You Must Be Born Again (Rom. 2:25-29)

Portrait of Nicodemus by James Tissot

I want you to imagine what it must have been like to be a Jewish man or woman in the first century A.D.  You were a member of the people of God that were in covenant with him through Abraham and Moses.  And more than that, your nation was the only nation on the face of the planet for which this was true, and this was the way it had been for 1500 years.  The temple, the rite of circumcision and the possession of the law of God were the clear signposts that your nation was a divinely favored nation.  The history of your nation was the history of the Exodus, Sinai, the conquest of Canaan, the kings and the prophets.  

Now it cannot be surprising that many Israelites would think that all this made God’s favor a sort of automatic thing for them, at least as long as they kept their noses clean relative to the other nations.  They remembered that other part of their history, their defeat at the hands of pagan nations and their deportation into foreign lands on account of their idolatry.  After that, the Israelites had little trouble with idolatry at that level.  No longer would they serve foreign gods.  They were God’s people, and they wanted others to know it.  They were therefore confident in their status as divinely favored people.

But Paul wants them to know that it’s not enough to have this history and these religious rites or even this religious purity.  And in particular in these verses the apostle attacks their confidence in circumcision, which was the physical sign that marked them out as God’s people.  Circumcision was a boundary marker.  It was one of the boundaries that marked the difference between God’s people and those who weren’t God’s people.  Circumcision was not a bad thing.  It was a very good thing.  God gave it to Abraham.  It was God-ordained and divinely sanctioned.  It was not a mere human tradition.  And as Paul will himself go on to say, there is real spiritual profit in circumcision – in fact, it profits “much [in] every way” (Rom. 3:1-2).

But here he begins by saying, “For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision” (2:25).  The “for” at the beginning here grounds Paul’s contention from the previous verses that hypocritical religion won’t do a person any good, even if you are a marked-out member of God’s nation Israel.  In other words, he is saying that there is profit to having these God-ordained rites like circumcision, but they only matter if you keep the law.  He goes on to say that, on the other hand, if the Gentiles obey the law, they have all the profit the Jews imagined they got from being circumcised, even if the Gentiles weren’t circumcised (26-27).  This is because what matters is not physical circumcision but spiritual circumcision (28-29).  

In these verses, therefore, we see a great and important contrast between a commitment to external religion duties and spiritual religion.  I think what we will find in these verses are three major emphases that are worthy of our attention.  First, we see the futility of external religion.  Second, the necessity of spiritual religion.  Third, the quality of spiritual religion.

The Futility of External Religion

At this point, I need to clarify what the apostle is getting at here.  Now I’m going to get at this by contrasting what I think Paul is saying here by two ways some folks have misinterpreted this passage, which I will summarize by calling them “hypothetical Paul” and “hyperbolical Paul.”  

Hypothetical Paul

Some have looked at this verse and interpret it in the following way.  They say that Paul is addressing the Jewish confidence in the law as a way of salvation.  They say that he is aiming at their self-righteousness in the sense of relying on the keeping of the law to be justified and right with God.  If they are right and that’s the case, then the obedience of the law that Paul is talking about is hypothetical because the fact of the matter is that no one can keep the law perfectly which is what is required to be saved by law-obedience.  Paul would be saying, hypothetically, that if you could keep the law perfectly you could be saved, and circumcision would then be profitable to you.  But they didn’t keep the law perfectly (no one does) and so they were not saved and were in that way just like any Gentile who didn’t have the law.

However, I don’t think that’s the point here.  Paul is not saying that circumcision only profits if you keep the law perfectly.  What he is saying is that circumcision, as a sort of stand-in for externalized religion, cannot be of any value by itself.  He is saying that being outwardly religious – even if it’s a God-ordained religion – is not of any value, it’s no better than if you were a pagan, unless you are from the heart obeying the law you profess to value and cherish.  Notice that Paul is contrasting “outward in the flesh” religion with “inward” spirituality (28-29).

The key to understanding this passage is understanding that the obedience Paul is saying is necessary here, is not perfect obedience, but Spirit-inspired obedience.  That’s the keeping of the law that he has in mind.  The reason why I think this is because Paul goes on to say that “he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (29).  That is to say, what matters is not so much the outward rite of circumcision, but the inward reality of heart-circumcision, which is a Spirit-enabled power in the heart that changes our affections and allegiance to be God-ward.

And so in verses 26-27, Paul is not arguing that Gentiles can keep the law perfectly and so be saved.  He is just saying that if Gentiles are obeying the law of God from a heart of faith, inspired by the Holy Spirit, they are in a better position than the Jew who has the law but isn’t keeping it.

Hyperbolical Paul

Other interpreters don’t think Paul is necessarily speaking hypothetically, but rather that he is speaking hyperbolically – that is, that he is exaggerating the sinfulness of his fellow countrymen.  They protest and argue that of course the Jews kept the law, and that Paul is tilting at windmills here.  They will say that Paul’s description of his fellow Jews isn’t fair or true and that he is off the mark in his accusations of his fellow countrymen.  They will point to something the apostle Paul said of himself, namely, that “touching the righteousness which is in the law, [he was] blameless” (Phil. 3:6).  And this was pre-Christian Paul!  

However, the same interpreters of Paul seems to miss the fact that he never says that his law-keeping was pleasing to God or was sufficient in God’s sight as a life of obedience.  He was saying that as regards the outward performance of the law, he was blameless.  But God convicted him that this was not enough, which is why he went on to say, “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (7). There was something missing in Paul’s “blameless” obedience of the law.

What was missing was that internal obedience of the heart that God’s law calls for – which he discovered ironically through the law itself!  So he will say later on in Romans, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me” (Rom. 7:7-11).

So when Paul contrasts Gentile and Jewish obedience and disobedience to the law, he is not contrasting a hypothetical situation in which if either one had kept the law perfectly they would have been saved.  Nor is he painting an inaccurate or exaggerated picture of his fellow Jews.  Instead, he is saying that mere possession of the law and external observance of the law is not enough. And he is saying that Gentiles who by the Spirit and faith live in obedience to God are more pleasing to him than the person who has grown up in the law and observed its external ordinances from the youth up.  In fact, as Paul puts it in verse 27, Gentiles who obey God from the heart by faith will condemn those Jews who don’t, even though they were brought up with enormous spiritual privileges.

In other words, the lesson Paul is trying to drive home here is that external religion is worthless if that’s all you got.  On the other hand, the true proof of true religion is a change of heart from which flows an obedient life.  The question is not, are you circumcised?  The question is, has your heart been changed?  “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God” (2:28-29).  

You must be born again

Paul is doing the very thing with his fellow Jews that Jesus did with Nicodemus.  Nicodemus “was a man of the Pharisees . . . a ruler of the Jews” (Jn. 3:1), whom Jesus calls “a master of Israel” (10) – that is to say, “the teacher of Israel.”  This man was not a thief or an adulterer.  He was not a bad man as far as men go.  He was the very kind of person, in fact, that Paul describes in Rom. 2:17-21.  But Jesus looks at this very man, and says, “Ye must be born again” (7).  He tells this very religious, circumcised, man, that unless a man is born again he cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God (3, 5).  This was totally surprising to Nicodemus who had a hard time understanding what Jesus was even trying to say (4, 9).  It is clear that at this point, Nicodemus was not born again, and he was not therefore a member of the kingdom of God.  That is to say, he was not saved.  

This is what Paul is trying to get at here.  This is the reality in fact that circumcision pointed to.  Physical circumcision was meant to point Jews to the need for spiritual circumcision, which God constantly in the OT complains was lacking in so many Israelites.  What is truly necessary is not external religious observance and physical circumcision but “circumcision of the heart” which was “by the Spirit,” the Spirit of God.  Paul is talking about regeneration here, the new birth.  That’s what is necessary.  Paul is saying to his fellow Jews what Jesus said to Nicodemus: “You must be born again.” 

Now before we go on here, I think it is important to say here that Paul is not saying that external religion is bad.  What he is saying is that it is not enough.  So we are not meant to draw the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if we go to church or participate in the life of the church.  He’s not saying you shouldn’t read your Bibles or pray.  We must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together!  We must be baptized if we are believers!   But he is saying that if this is where your confidence is in, you’re missing something, something infinitely important.  We too must be born again.

And like the Jews Paul was talking about here, we who have been raised in the Christian church can also put our confidence in external religious performances.  We can trust in our knowledge of doctrine, our orthodoxy, our baptism, our participation in the Lord’s Supper, and our standing in the church.  In fact, the apostle Paul, speaking to the Corinthian church, draws a sort of parallel from the false-confidence the Jews had in their spiritual privileges (like circumcision) to a false-confidence that folks in the church can have.  

Here is what he says: “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:1-11).  I don’t think there is any doubt that Paul is comparing the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper and baptism with the privileges of the Jews.  But just like them, we can despise these privileges by disobedience and sin.  And this will inevitably bring upon us the discipline and judgment of God.  

What’s worse is that a person can confuse a genuine experience of grace with mere external religion.  These people need to hear what Nicodemus heard: “You must be born again.”  Do you see the necessity of spiritual religion?  Have you been born again?

We been considering the futility of external religion and in seeing that we already see (I hope) that necessity of spiritual religion.  But let’s consider now a bit more carefully why a religion of the heart is so important and necessary.

The Necessity of Spiritual Religion

When I say “spiritual religion” I’m not talking about a “get in touch with your feelings” kind of religion.  I’m talking about religion that is the result of a heart that is being reshaped by the work of the Spirit of God by the word of God.  I’m not talking about something that is the result of human psychology or self-improvement.  I’m talking about of work of God in the heart.  Paul is not talking about a natural thing here; this is supernatural.  And this is necessary because this is what God requires.  He isn’t after people who play at religion; he is after people who worship him from the heart according to his word by faith.

This is the emphasis everywhere in the Bible, not just in the NT, but in the OT as well.  At the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, God responds to the promise of the Israelites to obey his law: “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever!” (Deut. 5:29).  It’s the heart that matters and the heart from which obedience must come.  

The prophets reverberate with this emphasis.  The Lord complains though the prophet Isaiah that “this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men” (Isa. 29:13).  Or as the prophet Ezekiel put it: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezek. 26:25-27).  How do you walk in God’s word?  You do so by having a new heart given to you and having God’s Spirit causing you to walk in his statutes and commandments.

So our Lord is not saying anything new when he says you have to be born again.  This is the universal requirement for true religion.  It is absolutely necessary.  Do you know why?  

It is necessary because it is the first step in the application of redemption.  In other words, you cannot say that the blood of Christ that washes away your sins has been applied to you if you have not been born again.  When Paul describes being saved to the Colossians, he puts it in this way: “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Col. 1:12-13).  Those who are a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light are precisely those who have been translated into the kingdom of Christ.  But this only happens to those who are born again.  This is why our Lord told Nicodemus that you can’t see or enter into the kingdom of God until you are born again.  The new birth is our personal entrance into salvation.  Those who are saved are born again; those who are not saved are not born again.  Here is how the apostle John put it: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:11-13).

Second, it is necessary because God cannot have fellowship with people whose hearts have not been changed.  We need to be reminded of the apostle Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians: “And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:16-18).  For God to dwell among us requires separation from sin and that requires a changed heart.  For what Paul is speaking of is not external obedience only but obedience from the heart.  Note how he proceeds in the very next verse: “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (7:1).  Notice how the apostle says “flesh and spirit:” this is comprehensive change, inside and out, a change of heart leading to a change in behavior that puts a difference between the Christian and the world.  God is light and those who walk with him must walk in the light as well (1 Jn. 1:5-6).

Third, it is necessary because we cannot serve God without a heart that has been changed.  It’s not just that God can’t have fellowship with us without a changed heart; it’s also that we will never seek to have true fellowship with God and to please him and to serve him unless our hearts have been changed.  Later in Romans, the apostle will describe what we are apart from the new birth: “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7-8).  The whole purpose of our Lord’s work is to bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18), and this requires not only God becoming reconciled to us through the forgiveness of sins but also our laying aside our hostility towards God.  But Paul says we are, apart from the work of the Spirit, hostile to God.  It takes the work of the Spirit in us so “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (4).  

Neither can we worship God apart from a changed heart.  As we’ve seen, God does not want worship with mouths only when hearts are far from him.  Our Lord told the Samaritan woman, “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (Jn. 4:23-24).

But what is this new birth?  What does it look like?

The Quality of Spiritual Religion

We need to understand the comprehensive nature of the change that God requires of us.  What God requires is not a reshuffling of the furniture of our souls.  What he requires is not a pulling up of ourselves by our bootstraps.  What he requires is ultimately something only he can do, nothing less than a spiritual recreation (2 Cor. 4:4), a spiritual resurrection (Eph. 2:4-9), a spiritual rebirth (Jn. 3:3-8).  This is not something we can do.  This is something only God can do.  But what does it look like?

To see what it looks like, we need to look at the first epistle of John.  There, the apostle John gives us several evidences of the new birth as a means of knowing that we have eternal life.  At the end of his letter, he writes, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 Jn. 5:13).  So, how do we know that we have eternal life?  Partly at least by seeing the evidences of the new birth.  What are these evidences?

First of all, to be born again means that sin no longer has dominion over our lives.  Here is what the apostle says: “If ye know that he [the Lord Jesus] is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him” (1 Jn. 2:29).  The one who is born again is someone who does righteousness – which is not defined by the culture but by the Lord himself.  Then he says this: “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (3:8-9).  Now John is not saying that the believer is perfect.  What he is saying is that the believer does not go on living in sin.  There is a changed life.  There is a difference from what he or she was before the new birth and after.  

Brothers and sisters, think about what this means.  It means that the power of sin is broken in the lives of everyone who belongs to Christ.  I love that and remind myself of that often because sin likes to whisper in my ear that it cannot be defeated.  But sin shall not have dominion over us, not because we are clever or strong or wise, but because we are not under the law but under the grace of God in Christ (Rom. 6:14).

Second, it means that we love other believers who are our brothers and sisters in Christ.  The apostle writes, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (1 Jn. 3:14).  Now, it’s not just that we love this or that Christian, but that we love all who belong to Christ because they belong to Christ.  Listen to the way he puts it in 5:1.  He writes, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.”  In other words, the bond of affection between Christians is the new nature that binds them both to God.  They love those who bear the image of Christ because they love Christ.  John is in effect saying that the failure to love those who bear the Lord’s image is a failure to love God.  Hence John goes on to say, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (4:20).

Brethren, let us love one another.  To love our brother or our sister is to love someone for whom Christ died.  To fail to love them is to fail to love them for whom Jesus shed his blood.  He loved them; how can we not? 

Third, it means that we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  Consider again 5:1, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.”  Now I believe that the work of God in the heart precedes faith.  It must, since we are dead in trespasses and in sins (Eph. 2:1).  However, it is an error to imagine that the new birth happens apart from faith.  This is because the point of the new birth is to make the effectual call to faith in Christ effective (2 Thess. 2:13-14).  In other words, the point of the new birth is to bring us to faith in Jesus.  Therefore those who refuse to believe in Christ cannot claim that they have been born again.  The new birth gives us a heart to receive and eyes to see the glory of Christ in the gospel.  As Spurgeon put it, “Faith in the living God and His Son Jesus Christ is always the result of the new birth and can never exist except in the regenerate.”[1]

Now to believe is not just to know certain things about Jesus, or even to give a sort of intellectual assent to them.  After all, even the Devil does that.  Rather, to believe on Christ means to trust in him, to put your confidence in him.  It means to embrace him personally as Lord and Savior.  And it is inseparable from love to Christ.  As Peter puts it, “Unto you therefore which believe he is precious” (1 Pet. 2:7).  Do you trust in Jesus Christ?  Do you love him as he is presented to you in the pages of Scripture?  There is no salvation apart from Christ, for the Bible is very clear on this matter: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (Jn. 3:36).

Fourth, it means that we have overcome the world.  John continues: “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 Jn. 5:4-5).  To overcome the world means to overcome “all that is in the world” which the apostle himself describes as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (2:15-17).  

In other words, I am so thankful that regeneration does not just put us in the position where we can find victory against sin but just barely.  The truth of the matter is that it puts us in the position where we can expect it!  Now that doesn’t mean that the fight against it is easy.  But we need to beware that we don’t adopt a sort of fatalistic mentality, an attitude of “I’m going to go on sinning because I’m a sinner.”  Now, again, I don’t believe in perfectionism.  Yes, we are always going to have to confess our sins to God.  But let’s not go in the opposite ditch of believing that we can’t really grow in grace or that we can’t expect to become more and more like Christ.  This, after all, is God’s plan for all of his children (Rom. 8:29), the very good thing for which he is working all things for us (Rom. 8:28).  Christ redeems us and regenerates us to be overcomers not underachievers.  

You must be born again.  Are you born again?  This is in some sense the question Paul is asking of his audience, and it is the question we ought all of us to ask ourselves.  Now you may hear at all this and say, very well, if that’s the new birth and it’s God’s work, then what am I to do? What is to be my response to this?  Well, shouldn’t it be this, that it should simultaneously lead to complete self-despair of saving ourselves and to desperate trust in Christ for salvation?  Shouldn’t it cause us to stop looking inward for the renovation of the heart and to look to the grace of God?  Isn’t that what the doctrines of grace are meant to do for us?  They are meant not only to cause us to ascribe salvation all to God but also to cause us to rest all our hopes upon him for our salvation.  The theme of this Bible is this: Salvation is of the Lord, to the glory of God.  And that means that we seek salvation in him alone, trusting in his grace through Christ to “be of sin the double cure: save from sin and make me pure.”  May it be the theme and the reality of our lives as well.  

[1] From “Faith and Regeneration,” by C. H. Spurgeon, a sermon preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit on March 5, 1871.  The text was 1 John 5:1.