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Scripture Reading: John 3:3-7; 1:12-13; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 6:17
In the previous chapters we have seen what life is and what the real experience of life is. In this chapter we will see the first experience of life, the beginning of the experience of the divine life, which is regeneration.
John 3:7 says, “Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew.” Here the Lord used the word must; regeneration is a “must.” But why must we be regenerated? The simple reason is this: We need the life of God. We need to be born again simply because we need the divine life, which we do not have by our natural birth. We have a life that is created by God, which we received of our parents, but this created life is not the real life. It is a picture, a type, a shadow, of the real life. Therefore, we need to have another life, a second life, the real life. This is the divine life, which is God Himself in Christ through the Spirit as life to us.
We need the divine life. If we as humans want to be real persons, we must be born twice. If we are born only once, we are not real persons; we are false persons, merely shadows. A shadow is not a real man. When we were born the first time of our parents, we received the shadow life, the figure life. Now we must be born a second time of God in order to have the real life, the eternal, endless, indissoluble, divine life, which is God Himself. Our human life was made as a vessel to contain God. Thus, the human life is not the real life; it is only an empty vessel to contain the real life, which is God Himself. Therefore, we must be born again to be filled with God, to contain God as our life.
Today many in Christianity preach regeneration on a very low plane. When I was young, I was taught much about regeneration on the lowest plane. I was told that we need to be born again simply because after the fall of Adam, man became sinful and corrupted. Many who preach in this way use several verses. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, / And it is incurable; / Who can know it?” Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Cushite change his skin, / Or the leopard his spots? / Then you also may be able to do good, / Who are accustomed to do evil.” Romans 7:18 also says, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells.” Those who preach in this way say that since we cannot change our sinful nature, we need to be born again.
Without a doubt, it is true that our life cannot be changed, and we all need to receive another life. However, even if we had never become corrupt and sinful, we still would need to be born again because, as vessels, we still need to be filled. Even if we did not fall and were still as we were when we were created by God, we still would need to have the divine life. Consider the picture in Genesis 2. Immediately after Adam was created, God put him in front of the tree of life. At that time Adam was one hundred percent proper, having nothing sinful. However, Adam did not have the divine life, so he still needed to take the fruit of the tree of life. We must be born anew not simply because we are sinful. Even if we were not sinful, we still would need to be born again, born of God, in order to have God’s life. No matter how good we are, as long as we are only born of our parents, we do not have the life of God. In order to have the life of God, we must be born of God.
John 3:5 says that unless we are born anew, we cannot enter the kingdom of God. Every kingdom has its own life. To enter the kingdom of the birds, for example, and to understand the things in the kingdom of the birds, we must be born of the birds to have the bird life. Likewise, in order to understand the things of the kingdom of God, we must be born again of God to have the life of God.
As we have seen, regeneration means to be born anew. To be born again is to be born of God. John 1:12-13 says, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” We are first born of man, of our father, to be a son of man, but we must be born anew of God to be a son of God. When we were born of man, we received the life of man. By this we have the authority, the right, to be a son of man. Now we must be born anew of God to have the life of God as the authority, the right, to be a son of God. Remember well that to be born again simply means to be born of God through the Spirit of God.
In 3:3 Jesus said, “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus asked, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” The Lord replied, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (vv. 4-5). As we have seen, to be born again means to be born of God, but verse 5 says that it is to be born of the Spirit of God. What does it mean to be born of the Spirit? Some talk about being born of the Spirit, but the meaning of this is unclear to many people. When we receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior, the Holy Spirit comes into us and brings God into us as life. At that very moment we are born of God through the Spirit.
Verse 5 speaks of water first and then the Spirit. What does it mean to be born of water? In Christian books there are different opinions concerning the water spoken of here. Most of these opinions, however, are wrong. When the Lord spoke of water to Nicodemus, He spoke plainly, and Nicodemus understood very well. He did not stop the Lord and say, “Please tell me what You mean by the word water.” He could understand this because of his background. Nicodemus, as we know, was a Pharisee. Before he came to the Lord, a number of the Pharisees had gone to John the Baptist. John rebuked them and told them that they needed to repent. Then he said, “I baptize you in water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is stronger than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He Himself will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt. 3:11). John spoke of two things: water and the Spirit. Water refers to the central item of the ministry of John the Baptist, which is that men needed to repent to such a degree that they recognized that they were good for nothing but death and burial. If someone came to John the Baptist to say that he was repenting, John might have said, “Do you repent? Do you really mean it? Then let me bury you. You need to be buried and done away with.” This is the correct meaning of the water spoken of here.
To be baptized is simply to be buried. When we baptize people, we should always tell them that we are going to bury them. They are good for nothing but burial. To simply confess that we are sinful is not good enough. We must repent to such a standard that we realize that we are good for nothing but to be terminated and buried. This is the ministry of John the Baptist before the ministry of the Lord Jesus.
What then is the ministry of the Lord Jesus? It is the ministry of life through the Spirit. John baptized people with water, that is, he put people into burial. Then the Lord Jesus regenerates people with the Spirit; that is, He brings the divine life into them. To be born of water and of the Spirit simply means that we realize, on the one hand, that as humans we need to be put into the water to be buried, and on the other hand, that we need the Lord to regenerate us with the Spirit of life. To be born of water is to terminate the old life, to put the old life of Adam into death and into the grave to be buried. Then out of death comes the resurrection life in the Spirit, which the Lord Jesus gives us. Now we can understand that to be born of water and of the Spirit simply means to die, be buried, and be resurrected, raised up, with the divine life.
The process, the way, to be born of God is first to confess that we are sinful and good for nothing but to be buried. This is not a small matter. Many people before becoming Christians think that they are good, but upon becoming Christians, they repent and say, “Lord, I am sinful.” However, after they have been regenerated, many do not continue to have the sense that they are sinful to such an extent that they are good for nothing but death and burial. We need the sense that we are truly sinful and good for nothing but burial. We must not think that we are good for anything.
Once in China, a learned man with a doctoral degree and a high rank came to our gospel meeting. After the meeting, some young brothers told me, “If this man will be saved, he will be a great help to the church.” I asked them, “Brothers, do you think this man is good for the church? You are one hundred percent wrong. This great man is good for nothing. As Christians, the first thing we must do is be buried. If you commit yourself to the church, the church first must bury you. We do not need that great man; he is good for nothing but to be buried.” To bury people is the right way to build up the church. The more the worldly giants come into the church, the more the church will be divided and damaged. All the worldly people need to be buried. Do not forget that in the church we baptize people to bury them. Do you want to come to the church? Then you must be terminated and buried. We are good for nothing but death and burial.
If we realize this, we are blessed, because resurrection life comes out of death. If we realize that we are good for nothing but death, we will be willing to come to the Lord to receive Him. Then we will have the Lord as life in us; we will have the second life, the divine life, which is God Himself in Christ through the Holy Spirit. What is the real way to be born again? It is simple. It is to realize that we are sinful, that we are good for nothing but death, and that we need the second life, the divine life, the heavenly life, which is God Himself. This very life today is in Christ, and this very Christ today is the Spirit.
When we repent and recognize and realize that we are good for nothing but death and that we need the life of God, we simply come to Him, open ourselves with our heart and spirit, and receive Him as life and everything to us. Then we are born anew of God, we have the life of God, and we become the sons of God. This is the beginning of the experience of life. The beginning of the experience of life is to be born of God to have His life. We cannot have the experiences of life if we do not have life. The first experience is to receive this life, which is God Himself in Christ.
The issue of regeneration is that we have life. Furthermore, since we have the life of God, we become the sons of God. To be the sons of God is not a small matter. The Lord Jesus is the Son of God who became the Son of Man by incarnation, and we are the sons of man who became the sons of God by regeneration. This is a very basic matter. We need to realize that regeneration makes us the sons of God, the children of God.
Moreover, according to the Scriptures, since we have been regenerated, we have become a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). There is a difference between the old creation and the new creation. The old creation had nothing of God in it, but God Himself is in the new creation. We have God within us, so we have become the new creation.
Since we have been regenerated, we also have become one with God in the Spirit. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” What are we today? Are we Americans? Are we Chinese? Because we have been regenerated, that is, born of God, we should have the boldness and boast to say, “We are the sons of God, we are the new creation, and we are joined to God as one spirit!” This is not a small matter.
Do you have the assurance that you have been born of God? A little over two centuries ago, a certain young slave girl in America was saved. She was so happy and full of joy. A gentleman came to be a guest at her master’s home. Seeing that she was so happy, he asked her, “What are you happy for?” She said, “Oh, I have been saved by Jesus!” That gentleman joked with her, saying, “Don’t laugh too much. If you laugh too much, you may be lost. The hands of Jesus are so big, and you are so little. You might slip between His fingers and drown.” The little girl told this gentleman, “If His fingers were so big, and I am so small, it would be possible to be lost. But now I have become one of His fingers.” She was right. We have become one with Jesus. We are now one with God because we have been regenerated, born of Him.
In what part of us did the Holy Spirit regenerate us? It is in our human spirit. John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The first Spirit is the Spirit of God, and the second spirit is our regenerated human spirit. Our being born of God is accomplished through the Holy Spirit in our spirit. The Holy Spirit comes into our spirit to enliven our spirit with the Lord Jesus as life. Therefore, by regeneration our spirit has been enlivened, regenerated, and recreated, remade. When God first created our spirit, there was nothing of God in it, but the second time, when God comes to regenerate our spirit, God does so with Himself. God comes into our spirit to remake us, to recreate us, to regenerate us, in our spirit. This is a wonderful matter. If we are clear about this, we will know how to go on in life. Our spirit has been regenerated with God, with Christ as life. Therefore, we have a new spirit, an enlivened spirit, a spirit with Christ as life. In the following chapters we will further consider what we have received through regeneration.
