Do John 3:3 and 3:5 Teach That People Come to Christian Faith because They Have Been Regenerated? Free Reprint Article

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Do John 3:3 and 3:5 Teach That People Come to Christian Faith because They Have Been Regenerated?

by Max Aplin
12/04/2024 / Salvation

At its heart, the Christian message of good news is that if a person has faith in Jesus Christ, their sins will be forgiven and they will be reconciled to God.

Another important part of this message is that if a person has faith in Christ, God responds by causing them to be regenerated, which is also known as being born again. Regeneration is an act of God that enables a person to be His child and to have a Holy Spirit-empowered, supernatural form of life.

Receiving forgiveness and being regenerated, then, are two aspects of what is involved in becoming a Christian, and they both follow on logically from a person coming to saving faith.

Those who claim that regeneration leads to faith

There are some Christians who claim, however, that it isn’t faith that leads to regeneration, but regeneration that leads to faith. They believe that God sovereignly causes some people to be regenerated, and that this leads to their coming to faith in Jesus.

It is true that God needs to give a person some measure of spiritual life before they can have faith in Christ. However, Scripture is clear that God responds to faith by giving a new Christian convert an even greater measure of life than He gave them before they had faith. And the Bible refers to this giving of life in response to faith as regeneration. By contrast, the Bible never refers to the lower-level, pre-faith giving of life as regeneration.

It therefore makes sense for Christians to follow biblical usage and reserve the term ‘regeneration’ for the life that God gives in response to faith. According to Scripture, then, faith leads to regeneration and not vice versa.

For a general discussion of this topic, see my article: Does Faith Lead to Regeneration or Vice Versa?

Two verses that are said to show that regeneration leads to faith

Two biblical verses that are often appealed to by those who say that regeneration leads to faith are John 3:3 and John 3:5.

In John 3:3 Jesus says to the Jewish leader Nicodemus:

‘Truly, truly, I tell you, unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’

Instead of translating the Greek original as ‘born from above’, another possible way of translating is ‘born again’, as many translations prefer.

The reference to being born from above/born again in this verse is a reference to regeneration, as all Christians agree.

In John 3:5 Jesus states:

‘Truly, truly, I tell you, unless someone is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’

The reference to being born of Spirit in this verse is a reference to regeneration, as all Christians agree.

The argument that appeals to seeing in v. 3

There is more than one line of argument from these verses that is used by those who claim that regeneration leads to faith.

Some of them use an argument that appeals to what Jesus says about seeing the kingdom of God in v. 3.

The argument goes in this way:

In v. 3 Jesus says that a person cannot see the kingdom of God unless he is regenerated. In this verse seeing means being able to spiritually understand what the kingdom of God is about. Clearly, a person cannot have faith before understanding what the kingdom is about. So this verse implies that, for those who become Christians, regeneration leads to seeing the kingdom, which in turn leads to having faith. Regeneration therefore logically precedes faith.

It is true that this verse implies that regeneration leads to seeing the kingdom of God.

Importantly, however, those who use this argument have misunderstood the sense of the verb ‘to see’ in the verse.

Quite commonly in the New Testament, seeing is a metaphor for experiencing something. It is used in this way, for example, in Luke 2:26; Acts 2:27, 31; 13:35; Hebrews 11:5; 1 Peter 3:10 and Revelation 18:7. And John’s Gospel itself uses it with this sense in John 3:36; 8:51.

This is by far the most natural meaning of seeing in v. 3.

Importantly too, this interpretation is confirmed by what Jesus says in v. 5 (the other verse I quoted above), where He more or less repeats what He said in v. 3.

Instead of His reference to seeing the kingdom in v. 3, in v. 5 He refers to entering the kingdom. His point in v. 5 is not about understanding the kingdom, but about becoming a participant in it. Given how v. 5 essentially repeats v. 3, v. 5 helps to confirm that in v. 3 Jesus was not referring to understanding what the kingdom is about, but to experiencing the kingdom.

Because seeing the kingdom in v. 3 is not about understanding the kingdom but about experiencing the kingdom, Jesus is not implying that people need to see the kingdom before they can have faith. And this means that He is not implying that regeneration, which leads to seeing the kingdom, logically precedes faith.

The argument that appeals to seeing the kingdom in v. 3 as evidence that regeneration leads to faith therefore fails. In fact, this verse tells us nothing about whether faith leads to regeneration or regeneration leads to faith.

The argument that assumes a certain logical order in v. 5

Some of those who claim that regeneration leads to faith use an argument based on a supposed implication of v. 5.

The argument goes in this way:

In v. 5 Jesus tells Nicodemus that he cannot enter the kingdom of God without being regenerated. This implies that regeneration leads to entering the kingdom. But we also know that we enter the kingdom of God through faith. So in order to be in a position to have the faith that is needed to enter the kingdom, we need to first be regenerated.

It is true that in this verse Jesus teaches that regeneration leads to entering the kingdom. And it is true too that we enter the kingdom through faith, i.e., that faith leads to entering the kingdom. Both faith and regeneration, then, logically precede entering the kingdom.

However, note how those who use the above argument just assume that regeneration leads to faith. But from the information given in this verse, there is no more reason to think that we need to be regenerated in order to have faith than there is to think that we need to have faith in order to be regenerated. The verse doesn’t mention faith at all.

So, all other things being equal, this verse could fit with the sequence held by most Christians:

Faith leads to regeneration, which in turn leads to entering the kingdom.

Or it could fit with the sequence held by a minority of Christians:

Regeneration leads to faith, which in turn leads to entering the kingdom of God.

There is not enough information in the verse itself to tell us which of these options is correct.

This argument is therefore also one that fails.

Summing up

Neither of the arguments I have mentioned carries any weight. These verses do not suggest that regeneration leads to faith. Those who claim that they do are reading something into the text that is simply not there.

In fact, these verses tell us nothing at all about the relationship of faith to regeneration in Christian conversion.

The rest of John’s Gospel

Although John 3:3 and 3:5 don’t say anything about the logical relationship of faith and regeneration, there are other passages in this Gospel that do.

In John 1:11-13 John tells us:

‘11 He [Jesus] came to what was his own, but his own did not accept him. 12 But as many as did accept him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those believing in his name, 13 who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of a man, but of God.’

The order of the words in v. 12 strongly implies that accepting Jesus in faith logically precedes being given the right to become children of God, i.e., to be regenerated. ‘But as many as did accept him’ comes before ‘to them he gave the right to become children of God’, and this is apparently the order in which things happen. In other words, this passage strongly implies that God responds to people’s faith by regenerating them.

There are also passages in this Gospel, which teach that faith leads to life or to eternal life:

In John 3:14-15 Jesus says:

‘14 . . . the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.’

In John 3:16 we are told:

‘. . . He [God] gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.’

In John 5:40 Jesus criticises people with these words:

‘But you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life.’

Coming to Christ in this verse is a coming to Him in faith.

In John 6:40 He says:

‘For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks at the Son and believes in him might have eternal life . . .’

And John 20:31 states:

‘But these have been written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.’

So in John’s Gospel faith leads to (eternal) life.

However, regeneration is the act of God by which eternal life begins. So faith must lead to regeneration.

John’s Gospel, then, teaches that faith in Christ leads to regeneration. And there are passages elsewhere in the Bible that teach the same.