The Need for the New Birth

Observing the failure of many Jews in the first century to believe in Jesus, the Apostle Paul pointed out how the prophet Isaiah centuries earlier had predicted the Jews’ hardness of heart and that God would use the preaching of the truth to harden their hearts further (Acts 28:23–28; see Isa. 6:8–10). The Lord, indeed, is sovereign over the hearts of men, and this sovereignty is seen not only in His work to harden sinners to hate Him but also in what we commonly call His blessing of regeneration—His work to change the hearts of sinners to trust and love Him. As we approach the end of our study of the book of Acts, we will pause our look at Luke’s record of the early church to consider the Bible’s teaching on regeneration. Dr. R.C. Sproul’s teaching series Born Again will guide our study.

The term regeneration may be unfamiliar to many people, but it is hard to escape the more familiar phrase born again, which is another way to talk about regeneration. The phrase is so ubiquitous that it is not even associated only with Christianity anymore, at least not in the United States. For example, the 2019 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that nearly 20 percent of Muslims in the United States identify as “born again” or “evangelical.” The phrase is embraced by or used to describe so many different groups of people that one hardly knows what a person means when he uses such descriptors.

By looking to the Scriptures, we can cut through some of the confusion on this topic. Fundamentally, all Christians must have some view of what it means to be “born again”—to be regenerated by God—because Jesus Himself teaches that we all need to be “born again” (John 3:1–21). He proclaimed this truth to Nicodemus, explaining that one cannot see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (v. 3). Our Lord was not teaching Nicodemus anything new, and He expected Nicodemus to understand this need of regeneration for salvation, since earlier prophets had proclaimed it (see Ezek. 11:19–20).

Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and many Pharisees—even many other ordinary Jews—believed that they were automatically in a state of salvation because they had Abraham as an ancestor according to the flesh (Luke 3:1–9). Family ties have never guaranteed salvation, however, but only the circumcision of the heart (see Deut. 30:6). Without regeneration, we cannot have eternal life.