This is the next in the ongoing blog-series on "The New Birth"
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church
When God chooses to rebirth a man, that person will most definitely be changed. None can resist the powerful working of God. God has ordained all things that will ever happen and all things will come about precisely and perfectly the way that He foreordained it to happen. Nothing will ever remain unfulfilled. No person will ever die unconverted if God has elected them. One who is born again -- or, born from above -- is drawn to Christ by God alone (John 6:44). Indeed, it is the power of God that draws sinners to salvation. All of this affirms the reality that the regeneration that God imparts to sinners is irresistible.
The irresistibility of the new birth is seen, proven, and extolled in the following headings.
1) The picture of regeneration. Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in John 3 and provided a very simple illustration of the new birth. The illustration was simple, straightforward, taken from nature, and one that Nicodemus certainly could understand. Quite simply, the “wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Many points come to the surface in a careful study of this verse. But, specifically, one should understand the simple picture that Jesus uses to illustrate regeneration. Jesus likens the new birth to wind. Wind blows wherever it wishes and none can resist it. Wind is invisible, it is powerful, it is irresistible, it is beyond human control. That is exactly what Jesus conveys with this image. In the same way that people do not know where wind comes from nor where wind is going, so it is with the new birth. No one can determine where it comes from nor where it is going. It is an invisible, powerful, divine, supernatural, instantaneous, beyond-human-control event. The picture of new birth is like the wind, something that is far beyond the reach and grasp of mere human hands as it far exceeds the human grasp.
2) The perversion of mankind. Jesus description of the new birth unveils, also, the perversion of mankind. If the new birth is an irresistible working of God that happens to the sinner, it emphasizes the utter perversion of all men. That is, men -- all humans -- desperately need this new birth to escape the wrath of God. But no man can do this to themselves. No man has the power or the ability to do it. Man is too perverted, too warped, too deceived, too in love with himself.
3) The power of God. That Jesus illustrates the new birth with wind blowing wherever it wishes also shows the power of God. Just as God brings the wind, directs the wind, controls the wind, removes the wind, commands the wind, and stills the wind, so it is the same power of God that brings this regeneration to spiritually dead sinners. The new birth comes from God and it glorifies the unrivaled, unequaled, unfathomable, and untiring power of God.
4) The preeminence of conversion. If the new birth is a gift from God imparted to the sinner, then it extols the preeminence of this miraculous event. The sinner does not want it; he’s dead. But God, in grace and in power, brings the new birth to dead sinners irresistibly and gloriously!
Posts
