John 3:3–7
3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
The Holy Spirit is not a natural property of humankind. Other than John the Baptist, we are not born with the Spirit’s presence. Theologically, we are spiritually dead until we become indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Put another way; it is necessary to go through a second birth, a spiritual birth, in order to connect with God. Humans generate humans that are after their own kind. We are born without the presence of the Spirit. Divine birth generates a new spiritual life from God, and the Holy Spirit enters your life.
How do I get born-again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, in other words, spiritually activated?
In a word, believe. Believe in Jesus the Christ. Acts 16:31, Acts 10:43. Jesus has already done all the work. By believing in Jesus and his work on the Cross, your sins, all of them, are transferred to him, and his righteousness is attributed to you. From God’s perspective, a believer is clean and pure, and therefore a suitable place for the Holy Spirit to take up residence.
The bottom line is that we are going to sin. With all of our mind, will, and emotion, we cannot stop sinning. Recall, God is holy, holy, holy. A holy God and an unforgiven sin generator cannot connect. To enable the Holy Spirit to enter into our lives, we must be cleansed. Grotesque as it sounds, blood is the divine symbol of purification. Why blood? Leviticus 17:11, “Because the life of the flesh is in the blood,” and life is the most precious thing in the world.
Divine forgiveness of human sin is very, very, very expensive. The most precious thing the world ever had to offer as payment was life – a perfect life. Jesus lived that perfect life and willingly gave his life, pouring out the very blood of God Acts 20:28 to purify the believer of sin.
Put simply, Jesus died on behalf of people who sin so we can be born again and connect with God.
The result is, as John MacArthur puts it, “When we enter into God’s presence, God sees Jesus instead of us.”
Ephesians 2:1–5
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
All that is required of us is faith in Christ and his work on our behalf.
Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
The reward is God himself, the giving of the Spirit to the believer. We can’t do better.
This indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a believer is staggering. You have access to God. In the next blog, we will look, in more detail, at how Jesus made this remarkable reality possible for us.