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At the Anlaby Churches I’ve recently given a series of sermons on the work of the Holy Spirit, launching off from Jesus’s words in the Upper Room (John 14-16). We moved on to consider other aspects of the Spirit’s work, including the Spirit’s work in the new birth of a Christian believer. In this post I’ll explore the role of the Holy Spirit in the New Birth; then in the post to come, the Spirit’s role in transforming believers.

The Spirit brings about the New Birth

We contribute nothing

In the New Testament there is no clearer illustration of the need for a new birth than in Jesus’s encounter with Nicodemus (John 3:1-8). Nicodemus was a highly respected religious teacher and leader. If anyone had an automatic place in God’s kingdom, it would surely be him. Today we might think of the upstanding Member of Parliament  who’s been going to church all their life; the Vicar or the Bishop.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, recognising that he is special (verse 2). He’s seeking the truth, and he wants to know more about who Jesus is, why he’s come and how he fits in to God’s kingdom. We might think this is a perfect opportunity for Jesus to be recognised by the establishment – equivalent to an invitation to the house of Lords or the house of Bishops. But as always Jesus is more concerned about the welfare of the person in front him, and he lovingly states the spiritual reality:

Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

John 3:3

Let’s not play games Nicodemus. You’re not even part of God’s kingdom; and you can’t be in God’s kingdom unless you’re born again. And then he clarifies:

You must be born again.

John 3:7

What’s distinctive about being born? Perhaps the most obvious answer is that we don’t play an active role – it is something that happens to us. When I witnessed my 3 children being born it was very obvious – Alice did all the work, and they contributed nothing. And Jesus is saying this is how a person enters the kingdom of God – they experience a new birth, and they contribute nothing. As Jesus says in verse 8, no human can control the Spirit of God – he does what he chooses, including choose who to cause to be born again.

Spirit gives birth to spirit

Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

John 3:5-6

The Spirit gives birth to spirit. That is, the second birth is a spiritual birth – being brought to life spiritually. Our first birth is physical; our second birth is spiritual. And only the Holy Spirit can cause someone to be born spiritually. In speaking about water Jesus is probably referring back to Ezekiel 36:25-27 where God promises to wash his people with water and give them his Spirit (see below).

What does the Holy Spirit do in the New Birth?

Brings us from death to life

In Ephesians 2 Paul tells his readers why we need to be born spiritually:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

Ephesians 2:1-3

Paul tells the Ephesians that they were dead in their transgressions and sins – that is, the self-focused, anti-God rebellion that is in our hearts. All of us have this disease (though some of us are better at hiding it than others.) And it means that we’re spiritually dead. Of course the Ephesians aren’t physically dead; but spiritually they are. And it goes without saying that dead people can’t do anything to save or resurrect themselves – just as babies in the womb can’t do anything.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Ephesians 2:4-5

But God – these are two of the most wonderful words in the Bible. We couldn’t do anything; but God did everything. Christ died for us on the cross, winning our salvation; and God raised us individually to new spiritual life with Christ. How did he do it?

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 Saviour…

Titus 3:5-6

We might be asking: Which comes first – our faith and repentance; or the new birth by the Holy Spirit? If it’s true that we were spiritually dead then the new birth by the Spirit must come first. The Holy Spirit works in a person and causes them to have faith, and to repent. Faith and repentance are themselves a gift of God given by the Holy Spirit.  

Gives us God

Jesus famously said to his disciples

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

John 14:16-18

In the new birth the Spirit comes to dwell in us; and through him Christ himself comes to dwell in us, so that we are no longer orphans. Thus God gives us himself.

This also reminds us that all we’re considering in this post is only possible because the believer is ‘in Christ’ – part of the vine (John 15:1-8). And the vine is a helpful image in this context because we might think of the Spirit as the sap which connects Christ and his people.

Transforms our whole being

When a person is born again, they have the Spirit, and so they have God.

But we can say even more than this – because when the Spirit comes into a believer, he transforms our whole being. 

In the Old Testament the prophet Ezekiel looks forward to the coming of the Spirit with these words:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 36:25-27

Most of the book of Ezekiel is about how God is going to send his people into exile because of their sin. But towards the end of the book God looks beyond the immediate future to a more distant future and what he is going to do so that he can keep his promise to the descendants of Abraham and King David.

In the passage just quoted, God promises two things: a new spirit – the Holy Spirit; and a new heart. He promises that he will exchange their hard hearts of stone for soft hearts of flesh. ‘The heart’ in the Old Testament is the whole being – the self, the soul. God’s promising that the whole being of his people will be transformed.

Jonathan Edwards writes:

The Spirit of God is given to the true saints to dwell in them, as his proper lasting abode; and to influence their hearts, as a principle of new nature, or as a divine supernatural spring of life and action. The Scriptures represent the Holy Spirit, not only as moving, and occasionally influencing the saints, but as dwelling in them as his temple, his proper abode, and everlasting dwelling place (I Corinthians 3:16, II Corinthians 6:16, John 14:16–17). And he is represented as being there so united to the faculties of the soul, that he becomes there a principle or spring of new nature and life.

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections

The Spirit doesn’t only come into and dwell in a person; he is united to the faculties of the soul, becoming ‘a spring of new nature’ and so transforming them.

What makes up the soul / whole being?

But what makes up the soul – the whole being that the Spirit renews? In this blog I have often returned to the writings of Jonathan Edwards which I find help in many ways, so let’s consider his thought in this area.1 Edwards writes that there are two main things that the soul does:

  • Understanding / mind – First, the soul understands things; it builds up knowledge of the world and the self and God. We might talk about the mind, and thinking.
  • Affections / Inclinations / heart – Second, the soul has inclinations towards certain things: it desires them. This is what Edwards calls our affections; in our culture today we might talk about the heart which desires things. (Notice our culture’s use of the word ‘heart’ is different from Ezekiel’s meaning, which is equivalent to the whole being or soul).

To help us understand the difference between the understanding and the affections Edwards uses the example of honey. It’s possible to know in your mind that honey is sweet without ever having tasted it. Perhaps you read in a book or someone tells you “honey – it’s sweet, it’s delicious – you should try it!” This is understanding that honey is sweet. But that is very different from getting a teaspoon of honey and eating it and tasting the delicious delectable sweetness; and so loving it and desiring it.

  • Will – Edwards also talks about the will as being an outflow of the affections. Once I’ve tasted honey and developed an affection for it I might choose to go out and buy a whole crateful – or perhaps a couple of beehives.

So we have the understanding, the affections and the will. And all of these are renewed in the new birth.

Transforming our Affections – A new spiritual sense – ‘Sense of the heart’

We begin with the affections because that is key: What we desire is what drives us. Thomas Cranmer wrote:

What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies.

Thomas Cranmer

Sometimes we think the understanding is most important; but actually, if we desire something with our hearts we will find a way to justify it with our minds.

When a person experiences the new birth, the Spirit changes our affections – what we desire – from being focused on the world and its pleasures and beauty, to being focused on God and his beauty and the pleasures he brings. God’s beauty and holiness become more desirable to us than the pleasures and beauties of the world.

How does the Spirit do this? Jonathan Edwards writes about a ‘new spiritual sense’:

There is a new inward perception or sensation of (the believers’) minds, entirely different in its nature and kind, from anything that ever their minds were the subjects of before they were sanctified.

Jonathan Edwards

We often speak of five senses that every human being has – hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch – and we sometimes speak of a ‘sixth sense’. Edwards is writing about a new spiritual ‘sense’ that is given to the believer. This new sense enables us to experience spiritual reality, and most of all the beauty of God. Edwards writes:

The first effect of the power of God in the heart in regeneration, is to give the heart a Divine taste or sense; to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and sweetness of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature.

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections

When we are born again we have a new sense of the glory and the beauty of God and his truth that we didn’t have before. And this new sense isn’t limited to the affections – to what we desire – but it’s mainly directed towards them in that before we were born again we might have known that God was holy and good – but we didn’t delight in that. In fact it may have had the opposite effect, terrifying us because outside of Christ this holy God was opposed to us and we were opposed to him.

Transforming our ‘Mind’ / understanding – Able to see spiritual truth / understand God’s word

The Spirit also renews the mind so that we can understand God’s word. Before I was born again I couldn’t understand the Bible. I remember trying to read the book of 1 Peter, and crying out to God to show me what it meant. A few months later I was born again – God sent his Spirit into my heart and he answered my prayer. Of course I didn’t understand everything straight away – and I still don’t! – but spiritual truth made sense to me in a way that it hadn’t before. In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul writes:

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:10-16

In other words, Paul explains ‘spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words’ (verse 13), and the person without the Spirit cannot accept or understand those things (verse 14). But verses 15-16 make it clear that the person with the Spirit is able to understand. And we need to understand the Word of God, for it is the fuel for the fire of the affections. Edwards writes:

The more you have of a rational knowledge of the things of the gospel, the more opportunity will there be, when the Spirit shall be breathed into your heart, to see the excellency of these things and to taste the sweetness of them.

Jonathan Edwards, The Importance and Advantage of a thorough knowledge of divine truth

God has spring-loaded the content of the Bible with power to transform lives and fill them with fresh delight.

Strachan and Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards on the Good Life

As we read the Bible we get a sight of God’s glory and beauty – and that fuels our affections, our love of God and our longing to know him, to be with him, to serve him  and to love him. The understanding and the affections  – the mind and the heart – work together: The Spirit takes the Bible and through the understanding he fuels the affections so that our desire is more and more for God and his glory.

Transforming our ‘Will’ – New principle / ability to obey

Finally, the Spirit transforms the will – and we’ll explore this in more detail in the next post.

So what?

You must be born again

Jesus says “you must be born again.” It’s worth each of us pausing to ask the question – “Have I been born again?”

How do I know the answer to that question? Ask yourself these questions: Do I desire to know God and his beauty and pleasures more than the beauty and pleasures of the world? Have I been given insight into the Bible? Am I seeking to live for God rather than myself? And if you’re not sure – ask God to cause you to be born again! And he will! Remember those words of Jesus:

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Luke 11:11-13

Be filled with the Spirit

The apostle Paul writes “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit…” (Ephesians 5:18). Ask your Father to fill you with his Spirit daily – and he will. Once we appreciate the massive impact the Spirit has on our hearts, minds and wills – and that he continues to have – we will be desperate for him to fill us, that we might know, love, serve, and obey and become more like him day by day.

Note:

1, What follows is developed further in these posts:

Emotions / Thinking about the whole being (Affections, understanding, will) – https://imperfect-pastor.com/2022/12/10/the-role-of-affections-emotion-in-the-christian-life/

New sense of the heart – https://imperfect-pastor.com/2023/07/05/a-new-sense-of-the-heart/