What Does It Mean to Be 'Born Again'?

Being “born again” is a thoroughly biblical idea—it comes straight from Jesus’ words to Nicodemus: “is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, NET). So Lutherans do not shy away from the phrase; we confess it. The new birth (or regeneration) is the Spirit’s work of making spiritually dead people alive, giving a new heart and creating faith. By nature we are dead in sin and cannot generate spiritual life any more than a corpse can birth itself; we must be born from above.

Where Lutherans differ from some is not whether you must be born again but how the new birth happens—who does it, and by what means. In much popular usage, being “born again” means a decisive moment when you decide to accept Christ; the new birth is treated as something you do. Scripture points the other way. New birth is God’s doing, not ours: we are “children not born by human parents or by human desire or a husband’s decision, but by God” (John 1:13, NET). Peter says, “You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23, NET)—that is, the Spirit works this new life through the means of grace, the Word and the water of Baptism. Jesus links the new birth explicitly to being “born of water and spirit” (John 3:5, NET), and Paul calls Baptism “the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5, NET).

So the difference is one of direction and comfort. If being born again depends on the sincerity or intensity of a decision I made, I will always wonder whether I did it right, whether I meant it enough. If the new birth is God’s gift, given through his Word and Baptism, then my assurance rests on his faithful work, not my inner performance. The new birth is real and necessary—and it is his act on you, not your achievement for him. You were not the one who made yourself alive; God was. And what he began, he keeps.