Born Again

Let’s climb into our time machine and go back to the year 1929. It’s January 1, New Year’s Day. We’re sitting in the Rose Bowl, along with 100,000 other screaming college football fans. Down on the field, the University of California Golden Bears are slugging it out with the Yellow Jackets from Georgia Tech.

It’s a scoreless game, when all of a sudden, Georgia Tech fumbles the ball on their own 35 yard line. There’s a mad scramble for it. Roy Riegels of the Golden Bears scoops up the loose ball and heads for the goal line. Unfortunately, he’s heading for the wrong goal line! In the confusion of the pile-up, Riegels has lost his bearings, and now he’s running towards his own end-zone just as fast as his legs will carry him.

The crowd roars. The U. of California fans are screaming at him to stop. The Ramblin’ Wrecks from Georgia Tech are urging him on. One of Riegels teammates, Benny Lom, sets out after him in hot pursuit. Just as Riegels reaches the five yard line and begins to slow down, Benny Lom tackles him from behind.

Before they can get up, Lom yells at him “You were going the wrong way!” Then the awful truth begins to dawn on Riegels. He looks up in the stands and sees the Georgia Tech fans cheering and laughing at him. The California fans are beside themselves with despair. But the game goes on.

The California offensive unit trots onto the field and lines up with their backs up against their own goal-line, thanks to Wrong Way Riegels’ magnificent run. They go nowhere on three plays and have to punt on fourth down. Georgia Tech blocks the punt and scores a safety. That’s how the first half ends, with Tech leading 2-0.

In the California dressing room at halftime, there was an eerie silence. Nobody knew what to say to Riegels. He sat slumped in a corner, with a towel around his shoulders and his face in his hands. The minutes ticked by until finally it was time to go out for the second half.

The coach announced that there wouldn’t be any changes in the line-up. The players got up and started out to the field. All except for Riegels. He just sat there slumped in the corner. Coach Price went over to him and said “Roy, didn’t you hear me? I said that the same team that played the first half would start the second.”

Riegels looked up at him. His face was wet with tears. “Coach,” he said, “I can’t do it. I’ve ruined you. I’ve ruined the university’s reputation. I’ve ruined myself. I can’t go out there and face those people.”

Coach Price reached out and gently put his hand on Roy’s shoulder. He said “Son, get up and go on back out there. The game is only half over.” Riegels finally did get up and went out and played the best thirty minutes of football in his career. Incidentally, California lost the game 8-7. The margin of victory was that safety.

The story of Wrong Way Riegels is all about getting a second chance. A fresh start. That’s what our sermon is about today, too.

We’ve been examining the question “What is a Christian?” Two weeks ago, we found that the Bible says that a Christian is a person who has turned away from his sin and has put his faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. The Bible calls those two things repentance and faith. You can say that you’re a Christian, you can go to church and be very religious, you can wear a cross around your neck, but unless you have done those two things, unless you’ve repented of your sin and believed in Jesus Christ, the Bible says that you are not a Christian.

Obviously, becoming a Christian is a matter of choice. Nobody is born a Christian. You don’t become a Christian by being born into a Christian family. You don’t become a Christian by being baptized as an infant. You don’t become a Christian because somebody writes your name on the membership roll of a certain church. You don’t become a Christian because you’re a member of a particular ethnic group.

You become a Christian by deciding to forsake that sinful, self-centered lifestyle that essentially leaves God out of the picture, and by deciding to put your trust wholeheartedly and without reservation in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That’s how you become a Christian.

We saw last week that, when you become a Christian, you undergo a process called justification. In God’s eyes, you go from being guilty of sin to being innocent, because Jesus paid sin’s penalty for you. In God’s eyes, you go from having no righteousness to having the righteousness of Christ, because God sees you as being united with Him, just the way a husband and wife are united in marriage.

You go from being at war with God because of your sin, to being at peace with God. And finally, you go from standing under God’s wrath against sin, to standing under his grace. God accomplishes all of these things on your behalf when he justifies you.

This week, we want to look at the subject of being born again. That’s another amazing thing that happens to you when you become a Christian. You are born again. The Bible teaches that there are many specific things that happen to you when you are born again. We want to look at each of them today.

But first it’s important to realize that the term “born again” has been really misused in the last few years. In fact, ever since President Jimmy Carter described himself as a born-again Christian, the public has been confused as to what it really means.

I remember having heard a former basketball star with the Boston Celtics, who is now a TV announcer, talk about having had a born again experience. Apparently he had gone back to his old high school. As he walked those corridors and the memories came flooding back, he was overcome by emotion. He felt a sense of connection with his past, and with his roots. He felt renewed. And he described that experience as being born again.

But that is not what the Bible calls being born again. It is not an emotional experience. It is not that warm fuzzy feeling of well-being you get when you are out in nature, or when you’ve just met some wonderful person, or when you’ve encountered some good fortune in your life.

The Bible says that being born again is a specific spiritual change that takes place when you repent of your sin and trust Jesus Christ as your Savior. Being born again isn’t something that you can do for yourself. It’s something that God has to do for you. Being born again involves three things:

1. You go from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive.

2. You go from being a child of the devil to being a child of God.

3. You go from being a slave to sin to being a servant of righteousness.

1. You go from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive.

Ephesians 2:1-5 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Nicodemus was a religious man. He was a member of the Pharisees. The name Pharisee means “separated one”. The Pharisees were so pious, so devoted to their religion and to the pursuit of holiness, that they were regarded as being separate from the common people. They were a cut above everyone else.

Nicodemus was no ordinary Pharisee. He was a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. You didn’t become a member of the Sanhedrin by skipping Sunday School, that’s for sure! You had to be a man of sterling reputation, well thought of in the community, a man of integrity and wisdom. You had to be someone who could be relied on to give sober counsel based on the Law of Moses. You had to know the Bible.

John 3 tells us that Nicodemus came to talk to Jesus one night. Why did he come? Well, because he had heard the teaching of Jesus, he had seen the miracles that Jesus had done, and he was intrigued. He wanted to know more. There was a spiritual hunger in his heart. Nicodemus came as a seeker of truth.

The Bible tells us that Nicodemus tried to open the conversation very tactfully. But Jesus replied abruptly and forcefully, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

It was almost as though Jesus were saying “Listen, Nick. You came here looking for truth and I’m going to give it to you straight. You’re a very religious man. Look at you. You’re a Pharisee. You’re a member of the Ruling Council. You know your Bible. People think very highly of you.

In fact, you’ve got everything going for you except for one thing. You’re dead. You are spiritually dead. And unless something is done about that fact, you won’t be seeing the kingdom of God. There’s no use beating around the bush. There’s no point in us getting into a big theological discussion here. You’ve gotta be born again. That’s the only thing that matters.”

The Bible says that what was true of Nicodemus is also true of us. The natural condition for all human beings is that they are spiritually dead. Romans 3:23 says “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death.”

If you’re a sinner, you’re spiritually dead. Isaiah says “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”

I’ve conducted many funerals, but I’ve never yet seen a corpse humming along with the funeral hymns, or remarking on how delightful the flowers smell. That body in the casket is dead. It is totally insensitive to what is going on around it. And that’s the way we are. We are oblivious to spiritual truth. We are totally insensitive to God’s will. And we are not even self-conscious - we don’t even know that we are spiritually lost.

You can be religious. You can go to church every day of the week. You can do good deeds. You can give your money to charitable causes. But until you have trusted in Jesus Christ and been born again by an act of God Almighty, you are spiritually dead.

Being born again is when you go from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive by the sovereign act of God when you trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior.

2. You go from being a child of the devil to being a child of God.

There are some theologians and preachers who would have you believe that all human beings are children of God. That is not true. We are all creatures of God, but we are not all children of God. There’s a big difference. Look at what the Bible says.

John 1:12-13 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Those verses tell us two important things:

1. You’re not automatically a child of God by dint of being a human being. A child of God is what you become when you receive Jesus Christ and believe in his name. So only the people who have done that can be validly called children of God.

2. You become a child of God by the process of spiritual birth. You have to be born of God.

I am the father of five children. I have witnessed the miracle of birth happen five times. When a child is born, he gains a new identity. When each of our five children were born, one of the very first things that happened was that the nurse would put a little bracelet on the baby’s wrist with the name McKnight on it. That established that baby’s identity as our child, and not someone else’s.

When the nurse would bring our baby for Carolyn to feed, she would match the name and the code number on the baby’s bracelet with the name and the number on Carolyn’s bracelet just to make sure she had the right baby. Now our baby’s identity didn’t come from that bracelet. Our baby’s identity came from the fact that we bore him. The bracelet was simply a witness to that fact.

Children of God receive their identity by being born of God. That happens when they receive Jesus Christ and believe on his name, just as it says in John 1. If you are a child of God, you belong to God because you have undergone the process of spiritual birth. That’s where your identity comes from.

1 Peter 1:23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

James 1:18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

But what is the identity of a human being if he is not a child of God? Well, he has been created by God, to be sure, but his identity is that he is a child of the devil. Now you may say “Wait a minute. That’s a little harsh isn’t it? What gives you the right to say that a person is a child of the devil just because he doesn’t happen to be a Christian? Isn’t that a little intolerant?”

Well, I don’t have the right to call anybody anything, but God does. And he says in the Bible that if you are not his child, through faith in Jesus Christ, you belong to the devil.

Suppose I were to walk into the Davison Ave. school, where my sons Philip and Tommy attend. As I walk through the halls, I see many children sitting in their classrooms. Some of them are being good, some are being bad. Some are well-dressed, but you can tell that others come from underprivileged homes.

I might feel compassion and affection for all of those children to some degree, but only two kids in that whole school have the right to call me “Daddy”. That’s because they are my children. They bear my name. They are the ones who have a special place in my heart.

John 8:42-44 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

I want you to realize that Jesus wasn’t talking to a gang of Hell’s Angels when he said that. He was talking to the religious leaders, the clergy, the preachers and teachers. He said “You are the devil’s children.”

The Bible teaches that the human race is divided into two groups. You are either in God’s family, or you are in the devil’s family. You are either spiritually alive because you’ve been born of God, or you’re spiritually dead in your trespasses and sins. Nobody is on the fence.

In the book of Matthew, chapter 25, we read about how Jesus is going to judge the nations when he comes back to earth. He will divide them into two groups - not three, or four, or a dozen. Two groups. He will call them the sheep and the goats. The sheep are those who are for him and the goats are those who are against him.

And he will say to the group that is against him “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

At the very end of the Bible, in Revelation 20, we read of the Great White Throne Judgment where the unbelieving dead of all the ages of history are raised to stand before God. Listen to what the Bible says:

Revelation 20:12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Two groups. You’re either in one or in the other. That biblical truth doesn’t go down well in today’s world, where everybody is expected to live and let live and not pass judgment on anyone else’s lifestyle or religion. That’s why you don’t hear that truth being preached from too many pulpits anymore. But it’s true nonetheless. You are either in God’s family or you’re not, and if you’re not, you are in the devil’s family.

When you are born again, you become a member of God’s family. You go from being a child of the devil to a child of God.

3. You go from being a slave of sin to being a servant of righteousness.

One of the reasons that a lot of folks are turned off by the “born again” label is that they don’t see any difference in the lifestyle of the people who claim it. A TV evangelist preaches that everybody should be born again, and then he goes out and divorces his wife and runs off with his secretary.

A businessman stands up in church claiming that he has been born again, and then he runs out on his creditors and leaves a trail of bad debts in his wake.

A college student calls herself a born-again Christian, but then she treats her parents like dirt.

The Bible teaches that when you have been truly born of God, your lifestyle changes. You’re not the same old you anymore.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

If you have truly been born again, you act differently, you think differently. You have a different attitude toward people. You have a whole new perspective on right and wrong. Listen to the way John describes it in 1 John.

1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.

Now that doesn’t mean that Christians never sin. But it does mean that a Christian will not continue to sin as a way of life. His lifestyle will become increasingly characterized by righteousness.

Listen to how Paul describes a born again Christian in

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

John says that a person who has been born again, or born of God, should really be like a chip off the old block.

1 John 2:29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

Our behavior as born again Christians should reflect God’s character because we have his life in us. When people look at us, they should see a little cameo of what God is like.

The Bible says that before we come to Christ, we are dead in our trespasses and sins. In that condition, we are actually slaves to sin. We can’t stop sinning, because we don’t have the spiritual power to do so. Most of our religious behavior is an attempt to overcome our own sinfulness. But the harder we try, the more defeated we become.

If we somehow manage to stay away from the more obvious sins like lying and cheating and stealing and adultery and murder, we find that, without even knowing it, we fall into the more subtle sins of pride and selfishness and coveting - sins that are actually even worse! That’s because we simply lack the power to break out of the sin cycle.

But when we are are born of God by trusting in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we receive a new power; a power that breaks the shackles of sin and makes it possible for us to live a truly righteous life - a life that pleases God. Listen to how Paul puts it in Ephesians:

Ephesians 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Being born again means going from being slaves of sin to servants of righteousness.

It means going from being a child of the devil to being a child of God. And it means going from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive.

Being born again is not about starting your life over with the same old you at the controls. It’s about starting a new life with God at the controls.

That’s what Jesus was talking about when he said to Nicodemus, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”