You Must Be Born Again! Part 2 | Sunday, September 19, 2021

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16–17)

You cannot work your way to God—but the One lifted up on a cross can save you completely.

A Calling to Teach and Equip

Shortly after my 19th birthday I began serving at this church as a ministry intern. I grew up here, and after high school I was given a partial scholarship to attend a Bible college up in Murrieta, beginning in the fall of 1998. About halfway through the first semester I found a growing desire to come back home to serve here. The Bible college was a great program, but I realized much of what I was learning I had already been taught through the regular ministry of this church. What was missing was the opportunity to regularly serve.

When that desire began to grow, a pastor approached me after church one Sunday and asked if I'd consider joining the staff as a ministry intern in the new year. It didn't take me long to say yes. So in January of 1999 I started serving full-time as a non-paid intern, living at home and working for basically nothing. My job was simple: I did whatever needed to be done—IT, receptionist, janitor—and when those things were done, I went looking for more. I absolutely loved it.

"I Will Teach You the Good and the Right Way"

About a month in, our youth pastor, Pastor Tony, flagged me down in the parking lot one afternoon. He told me our junior high youth pastor was moving to Arizona, and he wanted me to consider teaching the junior high ministry. That was not something I felt ready or willing to do. But when someone you look up to asks you to teach the Bible, you don't want to give a flat no—so I gave the Christian no: "I'll pray about it."

That night I actually did pray about it, and something happened I wasn't expecting. I prayed honestly: "God, I don't really want to teach the junior high. I'm not a teacher, I'm not a public speaker, I don't think I can do this. But I'm praying because I said I would. Show me what You want me to do." It is my conviction that if God speaks, He speaks primarily through the Scriptures. I was reading systematically through the Bible at the time—some Old Testament, some New Testament every day. That night I was in 1 Samuel 12.

Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you. (1 Samuel 12:23–24)

Maybe it's a coincidence, but I don't think it was. Then in Ephesians 4 I read that Jesus "gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." The following Sunday—Valentine's Day, February 14, 1999—I began teaching the junior high. I have been teaching through the Scriptures, teaching the good and the right way, for the last 22 and a half years.

Saints are simply Christians—not super-spiritual people, just regular old believers. This is not my job, career, or vocation; it is my calling. As Paul wrote to Colossae: "Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily" (Colossians 1:28–29).

Back to the First Principles

I bring this up because it's relevant to our series, "The Disciplines of a Disciple." With all that has happened in our culture over the last year and a half, I've had a strong sense that we need to go back to the basics—the first principles of our faith and of growing toward maturity as Christians. My calling has always been about teaching followers of Jesus to follow Him more faithfully, and the last 18 months have driven home how important that is.

A disciple is an obedient follower of Jesus. So what are the principles of discipleship, and how do we grow in them? As a preview, we'll talk about four essentials. First, the work of the Word of God—living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to correct, reprove, rebuke, and instruct us in righteousness. Second, the place of prayer—if the Word is the chief way God speaks to us, prayer is the primary way we speak to God, a two-way conversation. Third, the work of the Holy Spirit—Jesus promised not to leave us as orphans but to give us the Spirit of truth. And fourth, the church and your place in it.

But you cannot jump into the disciplines of a disciple without first talking about how one becomes a disciple. And that means going back to salvation. I didn't get nearly as far as I planned last week, so this week is salvation, part two.

The Most Famous Verse in the Bible

I can think of no better place to begin than John 3:16, perhaps the most famous, most translated, most well-known verse in the Bible.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16–17)

The simplest teaching of the Bible is that all have sinned and fallen short of God's perfect, glorious righteousness (Romans 3:23). Second, the consequence of our sin—our rejection of God's command and law—is death. Not just physical death, which everything living will experience, but what the Bible sometimes calls the second death: eternal death and separation from God forever. God made you to live forever; that is His desire. But there is the possibility you could die forever.

But the story goes on. God loved His creation so much that He sent His Son on a rescue mission. "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Four key verses sum it up: all have sinned (Romans 3:23); the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23); God so loved the world that He gave His Son (John 3:16); and Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (1 Timothy 1:15)—and Paul adds, "of whom I am chief."

This is good news—which is what "gospel" means. It comes from the Greek euangelion, where we get "evangelize," "evangelism," and even my daughter's name, Evangeline. The gospel is that we were dead in trespasses and sins, but Jesus came to rescue us out of His great love and mercy.

Even Nicodemus Had to Be Born Again

You may think that's good news for all the sinners out there, but figure you're a pretty good person. John 3:16 is nestled within a conversation Jesus had with a hyper-religious, probably hyper-self-righteous man named Nicodemus—one of the chief rabbis of Israel. What Jesus said to Nick before telling him about God's love essentially exploded his brain.

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." Jesus answered..., "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said..., "How can a man be born when he is old?..." ...Jesus answered..., "Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.'... Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?... And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:1–15)

Nicodemus was a good, religious, honorable man, respected and looked up to in Israel. Yet even to him Jesus said: unless you are born again, you will not be with God. This midnight conversation reveals a crucial point—and let me say it again, because it's so important: your good works and your religious righteousness will not save you. If Nicodemus wasn't righteous enough to save himself, you and I have no hope by our own works.

He belonged to the Pharisees, the most religiously committed sect in Israel, yet Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20). You have to be better than the most righteous—and even that isn't enough, because "all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags" before a holy God. We have all gone astray like sheep. We live in a culture full of good people trying hard to do right things, but on the day of Christ Jesus those things will not rescue them from the penalty and power of sin.

Look and Live: The Bronze Serpent

So if even Nicodemus wasn't good enough, how can anyone be saved? Jesus said, "You must be born again," born by the Spirit. But how? He pointed Nicodemus, an expert in the Old Testament, to a story he would have known instantly—Moses and the serpent.

When the children of Israel were redeemed from Egypt and journeying through the wilderness toward the Promised Land, they came to a place where their relationship with God was strained. Venomous snakes—called fiery serpents in the book of Numbers—came among the camp, and the people who were bitten began to die. They cried out to Moses, who went to God.

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live." So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:8–9)

Imagine being in that camp. People are dying, and Moses says the remedy is simply to look at a bronze snake on a pole. Because we're stubborn and hard-headed, many would think, "That's stupid—how is that going to help me?" And many people did die because they refused to do something so simple. Why did this happen? Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10 that "all these things happened to them as examples"—instructive teaching pictures written for our admonition.

So when Nicodemus asks how he can be born again, Jesus says: just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of Man will be lifted up—lifted up on a cross—so that whoever believes in Him, trusts Him, looks to Him, will not perish but have everlasting life. Only trust in Jesus Christ's finished work on the cross will save you from your sins. We cannot save ourselves by our works. Jesus came to save sinners, and He did so by being lifted up on the cross in our place.

The Three Tenses of Salvation

But what does it mean to be saved? This is where it can get confusing, because the biblical authors describe salvation as a finished, past, accomplished act, often in the passive voice—someone else did the saving. "By which also you are saved" (1 Corinthians 15:1). "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2:8–9). If you have trusted in the finished work of Christ, you presently, right now, have been saved.

Yet other passages say we are being saved. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18). "We are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved" (2 Corinthians 2:15). So is it finished, or is it a process? The confusion is amplified when other passages speak of salvation as future—"the hope of salvation" (1 Thessalonians 5:8), "now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed" (Romans 13:11), "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Romans 10:13).

Have I been saved, am I being saved, or am I waiting to be saved? The Bible speaks all three ways, and there is nothing to be confused about once you understand the doctrine of salvation—what theologians call soteriology. Here is the basic teaching: in Christ we have been saved from the penalty of sin, we are being saved from the power of sin, and we will be saved from the presence of sin.

In theological language: Jesus has made us righteous through justification—declaring us righteous. He is now, through the Word, prayer, fellowship, and the Spirit, perfecting righteousness in us through sanctification. And He will one day make us perfectly righteous through glorification. Jesus alone can save us completely. "The law made nothing perfect" (Hebrews 7:19), but "He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25).

Your Debt Paid, His Righteousness Credited

When you trust in Christ, He removes your sin and gives you His righteousness. Imagine you owed a debt of tens of millions of dollars you could never pay—and not only that, your righteousness account had a massive negative balance. That is what every person comes into this world with: no righteousness and a huge debt of sin. But Jesus pays the debt with the riches of His grace and fills your account with His righteousness. "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness" (Romans 4:3). He received righteousness he did not have because he trusted God.

After you are saved you are not yet perfect in conduct—we all continue to fail. But Jesus, by His grace, is working in you to work out that salvation. My favorite verses say it this way: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12–13). He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that we might receive His righteousness credited to our account—that is justification. He works that salvation out in us—that is sanctification. And in the future He will transform this lowly body in the twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15) so that it is conformed to His glorious body. "Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body" (Philippians 3:20–21).

Now What? Working Out Our Salvation

There is so much more I could say, because understanding salvation is essential. We are not saved by works of righteousness we have done; Jesus saved us by His grace, because of His great love and rich mercy, when we trust in Him and receive the free gift of the gospel. At that moment we are justified, declared righteous, saved—it is done—and immediately given the hope of glorification.

So it comes down to this: after being justified and assured of our future glorification, our focus becomes the working out of salvation. If you have trusted in Christ, you've been declared righteous and given the hope of heaven—now what? Right now we are in the process of being transformed, and this process is called sanctification. This is where the disciplines of a disciple come in. Over the next several weeks we will talk about how we grow in Christlikeness so that we display salvation in our lives to others, and how the Word of God, prayer, the work of the Spirit, and the fellowship of the church help us grow more into His likeness. I hope you'll be with us next week.

Closing Prayer

Father God, I thank You so much for Your Word, and for the salvation You give us in Christ Jesus—that Jesus came because of Your great love, demonstrated Your love on the cross, and died for us so that we might have life and life more abundantly. Through salvation You have given us the righteousness we did not have, paid our debt, and promised us eternity with You. And You want to work out that salvation in us by Your Spirit as we work with You. So I pray, God, that You would teach us what that means and help us grow in Christ's likeness.

But before we finish, I want to pray for those watching who have not yet received the gift of Your grace and salvation. Lord, I pray You would draw them to Yourself by Your Holy Spirit in this moment.

If you've never trusted in Christ, the wages of sin is death, and we are all sinners. If you want to receive the free gift of God's saving grace and forgiveness, I want to offer that to you today by asking you to trust in Jesus Christ. "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.... For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Romans 10:9, 13).

Pray simply this prayer: Dear Jesus, I recognize that I am a sinner. I have not lived up to Your perfect standard, and I cannot save myself by my good works. I pray that You would come into my life, forgive me of my sin, and help me to trust in You and follow You by faith. In Jesus' name, amen.

If you prayed that prayer today, go to the website and let us know so we can be in contact with you, get you a Bible, and get you connected to a church. God bless you.