The New Birth

1If any doctrines within the entire scope of Christianity can truly be called foundational, they are undoubtedly these two: the doctrine of justification and the doctrine of the new birth. The first relates to that great work God does for us in forgiving our sins; the second relates to the great work God does in us in renewing our fallen nature. In terms of time, neither one happens before the other: the very moment we are justified by the grace of God through the redemption that is in Jesus, we are also “born of the Spirit.” In terms of logical order, however, justification comes before the new birth: we first understand that God’s wrath is turned away, and then that his Spirit is at work within our hearts.

2How vitally important it must be, then, for every human being to thoroughly understand these foundational truths! Deeply convinced of this, many excellent writers have written extensively about justification, explaining every detail connected with it and unpacking the Scriptures that address it. Many have also written about the new birth, and some at considerable length, yet not as clearly, deeply, or accurately as one might wish—offering accounts that are either obscure and confusing, or else shallow and superficial. A full and at the same time clear explanation of the new birth is therefore still needed, one that will enable us to give a satisfying answer to three key questions:

First, why must we be born again? What is the foundation of this doctrine of the new birth?

Second, how must we be born again? What is the nature of the new birth? And,

Third, for what purpose must we be born again?

Toward what goal is it necessary? With God’s help, I will answer these questions briefly and plainly, and then draw a few natural conclusions that follow from them.

1First of all, why must we be born again? What is the foundation of this teaching? Its foundation goes almost as deep as the creation of the world itself. In the biblical account of creation we read: “Then God”—the triune God—“said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us.’ So God created human beings in his own image; in the image of God he created them” (Genesis 1:26, 27). Humanity was created not merely in God’s natural image—a reflection of his own immortality as a spiritual being endowed with understanding, free will, and various emotions—nor merely in his governing image as ruler of this earthly world, having “dominion over the fish of the sea and over all the earth.” Above all, humanity was created in God’s moral image, which, as the Apostle tells us, is “righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). Human beings were made in this image of God. “God is love,” and accordingly, at creation humanity was filled with love, which was the sole guiding principle of every disposition, thought, word, and action. God is full of justice, mercy, and truth, and so were human beings when they came from the hands of their Creator. God is spotless purity, and in the beginning humanity too was pure from every sinful stain; otherwise, God could not have declared human beings, along with all the rest of his handiwork, to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Humanity could not have been “very good” without being pure from sin and filled with righteousness and true holiness. There is no middle ground: if we imagine an intelligent creature who does not love God and is neither righteous nor holy, we must conclude that such a creature is not good at all, much less “very good.”

2Yet even though humanity was made in the image of God, human beings were not made unchangeable. That would have been incompatible with the state of testing in which God chose to place them. Humanity was therefore created able to stand firm, yet capable of falling. God himself made Adam aware of this and gave him a solemn warning against it. Even so, Adam did not remain in that state of honor; he fell from his high position. He “ate from the tree about which the Lord had commanded him, ‘You must not eat from it.’” By this willful act of disobedience toward his Creator—this open rebellion against his rightful Sovereign—he publicly declared that he would no longer have God rule over him, that he would be governed by his own will rather than the will of his Creator, and that he would seek his happiness not in God, but in the world and in created things. Now, God had warned him beforehand, “In the day that you eat” from that fruit, “you will certainly die.” And the word of the Lord cannot be broken. Accordingly, on that very day he did die: he died to God—the most dreadful death of all. He lost the life of God and was separated from the One in union with whom his spiritual life existed. Just as the body dies when it is separated from the soul, so the soul dies when it is separated from God. Adam suffered this separation from God on the very day and hour that he ate the forbidden fruit. He immediately gave clear proof of this, showing by his behavior that the love of God had been extinguished in his soul, which was now “alienated from the life of God.” In its place, he fell under the power of slavish fear, so that he fled from the presence of the Lord. Indeed, he retained so little true knowledge of the One who fills heaven and earth that he actually tried to “hide himself from the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8). He had lost both the knowledge and the love of God, without which the image of God could not survive. Stripped of that image at the exact same time, he became both unholy and miserable. In place of God’s likeness, he sank into pride and self-will—the very image of the devil—and into sensual appetites and desires, the image of the beasts that perish.

3Someone might object, “No, that warning—‘In the day that you eat of it, you will certainly die’—refers only to physical death, the death of the body alone.” The answer is simple: to claim that is to flatly and blatantly call God a liar, asserting that the God of truth declared something directly contrary to fact. For it is obvious that Adam did not die physically “in the day that he ate of it.” On the contrary, he continued to live physically for more than nine hundred years afterward. This warning cannot possibly be understood as the death of the body without calling God’s truthfulness into question. Therefore, it must be understood as spiritual death—the loss of the life and image of God.

4And in Adam all died—all humanity, all the future generations who were then in Adam. The natural consequence is that everyone descended from him comes into the world spiritually dead—dead to God and completely dead in sin, entirely devoid of the life of God and of the image of God, lacking all that righteousness and holiness in which Adam was created. Instead, every person born into the world now bears the image of the devil in pride and self-will, and the image of the beast in sensual appetites and desires. This, then, is the foundation of the new birth: the complete corruption of our human nature. It is because we are born in sin that we must be “born again.” That is why everyone born of a woman must be born of the Spirit of God.

1How, then, must a person be born again? What is the nature of the new birth? This is our second question, and it is a question of the greatest importance imaginable. In a matter of such immense weight, we should not settle for a superficial inquiry; instead, we ought to examine it with the greatest possible care and ponder it deeply in our hearts until we fully understand this vital truth and clearly see how we are to be born again.

2That does not mean we should expect a detailed, philosophical explanation of the exact mechanics of how this happens. Our Lord sufficiently cautions us against expecting anything of the sort in the words immediately following our text, where he reminds Nicodemus of a fact as undeniable as any in nature, which nevertheless even the wisest person on earth cannot fully explain: “The wind blows wherever it pleases”—not by your power or wisdom—“and you hear its sound”—so that you are completely certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is blowing—“but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” No one can explain the exact way it begins and ends, or rises and falls. “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”: you can be just as certain of the reality itself as you are of the blowing of the wind, even though neither you nor the wisest person on earth can explain the precise manner in which the Holy Spirit accomplishes this work in the soul.

3Even so, without getting lost in speculative or technical inquiries, we can give a plain, biblical account of the nature of the new birth that is more than sufficient for every rational and Christian purpose. This will satisfy any reasonable person whose sincere desire is the salvation of their soul. The phrase “being born again” was not coined for the first time by our Lord in his conversation with Nicodemus; it was already well known and in common use among the Jewish people when our Savior walked among them. Whenever an adult Gentile became convinced that the Jewish faith came from God and wished to join it, the custom was to baptize him first, before admitting him to circumcision. Once he was baptized, he was said to be “born again”—by which they meant that someone who had previously been a child of the devil was now adopted into the family of God and counted as one of his children. Our Lord therefore used an expression in his conversation with Nicodemus that, as “a teacher of Israel,” Nicodemus should have understood well—though Jesus used it in a far deeper sense than Nicodemus was accustomed to. That may be why Nicodemus asked, “How can these things be?” They cannot happen literally—a person cannot “enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born”—but they can happen spiritually. A person can be born from above, born of God, born of the Spirit, in a way that closely parallels natural birth.

4Before a baby is born into the world, he has eyes, yet does not see; he has ears, yet does not hear. He has only a very limited use of any other sense, and he has no knowledge of the things of the world or any natural understanding. We do not even call that state of existence “living”—it is only when a baby is born that we say he begins to live. The moment he is born, he begins to see the light and the various objects surrounding him. His ears are opened, and he hears the sounds that strike them one after another. At the same time, all his other senses begin to respond to the world around him. He also breathes and lives in a way completely different from before. How remarkably exact is the parallel in every detail! While a person remains in a purely natural state, before being born of God, in a spiritual sense he has eyes but does not see—a thick, impenetrable veil covers them. He has ears, yet does not hear; he is completely deaf to what matters most of all for him to hear. All his other spiritual senses are locked shut; he is in the exact same condition as if he did not have them at all. Consequently, he has no true knowledge of God, no fellowship with him, and no personal acquaintance with him. He has no real understanding of the things of God, whether spiritual or eternal; therefore, though he is physically alive, spiritually he is dead. But the moment he is born of God, there is a total transformation in all these areas. The “eyes of his heart are enlightened” (to use the words of the great Apostle), and as the One who once “commanded light to shine out of darkness” shines into his heart, he sees “the light of the knowledge of God’s glory”—his glorious love—“in the face of Jesus Christ.” With his spiritual ears opened, he is now able to hear the inward voice of God speaking to his heart: “Take heart; your sins are forgiven,” and “Go and sin no more.” That is the message God speaks to his heart, even if not in those exact words. He is now ready to listen to whatever “the One who teaches humanity knowledge” is pleased to reveal to him day by day. To use the words of our Church, he “feels in his heart the mighty working of the Spirit of God”—not in a crude, physical sense, as worldly people foolishly and willfully twist the phrase, though we have explained over and over that we mean neither more nor less than this: he experiences and is inwardly aware of the graces that the Spirit of God produces in his heart. He experiences a conscious “peace that surpasses all understanding.” Often he experiences a joy in God that is “inexpressible and filled with glory.” He experiences “God’s love poured out into his heart through the Holy Spirit who has been given to him,” and all his spiritual senses are then trained to discern spiritual good and evil. By exercising these senses, he grows daily in the knowledge of God, of Jesus Christ whom God has sent, and of everything belonging to God’s inward kingdom. Now he can truly be said to live: because God has made him alive by his Spirit, he is alive to God through Jesus Christ. He lives a life the world knows nothing about, a “life hidden with Christ in God.” God is continually breathing, so to speak, upon his soul, and his soul is breathing back toward God. Grace descends into his heart, and prayer and praise ascend to heaven. Through this continual give-and-take between God and the human soul—this fellowship with the Father and the Son, like a kind of spiritual breathing—the life of God in the soul is sustained, and the child of God grows until reaching “the full measure of the stature of Christ.”

5From this we can clearly see what the nature of the new birth truly is. It is that great transformation God works in the soul when he brings it into true life, raising it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. It is the change accomplished throughout the entire soul by the almighty Spirit of God when it is “created anew in Christ Jesus,” when it is “renewed in the image of God in righteousness and true holiness,” when love for the world is transformed into love for God, pride into humility, harsh passion into gentleness, and hatred, envy, and malice into a sincere, tender, unselfish love for all humanity. In short, it is that transformation by which an earthly, sensual, demonic mindset is turned into “the mind that was in Christ Jesus.” This is the nature of the new birth: “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

1Anyone who has reflected on these truths will have no trouble seeing the necessity of the new birth and answering our third question: Why, and for what purpose, is it necessary that we be born again? First of all, it is easy to see that the new birth is necessary for holiness. For what is holiness according to God’s word? It is not merely outward religion or a routine of external duties, no matter how numerous they may be or how carefully they are performed. No! Gospel holiness is nothing less than the image of God stamped upon the heart; it is nothing other than the whole mind that was in Christ Jesus, consisting of all heavenly desires and dispositions woven together as one. It means such a continual, grateful love for the One who did not spare his own Son, his only Son, that it becomes natural—and in a sense unavoidable—for us to love every human being, filling us with “tender compassion, kindness, gentleness, and patience.” It is a love for God that teaches us to be blameless in our entire way of life, enabling us to offer our souls and bodies—everything we are and everything we have, all our thoughts, words, and actions—as a continual sacrifice to God, acceptable through Christ Jesus. Now, this holiness cannot exist until our minds and hearts are renewed in God’s image. It cannot even begin in the soul until that inward change takes place—until, overshadowed by the power of the Most High, we are “brought from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan to God.” That is to say, it cannot begin until we are born again; therefore, the new birth is absolutely necessary for holiness.

2Furthermore, “without holiness no one will see the Lord”—no one will see the face of God in glory. Consequently, the new birth is absolutely necessary for eternal salvation. People may flatter themselves (so desperately wicked and deceitful is the human heart!) that they can live in their sins right up to their dying breath and still live with God afterward; and thousands genuinely believe they have found a broad road that does not lead to destruction. “What danger,” they ask, “could there possibly be for a woman who is so harmless and virtuous? What reason is there to fear that such an honest man, someone of such strict morality, could miss out on heaven—especially when, on top of all this, they faithfully attend church and take communion?” Such a person will ask with complete confidence, “Why, won’t I fare just as well as my neighbors?” Yes—just as well as your unholy neighbors, just as well as your neighbors who die in their sins! For you will all drop into the pit together, into the deepest hell! You will all lie down together in the lake of fire, “the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” Then at last you will see (though may God grant that you see it before it is too late!) the absolute necessity of holiness in order to enter glory—and therefore the necessity of the new birth, since no one can be holy without being born again.

3For the very same reason, unless a person is born again, they cannot be truly happy even in this present world. By the very nature of things, it is impossible for a person to be happy if they are not holy. Even a pagan poet could tell us, Nemo malus felix—“No wicked person is happy.” The reason is obvious: all unholy dispositions are miserable, restless dispositions. Not only do malice, hatred, envy, jealousy, and revenge create a living hell within the human heart, but even the milder passions, when not kept within their proper bounds, cause a thousand times more pain than pleasure. Even “hope deferred” (and how often that happens!) “makes the heart sick,” and every desire that is out of step with the will of God can “pierce us through with many griefs.” And those universal roots of sin—pride, stubborn self-will, and idolatry—produce misery in exact proportion to how much they dominate us. Therefore, as long as these rule in any soul, true happiness has no place there. Yet they will inevitably rule until the fundamental inclination of our nature is changed—that is, until we are born again. Consequently, the new birth is absolutely necessary for happiness in this world as well as in the world to come.

Finally, I proposed to draw a few practical conclusions that naturally follow from what we have seen.

1First, it follows that baptism is not the new birth; they are not one and the same thing. Many people certainly seem to imagine that they are identical, or at least speak as though they think so; yet I do not know of a single Christian denomination anywhere that publicly affirms that view. Certainly none within these kingdoms does, whether belonging to the established Church of England or dissenting from it. The position of the Dissenters is clearly stated in their Larger Catechism:

Q. “What are the parts of a sacrament?

A. The parts of a sacrament are two: the one an outward and perceptible sign; the other an inward and spiritual grace signified by it. — Q. What is baptism?

A. Baptism is a sacrament in which Christ has ordained washing with water to be a sign and seal of regeneration by his Spirit.” Here it is unmistakable that baptism, the outward sign, is spoken of as distinct from regeneration, the inward reality it points to.

In our own Church Catechism as well, the teaching of the Church of England is stated with the utmost clarity:

Q. “What do you mean by this word ‘sacrament’?

A. I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Q. What is the outward part or form in baptism?

A. Water, in which the person is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Q. What is the inward part, or reality signified?

A. A death to sin and a new birth into righteousness.” Nothing, therefore, could be clearer than that, according to the Church of England, baptism is not the new birth.

Indeed, the truth of the matter is so plain and self-evident that it needs no outside authority to prove it. For what could be more obvious than that one is an outward act while the other is an inward work; that one is visible while the other is invisible, making them completely distinct from one another? The one is a human action that washes the body; the other is a transformation worked by God within the soul. The first is just as distinct from the second as the body is from the soul, or as water is from the Holy Spirit.

2From these reflections we may observe, second, that just as the new birth is not the same thing as baptism, neither does it always accompany baptism; they do not always go together. A person may be “born of water” and yet not be “born of the Spirit.” Sometimes the outward sign is present where the inward grace is absent. I am not speaking here about infants: it is certain that our Church presumes all who are baptized in infancy are at the same time born again, and everyone recognizes that the entire liturgy for the Baptism of Infants rests on that assumption. Nor is it a valid objection against this that we cannot understand how such a work can take place in infants, for we cannot understand how it takes place in an adult either. Whatever the case may be with infants, however, it is undeniable that not all adults who are baptized are born again at the same time. “A tree is known by its fruit,” and by this test it is too obvious to deny that many who were children of the devil before they were baptized remain the same after baptism, “for they do the works of their father.” They continue as slaves of sin, without the slightest claim to either inward or outward holiness.

3A third conclusion we may draw from what we have seen is that the new birth is not the same thing as sanctification. Many people assume they are identical, including a prominent author in his recent treatise on “The Nature and Grounds of Christian Regeneration.” Setting aside several other serious objections that could be raised against that work, this flaw is unmistakable: from start to finish, it speaks of regeneration as a gradual process carried out in the soul by slow degrees from the moment we first turn to God. That is undeniably true of sanctification, but it is not true of regeneration, the new birth. The new birth is a part of sanctification, not the whole of it; it is the doorway into it, its starting point. When we are born again, our sanctification—our inward and outward holiness—begins; and from that point forward we are to gradually “grow up in every way into him who is the head.” This phrase from the Apostle beautifully illustrates the difference between the two and further highlights the exact parallel between natural and spiritual realities. A baby is born of a mother in a moment, or at least in a very short time; afterward, that child slowly and gradually grows until reaching full adult stature. In the same way, a child of God is born of God in a short time, if not in a single moment, and then grows by slow degrees toward the full stature of Christ. The relationship between our new birth and our sanctification is therefore the exact same as the relationship between our physical birth and our physical growth.

4There is one final point we can learn from what we have considered, and it is a point of such immense importance that it deserves our most careful and thorough attention. What must someone who truly loves human souls, and is heartbroken that any of them should perish, say to a person they see living in Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, or any other willful sin? If everything we have observed is true, what else can they say except, “You must be born again”? “No!” objects a zealous churchgoer. “How can you speak so uncharitably to this man? Wasn’t he already baptized? He cannot be born again now.” Cannot be born again? Do you really claim that? Then he cannot be saved! Even if he is as old as Nicodemus was, still, “unless he is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” By saying, “He cannot be born again,” you are in effect condemning him to eternal ruin. Now who is being uncharitable—me or you? I say that he can be born again and become an heir of salvation. You say, “He cannot be born again”—which means he must inevitably perish! So out of supposed “charity,” you completely block his path to salvation and send him straight to hell!

Perhaps the sinner himself, to whom we say in genuine love, “You must be born again,” has been taught to reply, “I reject your newfangled doctrine! I don’t need to be born again—I was born again when I was baptized. What, would you have me deny my baptism?” I answer, first: Nothing under heaven can excuse telling a lie; otherwise, I would tell an unrepentant sinner, “If you have been baptized, don’t admit it!” For how terribly that magnifies your guilt! How much worse it will make your condemnation! Were you dedicated to God when you were eight days old, only to spend all these years dedicating yourself to the devil? Were you consecrated to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit before you even reached the age of reason, only to spend every day since you gained the use of reason defying God to his face and consecrating yourself to Satan? Does the “abomination of desolation”—love of the world, pride, anger, lust, foolish desires, and a whole parade of vile passions—stand where it has no right to be? Have you set up all these accursed idols inside a soul that was once a temple of the Holy Spirit, set apart as a “dwelling place for God by the Spirit” and solemnly surrendered to him? And do you actually boast that you once belonged to God? Oh, be ashamed! Blush! Hide your face in the dust! Never again boast about the very thing that ought to fill you with disgrace and make you ashamed before God and humanity! Second, I answer: You have already denied your baptism, and in the most unmistakable way possible! You have denied it thousands upon thousands of times, and you keep denying it day after day. For in your baptism you renounced the devil and all his works. Every time you give in to him again, every time you do any of the devil’s works, you deny your baptism! You deny it by every willful sin, by every act of sexual immorality, drunkenness, or revenge, by every filthy or profane word, and by every oath that comes out of your mouth. Every time you dishonor the Lord’s day, you deny your baptism; indeed, every time you treat another person in a way you would not want them to treat you, you deny it. Third, I answer: Whether you are baptized or unbaptized, “you must be born again.” Otherwise, it is impossible for you to be inwardly holy; and without inward as well as outward holiness, you cannot be happy even in this world, let alone in the world to come. Do you reply, “Wait—I don’t harm anyone! I am honest and fair in all my dealings; I don’t curse or take the Lord’s name in vain; I don’t dishonor the Sabbath; I’m not a drunkard; I don’t slander my neighbor or live in any willful sin”? If that is true, I only wish everyone went at least as far as you do! Even so, you must go further still, or you cannot be saved: you still “must be born again.” Do you add, “I do go further! Not only do I avoid doing harm, I do all the good I possibly can”? I seriously doubt that claim; I am afraid you have let a thousand opportunities to do good slip right past you, for which you will have to give an account to God. Yet even if you had seized every single one of them—even if you really had done all the good you possibly could to everyone—it still would not change the situation at all: you still “must be born again.” Without this, nothing can heal your poor, sinful, stained soul. “But,” you say, “I faithfully observe all the practices God has appointed; I am devoted to my church and to taking communion.” It is good that you do, yet none of this will keep you out of hell unless you are born again. Go to church twice a day; come to the Lord’s Table every week; pray countless prayers in private; listen to countless good sermons; read countless good Christian books—still, “you must be born again.” None of these things can take the place of the new birth—nothing under heaven can. Therefore, if you have not yet experienced this inward work of God, let this be your constant prayer: “Lord, add this one thing to all your blessings—let me be born again! Refuse me whatever else you please, only do not refuse me this: let me be ‘born from above’! Take away whatever seems best to you—reputation, wealth, friends, health—only give me this: to be born of the Spirit, to be welcomed among the children of God! Let me be born ‘not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God’; and then let me daily ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’!”