Experiencing the New Birth: Studies in John 3 by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Author:Martyn Lloyd-Jones [Lloyd-Jones, Martyn]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2015-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

14

Alive in Christ

JOHN 3:8

Sunday morning sermon preached in

Westminster Chapel, April 10, 1966, Easter Sunday.

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. (John 3:8)

The great fact that is impressed upon us in these verses is the mysterious character of this Christian life. It is a mystery from beginning to end. Poor Nicodemus! His trouble was that he was trying to understand things that cannot be understood, and we have been considering the essential difference between merely being religious and being Christian. Before men and women can be Christians they must be born again. They are brought into a new realm, the realm of the miraculous, the supernatural. It is folly to bring in your natural human understanding as Nicodemus did. Those who try to understand these things are of necessity baffled, and they will never experience their grace and glory and power.

So that is the great and essential message of this passage, and it leads us very naturally into what we are now considering together. There is an ancient tradition that when the first Christians used to meet one another they greeted one another with the phrase, “Christ is risen.” That was their ordinary form of salutation. The Jews used to greet one another by saying, “Peace be unto you.” But the Christians had this new salutation, and they said it to one another whenever they met and whatever their circumstances might happen to be. They said it with joy and with rejoicing. It was not just a password. It was that incidentally because they were often persecuted. It was a dangerous thing to be a Christian in those early centuries. But, of course, there was a deep significance in it; they said it with joy, with rejoicing, with confidence.

This, after all, was the basis of their whole position; they were what they were because Christ is risen. If he had not risen there would never have been a Christian church, there would never have been a Christian individual. This was the basis and the foundation of all their assurance and of all their hope, so they said it to one another whatever the circumstances might be. When things were going well they said, “Christ is risen, and so things are going to be even better.” When things were going badly, when they were persecuted, harassed, hunted, driven to dwell in caves and in rocks, whenever they met one another they said, “Christ is risen.” They were saying in effect, “Whatever these enemies may do to us, because the ultimate Victor is on our side, nothing can make him forgo his purpose or frustrate him in his endeavor.”

So “Christ is risen” summed up their whole position. I now want to bring a question to you: Is that our position? Is that the thing by which we live?

Let me put it in another way. There is no better test as to whether we have been born again or not than this very thing.

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