What then does God purpose to do to equip a repentant, believing sinner for membership in the new order of heavenly holy men? He purposes to endow him with a new nature that fits him for citizenship in His Kingdom and for sonship in His family. He purposes to bestow upon him his own divine nature which will fructify in a supernatural life. To live the life of God one must have the nature of God, therefore through the new birth God plants his own seed in the spirit of man to abide there.

2 Peter 1:4

“Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

1 John 3:9

Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.

The believer in Christ Jesus becomes the possessor of something that he never possessed before, the nature of God Himself. The eternal life of the uncreated God is implanted in the innermost part of his human personality and his whole being throbs with the divine energy of a new life. The new birth is the impartation of a new intellectual, emotional, and volitional nature that produces in man a totally new life and fits him to live in a totally new sphere.

In the light of the Lord Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, it is a self-evident fact that God cannot accept any substitute for the new birth. Reformation cannot be substituted for regeneration. If God does not attempt to reform “the old man” surely, He cannot accept any fragmentary improvement man might affect. Reformation is purely man’s work; it leaves the flesh flesh, for it is the human trying to better itself. 

Reformation may improve the character of the flesh by the lopping off of certain evil habits but it cannot change flesh into spirit. Reformation may make a man somewhat more kind, generous, and courteous, but it cannot make him holy, and “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” Reformation may help a man to better the condition of his living on the plane of the natural but this does not meet God’s requirement for a totally new life on the plane of the spiritual.

Respectability cannot be substituted for regeneration. Many people are deluding themselves into thinking that if their character and conduct conform to the moral standards of the best society, that is a sufficient passport into the companionship of an altogether holy God. But God’s standards are as far above man’s as the heavens are above the earth.

Religion cannot be substituted for regeneration. Nicodemus was an ardent, active religionist but he was not a son of God or a citizen in the Kingdom of God. Over the doorway to the Kingdom of God no one will ever see written, “Admittance granted to those who have been baptized, who have been punctilious in church attendance, who have partaken of the Holy Communion, who have read the Scriptures and prayed, who have given their tithe.” In His holy Word God has already written these solemn and irrevocable words over that doorway, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus Himself, the righteous Judge, bars the gate of heaven to the unregenerate. “And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27). “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (See Diagram 10.)

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Lord, thank You for the path we all must follow if we would enter into the Kingdom of God. We must be born again.