You must be born again. You can reform your life. You can turn things around. You can stop drinking and start being nicer to your wife. But that is reformation. If you will be saved, you need regeneration. If you will go to Heaven, you must be born again, and the Holy Spirit must do that work (John 3:5). He opens the eyes of the spiritually blinded so they can perceive the things of God and realize their sinfulness and then see the glory of Christ. The blessed Holy Spirit then draws the sinner to Jesus in repentant faith.
Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3 “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” If you go to Heaven, God must perform this supernatural work of grace in your heart. It is not a matter of convincing someone the Bible is true. Even if a person could perceive the things of God naturally – he still wouldn’t believe because he would have no desire for the things of God. We don’t need help, we need to be saved. We need to be changed. God must come to us in grace or we would never come to Him. This is why Jesus said in John 6:44 “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.”
In the new birth, we receive spiritual life. It is a heart of stone being replaced with a heart of flesh.
(Ezekiel 11:19). God makes us new, with new loves, different desires, and a new will (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Holy Spirit gives spiritual life to a sinner, that he may be made able to receive the gospel, repent and believe. God’s love is so powerful that it conquers and subdues us. It arrests and binds our hearts. It smashes our idols and replaces it with a new heart and makes us willing to come to Him. We love God because He loved us first.
In Acts 16:13-15, Paul went to a riverside and preached to a woman’s prayer group. The word of God was spoken to Lydia and God opened her heart. Paul didn’t say to those women “with every head bowed and every eye closed” or did he start singing Just as I am. Paul didn’t even give an invitation to an old fashioned altar. Paul expounded God’s Word on a river bank. God opened Lydia’s heart so that she was attentive to the words of God. For the first time, she really HEARD the gospel. For the first time, she saw herself for what she was, a sinner. For the first time, the Word became real to her and for the first time, she saw the beauty of Christ and she then willingly and joyfully trusted in Jesus. The Holy Spirit uses the instrument of the Word of God in regeneration and then gives the sinner faith to believe in Christ and receive salvation. Paul opened the word, God opened the heart.
