Wesleyan Theology and the Doctrine of Salvation — Unit 6: The New Birth: What God Does in Us

Key Verse

"Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain the difference between justification and the new birth in Wesleyan teaching, and why they belong together.

2. Describe the new birth from John 3 and from other passages of Scripture.

3. Name the marks of the new birth that John Wesley taught: faith, hope, love, and a life that no longer yields to sin.

4. State fairly the Reformed view that regeneration comes before faith and the sacramental view that links new birth to baptism, and give the Wesleyan answer to each.

5. Describe how a pastor calls people to the new birth without confusing it with feelings, church membership, or good behavior.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Wesleyan tradition for students who belong to it. It is theologically conservative. It holds that the Bible is the inspired and final authority for faith and life, and that God is one God in three persons. When it says "we," it means the evangelical Wesleyan-Holiness and Methodist churches. Other Christians, including faithful Reformed, Catholic and Pentecostal believers, see some of these matters differently. We state their views fairly and then give our answer. Scripture says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Earlier units taught universal atonement, prevenient grace, free election and justification by faith. In this unit we ask what happens inside a person when God saves him. The history of how John Wesley came to preach these truths, including his experience in 1738, was told in Course 1, Unit 3. We do not repeat it here.

Why the New Birth Matters

Many people think that being a Christian means holding correct ideas, belonging to a church, or living a decent life. The Bible says something deeper. Jesus did not say that a person should improve himself. He said that a person must be born again.

John Wesley preached this truth throughout his long ministry. He wrote a sermon called "The New Birth" and others closely related to it, such as "The Marks of the New Birth" and "The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God." Wesley was an ordained minister of the Church of England, and many of his hearers had been baptized and had attended church all their lives. Yet many of them knew nothing of a changed heart. He called them to a real, inward turning to God. That call still matters wherever people have religion without life.

Nicodemus and the Teaching of Jesus

The best-known teaching about the new birth comes in John 3. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a teacher of Israel, and a man of high reputation. He came to Jesus by night. Jesus did not praise his learning. He told him, "Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).

Nicodemus asked how a grown man could enter his mother's womb a second time. Jesus explained that He was speaking of a birth "of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5), and that "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). Then He used the picture of the wind. We cannot see the wind, but we see what it does. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit (John 3:8).

Three lessons come from this passage. First, the new birth is necessary. Jesus said "unless." It is not an extra for special Christians. Second, it is a work of the Holy Spirit. No one gives birth to himself. Third, it is a real change. Nicodemus was already moral and religious, yet he still needed something he did not have.

Justification and the New Birth

Wesley taught that two great things happen when a sinner is saved, and he took care to separate them in thought. In Unit 5 we studied justification. Justification is what God does for us. He pardons our sin and receives us as His children because of the death of Christ. It changes our relationship to God. We were guilty, and now we are forgiven.

The new birth is what God does in us. He gives us new spiritual life. It changes our nature and our desires. We were dead toward God, and now we are alive.

These are not two separate events in time. In ordinary experience they happen together, at the moment a person truly believes. But they are different in meaning, and a pastor must not mix them. A man who is forgiven but not changed would still be in his old life. A man who is changed but not forgiven would still be under judgment. God gives both.

Scripture speaks of both gifts together. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12). Paul says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Faith brings a person into Christ, and in Christ he is both forgiven and made new.

The New Birth in Other Parts of Scripture

Jesus is not the only teacher of this truth. The prophets promised it long before. God said through Ezekiel that He would give His people a new heart and put a new spirit within them (Ezekiel 36:26). Paul wrote to Titus that God saved us "through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). Peter wrote that believers are "having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever" (1 Peter 1:23). John wrote that "whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (1 John 5:1), and that "whatever is born of God overcomes the world" (1 John 5:4).

From these passages we learn that God uses His Word and that the Holy Spirit is the Author of the new life. We also learn that the result is a life that can be seen.

The Marks of the New Birth

How do we know whether a person has been born again? Wesley answered from the First Letter of John. He taught that the new birth has marks, and he named them in his sermon on that subject. We can gather them under four headings.

Faith. A person born of God believes in Jesus Christ, not only that He lived and died, but that He is his own Saviour and Lord. This is a trusting of the heart, not only an agreement of the mind.

Hope. The born-again person has a living hope. He looks forward to being with Christ and has a settled confidence in God's mercy. This hope is tied to the witness of the Spirit (Unit 7).

Love. Love for God and love for neighbor are the plainest marks. "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren" (1 John 3:14). A person who says that he has been born again but hates his brother has not understood what has happened to him.

A life that does not yield to sin. John writes that "whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God" (1 John 3:9). We must understand this verse carefully, and the next section explains it.

These marks are not a ladder by which we earn the new birth. They are its fruit.

Does the New Birth Mean We No Longer Sin?

Some readers are troubled by 1 John 3:9. The same letter says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). How can both be true?

Wesley's answer, which Wesleyans have generally followed, is this. The verb John uses in chapter 3 describes a continuing habit. The born-again believer does not go on sinning as a settled way of life. He does not willingly serve sin. Sin does not rule him as it once did. This is a real freedom. But the believer can still stumble, and sinful tendencies remain in the heart. Wesley dealt with this in his sermons "On Sin in Believers" and "The Repentance of Believers." Sin remains, but it no longer reigns.

In Unit 8 we place the new birth within the larger way of salvation, and in Course 3 we study how God goes on to cleanse the heart. New birth is the beginning of holiness, not the end of it. A newborn child is fully alive but not yet grown.

Objection 1: Regeneration Comes Before Faith

Our Reformed brothers hold a different order. In the Reformed view, which many Baptists and others share, fallen human beings are spiritually dead and unable to respond to God. They teach that God must first give new life, called regeneration, and that faith is then the result. They cite Ephesians 2:1-5, where Paul says that we were "dead in trespasses and sins" and that God "made us alive together with Christ." They also cite John 1:13, which says that those who receive Christ were "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." On this reading, a person cannot choose to be born again any more than a baby can choose to be born.

Our answer. We agree that no one can save himself. We agree that new birth is entirely a work of God. We do not teach that anyone is born again by his own will or effort. The question is how God brings people to that point. Our answer is prevenient grace, which we studied in Unit 3. God's grace goes before the sinner, awakens his conscience, and gives him the ability to respond. Faith is therefore not a work that earns salvation. It is the open hand that receives a gift. Paul wrote, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8).

The Bible also speaks to people as those who can answer. Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me" (Revelation 3:20). John 1:12 says that those who "received" Him were given the right to become children of God. Scripture commands all people everywhere to repent and believe, and a command makes sense only if God has given the power to obey. So we teach that faith comes first in the order of experience, and that new birth follows in the same moment God receives the believer. In both views, all the glory belongs to God.

Objection 2: The New Birth Is Given in Baptism

A second objection comes from the older churches. Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and many Anglicans and Lutherans teach that God gives new birth through baptism. They point to John 3:5, "born of water and the Spirit," and to Titus 3:5, "the washing of regeneration." Wesley was an Anglican priest, and the Church of England taught that baptism is a sign and means of regeneration. Historians debate how Wesley understood this. Some stress that he kept the Anglican teaching on infant baptism. Others stress that he preached the new birth as something every sinner must experience in a conscious turning to Christ.

Our answer. We honor baptism as a means of grace and as a holy command of Christ. Course 4, Unit 7 studies baptism and the Baptist objections to infant baptism. For now we say three things. First, Scripture never teaches that the outward act alone saves. Peter wrote that baptism saves us as "the answer of a good conscience toward God" (1 Peter 3:21), which speaks of faith and not of water alone. Second, Wesley himself warned his hearers that a person who had been baptized as a child, but now lived in sin, still needed to be born again. Third, we cannot say that every baptized person has the marks of new birth. Many do not. A pastor must therefore call baptized and unbaptized people alike to repentance and living faith, while teaching that baptism is a gift and a promise of God.

Objection 3: The New Birth Is Only Emotion

A third objection is heard from several sides, and sometimes from honest observers of our own churches. They say that talk of new birth leads to emotional excitement, to pressure at the altar, and to the idea that a person is saved if he feels the right thing.

Our answer. The warning is fair, and we accept it. Feelings can be real, but they are not the foundation. The new birth is known by its fruit: faith, hope, love and a changed life. A person who had a strong feeling one night but shows none of these has not been shown to be born again. Wesley also taught that the moment of new birth, though real, is not always something a person can name. Some people can tell the hour. Others, raised in Christian homes, simply know that they now love God and trust Christ. What matters is the reality, not the date.

Pastoral Application

A pastor in a small town receives a visit from an older woman who has attended his church for forty years. She was baptized as a baby and has served on every committee. After a sermon on John 3 she says quietly, "Pastor, I do not know whether I was ever really born again. Does that mean all these years were wasted?"

First, the pastor thanks her for her honesty. Second, he asks her to say in her own words what she believes about Jesus Christ and what she has done with her sins. Third, he opens the Bible with her to John 1:12 and 3:16 and explains that the door is open now. He does not promise her a particular feeling. He tells her that faith is trust in Christ and that the Holy Spirit gives the assurance, which he will teach her about next. He prays with her and arranges to meet again. He does not say that her forty years were wasted, since God may have been drawing her all along by prevenient grace. He does tell her that what matters now is a living faith in Christ.

Summary

The new birth is what God does in us when we believe. Justification changes our standing before God, and the new birth changes our nature. Both come together when a sinner trusts in Christ. John 3 teaches that the new birth is necessary and is the work of the Holy Spirit. Wesley taught the marks of the new birth as faith, hope, love and a life that does not yield to sin, and he explained that sin may remain in the believer but does not rule. The Reformed place regeneration before faith, and we answer that prevenient grace makes faith possible. The sacramental churches link the new birth to baptism, and we answer that baptism is a means of grace but that every person must have a living faith. The charge of emotionalism is answered by the fruit of a changed life.

Further Reading

• John Wesley, sermons "The New Birth," "The Marks of the New Birth," and "The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God," primary sources.

• John Wesley, sermons "On Sin in Believers" and "The Repentance of Believers," primary sources.

• John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, on John 3 and 1 John 3, a primary source.

• Course 2, Unit 5 (justification) and Unit 3 (prevenient grace); Course 1, Unit 3 (Aldersgate).

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