Birth, Death And Rebirth

The Apostle Peter wrote to the lost sheep of the house of Israel declaring that to obtain eternal life we must be born again… since by nature we were born but to die.

“Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away. But the Word of the Lord endureth forever, and this is the Word which by the gospel is preached unto you” (I Pet. 1:23-25).

Our Lord emphasized this same fact to the Pharisee Nicodemus, a “ruler of the Jews” in His day. That which is born of the flesh,” He said, “is flesh… Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again” (John 3:6-7).

Nicodemus was devoutly religious according to Moses Law that was given to Israel, and he even recognized Christ as “a teacher come from God” (John 3:2). But Nicodemus was not saved by Christ’s life. He had not been “born of the Spirit,” and “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” even though it is “religious flesh.” Therefore the flesh must die. Nicodemus, like many sincerely religious people today, needed to be born againof the Spirit, by faith in the Word, of which “the Spirit” is the Author. Jesus said “my words are spirit and they are life.”

“It is the spirit that quickeneth (gives life); the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:63)

Some suppose that Paul did not teach the new birth, but they are wrong. He taught it consistently, and nowhere more is it more than in Titus 3:5, where he wrote by divine inspiration using another word for re-birth “regeneration.”

“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration [re-birth] and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”