"There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews;

"The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

"Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

"Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?

"Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of 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.

"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

"Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

"Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?"—John 3:1-10.

The subject under consideration is not one that is unfamiliar by any means. It is, perhaps, one of the most familiar subjects in all the Book of God—that is, the New Birth. I will have to admit, however, that in these modern days very rarely do you ever hear a sermon on the New Birth; for the simple reason that a "social gospel" is being proclaimed and people are believing and accepting it. There is nothing in the world more damaging to the cause of Jesus Christ than the "social gospel" that is being preached today. It sounds good to the alien sinner; it is certainly good news to them; it tickles their EARS, but it damns their SOULS.

If the Bible is plain on any subject that we might name this morning, it is certainly plain on the doctrine of the New Birth, and I forewarn you that the New Birth is a doctrinal subject; it is filled with the great doctrines of Jesus. It is needed, perhaps, in this hour of skepticism and unbelief more than it has ever been needed across 6,000 years of human history.

The reason that the New Birth is not being preached more today is because people rebel at the idea of the miraculous, denouncing and denying that God works a work in the human heart. It seems from the false premise that salvation is dependent upon a man’s character rather than the specific, direct work of God.

I believe, with all my heart, that if we would lay aside every preconceived idea and notion and with open hearts and minds examine these verses that I have read, accepting the truth of them, believing what Jesus Christ here tells us, we will leave this building this morning fortified against skepticism and doubts, grateful for this marvelous passage in the Book of God; rejoicing in the fact that we, as believers in Christ Jesus, the Lord, are twice born.

A great deal has been said about this third chapter of the Gospel according to John which is not true. First of all, I want you to notice WHY Nicodemus came to Jesus in the first place. Now we are not concerned with the time element that becomes involved (he came to Jesus by night), but we are concerned with the PURPOSE of the visit itself.

Only recently I noticed an editorial on "Why Nicodemus Came To Jesus" in a religious paper, and the writer said this: "Nicodemus came to Jesus to ask of Jesus the way of life." Now there isn’t anything further from the truth than that. Here was a man of noble birth, steeped in the traditions of the Jews, who had completely gotten away from the spiritual side of the law; he was only concerned and only concerned himself with the moral issues involved in the law itself. The spiritual precepts set forth in the teachings of the law were overlooked and completely forgotten. He came to Jesus to court the favour of the Master and that ONLY. He commended Him for performing the great miracles that He had performed, and here is what he said: "We know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles which thou doest, except God be with him" (John 3:2).

Where is the question? Where is the inquiry? Where do you find that Nicodemus asked the Master, "Lord, what about the way of life; will you tell it to me?"

The Bible is silent on that. It is foolhardy to read in the Word of God something that the Word of God doesn’t say. The mind of the Spirit knew what He wanted us to learn from these passages, and that which He wanted us to learn is set forth in words easy to be understood. Therefore, Nicodemus came to court the favour of Jesus, and offered to Him words of praise and commendation.

Then I want you to notice the tactfulness of Jesus—those of you who do personal work can learn something from this. The Lord Jesus Christ, who knows all there is to know about us, knows our uprisings and our down sittings, knows the end from the beginning, and knows the thoughts and intents of our hearts, knew that the thing closest to the heart of Nicodemus was not his WEALTH, not his PRESTIGE because of the office he held, but the thing closest to the heart of Nicodemus was his BIRTH, his background. He was a descendant of the great patriot—he was a man, therefore, of noble birth, and being a man of noble birth, he exulted in that fact; thus, Jesus knowing his heart, began to speak to him concerning a birth.

So we see the tactfulness of Jesus. When He talked to a man who derived his livelihood from the business of fishing, He talked to him about fishing—only on a SPIRITUAL plane. When He talked to a man about a spiritual thing He searched the background of that man, reading his heart, and He would turn that which was closest to the man’s heart into a spiritual fact; thus, gaining the man’s attention and everlasting gratitude. To the rich man, He talked about riches; to the poor man, He talked about poverty, that He might win him, but always He directed His conversation in the channels of a spiritual nature just as He did here in the third chapter of John.

Here in the text, Jesus turns to Nicodemus and has this to say: "Ye must be born again; you have an illustrious background; you are a descendant of one of the twelve spies who spied out the land and gave an honest and true report. You have much of which to be proud, but in spite of your illustrious background, your good morals, ye need to experience another BIRTH."

Jesus said, "Ye must, YE MUST be born again." And in the third verse of the text: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." It makes no difference, beloved, how good you appear to be; it makes no difference about your background, what family you are from, Jesus would come to you and say, "Ye must be born again." There is no substitute for the New Birth. May I say, beloved, that there are no substitutes for the cardinal doctrines of the Book of God. When Jesus said, "Ye MUST be born again," He meant just exactly what He said. There is no evading the truth; there is no denying the fact of the necessity of the New Birth. Men need not close their eyes to this great fundamental truth; they must face the inevitable fact that the New Birth is necessary; it is ESSENTIAL.

In order for you to have lived in this world, you had to experience the birth that we call the birth of the flesh. Before you can live in the kingdom of God, you must experience the birth from God, the spiritual birth. Let me pause long enough here to throw this out for your consideration: did you do anything toward bringing yourself into the world? Did you have any part in your conception and birth? Certainly NOT. A power outside yourself, a power other than that which you had yourself, was the cause of your conception and your birth. Therefore, men cannot have any part in producing the NEW BIRTH; they cannot work their way into God’s creation. Regardless of how men try, regardless of the efforts they put forth, regardless of all their good intentions, they must be BORN again.

You can study the lives and characters of men, and you will not find a man in all the Book of God with a more illustrious background than Nicodemus, and yet Jesus said, "That is beside the point; ye must be born again."

Then we would notice the third thing this morning: what the New Birth is NOT. You know, many people get the mistaken idea that they can turn over a new leaf. In just a little over two months we begin a new year. On New Year’s Day people will make their resolutions. They will promise themselves: "I am going to be better this year; I’m going to quit drinking, gambling, cursing; I’m going to change thoroughly; I’m going to be a new person." And they actually mean that. But a few weeks after those New Year’s resolutions they drift right back into the same old rut, because they found out that the reformation of life wrought no satisfaction and no PEACE; there was something definitely lacking. So the New Birth is NOT the turning over of a new leaf. The New Birth is NOT New Year’s resolutions. The New Birth is NOT the reformation of life, as some would have you believe.

In 2 Peter 2, and in the closing verses of this remarkable chapter, the Apostle Peter is describing false teachers and prophets. He points out those who follow after these deceivers, and then the Apostle Peter said, "But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire" (2 Peter 2:22).

That is the CONSUMMATION of the reformation of life. Peter is discussing the person that tries to clean up and follow after that which teaches that salvation is by character; they make good resolutions; they try to reform their lives, but in only a little while, they are like the old "dog that turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

"But," somebody will say, "Brother Cox, that is a case of APOSTASY. Those people were actually saved and then they became lost."

I deny that. Since when does the Bible class God’s people as "dogs and hogs"? When you find in the Word of God where the Holy Spirit has designated God’s people as hogs and dogs, I will believe that apostasy is possible.

I have before me this morning C. I. Scofield’s reference Bible, containing the King James Version, put out by the Oxford Press. I think that C. I. Scofield’s Bible is a fine Bible. It is fine on how that men are saved; it is sound on the security of the believer in Christ; it is sound on the premillennial coming of the Divine Son of God, sound on the New Birth, but it is rotten to the core on the doctrine of the church. On church truth he missed the truth a country mile.

He speaks concerning the Lord’s church and talks constantly about the church’s apostasy, that the Lord’s church would apostatize. I don’t believe the first word of that—not the Lord’s church. You are going to have to agree with the Divine Son of God and accept what Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, 19, or disbelieve what the Master has said and accept the theorizing of men.

What did the Master say? Did He say that the church, His church, would apostatize? Did He say that His church would go so far from the truth that it would lose its identity? NO! He said, . . . . .upon this rock (Christ Himself) I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). And in Ephesians 3:21: "Unto him (that is God) be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without END. Amen." The Lord’s church apostatize? I hardly think so; for Jesus said, "The gates of hell shall NOT prevail against MY church." I believe that with all my heart. I believe that the council of the unseen world shall NOT prevail against the Lord’s church.

And then we would notice another thing that the New Birth is NOT: it is not the REFORMATION of life. May I repeat with emphasis: I would accept this as a strong passage teaching the individual case of apostasy (in 2 Peter 2:22) if God’s Book designated God’s people as hound "dogs and old sows that wallow in the mire." But here is exactly what the Apostle Peter is talking about: the person that made the RESOLUTION, reformed his life, quit his meanness and in a little while ran out of gas, did so because he didn’t have much to begin with. He REFORMED his life; he was not TRANSFORMED by Christ.

You can take an old sow, as the Proverb says, bring her into the parlor, cut her toe nails, trim her ears, paint her face, wash her until she smells like a baby; you can put powder all over her, wash and scrub her, clean her until she is cleaner than a human, put a ribbon around her neck and a few on her ears. She looks fine, but turn her loose and it won’t be three minutes until she is right back wallowing in the mire. WHY? Because it is her NATURE to do so. Her nature has not been changed in the least by all the cleaning on the outside. They washed her on the outside, painted her face, trimmed her hoofs, trimmed her ears, but her nature remained the same; she REMAINED a hog, and that is why she returned to the mud puddle. So it is with men, women, boys and girls who decide to clean up their lives. They join the church—that is all there is to it, they think—and in just a little while they go back as the "dog to his vomit and the sow to her wallowing in the mire." And it isn’t a case of APOSTASY, beloved, but it is a case of never having experienced the NEW BIRTH. Their NATURE has never been changed.

Now you might ask me the question this morning: "Brother Cox, what did Nicodemus mean?"

You know, I didn’t realize that people could err so much from the truth. The third chapter of John, first 10 verses, is just as plain as John 3:16. There is nothing difficult about it. There might be some things involved in the New Birth that you can’t understand, but as far as the DESCRIPTION laid down in the Book of God, there is nothing of a difficult nature about it. Yet I read one time where a man said that Nicodemus was so upset and disturbed because he didn’t understand the New Birth, inasmuch at this particular time, was the first he had ever heard about the New Birth, that Jesus had introduced a new doctrine the Jews had never heretofore known anything about.

Now this is modernism pure and simple, and actually, as far as I am personally concerned, that is rank infidelity. It depicts one of two things: either a person DISBELIEVES the Word of God or he has never READ it. Notice what the 10th verse of John 3 has to say: Jesus, when Nicodemus asked Him the question, "How can these things be?" said "Art thou a teacher of Israel and knowest NOT these things?"

Do you think for one moment of time that if Nicodemus had no way of knowing previous to this conversation he had with Jesus, that Jesus would have deliberately mocked and criticized him for not KNOWING something about which he could not have possibly known, had it not been TAUGHT? But it HAD been taught; it had been taught for 4,000 years. God introduced it in the Garden of Eden—the doctrine of the New Birth. The doctrine of the New Birth is just as old as mankind; every person that has ever been saved, or ever will be saved, was saved when he experienced the New Birth.

It makes no difference what people believe or say or think, there is no way for men to be saved apart and separate from the New Birth. Jesus makes it plain in the text; for three times He said, "Ye MUST be born again." There is no substitute for it. It is a spiritual truth, not a fleshly birth. Jesus tells us in John 3:6, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto thee, Ye must be born again.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Man, you know, is a triune being: he has a BODY, SOUL and SPIRIT. The body of man is that which makes him world-conscious; the soul of man is that which makes him self-conscious, or conscious of self, and the spirit of man makes him capable of being God-conscious, capable of communing with God. The spirit, that is the thing that is BORN of the Spirit of God, the spirit inside of man, that which you cannot see—the spiritual birth.

I cannot pass up this text, John 3:5, without commenting on it. Jesus, the second time, said to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."

I wish to drive home this fact concerning this text: First, last and always the way that men enter the kingdom of God is through the NEW BIRTH. He is born into the kingdom of God just as he is born into the family of God. But notice there are some people who say that the 5th verse means that men are BAPTIZED into the family of God. But men are baptized into the CHURCH, not the family or kingdom of God (1 Cor. 12:13).

But I want you to get this: the word "water" spoken of here in John 3:5 has no reference to literal water; it is used first; it precedes the word "spirit"; then, if you take it literally, man has to be baptized, and then he experiences the New Birth afterwards. Do you believe THAT? I DON’T; for the BIBLE doesn’t teach it. I want you to get it now. In the first place, BAPTISM is not a BIRTH and we are talking about a BIRTH. Where in all the Book of God can you find that baptism is a birth? BAPTISM is a BURIAL in water. Romans 6:4 says, "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." We are buried with Him in baptism into death.

Baptism, therefore, isn’t a BIRTH. If baptism were a birth then water would be the mother of the new born soul, but WATER isn’t my MOTHER, thank you! But get this now: WATER is used throughout the New Testament to illustrate the SPIRIT. In John 7:37-39, "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of LIVING WATER. (But this spake he of the SPIRIT, which they that BELIEVE on him should RECEIVE: for the Holy Spirit was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified)."

Therefore, water means the Spirit. So actually here is what Jesus said: "Except a man be born of water and (that word "and" is kai in the Greek, and it means EVEN) or even the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God."

Let us notice the verse in its entirety. "Except a man be born of water EVEN the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God."

I want you to notice the two AGENTS God uses in producing the New Birth. They both work harmoniously; you cannot separate one from the other. They both have their own office, that is, the WORD of God and the SPIRIT of God. God uses both agents to produce the New Birth, and God did not mean here in the text that He uses the Spirit as the only agent. He uses both the Word and the Spirit. Actually, the Holy Spirit is the agent and the Word is the instrument.

Then notice in the 16th verse that He speaks of "BELIEVERS." And we might ask the question: HOW do men BELIEVE? "So then faith cometh by HEARING, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). Paul writing to the Corinthian brethren said in 1 Corinthians 4:15, "For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the GOSPEL."

Again in 1 Peter 1:23, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever . . . This is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

And then in James 1:18, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of TRUTH, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures."

Thus, it takes both the SPIRIT of God and the WORD of God to produce the New Birth.

Then HOW do men, and WHEN, do they experience the New Birth? Men experience the New Birth through the operation of the Spirit and the Gospel. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

That whosoever BELIEVETH in him should not perish, but have eternal life . . . For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."—John 3:14, 15, 17.

But FAITH is the EFFECT of the New Birth, and not the CAUSE. So men experience the New Birth when the Spirit with the Word imparts life to them. Jesus explained it. When men hear the truth of God then the Holy Spirit uses the WORD, the Word of God, to bring lasting conviction to their hearts and gives them enabling grace to trust in Jesus Christ—and this enabling grace is the impartation of life by the Spirit of God. "For ye are all the children of God by FAITH in Jesus Christ" (Gal. 3:26), actually sons. One who is a child by birth is a son by faith.

"Whosoever BELIEVETH that Jesus is the Christ is born of God . . ." (1 John 5:1). Actually this should read: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God." So men believe in Christ as the effect of the New Birth.

Now we come to the last thought and that is: What are the RESULTS of the New Birth? Men become the children of God; they are born into the family of God. They have not been WORKED over; they have not been OVERHAULED, but they have been made NEW creatures in Christ Jesus, the Lord: these are the RESULTS of the New Birth.

"Therefore," said Paul, "if any man be in Christ, he is a NEW CREATURE: Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new."—2 Corinthians 5:17.

If a man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creation. Then what does the Master do on the inside of man? He doesn’t REFORM; He TRANSFORMS men’s lives. There is a great deal of difference in self-reformation and the transforming power of God: He TRANSFORMS. When men believe in Christ and experience the birth which is from above, they become the children of God, and they are born into the family of God, the kingdom, and it is the power of the Lord that transforms them; thus, they become NEW creatures in Christ Jesus the Lord. Their very life is changed. I want you to get it now: implanted in the believer’s heart, implanted in the twice-born soul, is the very NATURE of the Divine Son of God. It is there, whether folk accept it or not. "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be PARTAKERS of the Divine NATURE, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Pet. 1:4).

WHEN is the Divine nature implanted in a man s heart? When he experiences the New Birth, because the nature of Jesus Christ that has been planted inwardly is that which transforms him, and he becomes a new creature. "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the OLD MAN with his deeds; And have put on the NEW MAN, which is renewed in knowledge after the IMAGE of him that created him" (Col. 3:9, 10).

He is a new man because he has been created in the very image of Him that created him. He takes on the likeness of God; implanted in his heart is the nature of Jesus Christ; he has been born into the family of God, and the POWER of JESUS transforms his life. If the power of Jesus DOESN’T transform his life, he hasn’t EXPERIENCED the New Birth. This is the truth taught in the Word of GOD, and I am going to say with the old Negro preacher I heard many years ago—one of the greatest sermons I have ever heard—who asked in closing the question: "Have you been born AGAIN? Have you experienced the birth from above? Have you felt the power of God? Has the power of Jesus transformed your life? Have you been BORN AGAIN?"

That is what I would ask you this morning. If you have not, may the Spirit of God take the Word this morning and use it to implant life in you. Amen.