Nicodemus failed to comprehend the spiritual consequence and heavenly requirement of being “born again” nor could he grasp the reason for it. I am afraid that many who now claim to be “born again” are no further along than Nicodemus in terms of seeing the Kingdom of God. Yet seeing and entering into the Kingdom of God is the reason why Jesus said we MUST be born again.
Latching onto these words of Jesus, many people today will indeed claim to be “born again.” They have learned the correct terminology. But is that all we need to be concerned with? Is it possible that a person has learned to say they are “born again” simply because that is what they have been taught to say? Is it the phraseology that Jesus wants us to have or the actual experience of being born from above, born of the Spirit?
Although it is the exact same thing as being “born again”, most cannot answer what being “born from above” or “born of the Spirit” means because that has not entered into their vocabulary yet. But they all know what “born again” means – it means to be a Christian! Even if they can describe it, the answer sounds too pat, like something learned at catechism class and recited as a theological doctrine instead of a something that has resulted from a life-changing encounter with the Risen Lord.
Today with so many “born again” people claiming salvation without the accompanying evidences and fruits of repentance, Jesus might well be saying to them, “You have made an intellectual decision to embrace the Christian religion, and you have confessed a certain level of agreement with Me and My teachings; and for that, they consider you ‘born again.’ But mental acceptance, doctrinal agreement, and canned confession is not enough for you to be My disciple. Your first born-again experience under the auspices of religion is seriously flawed. Leave that ground now and come to Me; experience new birth the way I intended it from the beginning. You must be born again – again! ”
What does it really mean to be “born again”? It cannot be explained with an A.B.C. kind of three-step scientific process. Spiritual birth is a revolutionary thing, something that strikes so deeply into the core of a person that they find it impossible to go on as before. It is a change of heart, which causes a change of mind, which results in a dramatic change of behavior and values. It is nothing short of a death, burial, and resurrection.
In Saul of Tarsus you have a graphic example of the born-again person. Like Nicodemus, Saul was also a teacher and a master of Israel but was just as ignorant as Nicodemus was concerning Jesus of Nazareth. Then something happened to Saul. Now Saul is different. Someone from another realm reached down and grabbed him. He saw the Light in the very truest sense of the word, and it was no insignificant flicker of understanding dreamed up in his own imagination – it was a bright and shining Light that burned through him and rendered his physical eyes absolutely impotent. He had heard the Voice, and that Voice was calling his name – “Saul, Saul! Why are you persecuting Me?”
Saul saw and heard something completely above and beyond the realm of his ordinary religious existence, something so wonderful and inexpressible that his highest and best possible thoughts and beliefs about God up until that point were now considered dung, waste, manure, garbage, and refuse – Saul’s words, not mine.
There on the road to Damascus he met Jesus. That meeting changed the course of his life and even the course of history. The outcome of that meeting was not merely an adjustment to his personal theology, or an intellectual re-evaluating of his doctrinal position on the subject of the Kingdom of God. It was the radical, foundation-destroying, earth-shattering crisis of finally seeing Jesus as He in fact is and being compelled to bow down and worship this Person: and to hell with everything he had preached, taught, thought, believed, and done before THAT day! THAT day was the day of his new birth.
You must know THAT is a supernatural happening, because the religious will not willingly give up their doctrines and their beliefs for anyone or anything. Far from giving them up, they will attack (and if possible, kill) those who hold to different doctrines and beliefs, and will find Scriptural justification for stoning those who oppose them. A person like that does not just wake up one day and decide to change. They are beyond the reach of any ordinary, human witness.
When I look at people who are recommended to me and I read their testimonies I often struggle to find the moment in which they were “born again – again”. I look for their road to Damascus experience that transformed them from a religious zealot into a disciple of the Living Lord. Most of the time I do not find this at all, but instead, I find a long, boring list of ministries and churches and movements they have been involved with. And this history is not recounted for the purpose of counting it all dung so that Christ may be embraced as Enough, but is rehearsed for the purpose of establishing the supposed authority and credentials of the person in question.
Have you met the Person that Paul met? In his letter to the Romans, this same Saul (now known as Paul) would write, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). If we approach this with a scientific analysis and lift this statement up and separate it from the man who wrote it then we would have a formula for “how to be saved.” And this is what many people do. But they overlook the road to Damascus meeting with Jesus that formed the basis of this confession and belief. Paul was not led in a prayer to confess the Lord Jesus, nor was he quizzed as to his belief concerning the resurrection of Jesus. Had you witnessed to him he would have flatly denied both the Lordship and the resurrection of Christ and would have you cast into prison for heresy.
Paul’s confession and the belief did not lead to this encounter with Jesus; it was the encounter with Jesus that led to his confession and belief! How quickly we forget – if we ever really understand it at all – that “you have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you” (Jn 15:16a). We have been taught to say we are saved by grace (once again, employing the correct phraseology) but we secretly believe we had something to do with it: it was our prayer, our faith, our confession, our belief, our walking the aisle, our joining the church, our decision that saved us. Heaven is our reward for making the right decision, unlike so many poor ignorant sinners who made the wrong decision!
But Jesus says, “No man can come to me unless the Father draws him” (Jn 6:44) and Paul declares that “No man can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ but by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 12:3b). Paul could confess Jesus as Lord and believe Jesus was risen from the dead because he did, in fact, meet the Lord Jesus as a Living Person; and that was the result of Jesus coming to Paul, not Paul coming to Jesus!
“Who then can be saved?” the disciples asked Jesus (cf. Mt. 19:25,26). The answer: “With man it is impossible.” Not just difficult, not just really, really hard, but impossible with man. Not do-able. Not attainable. Out of reach.
But Jesus, we have made it so easy to be saved! Three simple steps! A.B.C.! Confess and possess! No, says Jesus. This does not originate with you, and is impossible with men: “But with God, all things are possible!” Something from Above is required, something big enough and strong enough and powerful enough to knock a person to the ground and take their breath away.
One moment of seeing is worth a lifetime of being preached to. May God open our eyes.
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That is how it is.
Chip, you have made me think about some things. Paul had been a zealot within his religion of Judaism, but then Yeshua encountered him and he became a disciple of Yeshua. Though Paul did not give up his religion of Judaism, he did consider his reputation in Judaism as nothing compared to knowing His Lord. A change had occurred within him. As you have written that many today need to be born again, again. We need to leave our supposed reputation in Christianity ( how much knowledge of certain doctrines we have understood over the years, how “spiritual” we think we are, our Christian activities, etc.), and have a fresh encounter with Yeshua Himself so that we see things as they truly are and that He alone becomes our everything. Truly we need what you have written about so that we can become zealous as Yeshua’s disciples, not zealots for our intellectual beliefs. O’ may Yeshua encounter us again!
Now thats what I call the real deal!
Whoa…
So I am confused. While I agree mental acceptance or church memberships IS never enough, what happened to Saul was a truly unique experience never to be duplicated at least in the NT. So unless we have a knock me off my horse up close and center personal experience with the Living God, we are not truly saved? Or we can confess all we want, it is really up to God as it is impossible with man?
So do we seek experience or simply walk by faith and have fruit to show its real.
Paul’s confession and belief was a result of Who he met. His confession and belief were the fruit of his conversion, not the cause of it. That’s a big difference. The exact circumstances of Paul’s experience may not be duplicated for everyone, but the point is that each of us must be touched by something beyond logic or emotion. Many people only became a Christian because they happened to be born in a Christian country. They have never truly met the Living Christ. They merely learned to believe and behave in the way church told them to believe and behave. This accounts for the lukewarmness and lack of fruit. They have a religion, not a relationship. Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter, which shows canned confession is not enough. Therefore, the fruit indicates the reality – provided we know what to look for, and are not fooled by plastic bananas.
I love the testimony, whenever I read of Paul in His letters, he always refers to his encounter with the risen Lord.
How about giving a personal testimony of your “Chip-meet-Jesus” experience. I’d love to hear that.
Otherwise, we can theorise the experiences of others without experiencing that ourselves.
Just thinking.
I’ve freely shared my experience in several places, two that come to mind are here and here.
I’m with Rick,confused, and looking for a reasonable explanation. I don’t believe that Saul/Paul’s conversion was to be the exception, but rather the rule, as he was consistently referring to himself as a reference to the ‘before and after’. So if we look back and see that he had nothing to do with the initiation and the result of his transformation, then how can we ourselves or expect others to do anything but wait and hope that God will maybe grant us that same grace. Any thoughts?
Hi Bryce, I’m not sure it is 100% accurate to say Paul had “nothing to do” with the transformation. It seems his conscience was being pricked by the Holy Spirit, and he was kicking against the goads i.e. resisting the conviction of the Holy Spirit. At some point the wooing of God became irresistible and Paul stopped fighting. I think there is something to be said for seeking God, or seeking Truth, and searching for it. This seems to put someone in a place of greater receptivity for grace, and Scripture even promises that God “diligently rewards” those who seek Him. So I think there is a balance between seeking Him and receiving grace. It is clear that He stirs something in us that draws us toward Him, but it is also clear that we can resist the Spirit indefinitely, and perhaps that explains some of the tension between these two states.
Thanks Chip for your insight and patience. You did, however, leave me in a 30 minute debate with my wife. LOL ‘Is it possible to resist the irresistible?’. I guess I should read your book. Cheers
Yes, it is possible to resist the irresistible, but my belief is that you cannot resist Him forever. Temporary resistance is seen in many examples. Stephen to the Sanhedrin: “You do always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers.” The Hebrews “limited the Holy One of Israel” and “could not enter in because of unbelief.” Jesus wanted to gather Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chicks but “they would not” and He “could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Jesus to the religious leaders: “You make the Word of God of no effect because of your tradition.” These are some examples that immediately come to mind. Where I differ with most is I don’t believe you can resist God forever; I don’t see an eternity with a pocket of rebellion cursing the Creator. That would make man more powerful than God, to think that the thing created can outwit the One Who created it, blessed be His Name. Man does have a will of his own, but man is not omnipotent. God also has a Will, and in the end, God’s Will prevails – not by force, but by wearing down the finite stubbornness of man against the infinite love of God. A two-year-old resists taking a nap, kicking and screaming and crying the whole time – but eventually, all resistance fades away and they inevitably go down of their own accord. So will mankind.
Thanks again Chip. That makes perfect sense to me. I’ve always struggled with the concept, where darkness is influencing us to resist God, while God is drawing us with love, but in the end only a remnant gets saved, while the majority of mankind is either annihilated or tortured for eternity. That hardly portrays a victorious God.
May I ask, are you suggesting in your next article, ‘The Goal of this Age’ that God is not limited to our lifetimes to change us, but will pursue those that resisted Him, in the age to come until “every knee will bow”? That, if true would be an awesome shift in thinking for me.
My reading of Scripture definitely holds out the possibility. It speaks of “this age,” “the age to come” and “the ages to come” before “the end” comes, when all things are submitted to Christ, Christ is submitted to God, and God becomes “all in all” (not all in some or some in some). Death is a barrier to us, but it is not a barrier to God, for “He is the God of both the living and the dead” and “all live before Him.” I have never heard a reasonable explanation for why Jesus “preached to the spirits that were in prison” if God is limited to the brief duration of our earthly life to reach us. Who made up these rules? Both death and hell are considered “enemies” that will one day be destroyed by the consuming fire of… which is it – God’s wrath, or God’s love? Even after the Lake of Fire judgment we see leaves of the tree which are for “the healing of the nations.” What is left to heal if all the “sinners” have been destroyed? If “all things” are made new and death is destroyed, does this not at least give us hope, if not 100% belief? Of course this is not a traditional interpretation of Scripture, but you have to ask, where does the traditional view comes from?
Good question. Thanks again Chip, for your insight. It’s good to know that we are not confined to finite (carnal) parameters to understand an infinite God of infinite love.
Great conversation ! It was as good as the read . I happen to believe that it is God’s will that none should be lost , the fire is what refines , and I have been in a lot of fires , But thank God He always puts me out in the nick of time .