What’s all this born again stuff?

Born again is a New Testament term. It describes the beginning of the new life that God gives us. But there are different views on it. Some use it to describe a new start that they make in life. For example, someone with addiction problems might suddenly stop and undergo some sort of a conversion experience. It isn’t necessarily a conversion to Christianity. 

Catholics believe that the new birth happens at baptism. And it’s true that in the New Testament, it is closely associated with baptism. The Holy Spirit would open someone’s heart to repent and believe. This is essentially what the new birth is. Then, they would express this in a tangible way by getting baptised. Perhaps it can be likened to a couple getting engaged. They fall in love, and then, they make a commitment. Next, the ring is bought, and a public announcement is made. But the crucial thing isn’t the ring or the announcement. It’s what happens in the heart. And just as falling in love can be sudden or part of a process, the work of the Holy Spirit in giving us that appetite to believe works in different ways in different people. Here are some verses on the New Birth. The encounter with Nicodemus in John 3 is the most well-known. It’s a reminder that the new birth isn’t just for people who are notorious sinners or whose lives have run into difficulty. Everyone needs to be born again.

John 1:12
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

Note: Notice how you need to become a child of God. By nature, we are all God’s creatures, but we are not all God’s children.

John 3:3
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

John 3:7-8
You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

2 Cor 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

Titus 3:4-7
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

James 1:18
He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

1 Pet 1:23
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

So, when you hear an evangelical say that they were born again on a certain date, they are referring to when they committed their life to Christ. But perhaps it happened sooner, like an engagement, there might be a public announcement, but it all had its beginnings much earlier. It’s a bit of a mystery, but the important thing is that it happened.

Regarding, baptizing babies, I was baptized as a baby. I see this as a commitment by my parents, and by the church, to bring me up to know and love God. If we pray to God for our children and work towards having that prayer answered, we can hope that God will answer our prayers. But as I grew older, I found so many baptized people (including myself at times) had very little interest in Christianity. I used to blame this on Catholicism, but it can happen in any denomination. 

In Ireland, evangelical Christians are a relatively small community. If you go into a Baptist church of 50 or 100 people, you can expect them to be serious minded and at least aspiring to holy living. They won’t see you as a “Holy Joe” if you have a love for reading the Bible and singing hymns. But in other parts of the world, things are very different. Maybe most people in a region are members of big Baptist churches. You might see very little spiritual commitment. And the churches mightn’t even be evangelical. Martin Luther King was a Baptist, but I don’t think he was particularly evangelical in his thinking. Neither were many of the white Baptists, who resisted the change he espoused. Even if a denomination has spiritual beginnings, as it grows, and as new generations are born and brought up in it, it can drift from its earlier principles. That’s why Irish Baptist churches, will interview people before baptism and church membership to make sure they really are born again. And they have managed to stay evangelical, which is more than can be said for many Baptist churches in the UK and USA and elsewhere. 

Anyway, getting back to baptism, I was baptized as a believer shortly after my conversion. I consider this my proper baptism. Some evangelicals do practice infant baptism, but I don’t think any of them would say that they are making the infant a true Christian by baptizing them. Others have a dedication service for parents with new babies, where the church celebrates the birth of the baby and commits to encouraging that child to respond to the gospel message as he or she grows up and learns about Jesus. It’s not baptism, but it’s something similar to infant baptism.

This raises the question of when a person is capable of being born again. Some Baptist churches prefer to wait until a person is out of childhood before baptizing them. They don’t want people to be baptized just because their parents want it or because the church expects it. But then again, a child is capable of believing in Jesus. They might be believing it because their parents told them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t have real faith. The Bible says that John the Baptist was full of the Holy Spirit even before he was born. A child might die early in life or even before birth. Although the Bible doesn’t explicitly tell us what happens to that child, even very traditional evangelicals such as C.H. Spurgeon believe that God can apply the salvation that Jesus won on the cross for us to children, particularly if he is going to call them home early in life. One of my favorite songs as a child was Suffer Little Children, recorded in my home city of Cork. 

The Catholic church does have confirmation. What should happen then, is that the individual publicly affirms their faith and commits to following Christ. But in practice, for many it’s just a ceremony where you get a nice suit and get money off your relatives. It’s a bit better in the Anglican church, where the individual chooses when to get confirmed. Evangelical, John Stott, wrote a book addressed to candidates going for confirmation; Your Confirmation.

In the Catholic church, at least in my experience, the whole class in school gets confirmed together. Also, although I do cherish the fact that the teacher walked us through the Gospels and the Book of Acts in the run up to our confirmation, for me, even then, there was a little bit too much of the notion of standing up for the Roman Catholic faith in it. I would have preferred more of a focus on Christ himself. 

But to conclude, whatever our differences in theology and practice, the important thing is that we ensure that we are truly born again. If you have any doubts, what’s to stop you from praying to God, saying something like: “Lord, I’m confused about all this, but the very fact that I’m concerned is an indication that you are working in my life. I repent of all my sins, I trust in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ for my salvation, and I commit myself to learning to love you and others for the rest of my life on earth.”

Another common misunderstanding of being born again is that it means that you’ll be transformed into an entirely different person or that you’ll suddenly become a wonderful example of a Christian. That can happen, but everyone is different. It’s a little like a natural birth; it’s the beginning of a lifelong process. When we are born again, for many there will be some immediate changes. In my own case, I stopped using bad language (which I’d never been able to do before that), and I started telling people about my faith. I gave away all my punk rock/new wave records (and bought some of them again in later years 😀). And I started attending an evangelical church, where others would help me to grow in my faith. In short, I was trying to shake off the influences that discouraged me from living the Christian life and embrace good influences.

This was a huge step for me at the time. But in a lot of ways, I was disappointed with my progress. I still am. And I think that’s the way it should be. Think about the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. We need to be realistic about our progress, or lack of progress. As the U2 song goes, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. The only danger here is that, if we have low expectations of ourselves, it can lead to a careless lifestyle, where we use the fact that we are only human to excuse ourselves. 

As Christians, we should delight in our progress, however little. It can help to motivate us. So, in a sense, if the Pharisee had been sincere, it would have been good to thank God for the progress he had made and have high expectations of himself – like the writer of Psalm 26, who has a policy of being holy. In reality, maybe we’ll be a mixture of both. We’ll thank God for our progress, but we’re always reminded of our faults and that we’d never get to heaven on our own merits. Evangelicals believe that we’re saved by faith alone. Catholics believe that it’s faith and works, but some Catholics do emphasize that good works are more a confirmation of our faith, which is what evangelicals believe.