The New Self

This is the most comprehensive and complete chapter in the Bible on the subject of the new birth, what it means to be born again. It’s ironic that of all the theological terms Christians use (that come from the Scripture) this is the one that has come down into modern jargon. What does the phrase born-again Christian mean to the average person in New York? What does it mean when it’s used in the media?

First of all, it means someone who has had an emotional religious experience, usually, something fairly cathartic, maybe a crisis. Secondly, it also refers to a kind of Christianity, a narrow kind, a dogmatic kind, a conservative kind, and in some cases a cultic fringe kind in people’s minds, but a kind of Christianity. We’re going to look this week and next week at what Jesus says in this passage about the new birth, but right away we’re struck by the fact that Jesus meets these commonly held conceptions of the new birth. He takes them on in a head-on collision. Right off the bat, he says, “You must be born again. It is not an option.” Therefore, he’s saying to talk about a born-again Christian is a redundancy. It’s not possible to be any other kind. If you’re born again, you are a Christian. If you’re a Christian, you are born again. There’s no other kind. He not only says that, but he also shows us here that the nature to be born again or the new birth is not necessarily emotional. We can’t say the new birth is an emotional experience; it has deep emotional ramifications, but it’s not. It’s a radical and personal experience. Jesus defines the new birth right here, so we have to look at it.

As we get started, here’s something we have to start with. I have to lay a foundation before we go any further. There are a lot of folks who will say the concept of the new birth and to insist every person who has any claim to Christianity must be born again, to consider that a kind of conservative, dogmatic approach to Christianity, to consider it a kind of Christianity, a kind of new, loony-fringe cultic kind of Christianity… do you know what the loony fringe is?… is absolutely fallacious.