came to Ephesus. He found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” “No,” they told him, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” “Into what then were you baptized?” he asked them. “Into John’s baptism,” they replied. Paul said, “John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people that they should believe in the one who would come after him, that is, in Jesus.” When they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began to speak in tongues and to prophesy. Now there were about twelve men in all.

John’s baptism was a baptism of Repentence. Of starting over and coming back to God clean. But that can only get you so far. The same is true for all of us. It’s not enough just to recognize that we are doing wrong things, apologize and try harder. We need the Holy Spirit to make that real difference in our lives.

Jesus goes on to say this,

John 3:5–13 CSB

Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” “How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus. “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied. “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven—the Son of Man.

Now I just want to say real quick, Jesus is probably referring to baptism at least in part here, but I’ve preached about baptism three times in the last year, so if you want to know more about that I can send you the link for the relevant sermon. That’s not Jesus’ main point here anyway. He’s talking about the nature of this new birth that He’s telling Nicodemus He must go through.

We were all born descendents of Adam and Eve. We inherited when we were born limited bodies tainted by sin. If we were to somehow literally be reborn we would still be stuck in our sin. No matter how many clean slates we could be offered, we’d just dirty them again. So if we want to be men of Spirit, we need to be born of the Spirit.

There’s actually a bit of a fun wordplay going on in this verse that doesn’t translate. In Greek the word that Jesus uses when He says we need to be “born again” can also mean “from above.” Nicodemus takes it only in the sense of being literally born a second time, but Jesus means it both ways.

Nicodemus wants to understand this. He wants to know the code of what it means to be born again. Jesus tells Him that the Spirit is a mystery. We can’t see it when it comes and goes. It’s like the wind, you can’t see wind but you can see it’s effect.

So what’s the effect of the Spirit? What’s the result? In other words, what’s the fruit. Wait a minute, that sounds familiar doesn’t it? Fruit of the Spirit? Galatians 5:22-23

Galatians 5:22–23 CSB

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.

But once again Nicodemus seems baffled by the whole idea. Jesus is speaking to Him using examples from life, like wind and being reborn, and Nicodemus wants to know the truth behind the pictures Jesus is giving Him but Jesus tells HIm that if He can’t understand the earthly things that He is describing to Him, than how could He hope to udnerstand what’s behind them.

So what’s the point for us? We need to understand something important about the nature of being truly “born again.” It’s not converting to a new system of beliefs. It’s not a commitment to living life a different way. It’s not just a clean slate and a ticket to heaven. It’s being reborn as a different person. A person born of the Holy Spirit instead of the Spirit of the world. The Holy Spirit is the only way to truly live according to the will of God.

Thankfully we don’t have to do some special extra thing to get the Holy Spirit, but Jesus promises us that when we come to Him He gives us the Holy Spirit, Baptizes us into the Holy Spirit. The word baptize again means to immerse. From then on it’s a question of listening to the Holy Spirit and praying for guidance from Him to live life Christianly. The Fruit are the Spirit is just the visible sign of the activety of the Spirit in Changing our lives.

The Cost of New Birth

Most of the time I am quite thankful to be a Canadian. Nothing makes me more thankful to be a Canadian than looking up the cost of having a baby in the USA. I’m not talking diapers and all those expenses, we have those here, but the actual cost of going to the hospital to have a baby. According to moneygeek.com, “Even with an affordable health insurance policy, the average cost of delivery is $1,905, though it costs more for C-sections and less for vaginal deliveries. The cost of giving birth without insurance is $13,393”

It is of course wise to consider the cost of everything, and the New Birth is no exception. So the question is, what does being born again cost? Stick with me here, but it isn’t free. So if we want to be born again by the spirit, what is the cost of that and who pays it? Because we don’t want to miss out on eternal life because of a debt not paid, right?

I know you guys are probably way ahead of me here, but let’s take a look at the final part of our passage this morning.

John 3:14–21 CSB

“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”

At first glance this follow-up from Jesus seems to be a subject change. Certainly related, but not exactly what He’s been talking about. They’ve been talking about the necessity and nature of being born of the Spirit, and Jesus starts talking about the Son of Man (Jesus Himself) being lifted up to save people like the serpent in the wilderness. But a little reflection shows that it’s actually very much on topic. After all, how can Jesus talk about the necessity and nature of being born again without talking about the cost of being born again.

The cost it turns out is not paid by us, but by Jesus Himself. As a man He can represent all of us, and as Holy God His righteousness is enough to atone for all of us as a sacrifice. Let’s take a look at the story from the Hebrew Scriptures that Jesus is referencing here. Numbers 21:4-9

Numbers 21:4–9 CSB

Then they set out from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea to bypass the land of Edom, but the people became impatient because of the journey. The people spoke against God and Moses: “Why have you led us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food!” Then the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they bit them so that many Israelites died. The people then came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Intercede with the Lord so that he will take the snakes away from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake image and mount it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will recover.” So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole. Whenever someone was bitten, and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.

Jesus wasn’t kidding when He said the Hebrew Scriptures were written about Him by the way. When you start seeing all the prophecies, images and connections you start seeing just how true that is. In this case this moment in the desert serves as a powerful image of what Jesus will accomplish on the cross. The people sinned, and their judgment was death by serpents. So when they ask for deliverance what does God ask them to do? To look at the image of a serpent. We sin, and our punishment is death. So when we ask for deliverance God sends a man to be the image of death.

What healed those Israelites? Did they do anything to earn their deliverance from the punishment for their sins? They simply looked at the serpent and were healed. It was faith that made them well, just as looking on Jesus in faith is what heals us and delivers us from the punishment we face for sin.

Sometimes people get the mixed up idea that God sends some people to heaven and other people to Hell. Jesus clarifies for us here the truth. We’re all on our way to Hell. We’re already condemned. God makes a way for those who will believe to escape condemnation and come to the light. So why don’t more people do it? Because we love darkness and don’t want to give up our sin.

Listen dear friends, there’s nothing we can do to earn our salvation. There’s no good dead, no gesture, no magic formula, no ritual. The only thing we can do is accept what Jesus has already done for us. So the question is have we put our faith in Him? It’s literally the only question that truly matters. If you have put your faith in Him than every reminder from Scripture of the price He paid for us is a reminder to fall on our knees in a spirit of incredible thankfulness.

Guilty, vile, and helpless we; Spotless Lamb of God was He; “Full atonement!” can it be? Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Conclusion

There is so much more that can be said about this short passage of Scripture, but I don’t know that these chairs are comfortable enough to take the time they truly deserve. Let it suffice for today to remember these three huge truths. That if we want to know God and to see His Kingdom for what it is, that there is no substitute for being born again and seeing it with brand new eyes. That this new birth must be rebirth by the Holy Spirit. That we cannot truly change without God’s miraculous intervention. Finally let us recognize that this new birth is not something we could ever earn, but as Paul says we were bought at a price, a price that Jesus paid on the cross for our sakes.

Let us as Jesus’ disciples always keep our loyalty to the simple gospel message. Maybe this morning a lot of us already put our hope and faith in Jesus, and are already living assured of His forgiveness and set to join Him in the next life, but a reminder of the plain and simple gospel is a way to keep our feet firm on its foundation. It’s also a way to remind us of the message that we are bringing to others. We aren’t just called to receive the gospel, we are also called to share it. So remember and share with those in your life what it means to be born again so that they can join us in eternal joyous life.

Let us pray.