Is there such a thing as “normal Christian birth”? Not only do I believe there is, I also believe it is critical in these times that we understand what it is.
In Reinventing Australia: the mind and mood of Australia in the 90s, (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1993), Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay described this as an age of re-definition. He noted that many of these redefinitions are being written up as legislation and being forced upon us in a number of ways.
In Reinventing Australia: the mind and mood of Australia in the 90s, (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1993), Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay described this as an age of re-definition. He noted that many of these redefinitions are being written up as legislation and being forced upon us in a number of ways.
Mackay lists 7 areas of massive change and re-definition which were impacting Australians in the 1990s and causing enormous upheaval and raising searching questions about our personal identity and our sense of being a community.
During that decade and continuing into the 21st century, the people of God in Australia, I believe, are faced with a critical need for our own re-definition of many things – including what it means to be a Christian and what is “normal Christian birth”. However, the temptation facing us is to re-define them in the direction of all the other social re-definitions taking place instead of in the direction of what God Himself has already revealed.
In other words, we need a re-definition; but it needs to be not a new definition but a return to the old one; a return to what was lost along the way in the three hundred years after the first Apostles. Let me illustrate this process from something most of us are to some extent familiar with: childbirth.
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My wife and I have 3 beautiful daughters. For medical reasons, they could not be delivered by normal natural birth so they were all born by Caesarean section. Now try to imagine a time when no-one knows anything about any other form of child-birth besides Caesarean section. All knowledge of normal natural birth had been lost; and if one mother accidentally goes full-term and the baby is born in the “old” way, both are left to fend for themselves and quite possibly to die; and if this mother and child survive and they seek to teach normal natural birth, they are laughed at, scorned, and mocked. Can you imagine it? I honestly can’t! It is just beyond belief that it could ever happen.
However, in relation to normal Christian birth, something very similar has happened. We have had so many abnormal births in this tribe called “Christians”, that much knowledge of “normal Christian birth” has been lost – as I said, somewhere in the three hundred years after the first Apostles. We have had spiritual caesarean sections, still-births and forceps births.
This is very strange, because there are many who have sound knowledge and experience of normal Christian birth; and it is all written up for us in the scriptures. Trouble is, when those with the knowledge try to teach it, they are laughed at, scorned and mocked – usually by others who call themselves “Christians”. Let me repeat: there is a normal Christian birth and it needs to be understood, taught and lived: because birth affects life!
In the 1990s, I was greatly encouraged by David Pawson when he wrote The
It is just as true of spiritual birth. Many who go by the name ‘Christian’ were badly delivered. The birth either took years to be completed or has remained incomplete. In some, an umbilical cord to the past has never been cut and tied off. Others have never been washed. Others have never had hands laid on them in order to breathe in and cry out! Some are barely alive or soon abandoned.
Let me point to one glaring problem we have. Between the womb and the outside world is what is known as the birth canal. It is not just an entrance which opens and shuts like a door. Let me ask: do you say “the baby is born” when its head first engages in the top of the birth canal? No. It is born when it emerges, with considerable trauma, from the birth canal; and it requires some help to stay alive – right there in the first minutes of breathing our air – by cutting and tying the cord.
In spiritual birth it is the same. It is not necessarily true that a person is born into the kingdom of God when they make their first moves towards God – such as raising a hand, coming to the front of a meeting or praying a prayer. That is just the head engaging in the entry to the birth canal. Birth is at the other end; when “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of [Jesus].” 2 Peter 1:3
Now, before you start panicking, let’s take a good look at this. Normal Christian birth is not by Caesarean section, it is via the Christian birth canal. It starts with a decision of the will to go God’s way. The “canal” (or corridor) has four sides: a ceiling, a floor and two walls. It has no emergency exits on the way down. There are only two ways out: go back on your initial commitment and try for some “more convenient time”; or being born.
Imagine a baby screaming “No! I’m not coming out”, and going back under mum’s ribs for a “more convenient time”! Not very likely; and the only other way out is to be born – and this is what we need to get back to.
The foundation for all that is written here is that foundation used by apostles Peter and Paul as Luke recorded for us in Acts 2:38 and 20:21. This is what the first Apostles’ say is normal Christian birth and it fits with Jesus’ own teaching in the early chapters of John’s gospel.
As I said before, this process of spiritual birth is a little like going down a corridor. And just like the corridor has a floor, a ceiling and two sides, spiritual birth has four equally important parts: Repentance - Faith - Baptism – God’s Gifts. If any of these elements is missing, there is a high likelihood of a bad delivery or a still-birth. In fact, this is the very reason why some are not really changed; are not filled with the Spirit; or live their lives in relative boredom, frustration, apathy and lethargy.
Let me say it again for emphasis. Some have never repented; some have never fully trusted; some have never been baptised; some have never received the gifts God gives (especially the gift of the Holy Spirit); some have missed more than one. This study carefully addresses these issues. However, before we venture down that road, I want to resolve an important issue.
Some of you may be tempted to panic and worry that you have missed something and stress out about making up for that lack. DON’T WORRY OR PANIC OR STRESS. God has the matter in hand and He won’t leave you destitute. Can I encourage you to read Acts 19. This is the story of 12 disciples Paul bumped into when he arrived in Ephesus. Apollos the preacher had visited before Paul got there, and he had made some disciples and baptised them. When Paul arrived, he sensed that something was amiss, so he asked: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They replied by saying, “We haven’t even heard whether there is a ‘Holy Spirit’.”
Paul responds by giving them the rest of the good news they missed out on from Apollos – who, as it happens, didn’t know either and so gave them only John’s baptism. When they heard the full story, they were baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands on them, they received the Holy Spirit. True story! One: you can’t give away what you don’t have. Two: if we haven’t heard the new covenant gospel of Jesus, we don’t know to reach out for the gifts of God, in particular the gift of the Holy Spirit. But as you can see, the issue is quite easily resolved, so long as we are honest and humble about where we are in God and not pretending we’re somewhere we’re not. Some people need to be baptised twice!
As we begin this discussion let’s recount one of the early encounters Jesus had with one of the Jewish religious leaders of His day. His name was Nicodemus, a “ruler of the Jews” and part of the Pharisee group. He went to see Jesus one night to ask him some questions. Nicodemus had been watching Jesus and had come to the conclusion that he was a ‘Rabbi’ – a teacher – and that the miraculous things he had done could not have been done without God.
Much of what Jesus had been doing and saying centred around the concept of the Kingdom of God. To Jesus, God is the King and His Kingdom is that area and those places where His reign is accepted. The Kingdom of God is eternal, not of this world; but one of the things Jesus was saying was that his purpose on this earth was to bring the eternal Kingdom of God in visible touchable form to the people and to open the Kingdom of God to those people.
So Jesus says to Nicodemus: “Truly, I am telling you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Nicodemus replied to Jesus, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”
Jesus continued his lesson: “Truly, I am telling you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into 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 marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it but you don’t know where it is coming from or where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus was
a “teacher of Israel” John records, so Jesus asks him why, as a teacher, he
doesn’t know these things. Jesus
continues: “Truly, I am telling you, we speak things that we know and bear
witness of that which we have seen yet you do not receive our witness.”
At this point,
we are not told what Nicodemus decided to do.
But the lesson is there for us as well as for Nicodemus and the
Pharisees. In the words of Jesus that
follow, Jesus talks about some of the “heavenly things” that are going to take
place in and around his life. He will
ascend into heaven; he will be ‘lifted up from the earth’ (on a cross) in a
similar way to how Moses lifted up his serpent on a pole for the salvation of
Israel; God is offering the life of the eternal realm where He lives, through
faith in His first-born once-born Son; this Son has come into the world not to
judge it but to save it, through faith in him.
As we shall
see here, this theme of the second birth; spiritual birth; born of the Spirit;
born of the will and power of God; born from above (eternity where God lives)
became a pivotal part of the good news of Jesus and the apostles. And it is central and pivotal precisely
because it is the way God takes rebel sinners and transforms them into sons and
saints.
Precisely how
He does that we shall see as we work through these pages. In summary, it goes like this: rebel sinners who turn to welcome Jesus and
put their trust fully in him for their right standing before God (via
repentance, faith and baptism) are welcomed by God into His eternal family and
household by the process of the second birth; and God places on them His
imprimatur of forgiveness of sins, adoption as sons and the gift of the Holy
Spirit.
Apostle Paul
put it beautifully when he wrote: “In Him,
you also, after listening to the message of truth, the good news of your
salvation—having also believed, you were
sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of
our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of His possession, to the praise of His glory.” (Ephesians 1:13-14)
Be back soon.
Kevin.
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