New birth and the indwelling Spirit

Born from above

Nicodemus, a respected teacher of Israel, came to Jesus by night and called him a teacher sent from God. Jesus answered with something he was not ready for.

Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

John 3:3

The word translated ‘again’ is anōthen (ἄνωθεν), which can mean ‘again’ or ‘from above’. Nicodemus heard only the first and pictured an old man re-entering his mother's womb; Jesus meant a birth that comes from God. He went on: "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5), and he compared this birth to the wind.

The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

John 3:8

The church calls this regeneration, and God promised it long before, through Ezekiel:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you

Ezekiel 36:26-27

God saved us "through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). Anyone in Christ "is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17). God "chose to give us birth through the word of truth" (James 1:18), so the Spirit gives new birth through the message of the gospel (1 Peter 1:23).

Matthew Henry puts it simply: "It is a great change made in the heart of a sinner, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It means that something is done in us, and for us, which we cannot do for ourselves" Matthew Henry. No baby decides to be born. God's children, John says, are "born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God" (John 1:13).

The Spirit who lives in us

Jesus promised that the Spirit "abides with you and will be in you" (John 14:17): not beside the disciples, as Jesus had been, but within them. This indwelling is not a rare experience for a spiritual elite but belongs to every Christian. "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ" (Romans 8:9), and the same Spirit will one day give life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11). Paul could remind even the quarrelsome Corinthians that "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you" (1 Corinthians 6:19).

What does he do in us? First, he assures us that we belong to God's family.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:15-16

Galatians says the same: God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying "Abba, Father!" (Galatians 4:6).

Second, he marks us as God's own and guarantees what is still to come. Believers "were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit" (Ephesians 1:13), who is "the pledge of our inheritance" (Ephesians 1:14). A seal shows whose a thing is; a pledge is a first payment that promises the rest. Third, he bears fruit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23). How it grows is the subject of the lesson on holiness.

Where Christians differ

Every church confesses that new birth is the Spirit's work, but two questions about it have been answered differently.

The first is how new birth relates to baptism. The Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran churches confess that God gives new birth through baptism. They read John 3:5 and Titus 3:5 as speaking of it, with Paul's teaching that in baptism we are buried with Christ to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). This is not a claim that water has power of its own. Augustine explains that in this birth there is "water the visible part cleansing the body; the Spirit by His invisible cooperation, changing the invisible soul" Augustine.

Cyril of Jerusalem, teaching candidates for baptism around 350, said that the water cleanses the body and the Spirit seals the soul, and warned that Simon the sorcerer was baptized without being enlightened Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures. Luther's Small Catechism likewise credits not the water but the word of God with the water, and the faith that trusts it Luther, Small Catechism. Anglicans hold a qualified form of this view: the Thirty-Nine Articles call baptism a sign of regeneration, "whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church", words Anglicans have read in stronger and more cautious ways Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. 27.

The Reformed and Presbyterian churches see baptism as a sign and seal of the new birth the Spirit works. The Westminster Confession teaches that its efficacy is "not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered", yet the grace it promises is truly given by the Spirit in God's own time Westminster Confession, ch. 28. Matthew Henry, from that tradition, thought John 3 probably did refer to baptism, yet added that "without that new birth which is wrought by the Spirit, and signified by baptism, none shall be subjects of the kingdom of heaven" Matthew Henry.

For Baptists and many other evangelicals, new birth comes with conversion, when a person repents and trusts Christ, and baptism follows as the believer's confession of what God has done. The Second London Baptist Confession reserves baptism for those who actually profess repentance and faith, as a sign of their fellowship with Christ in his death and resurrection Second London Baptist Confession. For all their differences, these traditions agree that baptism is Christ's gift to his church and that no one should trust the outward washing while turning from Christ. Who should be baptized, and how, belongs to the lesson on baptism and the Lord's Supper.

The second question is whether new birth comes before faith or after it. Reformed churches teach that people dead in sin cannot believe until the Spirit makes them alive, so that regeneration gives rise to faith. God "made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses" (Ephesians 2:5); with Lydia, "The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message" (Acts 16:14). The Canons of Dort describe this new birth as a new creation and a raising from the dead that God works in us Canons of Dort.

Arminian and Wesleyan Christians also insist that grace comes first, but they describe it differently. God gives prevenient grace to every person, enabling a free response to the gospel, and those who believe are born again. They point to the promise that "to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). John Wesley taught that at the very moment we are justified by faith we are also born from above, so that God changes not only our standing but ourselves Wesley, The Scripture Way of Salvation. Both views confess that new birth is not the fruit of human resolve but the work of God, as John 1:12-13 holds together. The larger question of grace and choosing belongs to the lesson on election.

Hearing the wind

The point of all this is not to fix the date of our spiritual birthday; many believers cannot say when it began. We do not see the wind, but we hear it. A heart that trusts Christ, calls God Father and is slowly learning to love is the sound of the Spirit at work. For how faith can begin, see How can I begin to believe?; for the wider picture, What does it mean to be saved?; and for baptism, What are baptism and the Lord's Supper?.

Practice