Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3121
“Marvel not that I said unto you, You must be born-again.” John 3:7.
[See Sermon #130, Volume 3—REGENERATION.]
WE need not wonder that there are some mysteries in our holy faith, for there are mysteries everywhere. In Nature there are ten thousand things that we cannot understand. In our own bodies there are inexplicable mysteries. He who thinks for only a little while, even of so simple a matter as to how it is that food is gradually turned into flesh, knowing how impossible it would be for us to do it by any chemical process or mechanical apparatus, will see that there is a mystery in every human life—a secret chamber into which the eyes of man cannot look. There are mysteries all around us at this very moment. If we go outside this building, we shall, like Nicodemus, observe that the wind blows. We know it blows, for we hear the sound of it, but as to from where it comes, or where it goes, we know nothing. As there are mysteries in Nature, as there are mysteries in our own bodies, as there are mysteries all around us even in the most commonplace things, it is not remarkable that there should be mysteries in the Kingdom of God!
Yet Christ, by using the metaphor of the wind, shows us that the mystery is a matter of fact and that the mystery can be turned to practical account, for though we do not understand all about the wind, yet we know when it is blowing. And though we cannot comprehend it, we can make use of it. The wind has been employed in a thousand ways in the service of man and it is not necessary that we should understand it in order to make use of it. A man may be an admirable sailor and yet know nothing about the origin of the wind. If he does but understand how to hoist, or shift, or furl his sail, he will do well enough. So is it with the mysteries of the Kingdom of God—although we cannot understand them, the practical use of them is a matter of such simplicity that we shall do well to learn what it is.
I am not going to attempt to explain the mystery of the new birth—that is altogether beyond my powers. I can only explain its results. But there is one point upon which I want to fix your attention and that is that if you are ever to be saved, you must experience this new birth. “Must is for the king,” we say, and it was the King of kings who said, “You must be born-again.” My text belongs to the absolute necessities—this is a Truth of God that cannot be put aside! “You must be born-again.” If you are ever to enter the Kingdom of God, or even to see it—if you are ever to be reconciled to the God whom you have so greatly offended—“You must be born-again.”
But what is it to be born-again? I have already said that I cannot tell you how the Spirit of God operates upon the unregenerate, making them to be new creatures in Christ Jesus. I know that He usually operates through the Word— through the proclamation of the Truth of the Gospel. So far as we know, He works upon the mind according to the laws of mind by first illuminating the understanding. He then controls the judgment, influences the will and changes the affections. But over and above all that we can describe there is a marvelous power which He exerts which must remain among the inscrutable mysteries of this finite state, even if we can never comprehend it. By this power such a wondrous effect is produced that a man becomes a new man as much as if he had returned to his native nothingness and had been born-again in an altogether higher sphere! A new nature is created within him, although the old nature is not entirely eradicated. It will ultimately be destroyed, but it is not destroyed at first. Yet a new nature is born within the man, a nature which hates what the old nature loved, and loves what the old nature hated—a new nature which is akin to the Nature of God! That is a wonderful sentence in Peter’s second Epistle, “that by these you might be partakers of the
Divine Nature.” In his first Epistle, he writes concerning “being born-again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which lives and abides forever.” This living seed is sown within our hearts and there it begins to grow, “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” The new birth is the implanting of that living seed within the soul—it is the creation within us of that new, Divine, immortal life. We must have that life or we cannot see or enter the Kingdom of God.
My subject is the imperative necessity of regeneration and I want to show you, first, that the new birth is a great necessity. And, secondly, to ask, have we all experienced it?
I. First, then, I want to show you that THE NEW BIRTH IS A GREAT NECESSITY.
That it is a necessity is quite certain, because it is Jesus Himself who says,’ ‘You must be born-again,” and Jesus cannot err. Unless we are prepared to reject Him altogether, we must believe Him to be the Infallible Teacher sent from God. Yet He says, “You must be born-again,” and you may depend upon it that you must if you are ever to be saved. He was of a gentle, loving spirit. He never bound heavy burdens upon men’s shoulders which they were not able to bear. He was so gentle that the little children gathered around His knees and He took them up in His arms and blessed them. I am sure that if He could have said, “You can enter the Kingdom of Heaven without experiencing the new birth,” He would have said so. He said, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leads unto life,” because He must speak the Truth of God. In other places, how blessedly has He set the gate of mercy wide open, saying, “If any man thirsts, let him come unto Me and drink.” And His last Gospel invitation is, “Whoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The words of our text become all the more solemn because they drop from the lips of Him who would not exclude a single soul from everlasting happiness unless the Truth of God required Him to do so. It is the kinder, gentle, loving Christ who says, “You must be born-again,” and so shuts and bars the gate of Heaven against the admission of the unregenerate!