Born through Belief

Today we turn to one of the most well-known passages in all the Bible, so go ahead and open to John 3.

This is the account of Jesus’s nighttime encounter with a Pharisee, a Jewish religious leader, named Nicodemus.

Although he covers a lot of territory with Nicodemus, we want to unpack this one central truth this morning: If you are going to be a part of what God's kingdom, you must be born again by the Spirit of God through belief in his Son.

Now, if you aren’t super familiar with church, those words may not make a lot of sense.

Let’s try to break this down piece by piece this morning.

My challenge for you is to answer the question: Have I been born again?

You will see that as you we look at three different realities that Jesus outlines here about the new birth.

First is the straight-forward truth that...

1) You must be born again.

Start reading with me in verses 1-2...

Nicodemus recognizes that Jesus is a good teacher, but he is not sure what is going on.

He knows that only someone sent from God could do the miracles and signs Jesus has done, so that’s where he starts.

Jesus comes back with a confusing response in verse 3...

In Nicodemus’ response to Jesus, you see that, like most Pharisees, he is thinking mainly about physical realities and changes.

The Pharisees believed God did miracles and that there were spiritual beings like angels and demons, but their understanding of following God focused largely on external obedience and making sure that you did all the things that God commanded.

However, through all of that, they missed that obedience is supposed to come out of a heart that has been transformed, not just as a set of dos and don’ts.

To his credit, the Old Testament doesn’t really speak about God’s people being “born again,” so this is a new concept.

Jesus uses the newness of it to create a teachable moment.

Look at verse 5-6...

Jesus isn’t saying that a person has to be physically born again or reincarnated.

Instead, he is saying that there is a second birth that a person must go through.

A person must be born spiritually, which is a work that is carried out by the Spirit of God.

Before we explain a little more about that, let’s work through some implications of this truth:

Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, would have had to come from a good Jewish family. He had done lots of things that would have looked like they honored God, yet none of that caused him to be born again.

At times, there have been a large number of people in America who have followed Christ; so much so that America is often referred to as a “Christian nation.”

That has led some to believe that they are Christians simply because they have been born in America.

Some of you may have had parents or grandparents who loved Jesus and followed him, so you have always thought of yourself as a Christian because you were born into a Christian family.

Listen: that is not the case! Your physical birth into a nation or a family does not make you a Christian.

If you have been trusting that you are good to go with God because your mom and dad took you to church or because your grandmother prayed for you, then you have only been born once, and that isn’t how you get right with God!

When you are born again, the Spirit takes you from being spiritually dead and makes you spiritually alive.

The apostle Paul says that this makes you a totally new creature:

2 Corinthians 5:17 CSB

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!

You may look the same on the outside, but your heart has been transformed and you are made new.

God promised his people that he would do this:

Ezekiel 36:26–27 CSB

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.

This is more than just a physical birth; this is a total life transformation.

By the way, how can you tell if a person has been born again? There are several marks of this throughout the Bible, but Jesus gives us some in verses 7-8...

Those who have been born are led by the Spirit, and that causes us to behave in ways that don’t make sense to those who don’t follow Jesus.

Although the science of meteorology has come a long way since the first century, there are still aspects of the wind that we don’t understand. We still can’t always predict when a storm is going to pop up or how severe it may be.

Jesus is using a play on words here as well, because the word for “wind” and “Spirit” are the same word!

So, just like the wind moves in ways we cannot always predict or understand, so to those who have been reborn are led by the Spirit in ways that don’t make sense to those who are not following Christ.

Why would you get dunked in a pool on a Sunday morning and sing weird songs and listen to some guy talk for 45 minutes? Because the Spirit of God lives in us to give us strength to identify publicly with Christ. As we sing songs in worship, his Spirit intercedes for us, expressing our needs to the Father in ways that are too deep for words. As we look at God’s Word together, the Spirit convicts us of sin and helps us see accurately who we are, who God is, and what God is calling us to do out of the transformed hearts he has given.

All of that is going on during this hour and 15 minutes we spend together on Sunday morning. It doesn’t count the times where the Spirit equips us to take a bold stand at school and hold tight to integrity when everyone else is compromising what is right. Or when the Spirit of God leads us to give money to support the work of his church instead of spending it on ourselves so people can come to know Jesus. Or when the Spirit of God leads us to take a week of our vacation and go on a mission trip so people around the world can know that there is a God in heaven who loves them.

Here’s a great passage that summarizes this:

Romans 8:7–9 CSB

The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.

You must have the Spirit of God living in you, you must be born again, if you are going to be right with God and be able to walk with him.

Here’s a great question for those who claim to be Christians here this morning: How much of my life doesn’t make sense if I am not following Christ?

I am not talking about just being weird, but how much of the way I spend my time, the way I give and spend my money, the way I talk about other people, the way I treat others—how much of that looks like Jesus really is in charge and I am a new person?

Compare your life today to where you were a year ago—are you showing that new birth more clearly than you did then?

You cannot please God, you cannot enter his kingdom and be led by his Spirit unless you are born again.

So, how do I become born again?

Jesus makes it clear to Nicodemus: the only way to be born again is to...

2) You must believe in the Son.

In verse 9, Nicodemus shows that he still isn’t getting it...

Jesus rebukes Nicodemus for his lack of understanding, and then he begins explaining what he has come to accomplish.

In verses 10-18, Jesus uses the term “believe” at least 7 times! Pick up in verse 14-17...

Three different verses (15, 16, and 18) contain the phrase “believe in him”

Who is the “him”? Jesus!

The way to be born again is to believe in Jesus. John states that all throughout his gospel. Later in this chapter, he says:

John 3:36 CSB

The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who rejects the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him.

He says similar things in John 6:29, 47.

He even reiterates it in the letter we have that John wrote:

1 John 5:1 CSB

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him.

How can you be born again? Believing in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God and Son of Man who descended from heaven and took our sin and died in our place. He rose from the dead, and now he is back in heaven, ruling and reigning as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

“Yeah, Sean…I know all of that. I was raised in a Christian home, I’ve heard all of this before. Does that mean that I am born again?”

Nicodemus could have said similar things—he knew the promises of God, and I can guarantee he lived a cleaner life than the vast majority of us.

However, he still wasn’t born again.

James tells us that it is possible to know all the facts about Jesus, to know all the stories, and still not be right with God:

James 2:19 CSB

You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe—and they shudder.

Demons have better theology than you. They know the Bible better than you. However, they are not saved because they have never truly believed in the Son.

They know the facts, but believing is so much more than just knowing it in our heads.

Believing is the idea that I am trusting everything I have to Jesus. I am giving up the control of my life and putting him in charge.

That’s what we mean when we talk about Jesus as “Lord”— acknowledging that he is my master, and I am simply his servant who has the privilege of serving the greatest master the world has ever known.

We aren’t saved by doing good things; we are saved because God gave his one and only son to save us from our sins as a gift to us, and our only appropriate response is to place our trust in Jesus.

We are born again, remade by the Spirit of God, as we place our faith, trust, hope, love, and allegiance on the Son of God who died for us and rose from the dead and is now exalted over everything else in creation.

Just like we talked about in our first point, that has to change the way we live.

If you have been born again, if you have been saved and committed to Jesus as your Savior and your Lord, then it will be noticeable to those around you.

In fact, Jesus pointed that out to Nicodemus in verses 19-21...

See, if you are born again by the Spirit through belief in the Son, then...

3) You must come to the light.

Think back to the beginning of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus. When did Nicodemus come to Jesus? At night.

Jesus uses the physical darkness around him and picks up the metaphor John introduced in chapter 1, drawing the contrast between light and dark.

He is definitely using the situation around him to illustrate what is going on. Nicodemus came in the dark of night, hinting at the fact that he is still spiritually in the dark!

Even though he was a teacher, even though he was looked up to as a spiritual giant, he was still coming to Jesus in the dark.

When Jesus came, his teaching and his miracles and his confrontations with religious leaders turned on the lights, and it caused those who weren’t willing to follow him to run and hide like roaches when you turn on the lights in a dark house.

It isn’t just that people ignore Jesus’ light and can find light somewhere else; remember what we saw in chapter 1 about Jesus being the Light—he isn’t just a light.

Until you are born again, spiritually reborn by the Spirit of God through belief in the Son, you hate the light. You know you are in the wrong, and you don’t want anyone to see it or know it.

Apart from Christ, we all have a desire to hide and keep doing things we know are wrong.

However, when we give in and turn to following Christ, we take a step into the light and acknowledge how desperately we need to be made clean.

Did you ever get hurt as a kid and you didn’t want your parents to know, so you tried to hide it?

Eventually, you may have been in so much pain that you rolled up your pants leg and showed them the scrape or the cut.

That’s what we are doing when we come into the light—we aren’t hiding our sin, and we aren’t celebrating it, wearing those stains like a badge of honor.

Instead, we are coming to Christ and acknowledging that we need him and him alone to heal us, to make us clean.

We are laid bare before him, and we lean into the pain so we can be made right.

Then, as we continue to live our lives in the light, we let everyone see that Jesus is in charge, and anything good that happens is him working through us:

2 Corinthians 4:6–7 CSB

For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.

As one commentator put it, we are a bunch of clay jars that are full of cracks.

Instead of those cracks destroying us, though, those who have been born through belief have the privilege of allowing God’s glory to show through, just like we saw last week as we see that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.

Are you leaning into the light, even when it exposes things we would rather hide, or are you hiding in the dark?

Nicodemus was still wandering in the dark, but he came to the Light of the world in the dark of night.

Interestingly, John doesn’t say anything here about how Nicodemus responded that night.

However, we do get a couple more pictures into Nicodemus’ heart.

In John 7:50, Nicodemus tries to stick up for Jesus when the Pharisees wanted to kill him. In that passage, he seems to be starting to identify with Jesus.

It gets better, though. After Jesus was crucified, his body was laid in a borrowed tomb.

The family would have been responsible for preparing the body for burial, which included placing spices with the body in the tomb.

Do you know where they got the spices they needed?

John 19:39 CSB

Nicodemus (who had previously come to him at night) also came, bringing a mixture of about seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes.

The man who came to him in the dark is now openly giving them the spices they needed to prepare his body.

He had stepped into the light and identified with Christ, even after he had been shamed and condemned to die as a criminal.

It seems that Nicodemus left the darkness behind and stepped into the light, and he may very well have been born again.

That leaves you with the question: have you been born again by the Spirit of God through belief in his Son? Have you come into the light and lived in it so that God’s glory can be displayed through you?

If not, I want to invite you to do that this morning.

If you have been born again, I want to invite you to join me in commemorating Christ’s death and resurrection and looking forward to his kingdom as we take the Lord’s Supper, or Communion, together.