How God Makes Us Alive
From Gospel Translations
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By John Piper
About Regeneration (New Birth)
Part of the series Message Excerpt
Audio Transcript
This is 1 Peter 1:23–25: “You have been born again” — I hope that’s true of you. “You have been born again,” — that is, you have life — “not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for ‘All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.’ And this word is the good news that was preached to you.”
How does the miracle of life happen? By the Spirit, through the word. When it hits you that, through the word, everlasting life happens, it makes you tremble. It makes you want to kiss this book. We’re not bibliolaters. I remember a professor who was trying to make this point and he threw the Bible into a garbage can in seminary class — not one of ours. I would never do that, but I got the point. I get the point.
Here’s James 1:18 take on the same point: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” How did you get to be a new creation in Christ? He brought you forth by the word. It’s tremblingly glorious that the word is the instrument of the miracle of everlasting life.
So, the new birth — the beginning of the entire Christian life — is a miracle of the word. The writers intend that their words would be a means to that miracle of new life. So, it’s not surprising, then, that if the lifelong drama of the Christian life began by the word — with the miracle of life — everything else that pleases God and counts for eternity comes by the word through that supernatural work, because you’re alive. You’re the one doing it and you’re a new person.
