How to Know if You Are Born Again

The most important things for anyone to know, even someone who calls himself a Christian is, "Am I really born again?" It is possible to pray for salvation, to be baptized, to belong to a church, even to live an upright life, AND STILL NOT BE BORN AGAIN. In this lesson I want to show from the Bible why it is necessary to be born again, and how we can know if we have been born again. 

In John chapter 3 we read that Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night to learn more about His teachings. Jesus said to Nicodemus "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."  Nicodemus did not understand what Jesus meant. He was already an old man. How could he be born again?  Then Jesus explained further: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised that I said to you, 'You must be born again.'" Jesus went on to compare the Spirit to the wind: We can’t see the wind because it’s invisible, yet we know it’s real because we can hear and feel it. "So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Jesus means that being born again causes something supernatural to happen in our spirits, on the inside, and that change inside will show itself in certain changes outside in our lives. When we were "born of the flesh," it was our bodies and our natural life that were born from our mothers. But when we are born of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God comes into our spirits and plants a seed of God's own life in us.  We cannot be exactly the same person after that because God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit now lives in us. Then we must be "born of water," as we submit to Christian baptism to show what is happening in our spirits, and to declare that we are followers of Jesus Christ.

This NEW BIRTH takes place when we SINCERELY give our lives to Jesus, confess our sins, and ask Jesus to be Lord of our lives. Peter speaks to Christians in this ways: "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, for a sincere love of the brothers, see that you love one another earnestly from the heart. You have been born again, not of a seed that dies, but of a seed that does not die, through the living and remaining word of God" (I Peter 1:22-23).  In some instances regeneration almost certainly occurs at baptism, but not always. The New Birth seems to be a process, which begins when we turn our hearts to Christ, confess our sins, and believe on Him for salvation; and the process is consummated when we are baptized in water. It is impossible and unnecessary to know exact moment and manner of the New Birth. The seed of the living and abiding Word of God enters our spirits and abides, transforming our lives from the inside out. 

So we see that one must have God's Spirit come into him and change him before he can claim to be a real Christian. Now let us see how we can know if we have been born again. 

1) First of all the Holy Spirit lets us know that He has come into us by giving us an inward certainty that we now children of God.  "The Spirit Himself bears witness that we are children of God" (Romans 8:16). This means that we simply KNOW inwardly that we now belong to Christ. We do not know because of our baptism, or even because of the prayer we prayed for salvation. WE KNOW BECAUSE WE KNOW.  Deep down in our hearts and spirits the Holy Spirit makes us know that we have been born again.  

2) Secondly, we begin to experience certain impulses and impressions from the Holy Spirit that we did not experience before. In Romans 8:14 Paul tells us: "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." So we will begin to feel different and to know things in our spirits. God's Spirit will direct us by impressions, intuitions, and feelings, and sometimes in dreams. It is not always easy to know what is God's Spirit and what is our own thoughts; and we must be VERY CAREFUL to be sure it is God; for we can get impressions from our own minds, or even from evil spirits; but if we WANT VERY MUCH to obey Christ, His Spirit will give us direction through thoughts, impressions, and intuitions, and in other ways. 

3) Because God's life has come into us to change us, we are quite different. We no longer love sin, but we hate it. We turn away from sin and try very hard to please God. John said in I John 3:9: "No one born of God commits sin; for God's nature (seed) abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God." John does not means to say that it is impossible for Christians to sin, for he says in this same book that they can. (You might look to I John 1:5-10; and I John 2:1-2)  But he does say that a real Christian will not go on sinning as he did before. In fact he will not allow sin in his life. If a person says he is a Christian and does not get rid of sin as God shows him sin in his life, he may wonder if he has really been born again. James says that, "All of us stumble in many things" (James 3:2), but that is not to say that we have to keep sinning. We do not; we must not. We must try, so far as we possibly can, to get rid of all sin. And we can do it because "God's nature (seed) abides in" us. When we first become Christians, it may take a while for us to get rid of all our sins; but as God shows us and convicts us, we repent and leave behind our sins. The new life of God in us is changing us more and more to become like Christ.  

Sometimes, just after we come to Christ, there seems to be a honeymoon period during which we are very grateful, very earnest, and very careful about sin. After a time, however, we begin to take grace for granted and are not as careful to avoid all sin as we were. This is a dangerous condition.  The normal Christian life is one of progress in holiness. We should be more holy, more obedient, now than we were when we first believed. As the Holy Spirit discloses areas of our lives that are not perfectly subject to Christ, we repent and renew our zeal for holiness. The believer who has “lost his first love” can go either way. He can repent “remember from whence he has fallen, repent, and do his first works” (Rev. 2:4-5), or he can “become entangled again with the world and overcome.”  The latter case is worse for him than if he had never “known the way of truth” (II Pet. 2:20-22).  A consistent life of total obedience is the only solid evidence of the New Birth. 

4) God's nature in us will also make us love all Christians. I John 3:14: "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers."  Of course John includes "sisters" in Christ in what he says: If we are real Christians, we will love our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we will want to meet with them often, “to provoke one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24). 

5) Finally, the Divine life that is in us, God's own nature, will produce fruit: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control..." (Gal. 5:22-23); and we will begin to develop a likeness to Christ: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (II Cor. 3:18). 

We will not grow this fruit all at once. And some will never have as much as others. And we must not judge each other or look down on each other. But each of us should look into his or her own heart and see if he or she is really born again. Nothing is more important than this. Neither baptism, nor confession, not church membership, no even outward signs of a good life can save you. YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN.   Amen. God bless you.

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