Born Again To Believe

1 John 5:1 Every one who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God.

In the original Greek text of 1 John 5:1, the word for “born” is a perfect tense verb. In Greek, a perfect tense verb denotes an action which has been completed in the past, but has results continuing into the present time. Thus, if a person believes in Jesus Christ, then he has been born from God!

This means that we do not believe in Jesus in order to be born again. Rather, we believe in Jesus because we have been born again. We are saved not because we took the first step toward God by believing in Jesus, but because God took the initiative by causing us to be born again. By ourselves, we would never have made the free-willed choice to believe in Jesus. Rather, we had to be born again before we were able believe in Jesus.

A newly born baby made no free-willed choice regarding where to be born, whom to be born to, or even to be born at all! Likewise, being born again is not something that we can do for ourselves, and it was not by our own free-willed choice that we were born again. This is why the same Apostle John wrote elsewhere that we were “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:13)

This means that even the free-willed choice which we made to believe in Jesus for salvation was a result of what God first did in us: causing us to be born again. Therefore, there is really nothing in our salvation which we can take credit for, since our entire salvation experience, which began with us being born again, is entirely the work of God; a miracle in every way!