You Must Be Born Again

God really knows who believes and what’s really in our hearts.

Jesus is not looking for surface level believers, people who believe only in deed but not in heart

God doesn’t need human validation to be God

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”” (, ESV)

““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (, ESV)

Jesus clarifies the source of true faith and belief

A man who saw the works of Jesus believed because of the works now seeks to know the Master of the works.

Must be born again to be considered a true child of God

Born of water and the spirit (Combination terminology)

Spiritual Birth not a Natural Birth

The Spirit is in sovereign control of the New Birth experience

“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.” (, ESV)

Nicodemus is struggling to comprehend spiritual truth

Fallen Condition Focus

“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (, ESV)

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (, ESV)

When Jesus is truly exalted in the heart, then there is a true trusting and it is those who truly trust in him that will inherit eternal life.

Big Idea

Truly believing in Jesus comes by a work of The Spirit and manifest itself in the heart and produces true believing faith.