When we study our Lord Jesus Christ in the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), one of the first things that stands out for many Christians is the countless miracles that accompanied His life and ministry. Even His birth is accompanied by a great miracle that the Holy Spirit performed in conceiving a child in the womb of a virgin by the name of Mary, and that the Child she bore was none other than Immanuel (“God with us”). When Jesus began His earthly ministry, He was voluntarily baptized by John, and as He was coming up out of the water, another great miracle took place. As the gospel writer recorded, “After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.’” (Matthew 3:16-17).

The very first miracle that Jesus performed in His ministry was when He turned water into wine while at a wedding in Cana of Galilee (see John 2:1-11). From that time on, right up to His final miracle just days before His crucifixion, He performed countless miracles, including healing the sick and lame, opening the eyes of the blind, giving hearing to the deaf, and so on. The last miracle He performed shortly before His death was undoubtedly the culminating miracle of the last 3½ years, namely the raising of Lazarus after being dead for four days (see John 11:38-46). These miracles, as amazing as I’m sure they would have been to behold and participate in, were signs that were manifestations of Christ’s glory, while also pointing us toward an even greater spiritual reality that our Lord was teaching us. Whether it was turning water into wine or raising Lazarus from the dead, we see a constant theme running through all the miracles of Christ like a thread woven through a fabric: we were once a certain way, but Jesus transforms us into something completely different! This is what our salvation is all about. We were once dead in our trespasses, guilty law-breakers in the eyes of God; but Jesus raised us up to new life in Him so that we are no longer under the law but under grace (Romans 6:14). Our salvation in Christ is the reality that all of His miracles were pointing towards, and so the new birth is by definition an even greater miracle!

This brings us to our topic for today: the miracle of the new birth. Jesus Himself taught directly about the new birth in His conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 and said these remarkable words when describing it, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into 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 be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 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.’” (v. 5-8). When we think about our physical birth, we understand that it was an event in our lives that we had absolutely no control over. As far as we were concerned, we went from the darkness of our mothers’ wombs to a whole new world all because of the external forces at play. We did not voluntarily leave the womb ourselves. Our spiritual birth, likewise, was an event in our lives that we had absolutely no control over. As far as we were concerned, we were once in our darkness, living only for ourselves and fulfilling our carnal desires. Then, one day, everything changed, and we now have a new life all wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, we had no ability to voluntarily leave our sinful state on our own; God was the one who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9), and in the words of Paul, we have been raised up with Christ (Colossians 3:1).

The miracle of the new birth is indeed miraculous because it is a work that only God can do in our lives. Only God can take a person who is dead in his sins and give him new life. We symbolize this reality every time a believer gets baptized. Baptism is a beautiful means of grace that God has given the Church to be constantly reminded of the goodness of our Lord when He performed that same miracle in each and every one of us. It is such a profound miracle that the Bible describes this gracious act of God in a myriad of ways: regeneration (Titus 3:5), circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:29), a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), conversion (Psalm 51:13, Matthew 18:3), etc. Each of these terms describe slightly different facets and emphases of all that takes place in the new birth, but the term regeneration is what will be most frequently used throughout this series as a shorthand way of summarizing everything that the other terms encapsulate in regards to what it truly means to be born again.

Regeneration is a glorious miracle that the Holy Spirit performs in our lives, but what does that have to do with the doctrine of irresistible grace? We will seek to further elaborate on the implications of this later in this series, but in short, God is constantly calling all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30), but only those whose hearts have been regenerated by the Spirit respond to the gospel with true, saving faith. To put it succinctly, regeneration precedes faith. A person with a new heart will have new desires, no longer wishing to be hardhearted and callous towards the call of the gospel, but instead is drawn by the wonder and awe of God’s saving grace. In other words, he can no longer resist that demonstration of grace, hence the term irresistible grace. But many non-reformed Christians reject the notion that regeneration must precede our faith, citing passages such as John 3:16, Acts 2:38, Romans 10:9, and a handful of others that seemingly support the notion that faith precedes regeneration. While these passages may seem at first glance to be in support of a faith-precedes-regeneration ordo salutis (order of salvation), there is another way to interpret those passages that would be perfectly consistent with what Scripture clearly teaches concerning our complete inability to do any righteous deeds, including repentance and faith, apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Notice that in all these seemingly troublesome passages, the phraseology typically goes something like this: “Do X, and you will be saved”. There is a rather simple solution to our conundrum: don’t read those passages as a literal rendering of the ordo salutis. In none of those instances are the writers of Scripture saying, “Do X first, and you get saved afterwards”. Instead, it is best to read those passages in this manner: “Do X, which will be evidence that you are saved.”

While some passages of Scripture that pose a challenge to the doctrine of irresistible grace are relatively easy to resolve, such as the ones just mentioned, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other difficult passages that require much more work to harmonize with the regeneration-precedes-faith ordo salutis. Next time, we will take a closer look at the account of Stephen’s sermon that is recorded in Acts 7, as many have struggled with accepting the doctrine of irresistible grace because of that very passage.