Faith & Writing
Faith · Salvation

What Does It Mean to Be Born Again?

Already, and not yet: has been, is being, will be completed

Few phrases are pulled in more directions than "born again." One side shrinks it to a single emotional moment, a night, a raised hand, a prayer prayed once, as if the whole of new birth were finished in a sentence. Another side, reacting against that thinness, postpones it entirely, teaching that no one is born again now at all, only at the resurrection. Scripture, read with the early church, holds something fuller and truer than either: you have been born again, you are being made new, and you will be born into glory when the dead are raised. New birth has a past, a present, and a future, and you lose the gospel if you keep only one of them.

Already: a real new birth, now

The New Testament speaks of regeneration as something that has truly happened to a believer in this life, not merely a hope for the next. Peter blesses God "which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3), and says we are "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God" (1 Peter 1:23). Paul calls anyone in Christ "a new creature: old things are passed away" (2 Corinthians 5:17), and says God "saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). James says "of his own will begat he us with the word of truth" (James 1:18). These are past-tense verbs about a present people. The new birth is not only ahead of you; it has begun.

Still being made new

And it is not static. The same Scriptures that say we have been made new also say we are being made new, daily. "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:16); "be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2). The life given at the new birth grows, is tested, is sanctified. A birth is a beginning, not the whole of a life, and the One who began a good work is still at work (this is the abiding of the Vine).

Not yet: completed at the resurrection

Here the over-spiritualized "I'm already finished" view needs correcting, and here the postpone-it-all view sees something real. The fullness of our sonship is genuinely future and bodily. We "groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23); "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:50-54), so this mortal must put on immortality; and "it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him" (1 John 3:2). Christ is "the firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:18); the resurrection is where new birth is consummated, when what was sown perishable is raised imperishable.

John 3:5-6 · KJV

Except a man be born of water and of 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.

What the early church held

The earliest Christians did not make us choose. They read Jesus's "born of water and of the Spirit" (John 3:5) as real regeneration begun now, in conversion and baptism, the washing of regeneration Paul names, and they also looked for the resurrection as the day that new life is perfected in a glorified body. New birth now; glory then. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus speak of believers already "regenerated," while the whole church confessed "the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." Both ends were held at once.

So a teaching that says you are only born again at the resurrection, and not now, rightly honors the future, but it has to deny the plain past-tense verbs above, and it usually travels with other novelties the early church never held, such as a denial of the Trinity the church confessed at Nicaea. The older path keeps the whole shape: begun, growing, completed.

Not a fringe idea

And none of this is novel or fringe, it is the historic mainstream; the fringe is actually the view that denies the present new birth. The Catholic Church teaches the very same thing under its own vocabulary, baptismal regeneration: in baptism we are "reborn as sons of God," in what it calls "the sacrament of regeneration." The Orthodox hold regeneration as the beginning of theosis, the lifelong being-made-like-God that the resurrection completes. And C.S. Lewis described it plainly, distinguishing Bios, our natural biological life, from Zoe, the uncreated spiritual life of God Himself: to be born again is to begin receiving Zoe, a change he likened to a statue coming to life. The early church, the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and Lewis are all saying the one thing the New Testament already said, a real new life that begins now and is finished in glory.

The three tenses, held together

Has been: you were born of God when you were brought to living faith in Christ (1 Peter 1:3, 23; Titus 3:5). Is being: you are renewed day by day as that life grows (2 Corinthians 4:16; Romans 12:2). Will be: you will be raised, your body redeemed, made like Him (Romans 8:23; 1 John 3:2). Drop the first and the gospel becomes a distant rumor; drop the last and it becomes a shallow memory. Keep all three.

Where this lands

To be born again is not a slogan you graduate from after one night, nor a prize withheld until the grave. It is a new life that has truly begun in you, is being formed in you now, and will be brought to glory when Christ raises the dead. Live, then, as one already born of God: not coasting on a past decision, not waiting idle for the future, but abiding, being made new, and longing for the redemption of your body. Already, and not yet. (See the Kingdom, the Security of Salvation, and the Sinner's Prayer.)

Study the passages

Read them in context. Links go to BibleHub.

Related: Born Fallen, Adoption, Baptism, and Sanctification.

Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub. The early church read John 3:5 as regeneration begun in conversion and baptism (Justin Martyr; Irenaeus), and confessed the resurrection of the body as its completion. Catholic baptismal regeneration language follows the Catechism ("reborn as sons of God," "the sacrament of regeneration"); Orthodox theosis; C.S. Lewis's Bios/Zoe distinction is from Mere Christianity. Written in response to the "born again only at the resurrection" teaching, keeping the whole biblical shape: has been, is being, will be.