The Invitation/ Sanctified/ Principle Doctrines of Christ

How Can You Be a Christian If You Are Not Born Again?

Jn 3:3 October 1, 2015

While taking our son back to school for his senior year at George Washington University he asked my wife and me if he should continue going to Intervarsity Christian Fellowship meetings on campus if they were not preaching the whole truth. Without asking what the problem was I told him that it was a matter for him to decide. He had to find out what the Lord suggested to do and then do whatever he must by faith. Joanne was not so cautious though. She wanted to know what it was that troubled him about the campus fellowship group. He told us, for instance, week in and week out one unbelieving person dominated the meeting by insisting that the fellowship once again prove the existence of God. He thought it was a waste of valuable time for Christians to be sitting around discussing the existence or non-existence of their Savior every time they gathered together. But more than that he felt there was no spirit of discernment for the truth present.

Anyone who slapped a label of Christian on himself was presumed untouchable as a follower of Jesus Christ. Doctrine and Scriptural truth were handled with kid gloves lest they should prove to be politically incorrect and discriminatory. The bottom line was that the most respected and revered person in the group, an older student whose opinion held sway, was probably not even born-again. At the close of one meeting, Jeff had asked him about his conversion and wanted to know his personal testimony about being born-again. The person responded by saying, “As long as I can remember I’ve always believed.”

Rightfully, my son was alarmed by this testimony and said to us, “I always believed but that didn’t mean I was born again.” (We knew what he meant because we all remembered that it was not until an Easter morning when he was 20 years-old that he accepted Christ into his heart.) I told him he was absolutely right in all of his concerns and that if they were not preaching the fact that you must be born-again to see the kingdom of God then his decision whether or not to continue going to Intervarsity Fellowship might be easier than he thought. We all left it at that and are now waiting to see what direction God leads him. Will God call him to go and tell them? Will he direct him somewhere else? What God wants to do about this is still unclear, but one thing is certain, it is not enough simply to believe.

You Must Be Born-Again

Jesus coined the term “born-again” Himself and clearly said that this is not an optional thing or an experience that accompanies salvation. It is salvation. He said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born-again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3

It is not enough to believe. James says; You believe! So what! The devils believe and because they know God’s power and the judgment awaiting them they tremble with fear. Nicodemus, the man who came to Jesus by stealth, was not only a religious leader but also a great and prominent teacher in all of Israel. It is safe to say that he believed in God – and probably always had. But he was not born-again; didn’t even know that you must be born-again to be saved otherwise he would not have asked how can such a thing be? Remember Jesus said you had to be born of the water (by the breaking of the water at natural birth) and of the spirit (by the passing from death into life by the conversion and rebirth of our heart). To be saved we must become new creatures, totally new persons. This is the miracle of the atoning blood of Jesus on the cross at Calvary. It gives us right of passage down the birth canal of the spirit so we can be born into God’s kingdom. It comes only by turning from trust and reliance on our old black heart, repenting from everything that is our first birth, no matter how good it may seem in the eyes of men, becoming newborn babes in Christ. We must become new creatures with new spirits. We must be born again.

There can be no moving away or backpedaling from this message, this truth. The Church should never allow the Devil to sidetrack them from establishing this fact. We sometimes take heat for this position. The world, and now much of the Christian Church says we, who hold these truths, are narrow-minded and bigoted. But our retort is that we are steadfast not narrow-minded. We trust in the word of God and are epoxied to this belief and faith in the miraculous work done by the Father and Jesus Christ for our sakes. If that is narrow-minded, so be it. Any denomination, church, fellowship, group, or person that does not steadfastly insist that a Christian must be born-again to be truly labeled a Christian (disciplined follower of Christ) is missing the most fundamental message of Christianity. Being born-again is not an experience that is subordinate to being a Christian for without it you are not a Christian. It is not an experience that accompanies salvation. It is the salvation experience. To fudge on this would only create another religion other than Christian, though the popular move today is to do just this and still call it Christian.

Don’t be persuaded otherwise. You must be born again to see and enter the kingdom of God! How can you be a Christian if you can’t see the kingdom of God? How can you see the kingdom of God if you are not looking through the veil of this world born anew into another existence – born-again? Jesus said so, that should be enough.