Sermon Cloud

Born of God

John 1:12-13

Grace Fellowship Church

October 11, 2009

Series 6 Sermon 4

 

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.  9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

 

Introduction

The modern church works hard at making things easy.  They want things easy on the eyes, easy on the ears, and easy on the mind.  In their desire to make things easy they have lost the biblical metaphors that God has given us regarding the most important issue in the world to every single person.  Man that is born blind to the glory of Christ, deaf to spiritual truth, and dead in sins and trespasses must be saved.  If they are not saved then an eternal hell awaits them where they will never die.  Most theologically conservative churches would not deny this biblical truth. 

 

So well meaning people, who have not studied and have not been taught what God Himself says about salvation, try their best to package church and the Gospel in the most acceptable form.  Often sin is downplayed.  Biblical worship is downplayed.  Holiness and sanctification are downplayed.  Doctrines that are foreign to Scripture are invented to provide comfort for people who maybe are under real spiritual conviction. This is like putting a band aid over a mortal wound. 

 

For instance unbiblical processes have been introduced.  “If you pray this prayer and mean it with your whole heart you will be saved.”  “Come forward to receive or accept Christ as your Savior.”  When someone is under conviction of sin and eternity what we do not need to do is offer them something that God has not said even if it does make it seem easier and someone shows some immediate relief. 

 

Recently someone gave me a subscription to Wretched Radio.  I have thoroughly enjoyed that.  What I listen to the most are the podcasts from Wednesdays because that is called witness Wednesday.  The host will go every Wednesday to the campus of Georgia Tech and talk to people that he meets for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel.  The lost that he talks to are sad enough to listen to.  But those that he talks to that believe they are Christians when in fact they are probably not are who sadden me the most.  Most of them can not articulate the Gospel in the most simple terms.  What they usually say is one of the catch phrases that the modern church has offered people.  Sin is downplayed and accepting Christ so that you can have a better life is given as the reason for being a Christian.  Most never mention sin or the wrath of God or the love of God or anything that is so important to the Gospel.  I don’t want that to be true for this congregation.  I want us to have as great an understanding of the Gospel in our own hearts and minds so much so that someone could wake us at 2am and ask us to explain the Gospel and it would spring up from our hearts and roll out of our mouths. 

 

What if you came up on a car accident and you were the last person to talk to the person who was dying in the wrecked car.  What would you say?  Could you in the remaining moments of that person’s life articulate the Gospel in a clear and concise way so that this person might be saved?  When seconds will count for all eternity what will you say? 

 

I want us to understand that the Gospel is life or death.  I want us to understand that the Gospel is so important that we must get it right.  How many of you want a heart surgeon that knows a little bit about heart surgery?  If I ever need heart surgery I want a heart surgeon that was so engrossed in what he or she studied in college and medical school that they never even had a date.  I want them to be so knowledgeable and skillful at what they do that it allows me to go under anesthesia knowing that I am in the best of hands. 

 

We need that kind of skill and dedication in our understanding of what the Bible says about the Gospel.  And as we learn about the Gospel what we must be willing to do is to throw away any and all of our preconceived ideas or thoughts or beliefs OR UNBIBLICAL CATCHPHRASES about the Gospel if we find that the Bible teaches the Gospel differently.  If the Bible does not make the Gospel easy and palatable to depraved human beings then neither should we.  The Apostle John, moved by the Holy Spirit of God, will be our guide this morning in coming to a fuller orbed understanding of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.     

 

John has written in verses 30 and 31 of chapter 20 of his Gospel account that the whole purpose of his writing is so that we may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and by believing on Him we may have eternal life.  This is at the end of his account.

 

But John does things backwards to the modern mind.  The modern church will say let’s put divisive theology at the end of the presentation and maybe even avoid it all together.  Let’s not put stumbling blocks in front of people on their way to Christ.  Let’s simply let them come to Christ and get comfortable with Him and then we will slowly peel back the layers of theology and maybe they will not run off and forsake Christ.  The modern church desires to make things easy.  But not the Apostle John. John is much more concerned with us having a right understanding of Christ.  John puts the Gospel call at the end of his Gospel and takes deep theological truth about Christ and about the Gospel and he opens his Gospel account with those. 

 

I have read a ton of Gospel tracts in my Christian life.  Some will highlight the great worth of mankind shown at the cross since Jesus would willingly die for us.  Some highlight the glories of Heaven and the miseries of Hell to try to get people to come to the Savior.  Some will address sin and then present the Gospel.  But what if John wrote a Gospel tract?   What would that look like?  We get a glimpse in John 1 and what we have covered so far. 

 

I think John would begin his Gospel tract the way he begins John chapter 1.  He would take the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and would put that right up front.  He would write, “Jesus of Nazareth was already there in the beginning.  He was already there with God in eternity.  He was with God and he was already God.”  Do you know who John would have offended?  He would have offended all the Jews and in our day the Muslims as well.  Then John would write, “This Jesus of Nazareth who is God the Son from all eternity is the one through whom the universe was created and there is not one thing that has been created that was created without him.”  In John’s day the Greek mind would have laughed this off as foolishness.  In our day John would have offended the modern evolutionary mind.  So on page 1, in the first few sentences, John has already offended at least four groups of people and probably more.  But he is not done.  We have just arrived at verse 4 of John 1. 

 

John goes on laying out foundational Biblical truth.  He tells us that Jesus of Nazareth was not only God and the one through whom the Universe and all that it is in was made but that He in the past, present and in the future is the One where life is found.  Physical, spiritual, and eternal life is only found in Him.  This life is the light of men and now it is shining into the world that is in deep darkness because of sin and those in darkness which are all of humanity can not comprehend or understand the Lord Jesus. 

 

How many people would ever leave page 1 and move on to page 2 of that Gospel tract?  Probably not many.  And he proves that in verses 6 through 11 when he tells those who are still reading this tract that God sent three major witnesses of this truth into the world and all three have been, are being, and will be rejected by darkness.  The light of creation has shone into the world since the very beginning and that has been rejected by mankind.  Witnesses like John the Baptist and others have been sent by God into the world to bear witness of the light and they have been largely rejected and many have even been killed.  Finally the Lord God sent the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God into the world and He was despised and rejected and killed.  And we all are guilty before God and not only have we rejected God’s witnesses but we are unable and unwilling to see things God’s way.  Now John has offended everyone else that was not offended at the first page or was not offended to the point that they stopped reading.  What he says to all of us is that Christ is all glorious and we all are too blind, too deaf, and too dead to get it.

 

Modern evangelism for the most part would never take this course in dealing with a sinner.  They would start with the love of God and not His absolute sovereign authority over all.  But John takes all the difficulties of theology and immediately sticks them in our faces.  He takes the items that will be controversial to the Jews and Greeks and Gentiles and puts it right at the forefront so we can stumble over them. 

 

You would think that maybe John would let up a little bit.  He would ease back on the throttle just a bit so he does not drive off the four or five readers that are still reading this Gospel.  So what does John do next?  He takes what is probably the most divisive issue in the church today and he puts that in verses 12 and 13. 

 

Remember the context of these verses.  Like a skilled attorney John has shown how God has sent witnesses into the world and sinful men, women, and children have rejected God and they did so because they loved darkness rather than light.  Last week we saw that because of sin we have total or radical depravity and not only are we unable to see the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ we flat out refuse to look there. 

 

But there is an astonishing statement in verse 12.  If read and understood in its context it is shocking.  John has told us and the Lord Jesus has told us and all the apostles that wrote the New Testament have told us that all are sinners and none seek after God and none are righteous and we are all dead in our sins and trespasses, deaf to spiritual truth, blind to the glory of the Gospel and yet we find verse 12.  Look at it with me.    

12 But to all who did receive him (Aorist active verb- shows action in the past and shows that those who did receive Him acted.), who believed in his name (Present Active verb showing that those who received him have also believed in Him and are still presently believing in Him and this group of people John says:), he gave the right to become children of God,

 

How did this happen?  If man truly is totally depraved then how did some receive Christ and believe in His name?  And on top of that those that believe and have received Christ have now been given the right or authority to become children of God.  How did these become children of God? 

 

What verses 5 through 11 of John’s Gospel shows is the total rejection of Christ by all of humanity.  “He came unto His own people and His own people did not receive Him.”  But we know that some believed.  We know there was 120 in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost.  We know John was one of them and that he wrote this Gospel account. We know that there was three thousand added to the 120 when Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost.  We know from reading Acts and the Epistles that many received Christ as Lord and Savior.  We even know that many of us have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. 

 

And this is exactly the tension that John has created for us in these verses and I believe that this was his intention.  So how is it that when the Gospel is proclaimed that most reject it but there are some who believe it and receive it?  How is it that you believed?  The world would simply say that you were weak minded.  Ted Turner would say that you were mentally deficient.  Karl Marx would say that you did so to feel better about things.  Atheists would simply call you a simpleton with your head in the sand. 

 

So how does it happen that when someone receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, they are believing in His name, that they are now given the right to become children of God? 

 

PNP

From John 1:13, John gives us three ways that becoming children of God did not happen.  That is what I would like for you to see this morning.  I am going to take them out of order to show you what John is teaching us.  So here are your three points for this morning. 

 

1.  People do not become children of God by their human pedigree.

2.  People do not become children of God by human appointment.

3.  People do not become children of God by an act of their own flesh.

 

What John is going to show us will alienate many people from the Gospel.  It will take away the three great human privileges; birthright, authority, and self determination.    

 

Purpose

My purpose in preaching this passage is what I think John’s purpose is.  His purpose and my purpose is to show you that salvation is a miracle of God.  Salvation is a supernatural act of God.  John’s purpose is to strip all of us of any self perceived spiritual rights or abilities when it comes to believing. 

 

Let me warn you this morning.  There has been an ongoing debate throughout Christian history over the understanding of these verses.  It is a biblical Hatfield and McCoy feud. What I have discovered in my own heart and life is that the war really is due to human presuppositions.  We are born thinking we can determine everything about our lives when in fact we do no such of a thing.  So many things are predetermined for us and its like we have blinders on or we just refuse to see that.  We will see more of this in a few minutes. 

 

RPNP

So look with me at these three ways that becoming children of God did not happen. 

 

1.  People do not become children of God by their human pedigree.

Notice with me verse 13. 

13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Notice first that John uses another biblical metaphor.  He says it in the first part of verse 13.  “Who were born” is what John says.  What do we know about birth?  We know there is a mother and a baby and the baby decides when and where it’s going to be born.  There is a conscience decision by the baby whether the mother is at home or at the grocery store or at work when that baby decides to be born the birth process is going to happen.  Right?  Of course not.  That baby makes no conscience decision in the process.  As a matter of fact if you could ask the baby if it wants to be born it would probably say no.  Why would that baby want to leave the comfort and safety and provision of its mother’s womb for a cold world where sickness and disease lurks around every corner? 

 

So then it must be the mother who decides the time of birth right?  No mother in her right mind would willingly go into labor at two or three o’clock in the morning.  Or while she was in the grocery store or stuck in a traffic jam or on an airplane. 

 

So the father of the child decides the time.  It has to be because after all everything we do is self determined right?  The father has no choice in the matter.  Dani went into false labor with Matthew on the day I was ordained to the ministry.  We finished the ordination service and went to the hospital and even had a flat tire in the hospital parking lot.  If I would have had a choice or if Dani would have had a choice we would not have chosen that day and since we were already at the hospital any way if we had any say so in the matter we would have went ahead and let Matthew be born that day.  But it was not up to us. 

 

This is why John uses the analogy of birth.  Whether or not a baby is conceived is out of our hands.  When and where the baby is born naturally is out of all our hands.  There are forces at work that are beyond our control.  It is under the providence and the sovereignty of God.  The Lord Jesus as we saw in verse 4 is the giver of life.  So if He does not give life then there would be no baby.  And if He does not give spiritual life then there will be no believers who now have the right to become children of God. 

 

So verse 12 and verse 13 tell us clearly what has to happen.  In order for anyone to become a child of God, to receive Christ as Lord and Savior, and to believe on His name they must be born of God. 

 

So how does this happen?  John tells us in the first point of verse 13 how it does not happen.  Look at verse 13 again.

13 who were born, not of blood

There is some debate on the meaning of this phrase but the majority of scholars will say that it has everything to do with one’s ancestry.  The Jews of John’s day would have been very proud of their heritage.  Paul told the Philippians that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, circumcised the eighth day of the tribe of Benjamin. The Jews would have reminded John the Baptist that they had Abraham for their father.  But he cut them off and said, “Do not say that you have Abraham for your father because God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham!”  The Lord Jesus quickly told those who reminded Him of their Abrahamic ancestry that truthfully they had Satan for their father because they did the will of Satan. 

 

John says these who were born in verse 13 are those who have not been born from their natural lineage.  So the Jews had no special entrance into the New Covenant in Christ because of their heritage and neither do any of us. 

 

Some of you have a wonderful spiritual heritage.  I have a friend who traced his lineage back and found out that one of his relatives was a pastor who was a good friend of Jonathan Edwards and they would correspond with one another via letter.  That is impressive.  You may have similar stories in your ancestry.  It is possible that some of us could trace our lineage back and find that we were related to someone that was a Puritan that came over on the Mayflower.  Or we might be related to some spiritual giant of the past. 

 

How many times have you talked with someone who was lost about the Gospel and they told you that their Grandmother or Grandfather or some other relative was a good and godly Christian? 

 

Do you know what coming from a godly Christian heritage will do for us in being born of God?  Absolutely nothing!  John says those who have been born of God were not born because of their ancestry. 

 

Let me say a word here for you parents and grandparents.  It is a good and godly thing to leave a Christian heritage.  You should be striving to do so.  It is a good and godly thing to leave your children and grandchildren knowing full well that you were a committed Christian and you have preached the Gospel to them over and over.  That just might be the means that God uses to bring them to salvation.  But that is no guarantee.  That is why you preach and then you pray.  And then you pray some more for the conversion of your children and grandchildren.  And you never ever let them rest on their spiritual heritage. 

 

Jonathan Edwards’ father and both grandfathers were godly pastors.  Charles Spurgeon was a third or fourth generation preacher of the Gospel.  John McArthur is a fifth generation preacher of the Gospel but none of these men who have been greatly used of God would have done anything for the Lord had the Lord not given them the new birth.      

 

I don’t think John is knocking a godly heritage at all. I don’t think John for one minute would have downplayed the importance of growing up in a Christian home and being nurtured by godly and loving parents.  But what he would have lambasted is the thought that this alone will get someone to heaven.  This may indeed be the means that God brings someone to salvation but the means alone will never bring anyone to salvation. 

 

That is first.  We can not become children of God by human pedigree.  Second this morning I want you to see that:

 

2.  People do not become children of God by human appointment.

I want to skip forward one phrase and then come back to the middle phrase. Look again at verse 13.  

13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

In the first point John attacked the Jewish idea of lineage.  In this phrase, “nor of the will of man,” John attacks the Greek idea of hyper patriarchs. The word that John uses for man is “andros” which is the normal Greek word for husband.  “Anthropos” is the normal word for man or mankind.  

In Greek and Roman culture what the husband and father said went. There was no discussion.  Life and death was in his power.  If he wanted a child to die he simply gave the order. And likewise if he wanted everyone in his house to be Christians he simply gave the order. And John says that will simply not work.  No one is born of God by the appointment of his earthly father. 

 

That may work in Buddhism or Islam but it will never work in Christianity.  Fathers cannot appoint their children to be Christians. 

 

Again what we need to understand is that John is not at all minimizing the role of a father in the spiritual upbringing of his children.  He is not advocating a polar opposite attitude from fathers toward their children.  It is a biblical fact that we can not raise our children to be Christians but we are commanded to raise them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  Again this can not save them but it may be the very means that the Lord uses to bring them to salvation. 

 

Here is the problem.  As humans we tend to go to extremes.  We read passages of Scripture that command us to raise our children in the Lord and so we start trusting in our skills as parents and our obedience to the Word of God in order for our children to be saved.  And then we read passages like John 1:13 and then we tend to slide the opposite direction and do nothing spiritually for our children.  Some see this as irreconcilable.  And many have erred in either direction. 

 

So what do we do? 

 

Remember what we have seen so far.  We can not become children of God by our pedigree nor can we become children of God by human appointment.  Islam may work with conversion by force but Christianity can not and will not work that way. 

 

That was point one and two.  So third we need to see that:

 

3.  People do not become children of God by an act of their own flesh.

Now I want you to notice the second phrase in verse 13, the one we just skipped. 

 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

This phrase, “nor of the will of the flesh,” could refer to the natural desire that God has given human beings for procreation.  And that would fit well with the analogy of being born.  Let me tell you how.  You may have a desire for children but that does not mean that you will have children.  It is the Lord that opens and closes the womb.  You may not want children at all and then the Lord gives you children.  And even if you conceive it may be that the child that is conceived does not live.  Over so many things regarding natural human birth we have no control. 

 

This is why I think John uses this metaphor to describe salvation.  Plus the Lord Jesus uses it in John 3.  By saying this, John does exactly what he does in the other two phrases and he removes salvation completely from the authority of man.  You are not saved because you were born into a Christian family. You are not saved because your father told you to be saved.  And you are not saved because you have willed in your flesh to do so.  And folks this flies in the face of 95% or better of American Christianity in our day. 

 

Here is where the modern church works hard at making things easy.  They will say to someone if you will be born again you must make a decision, say a prayer, walk an aisle.  You must do something in order for God to act on your behalf.  What they will not deny outrightly is that God must act.  But what they do is put the cart before the horse.  Christ is presented in the modern Gospel as the one who is waiting for us to accept Him as Savior.  And once we do that then we are born again or born of God.  If we will just decide to follow Jesus then He will be our savior and carry us right into Heaven. 

 

And John takes out his theological machete and chops those limbs right off.  He cries out, “nor of the will of the flesh!”  Why?  Because the flesh can not do what the flesh does not have the ability to do. 

 

Remember the metaphors we saw last week?  Blind, deaf, and dead is the condition of fallen man.  For a lost man or woman or child to see Christ as all glorious and all beautiful and to hear the sweet sounds of the glorious Gospel of Christ and to receive Him as their Savior and Lord and to walk before Him in holiness and righteousness is as humanly possible as one of us getting a running start and jumping over the top of this building.  The fastest and strongest human being on earth could not do it. 

 

Folks this is not just my opinion.  Whether I like it or not this is what the Bible teaches.  And if we will correctly call ourselves Christians then we must bring our thinking and our theology into conformity to the Word of God.  If we will declare a Gospel to the world like the apostles declared to the world then we have to have the same understanding of the Gospel that they did.  I truly believe that if we had a time machine and could go back to the first century and get one of the apostles and take him to most modern churches he would not be able to recognize the message. 

 

Here is why.  The message of the Gospel has been changed. Now the focus is on human decision but then the focus was on God and His glory.  Man’s inability to believe the Gospel was emphasized and the need for the miraculous work of the new birth was preached.  

 

So why does John say that man can not be saved by the will of their flesh?  After all the modern church believes that if you can have the right lighting, and the right music, and the right atmosphere, and the right speaker then anyone can be saved and they have large buildings teeming with people to show for it.  So who is right?  Let me give you some passages of Scripture that will inform and correct our theology. 

 

Listen to Romans 7:18-20.

18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

 

Paul is speaking of his helplessness or his inability.  He says that he sees the law and sees that it is good and delights in it but the problem is not the Law but he is the problem.  Sin is just what he does naturally and so he sees what is right and good in the law he simply does not have the innate ability to obey it.  What Paul says is that he may indeed desire to do good but he does not have the ability in his flesh to do so.  Why is this? 

 

Listen to 1 Corinthians 2:14.

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

 

Some of you may be having a hard time with this.  The reason is because all of your life or your spiritual life you have heard that people are able by their free will to accept the things of God including the Gospel.  You have also heard and been taught that God reacts to the person believing the Gospel and as a result of that person believing God causes them to be born again. 

 

So what the modern church has done is come up with evangelistic methods that cater to this view.  The sinner’s prayer prayed with a sincere heart is said to save.  God reacts to that. 

 

I will lay down a challenge for you.  Don’t take my word for it.  Go see for yourself.  Search the Scriptures and see if these things are true.  Find a passage that says that God reacts to the will of man in something other than judgment.  Then go out into the marketplace or your neighborhood or your workplace and start sharing the Gospel with people.  Just ask them what they believe and then talk to them about sin and Jesus Christ.  Do you know what you are going to discover?  You will discover that person after person after person will reject the Gospel. 

 

And after you experience rejection after rejection stop and ask yourself why you believe the Gospel.  You should know this experientially anyway.  One day you were hearing the Gospel or thinking about the Gospel or reading the Gospel and the light came on and you realized that as a sinner you stood under the wrath and judgment of God and He was perfectly righteous and just in sending you to Hell for your sin and rebellion.  Then you saw that the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross was your only hope for salvation and you came on your face repenting of your sins and trusting in and seeing Christ as the pearl of great price. 

 

If this is true of you then how is it that you believed and all those other people rejected the Gospel?  Is it your IQ?  We know from John 1:13 it was not your ancestry.  We know that it was not because your parents told you to.  And if you believe what John says in verse 13 it was not an act of the will of your flesh.  So what was it? 

 

It was an act of God.  That is what verse 13 says. 

13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

 

God Himself had to act.  Let me help you here theologically and practically.  What I am not denying is man’s responsibility to repent and believe.   God has indeed commanded all men everywhere to repent and believe. This is the Gospel command.  All men are under a God given obligation to repent and believe.  And what is clear about the Scripture is that those who come to Christ, those who receive Him as Savior and Lord, have indeed repented and believed the Gospel.  An act of the will has indeed happened. 

 

Here is the problem.  As Americans we read passages like verse 12 and automatically think that we have acted in a spiritually good way and we think that this is normal.  But what we should do is be utterly shocked at verse 12. 

 

Last week I showed you that the Lord Jesus is the mediator of all life and He is the light that has shined, is shining, and will shine into the world.  The light is shining into the darkness and the darkness has not understood it.  The darkness has not comprehended it.  The darkness has rejected it.  Then as we see in verses 6 through 11 there were three other witnesses that have come into the world and they have been rejected.  John the Baptist was rejected, creation was rejected, and then the Word came into the world to His own people and they despised Him. Rejected Him, and they crucified Him.  That is what we should read as normal. 

 

Then we get to verse 12 and we should be fall over dead shocked.  After all this rejection then how can verse 12 be true?  Look at verse 12 again. 

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,

It is true only because of verse 13.  We who have believed, who have received Him and who have been given the right to become children of God have done so because we have been born of God.  And verse 13 says that we were not born by any means that we could conjure up or by any means that some human could exert upon us. 

 

It was a miraculous act of God.  Do you see this?  I want you to feel the very weightiness of this truth.  This is what it means when we say that we were saved by grace.  Apart from God’s grace we would have simply rejected Christ over and over again.  We would have never believed in His name nor received Him as Lord nor ever been given the right to become children of God.  We would have remained of our Father the devil.  We would have remained in the domain of darkness.  We would have been lost without any hope. 

 

So let me answer my question from earlier.  I asked how is it that we are born of God and it is obvious it is by God’s grace.  But where does our active belief and trust and repentance play into that?  Is it a 50-50 proposition?  Or is it 99-1 percentage toward man or God?  Let me read to you a paragraph from our confession of faith that I think will make what is blurry come into sharp focus.  How does divine sovereignty, human responsibility, and human inability come together and we get verses like John 1:12-13?  Listen closely as I read.

Those whom God hath predestinated unto life, he is pleased in his appointed, and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.

 

This is how we know how it is that people are born of God and then they believe on Christ and receive Him as Lord.  Those of you who have been born again know this.  No one had to drag you like a robot to Christ when you were under conviction by the Holy Spirit.  You would have ran through a minefield to get to Christ if He were on the other side.  Why?  Because God did something in you that He does not do for all people.  He changed your nature.  You don’t believe that God changes people’s natures?  Go ask Nebuchadnezzar about his time eating grass like an ox in a field. 

 

So is being born of God a result of our belief or is our belief a result of being born of God?  We don’t have to guess.  We can be as sure of this as we are about the divinity of Christ.  I want you to see one verse and then I will end this sermon.  I want you to turn to 1 John 5:1.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,

If John were a sniper the cross hairs would be right between the eyes.  John says everyone or all who believes, which is a present active verb, which means that they are actively believing.  They have believed, they are believing, and they will continue to believe…. What are they believing?  They are believing that Jesus is the Christ, that He is all that the Bible says He is and they are trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation.  He is their only hope.  And then John tells us why they are believing.  Look at the verse again.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,

 

Grammar students and homeschooling moms you can see this can’t you?  Believes is a present tense and “has been born” is a past tense in English.  But in Greek, “has been born” is not the aorist tense which is simply an undefined past action.  In Greek it is in the perfect tense.   Perfect tense is a past action that has results that carry on into the future.  What the Bible is saying to us is that all of us who are right now believing and will continue to believe perseveringly will do so because God in the past has acted upon us by giving us the new birth.  For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God and most definitely not of works or human pedigree or human appointment or even an act of the will of the flesh so that no one may boast. 

 

If we boast we can only boast in Christ.  So when you go out into the lost world and you proclaim the glories of God in the face of Jesus Christ and you experience rejection after rejection after rejection, but you stay faithful and you keep proclaiming Christ then sooner or later the Lord will allow you to see a miracle as one who was dead is brought to life before your very eyes. 

 

I can’t end this without asking each of you this morning if you have been born of God?

 

Let’s pray.