New birth - born of God with Jesus as Lord

9 - THE NEW BIRTH:
BORN OF GOD WITH JESUS AS LORD

It is crucial that we not only experience the new birth, but also that we understand its significance and nature.

The new birth is something that God does in us. His eternal life enters the human spirit, and we are born of God. When we come to the Lord Jesus, we partake of the Tree of Life, so to speak, and become partakers of the divine nature", for

God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
He who has the Son has the life...".

Through new birth we are joined to the Lord Jesus and become part of the new human race and there is no other way to enter it. Religious self-effort accomplishes nothing. When we respond to the gospel in repentance and faith, when we trust Jesus alone for salvation, a miracle takes place in our spirits. We are born of God.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation."

There is a reference in John 3 to being born of water and the Spirit. This refers to a prophecy in Ezekiel 36. It reminds us that the cleansing away and removal of our sin goes together with the entrance of the new and eternal life of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

One important matter, frequently misunderstood, is our assurance of salvation. There are those who deny the possibility of true assurance. They say it is presumption to claim that you know you are saved. Such people have clearly misunderstood the gospel and the basis of the assurance which the Christians in the New Testament certainly had. The true Christian has God-given assurance of salvation, based not upon anything he is or has done, but upon God's grace, and the gift of forgiveness and eternal life. He pins all his hopes on his Savior. This is not presumption but faith. It is this kind of faith that saves a sinner.

But what is the nature of true assurance? The most direct answer from the Scriptures would seem to be in Romans 8:16, 

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. 

The true Christian just knows that he has been born of God, that he is alive, that something has happened inside him. Everything is new. The result of this realization, this assurance, will vary. Some may leap for joy, others may open quietly like a flower. It is not the outward expression that matters, but the inward reality of God-given assurance, rooted in grace alone. A distinguishing mark of every true Christian is such assurance. Without it, there must be a question as to whether the person has been born again. Mere mental assent to some verses of Scripture is dangerously inadequate.

It is God's intention and will that His Son should be enthroned in our hearts and that we should be filled with the Spirit, from the time of our new birth. The idea that this filling comes later in another experience is without solid Scriptural justification. It is true that many do not enter into the reality of this filling at conversion, but it is God's intention that a Spirit-controlled life begin then.

Why does this confusion exist, and why is there such a sad contrast between what the New Testament presents and what Christians generally experience? It is because the gospel that is often preached today is not the Christ-centered and Christ-exalting gospel the apostles preached, but a pale shadow of it. Today we hear a largely man-centered, man-accommodating false gospel. 

A false gospel which proclaims a false Christ, will only produce false Christians.

A false gospel can never produce a true Christian. A weak, partial gospel, true as far as it goes, while sincerely preached, may possibly produce only a feebly born Christian, and that because the Lord permits human factors to affect His working. But it is the true, Christ-exalting gospel that provides, on the human side, the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to bring people to a healthy new birth. While the Lord is sovereign in His dealings with everyone, and may overrule our failure, the kind of gospel we present to people obviously matters very much.

Consider the gospel first proclaimed by Peter on the day of Pentecost, when about 3000 people were added to the Lord and to His church. He proclaimed the Lordship of the One who had died and risen again, and uncovered the heart of sin, rebellion against God and His Son

"God has made both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

This brought deep conviction of sin, true repentance and faith that was declared decisively in baptism. The result was that the 3000 received forgiveness, were born again, and filled with the Spirit. They were added to the family of God, and they"  steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and the fellowship ...". The Spirit of the enthroned Lord Jesus took possession of their hearts. The chief task of the Holy Spirit is to establish the reality of the Lordship of Christ over our entire lives. Of course, these 3000 were only at the beginning of their journey, just babes in Christ; they had yet to learn about being filled to the fulness of an ever-growing capacity. But they were filled as full as they could be at that stage. The point is that their beginning, their new birth, was strong and healthy.

When the gospel came through Paul to the Thessalonians, we see exactly the same impact and response, ... our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance and deep conviction.

The watered-down gospel so prevalent today, without true repentance, produces at best only weak Christians, and beside a host of other problems, at worst, it produces many people who think they are Christian but are not saved at all. It is vital that we return to the true gospel. We have gravely erred in shaping the gospel to suit man. The meeting of man's need is not the first thing. We have forgotten that God saves sinners on His terms only. Conversion is a radical transformation - the Lordship of Christ is not an optional extra, it is central to salvation.

To see conversion as the beginning of a Spirit-controlled life, in which the Lord Jesus is truly Lord, provides us with the vital key to the understanding we need in our day when there is so much confused, contradictory, unbalanced and un-Biblical teaching about the need to have a further experience after conversion in order to be filled with the Spirit. The true gospel produces a healthy new birth, the chief feature of which is that the heart knows, accepts, and confesses that Jesus is Lord. You cannot be sure someone is truly born-again until there is evidence that Jesus is Lord in their life. With such a beginning, the new believers prospects are good, and a further experience is unnecessary, for the Lord is truly present in their life. 

Beginnings are always crucially important.