Born Again?

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3 Nas95

As Jesus makes clear, in order for a person to be forgiven of his or her sin and be saved from the wrath of God that person must be born again. To be a Christian in the truest sense of the word is to be born again. And from personal experience I can tell you this. A person can make a profession of faith early in life. He can faithfully attend church essentially all of his life. He can go to Bible college and get a degree in pastoral ministries, and then go on and be the pastor of a church. He can pastor that church for over 20 years. During that time he can earn a Master's Degree in Biblical Studies. He can love and defend orthodox doctrine, and champion the inerrancy of scripture. He can passionately preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Sunday after Sunday and even "lead" other people to faith in Christ. He can believe and love all of the correct Gospel facts about the work of Jesus Christ, about His death and resurrection and about being saved by grace through faith apart from works of the Law. A person can do all of that, all of that and more, and not be born again. A person can do all of that, and be on his way to hell.

I was that person.

What does it mean to be born again?

I grew up in an evangelical church. And I was told that in order to be forgiven of my sins and be saved from the wrath of God all I had to do was "receive Jesus into my heart." In other words all I had to do was trust that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to pay for my sins, and in doing that I would be saved; I would be a Christian. So that's what I did. At a very early age I prayed a sinners prayer, probably with my mom, and sometime after that I made my public profession of faith in Jesus Christ. I stood in front the congregation at our church and told them that I trusted in Jesus and that I received Him into my heart. At that point, so I was told, I was born again.

And I thought I was.

For a long time after my conversion, I just assumed that I had been born again. After all, most of my friends had professed faith like I did, and we all lived about the same way. We all participated in youth events and did other churchy things with our families; for me, and for a long time, that was normal Christianity. As a result I didn't think a whole lot about my eternal destiny. I had accepted Jesus into my heart and, with that box checked, I was saved. What else was there to do but to go on and live my life.

At some point I remember beginning to have vague doubts about my salvation. Even with my limited knowledge of the Bible, something just didn't seem right. And I wanted to be saved; I certainly didn't want to go to hell. Who does? In my doubt I distinctly remember thinking that if I became a pastor I would be saved. If anyone is saved, it's a pastor, right? So I went to Bible college to become a pastor. After that I entered full time ministry.

One thing Scripture teaches is that when a person is born again, God the Holy Spirit comes to live in that person's heart. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:22, that God, “... gave us [Christians] the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.” And one of the nuggets of wisdom we budding theologians passed around in Bible college was this, “It is impossible for the God of the universe to come to live in the human heart and not make a difference.” I realized that when I was “born again” there was no evidence that the God of the universe had come to live in my heart. There had been no change of heart, and no resultant change of life. But the more I looked at scripture, in bible college and in ministry, the more I realized that things weren't adding up.

Something was wrong.

The Christianity I saw in the New Testament didn't look very much like the Christianity I and other Christians were living. Shouldn't people who have been inhabited by the living God, who have been born again, shouldn't those people live differently from people in the world?The words of Thomas Linacre come to mind here. Near the end of his life Linacre began reading and studying the New Testament, and he remarked, “Either this is not the Gospel, or we are not Christians.” That's the kind of thing I was feeling.

I continued to study scripture and preach and do youth group and other ministry stuff, all the while trying to figure out why modern “born again” Christians didn't look very much like New Testament Christians. I arrived at this conclusion. Even though I had not seen a major change in my life when I was “born again,” perhaps that was normal and the problem was that we just weren't living it out. The solution then was that Christians needed to choose to act in faith. We needed to choose to read our Bibles more. We needed to choose to obey what scripture commands. And as we chose to do those things we needed to trust the Holy Spirit to give us the power to succeed. In this way, our lives would change and we would live more and more like New Testament Christians. We had been born again, we just needed to live out the "born again" life. Sounded like a great idea, and it seemed biblical. The only problem was, it didn't work.

Nope. Didn't work.

When I began preaching my "great" idea I also set out to practice what I preached. I would set my teeth and choose to read my Bible more, and to pray more and obey more. Paul says, “Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God.” When I was confronted with temptation I would (try to) reckon myself to be dead to that temptation and I would (try to) to turn to God for help in that moment. John says in 1 John 2, "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (Nas95). So to obey that command I would stop all “leisure” activities; I wouldn't watch and movies or videos or read books except those that contributed directly to my Christian growth.

It didn't work. I could preach it on Sunday, but I couldn't do it on Monday or Tuesday or... In the end I always found myself slowly slipping off the path to living the "born again" life. My prayer life waned, my bible reading waned, and I fell back into movies and books and video games etc. I'd find myself loving the stuff of the world all over again. Indeed, after being away from it for so long I would binge on the world.

Then I'd "come to my senses." I'd screw my resolve up to the sticking point, and I would try again. I'd purge the stuff of the world and gut out my devotions, bible reading and prayer. And that's how it went, from purging the stuff of the world to bingeing on the stuff of the world and back again. Over and over. Rinse and repeat. And (this should come as no surprise) through all of that I didn't make any progress in living out the "born again" life.

The reason I failed is clear to me now.

Near the beginning of this post I asked this question. “What does it mean to be born again?" The answer, in short, is this. To be born again is to have a fundamental change of heart. In Ezekiel 36:26-27, God says, “Moreover I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Nas95 emphasis added). To be born again is to have new life, just like when a baby is born. To be born again is to have a fundamental change of heart.

My problem before being born again was that I was spiritually dead; my heart was unchanged. Paul says in Ephesians 2:1, that before we were born again we were “...dead in our trespasses and sins.” To use Ezekiel's language we had hearts of stone that were hard and cold and dead. Our hearts were insensitive to God, unable to know Him, unable to experience a relationship with Him. We were alive physically, but dead spiritually, and no amount of human effort could change that. No amount of religious devotion or effort to do good works or prayer or Bible reading will affect the stone cold dead human heart. So as I look back on my efforts to live the "born again" life it's easy to see why I failed. I still had a stone cold rock hard heart. Even though my efforts were sincere, and even though I thought I was relying on the Holy Spirit to help me, I was spiritually dead.

In my estimation, two of the most amazing words in the Bible are these, "But God..."

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),..." (Ephesians 2:4-5 Nas95). To be born again is to be made alive spiritually; it is to be given new life and a new heart. It is to have the God of the universe come and live in us by His Spirit (Ezekiel 36:27), and when that happens everything changes.

How it happened...

In the end I got tired of bingeing and purging; I gave up trying to change my own heart. I left full time ministry and I went back into the secular workforce. I wasn't a pastor anymore and my apathy toward spiritual things just intensified. The story of my descent (which I will share another time) ended with a medical crisis that landed me in ICU for nearly a week. That was as close to death as I had ever been. I went through rehab and got better, but only physically. I was still dead spiritually; I was dead in sin, and the binge went on.

Early in 2023 all of that changed. Over a year after I got out of the hospital, I began to think about the fact that I had almost died. I began to think again about spiritual things. I didn't begin praying again. I didn't set out to read my Bible again or to do anything I was trying to do before. I made no effort at spiritual things at all, but the fact of spiritual realities was heavy on me. In those days I remembered a night long before, during my ministry days. I was in one of my “world purging” times, and I had been praying. And as I prayed I felt like if I just continued in prayer a little longer I would have a breakthrough in my spiritual life. But instead of continuing to pray I just stopped. No idea why; I just got up from my knees and went on in the binge/purge pattern until I left the ministry.

As I said, everything changed in 2023. I was standing at the kitchen sink just before bed time one evening. The fact of spiritual realities was still heavy on me, and I had been thinking about that potential moment of spiritual breakthrough that I had years before. I wanted a breakthrough; I wanted to know God. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but I think that sometime during those moments at the sink I cried out to God to save me. I don't remember feeling anything, and after that I went to bed.

The next morning I was sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee, and I suddenly realized that something was different. Everything was different. I realized that I didn't want the things I used to want anymore. I had no desire to seek pleasure in movies or novels or video games or anything in this world. I found myself gloriously apathetic toward Star Trek and Star Wars and Marvel movies and whatever video series I had been watching on Amazon Prime. Suddenly none of that had any appeal. Moreover I found that what I wanted, more than anything else, was to know, and to grow to know, God. I found my heart crying out for Him. Before that time prayer had been a duty I forced myself to endure. Now I wanted to pray, and I found that as I prayed I felt the subtle but undeniable presence of God. In prayer I began to experience God in a way I never had. And often when I prayed the joy and peace I felt was almost overwhelming.

I would pray as I traveled to work, and I remember at times weeping for the years that I had wasted in banal and frivolous things. At other times I soared with wonder at the glory of God that I saw in His creation. I remember sitting on a lawn chair outside our home when a barn swallow flew right over me. And in that moment I felt the weight of God's glory in the beauty and complexity of that small marvelous, miraculous, creation. I remember a day when I realized that Jesus had actually died for me. For me! I had believed that biblical truth for decades; it had now become a realized reality in my life.

It took me a while to figure out what had happened, and to put a label on it, but you can guess. I had been born again. God had made me alive spiritually, and everything changed. I knew the Gospel. I had taught the Gospel for years. I had shared it and preached it. Now, by God's grace, I was experiencing the Gospel for myself. And oddly, there was no conscious moment when that happened. I wasn't at a crusade, and heard the Gospel message and had a dramatic conversion experience. Apparently I was born again as I slept, and to this day I can't tell you exactly when this happened. It was the spring of 2023, but I don't know what day of what month, and I don't know what time of day. All I know is this; once I was blind, but now I see. Once I was dead, but now I live. Once my heart was as dead as a cold stone, but now it beats with life for God. I have been given a new heart and new life. I have been born again.

My concern

I'd like to believe that my story is unique. I'd like to believe that I was just one dense dude who heard the Gospel at age 7 and it took me 54 years finally to figure it out. That's possible but, I fear, not likely. My concern is that an entire culture has grown up in American Christianity, a culture that says, “This is the formula to be saved. Do this and you're in. Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins? Do you trust completely in His sacrifice for you? You do? O.K. Great! Now just pray this prayer. (insert the "sinners prayer") O.K. You prayed the prayer. That's it. You've been born again. You have the Holy Spirit living in your heart. Now you're saved.” That's what I was told when I "got saved" and it was completely untrue.

How many?

Could a person truly be born again doing what I just described? Absolutely yes; I'm sure many have. But I can't help but wonder how many people out there are like I was; they followed the formula, they were told they were born again but weren't, and that they have the Spirit but don't. How many people today believe that they are Christians and are going to church and teaching Sunday school and preaching from pulpits and teaching in Bible colleges and seminaries, and loving sound doctrine and solid Bible teaching, all the while expecting to go to heaven, but have never actually been born again.

In closing, I think of Paul's solemn plea in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” By God's grace I have been born again, and I can say today with clarity and certainty that Jesus Christ is in me. Before I was born again I read 2 Corinthians 13:5 many times, and I basically ignored it. I wasn't even sure what it meant to have "Christ in me." And yet what question is more important to answer right now?

Is Jesus Christ in you?

Please hear me. It's not the profession of faith you made years ago that is your hope of glory; it is Christ in you, Christ in you now, Christ in you today, Christ in you is your only hope of glory. (See Colossians 1:27). Christ in you is one mark of a heart that has been born again.

I recognize that this post raises question, and I am glad to try to answer any questions you may have. I don't have all of the answers, but I trust that by God's grace I may be able to help. I also expect disagreement and I am open to and welcome your concerns/criticisms/further insights. I will never be past learning until we are all done looking into spiritual things through a glass dimly. Please feel free to reach out.

I can also imagine a number of possible reactions to this post:

1). The reaction I'm trusting God for is that you, the reader, will understand better (or maybe for the first time) that Christ is in you and that He is your hope of glory today. I'd love to hear your story; please contact me.

2). I can also imagine someone reading this post being shocked and even fearful at the possibility that his or her profession of faith was not genuine and never has been. To realize that scary fact that is a gift from God; He is at work in you. Please cry out to Him for a heart to receive Christ by faith and to be born again.  To that end I would love to pray for you personally. Please reach out for prayer or with any questions you have.

For now, may, “The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24–26, Nas95)