The Gomez Blog

If you listen to me teach or preach long enough, you’ll soon realize that C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors.  Mere Christianity is probably the book I quote most often and I’ll go ahead and offer some of his thinking here.  We were looking at Ephesians 2 and the problem of sin.  We are dead in sins and unable to help ourselves.  As Lewis says, “In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.”  But don’t misconstrue Lewis as saying man can lay down his arms in repentance.  He goes on to say, “In fact, it needs a good man to repent.  And here’s the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly.  The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it.  The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person – and he would not need it.”

The key here is the idea that repentance and faith are good things that please God.  But Romans taught us that “no one does good, not even one.”  So while we have this need to do a good thing, repentance, we find in ourselves the inability to do anything good.  And as Lewis aptly puts it, “The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person – and he would not need it.”

In order for me to rightly respond to God, He needs to do something in me first.  This is what Christ taught Nicodemus in John 3.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  John 1 helps us understand this new birth by explaining that those who believed “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”  The new birth that Christ told Nicodemus about, was an act of God that was explained in the Old Testament, that Nicodemus should have understood.

In John 3:5, Christ says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

So Christ elaborates on the new birth, or regeneration.  First of all, one must be born of water and the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God.  What is Christ referring to when He uses the phrase “water and the Spirit”?  Some have postulated baptism is in view here and that this, along with other proof-texts, show the necessity of baptism for salvation.  However, baptismal regeneration is nowhere in view in the passage.  Christ doesn’t mention baptism specifically in the passage.  In fact, later on in the passage He makes belief the key ingredient between condemned and not condemned (John 3:18) without mentioning baptism at all.

Others have suggested the water is referring to physical birth, as in a woman’s water breaking during labor.  They would argue that Christ contrasts a fleshly, or physical, birth versus a Spiritual birth in verse 6.  So you must be born physically and then born spiritually in order to enter the kingdom of God.  I don’t have a problem with this view, but it seems odd that Christ would use the phrase born of water to refer to physical birth.  I can not find anywhere else in Scripture where this type of phrase is used.  So what does it mean?

I think “born of water and the Spirit” should be viewed as one thing.  The key, to me, is that Nicodemus immediately asks, “How can these things be?”  To which Christ replies, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”  In other words, Nicodemus should have understood the phrases Christ was using.  So where do we see water used in this type of context in the Old Testament that Nicodemus should have been familiar with.

The first passage that comes to mind, and should have come to mind for Nicodemus, is Ezekiel 36.  Here Ezekiel prophesies of a time where God would give men a new heart by the Spirit.  The process is described this way:  “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”  This passage is indicative of the new birth, having your heart of stone removed and a heart of flesh that is tender to God put in its place.  So the water could be referring to the cleansing water of the Spirit  So Christ is essentially saying, “Unless one is born of the cleansing water that cleanses you from all your uncleanness and has My Spirit placed within you, you can not see the kingdom of God.”

The second key part of this passage is the metaphor of the wind.  MacArthur has some good thoughts on this verse:  “Jesus’ point was that just as the wind cannot be controlled or understood by human beings but its effects can be witnessed, so also it is with the Holy Spirit.  He cannot be controlled or understood, but the proof of His work is apparent.  Where the Spirit works, there is undeniable and unmistakable evidence.”

Now, we see that we are dead in sins and need a rebirth to enter the kingdom of God.  That rebirth is spiritual and enacted by the Holy Spirit, whom we cannot control.  It is not of man’s will that it happens (John 1:13).  Lets move back to Ephesians 2 to try to wrap this all together.

Ephesians 2:1-3 showed us our problem: spiritual death which is slavery to sin.  Verse 4 rescues us from our hopelessness.  It says, “But God, being rich in mercy, becaus of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. . . .”  Let’s unpack this a bit.

First, the remedy to our spiritual death and slavery to sin is an act of God.  God is the subject of the long sentence Paul provides us with here.  It is God Who is active in our coming to spiritual life.  And it is through His rich mercy.  Verses 1-3 show us how condemned we are and how worthy of judgment we are.  Yet it is God’s mercy which frees us from our deserved condemnation.  And this mercy is based on “the great love wherewith He loved us.”

Secondly, the passage emphasizes our spiritual death.  “Even when we were dead in our trespasses. . . .”  We were still in a state of rebellion to God.  We were still “following the course of this world”, living “in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. . . .”  So this is not God meeting us halfway.  This is not God responding to our decision.  This is not us coming to God in repentance and Him granting new life.  This is God acting in spite of our present rebellion to Him.

Third, the action that God does is He “made us alive together with Christ.”  This is the new birth.  This is placing us in the family of God so that we are joint-heirs with Christ and God will “show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”  Despite our rebellion toward God and slavery to sin, God made us alive.  He took our stony heart and gave us a heart of flesh.  God establishes Himself in this passage as the primary active agent in our salvation.  Paul explains this further in the classic passage we all have memorized, verses 8-9:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  It is God’s grace in our lives, working through the mechanism of faith that produces salvation in us.  And Paul emphasizes that this is not our own doing.  What does he mean by “this”?  He could be referring to faith.  Or he could be referring to the whole process.  Either way, he emphasizes that salvation is not something you do, but rather something you receive (“the gift of God”).

This passage and the John 3 passage obliterate the idea that rebirth or regeneration is something we do.  When we properly understand our standing before God, that of a rebel, we understand our need for God to accomplish something in us that we couldn’t work up in ourselves.  I would be interested in seeing how baptismal regenerationists (I think I just made up that term) defend their view in light of these passages.

These two passages, along with many others, are why I take a monergistic view of salvation.  Salvation is all of God and is accomplished based on the counsel of His will, according to the purpose of Him Who works all things according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1).  In love, He has predestined us to the adoption of sons and He accomplished this salvation while we were spiritually dead and in rebellion to Him.  This overview of salvation comprises what are referred to as total depravity, unconditional election, and the Spirit’s effectual call.  It leads to a discussion of the atonement which we will look at later.

Tagged as Salvation + Categorized as Theology, Calvinism, Theology