Pastors and leaders who preach week after week in the so-called Christian churches, don’t say this to their congregations because most of them don’t know or because they willfully ignore it. Most of them do not read or study the Bible but they rely on premade sermons written by famous theologians and preachers who have been as lost as they are.
They preach about many things, mostly psychology, but they leave out the crucial doctrines of Scripture, and the first they never tell the people is “You must be born again”, and if they do, it is always without explanation and outside the context of the Word of God.
What is to be born again? No one knows. Pastors and preachers who are supposed to know better in actuality don’t know the meaning of Jesus’ words in John 3. It is a mystery many say. Even Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, didn’t know. He asked Jesus, “How can these things be?”
Jesus proceeded to answer Nicodemus’ question and that’s what we should study, the answer of Jesus. He answered with wisdom to instruct His people on the meaning of that new birth so that all could understand and act upon His teaching accordingly.
Most Christians know John 3:16 but ignore the rest of the chapter. In the answer to Nicodemus the Lord Jesus Christ is explaining what to be born again is. It is a spiritual birth that will give access to the Kingdom of God. It is a spiritual birth of water and the Spirit. Pastors, very conveniently teach that the water Jesus talks about is water baptism but that’s not true.
We can read in Ephesians 5:26 that when God talks about the church, He says, “That he might sanctify and cleanse it [the church] with the washing of water by the word. The water is the Word that cleanses the church. It is not to be baptized with water in a ceremony, that doesn’t mean anything.
Christ also says something revealing in verse 6, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In this comparison, Jesus teaches that to be born in the world, in the flesh with human parents, is completely distinct to be born of the Spirit and the new birth is a spiritual reality effected by God the Holy Spirit. No human intervention there.
The Word of God has to do a lot with the new birth, too; we read in James 1:18 “Of his own will He begat us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” Also, 1 Peter 1:23 “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever.
The second birth is a spiritual reality that each believer has to experience to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Christ will continue teaching about that spiritual new birth in verses 7 and 8. He will use the Scriptures (as He usually did) to clarify even more His answer, He says, “John 3:7-8 Marvel not that I said unto thee, You must be born again. The wind blows where it wants, and you hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it comes, and whither it goes: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”
Jesus used Ecclesiastes 11:5 “As you don’t know what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so you don’t know the works of God who makes all” to tell Nicodemus that the new birth is the work of God. In the same way, we didn’t have any saying when coming to be born in the flesh, so likewise we have no saying in the spiritual new birth which is the WORK of GOD.
The knowledge of the Scriptures is crucial to the new birth. God designed the salvation of those He came to save by the preaching of the Gospel. That Gospel is written in the Word of Truth, the Bible. The Gospel to be effective must be in total agreement with the Word of God because there cannot be spiritual birth in a false gospel, one created by the wicked heart of men.
Now, friend, you have learned why your pastor will not tell you what the new birth is and now you know and can instruct him. The new birth is the work of God, it is not the work or desire of men, it is not because we perform rituals, it is the will and the work of God Almighty in the heart of those who have ears to hear, and the Word of God does that work too, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing (comes) by the Word of God” Romans 10:17
Study your Bibles and God’s Grace be with you.