For the Searching Heart
"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again."
John 3:7
There is a particular kind of person this page is written for. He was baptised as an infant. He was instructed, confirmed, and taken to services all through childhood. He can recite prayers from memory and knows exactly when to stand and when to kneel. He has kept the seasons, observed the fasts, and been present at every family funeral and wedding in the building where his grandparents were married.
And if he is honest in a quiet moment, he would have to admit that he does not know God, has no certainty about eternity, and has never felt that any of it reached past the ceiling.
If that is anywhere near you, this page is written with real respect, and it asks you to consider one distinction.
Let three things be said before anything else, because otherwise the rest will be misheard.
This is not an attack on any church, and it is not a sneer at form. Scripture itself is full of ordinances, appointed days, appointed words and appointed acts, and God gave every one of them. A man who despises order is not more spiritual than a man who keeps it.
Nor is it the modern complaint that religion is stuffy and sincerity is enough. That objection usually comes from people who want neither the form nor the reality.
The question here is narrower and far more serious. It is whether a person can have every outward mark of belonging to God — the attendance, the language, the ceremonies, the family name — and not know Him.
Scripture says plainly that he can.
This is not an attack on your family. The people who took you to church were almost certainly doing what they believed was right, at real cost, out of love for you. Nothing here dishonours them.
This is not a claim that religious people are hypocrites. Many are the most sincere people alive. Sincerity is not the question; the question is what sincerity has been placed in.
And this is not an advertisement for a different institution. Nobody is asking you to transfer your loyalty from one building to another. Changing churches has never saved anybody.
The distinction here is not between a worse religion and a better one. It is between religion and something else entirely.
Religion and Christianity are commonly treated as the same thing, and they can look identical from the outside — the same buildings, the same book, the same language.
The difficulty is that from the outside they are almost indistinguishable.
Two men sit in the same building. Both were baptized. Both can recite the same creed. Both give, both attend, both would be listed as members. One of them has passed from death unto life. The other has an excellent religious record and nothing else, and he may be entirely sincere about it.
Scripture uses a striking pair of pictures for this: something with the shape of life but not the substance.
"Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." (2 Timothy 3:5)
"Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." (Revelation 3:1)
A name that thou livest. The reputation was intact. The register said one thing and heaven said another.
But they run in opposite directions.
Religion is man reaching up to God. It is the attempt, sincere and often costly, to make oneself acceptable — by observance, by moral effort, by rites correctly performed, by accumulating enough on the credit side. Every religion on earth works this way, and so does a great deal that goes by the name of Christianity.
The gospel is God reaching down to man. It says the ladder cannot be climbed, and that God has therefore come down — that what we could never achieve has been done for us and is offered as a gift.
The difference shows in one question. Ask a religious man whether he is going to heaven and he will usually say I hope so, I've tried to live a good life — because his answer depends on his own record, which he cannot fully audit. Ask a man who has understood the gospel and he will point away from himself entirely.
There is a conversation in the Gospel of John that speaks directly to this, and the striking thing about it is who it is with.
If ritual could save, Nicodemus was safe.
He was a Pharisee — the strictest sect. A ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin. A teacher, whom the Lord Jesus Christ addressed as a master of Israel. He had the law by heart, kept the feasts, tithed, prayed, and had never in his life eaten an unclean thing.
And he came by night to a young Galilean preacher, and was told, before he had finished his opening compliment, that none of it had accomplished anything.
"Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)
Not improve. Not try harder. Not add this to what you already have. Born again — a second birth, which no man arranges for himself, any more than he arranged the first.
"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." (John 3:7)
And note the word must. Not may, not would do well to. There is no alternative route offered anywhere in Scripture.
"There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:1-3)
Consider who this man was.
A Pharisee — a member of the most rigorous religious group of his day, men who tithed their garden herbs and fasted twice a week. A ruler of the Jews — a member of the ruling council, an elder. A teacher of Israel, as the Lord Jesus Christ calls him later in the conversation. He knew the Scriptures thoroughly, kept the law scrupulously, and was respected by everyone.
If religious observance could put a man right with God, Nicodemus was already there. Nobody was going to out-perform him.
And the very first thing said to him is that he must begin again from the beginning.
"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." (John 3:7)
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." (John 3:6)
Like produces like. Religious effort is flesh, however sincere and however costly, and flesh cannot produce spirit. This is why reformation is not regeneration: you may improve the old nature endlessly and never obtain a new one.
"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." (John 1:12-13)
Read the three exclusions in that verse, because each one closes a door men still try.
Not of blood — it is not inherited. A godly mother cannot pass it on. Nor of the will of the flesh — it is not achieved by effort. Nor of the will of man — no priest, minister or ceremony confers it. But of God.
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
The phrase has been so misused that it now sounds like the label of a party. Set that aside and look at the image, which is exact.
Birth is not improvement. A dead thing cannot be trained into life, and a living thing does not become alive by better behaviour. Birth is the arrival of life that was not there before.
So the Lord Jesus Christ was not telling Nicodemus to try harder, to add a discipline, or to reform. He was telling him he needed something he did not possess and could not produce — a new life, given from outside.
Notice three things about birth that apply exactly.
You cannot arrange your own. Nobody assisted at his own birth. It was done for him, and he received it.
It happens once and settles a relationship. A child does not have to earn his place in the family; he was born into it. He may disappoint his father, but he does not stop being a son.
And it is either true or not. There is no partial birth. This is why Ye must is stated so absolutely — not it would help, but ye must.
The apostle Paul, himself a Pharisee before his conversion, wrote something about his own people that applies to every deeply religious person who is nonetheless lost. He said he could testify that they had a zeal of God — but not according to knowledge; for being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, they had not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.
The apostle Paul had been on the wrong side of this himself, and he wrote about his former countrymen with grief rather than contempt.
"For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." (Romans 10:2-3)
Weigh that carefully, because it is one of the most searching descriptions in Scripture. They had zeal. Real zeal, of God. They were not hypocrites and they were not lazy. Their whole error was in the direction of the effort: they were building a righteousness of their own instead of receiving His.
And the apostle Paul knew that road personally. He had been faultless by the outward standard:
"Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless." (Philippians 3:5-6)
An unblemished record — and here is what he did with it:
"But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." (Philippians 3:7-8)
Weigh that carefully, because it is not an insult. He grants the zeal. He is describing people who were serious, devout and self-denying — and he says the very seriousness was aimed in the wrong direction.
The phrase that does the work is going about to establish their own righteousness. That is the essence of religion: the attempt to construct a standing before God out of one's own materials. And the reason it fails is not that the materials are shoddy but that God has already provided a righteousness, and to build your own is to decline His.
This explains why deeply religious people are often the hardest to reach with the gospel — not because they are worse, but because they have more to lay down. A man with nothing to show has less to surrender.
The Lord Jesus Christ said something that should be read slowly by anyone relying on religious activity.
"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)
Read what follows, because it is more alarming still. These are not irreligious people. They come with a record of spiritual achievement:
"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?" (Matthew 7:22)
Preaching. Deliverance. Wonderful works. Whatever else these people were, they were busy, and they were busy in His name.
"And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." (Matthew 7:23)
I never knew you. Not you fell away. Not you did not do enough. He does not dispute the works — He disputes the acquaintance. The issue was never activity. It was that there had never been a relationship at all.
He said that not everyone who says to Him Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven. And He described people who would say, on that day, that they had prophesied in His name, cast out devils in His name, and done many wonderful works in His name — and that He would profess to them: I never knew you.
Read what is not being described. These are not atheists, or scandalous sinners, or people who despised religion. They are religiously active, using His name, doing impressive works.
And the ground of their exclusion is not that they did too little. It is a matter of relationship: I never knew you. Not you did not do enough, but we were never acquainted.
That is the whole burden of this page in a single sentence. It is possible to be religious and unknown to God.
The prophets had said the same thing centuries earlier, and the Lord Jesus Christ quoted them: this people draws near with their mouth and honours Him with their lips, but their heart is far from Him, and in vain do they worship Him, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
"Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as 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." (Isaiah 29:13)
Written seven centuries before Christ, and quoted by Him against the religious men of His own day:
"This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (Mark 7:6-7)
In vain do they worship me. That is a terrible sentence. The worship happened; it simply did not arrive.
And the diagnosis in Isaiah is worth marking: their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men. A religion learned entirely from other people, which had never once been transacted with God.
Notice that the worship described is not absent. The people are drawing near. The words are correct. The lips are honouring Him.
The problem is distance in the heart, which no amount of correctness can close — and the addition of human commandments to God's, which makes the whole thing vain.
Anyone who has sat through a service saying the right words while thinking about the afternoon knows exactly what that verse describes. And the fact that a person can do it for forty years is precisely what makes this so serious.
Let us be fair to ritual, because Scripture is.
Let the ordinances be given their proper place, because the answer to dead ritual is not no ritual.
Baptism pictures a death, burial and resurrection that have already happened. The Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of a body broken and blood shed. Both are commanded, both are precious, and both were given by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
What neither can do is produce the thing it pictures. A wedding ring is a good and right symbol; it does not create a marriage. A man wearing a ring who has never married is not partly married.
"For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision." (Romans 2:25)
That was written about the oldest and most solemn ordinance God ever gave to a people. Even that, He says, is emptied when the reality behind it is absent.
Forms are not evil. God Himself appointed a great many of them in the Old Testament, and the Lord Jesus Christ left two simple ones to His church. Order in worship is commanded, and a service with structure is not thereby dead.
What ritual can do is teach, remind, order and unite. It can carry truth into the memory and hold a community together across generations. These are real goods.
What ritual cannot do is give life. It cannot forgive a sin, change a heart, or make a stranger into a son. A wedding ring is a fine thing and means a great deal — but no one has ever become married by buying one.
And Scripture warns specifically that religious observance can become a substitute for the thing it points to. The apostle Paul wrote of ordinances — touch not; taste not; handle not — which have a show of wisdom in will worship and neglecting of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. Impressive, demanding, visible — and powerless at the one point where power is needed.
The alternative is not a better system. It is a Person, and Scripture defines eternal life in terms of knowing Him: this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Know — not know about. The difference is the difference between knowing a great deal about a man and being his friend.
And the terms are stated with a bluntness that leaves no room for contribution:
"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us." (Titus 3:5)
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Notice that this is not a lowering of the standard. It is a change in who meets it. God did not decide that less would do; He provided everything Himself.
Some honest questions, offered without any wish to unsettle you needlessly.
If you died tonight and God asked why He should receive you, what would you say? If the answer begins with anything you have done, attended, kept or avoided, that is religion. If it points entirely to Christ, that is the gospel.
Is your standing with God affected by how the week has gone? If a bad week makes you feel He has withdrawn, you are on a ledger, not in a family.
Do you know God, or know about Him? Could you speak of Him as someone you deal with, or only as a subject you were taught?
Was there ever a point at which you personally came to Christ? The date does not matter and many cannot name one. But there is a difference between being unable to recall the day and having no notion of the transaction at all.
And does the gospel strike you as good news, or merely as familiar? To a person who has grasped it, it never becomes ordinary.
Nicodemus came at night, uncertain, with a lifetime of religion behind him and a real question in front of him. He was not turned away. Later in the Gospels we find him defending the Lord Jesus Christ before the council, and finally helping to bury Him — a man who had come by night now acting in daylight.
The same conversation is open to you, and it requires no ceremony, no permission and no intermediary.
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
"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." (John 1:12)
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts 16:31)
If you have kept the forms all your life and never had peace, the problem was never that you did too little. It is that the whole approach was aimed in a direction that could not reach.
You cannot climb to God. That is not a criticism of your effort; it is the reason He came down.
Everything you have done can stay where it is — the memories, the family, the building, the years. None of it needs to be despised. But none of it can do what only He can do, and He has never asked you to bring it.
Come to Him directly, tonight, as Nicodemus did.
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."John 3:3
English uses one word where the difference is enormous. A man may know a great deal about a person he has never met.
A biographer may know his subject's birthplace, handwriting, habits and private letters, and be a stranger to him. A woman may know every statistic about a footballer and never have shaken his hand. Knowledge of that kind can be extensive, accurate and entirely second-hand.
And that is precisely the word Scripture uses for eternal life:
"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17:3)
Not know about. Know. Eternal life is defined here as an acquaintance with a Person, and no amount of accurate information substitutes for it.
This is why a man may pass a doctrinal examination and be lost, and why a dying thief with almost no theology went to paradise the same afternoon. The one had facts; the other had Christ.
"But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God." (Galatians 4:9)
Notice how the apostle Paul corrects himself mid-sentence. After that ye have known God — or rather are known of God. The knowing runs both ways, and His knowledge of you is the greater half.
Nobody sets out to replace Christ with a routine. It happens gradually, and it is worth seeing the stages, because most people are somewhere on the road.
It usually begins with something real. A conviction, a season of seriousness, an honest wish to be right with God. So far, so good.
Then the practices are adopted. Attendance, giving, the vocabulary, the ordinances. These are right things and they bring real benefits — friendship, structure, a settled week, the respect of good people.
Then the benefits begin to sustain themselves. The man keeps going because he is known there, because his family expects it, because it is who he is. The practice no longer depends on the conviction that started it.
And then the original question is never revisited. Why would it be? Everything is in order. He is doing more than most. To raise the question now would be to unsettle a whole life.
That is how a person arrives at sixty with forty years of faithful churchgoing and no certainty whatever, and cannot say when the certainty went, because it was never there.
"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (2 Corinthians 13:5)
The apostle Paul wrote that to a church — to people already gathered, already baptized, already receiving his letters. He did not consider the question insulting.
Suppose you have read this and recognised yourself. What follows matters, so read it slowly.
You have not wasted your life. The years of attendance put you under the sound of the truth, and that is why you can recognise the difficulty now. Many never get that far.
You do not need to leave anything. This is not a call to abandon your church, your family, or the ordinances. It is a call to have the reality that all of them were pointing at.
You do not need to become someone else first. The invitation is not to improve and then come. Nicodemus was told to be born again, not to be better.
And you do not need a ceremony to settle it. No priest, no minister, no rite. The transaction is between you and God, and it can happen where you are sitting.
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18)
"For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:13)
Whosoever. That word was chosen carefully, and it includes the man who has been in the building for forty years without ever once meeting the One it was built for.
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Your presence.
We thank You for Your beloved Son, and for Him who told the most religious man of his day that he must be born again. We praise You for Your preserved Word, which declares "Ye must be born again" (John 3:7), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before You that we have trusted forms and ceremonies to do what only the new birth can do. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech You for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Your Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Your Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Your people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to bring every religious soul who reads it from ceremony to Christ Himself, for Your glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to You, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to You just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Your law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring You nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Your Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).