Born of God (1 John 5:1–4) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

George Whitefield, the English evangelist during the 18th century Great Awakening, had as his principal theme the new birth. His sermon entitled, “On the Nature and Necessity of our Regeneration or New Birth in Christ Jesus,” served as an instrument of spiritual awakening in London, Bristol, Gloucester, and Gloucestershire. What we might think normal for preaching in that era was not. The respectable Church of England clergy didn’t entertain that message [George Whitefield’s Journals, 86]. So powerful and so disrupting to the deadness of the religious climate, some communities banned Whitefield from preaching because, as he put it, “because I insisted upon the necessity of the new birth” [232]. Why did he insist upon preaching the new birth? He would have said, quoting the words of Jesus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

Yet this message of the new birth has from time to time appeared absent in many churches, which accounts for the spiritual deadness of those congregations. Apart from the new birth we cannot know God.

I scarcely heard a sermon on the new birth while growing up. Generally, if it happened, a guest preacher addressed that theme. I would dare to say that probably very few people in my community could have explained the new birth. But a few years after coming to faith in Christ, virtually everyone in America became familiar with the words “born again.” Two events made that term current, whether understood or not. One was presidential candidate Jimmy Carter who claimed to be not just a Christian but “a born again Christian.” The other served as a title to a book by President Nixon’s so-called ‘hatchet man,’ Chuck Colson, Born Again. Colson chronicled his story of idolatry to the political achievements he pursued, his conviction for obstruction of justice, his conversion, seven months in an Alabama prison, and the journey because of the new birth that took him in a completely different direction.

Even with that exposure, most people did not understand what it meant to be born of God. But that truth is central to the gospel. To be a Christian is to be born of God. That’s what John insists in our text. But what did he mean by being born of God?

1. What does it mean to be born of God?

While John gives lengthy treatment of the new birth in his Gospel, here, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones points out, he takes for granted that his readers are “perfectly familiar with the doctrine of regeneration and rebirth” [Life in God, 10]. So he need not give details, as Jesus did when explaining the new birth to Nicodemus. What did Jesus tell the Pharisee about the new birth? He could not enter the kingdom of heaven without it. It’s a distinctly new life, and a spiritual rather than physical birth. The new birth is as mysterious and sovereignly wrought as the wind suddenly blowing. So John can just mention, “everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him” (1 John 2:29); “no one who is born of God practices sin” (1 John 3:9), until he gives more explanation in this text. What does it mean to be born of God? Our text identifies at least four explanations.

(1) In the new birth, God has acted upon you in sovereign mercy

It’s important that we get the language clear in this text. The reason that I’m insistent on looking at it is because some people treat the new birth as something that they can make happen by good persuasion. Or they think that they can lead someone in a prayer in order to be born again. But that’s not how John saw it.

Jesus told Nicodemus that the new birth is as mysterious and sovereign as the wind blowing, “so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). So the new birth is not something that we do in order to obtain it, as though obtaining a new status like someone who has a driver’s license or a visa to visit another country. Birth language is critical. Not one of us did anyth[...]