EVERY MAN’S NECESSITY – Charles Spurgeon

Every Man’s Necessity

“You must be born again.” John 3:7.

When men are perishing all around you, it would be cruel to waste time attempting to interest their minds or amuse their fancies. We must do something more practical and give earnest heed to their pressing necessities. Is it famine that slays them? Let us feed them. Is it cold? Let us supply them with covering. Is it disease? Let us administer medicine. When the case is urgent, we confine ourselves to necessities and attend with our whole heart to that which must have our attention. That which may can wait, but that which must demands our immediate care.

Now, the spiritual needs of men are urgent, and among them, the most pressing is their regeneration—they must be born again or they are lost! Therefore, at this time, we will dwell on this topic and give it our full consideration, letting other interesting matters wait until this most weighty business is happily over. This is a must, and we must press it upon you at once with our whole heart! Our earnest desire is for a great ingathering of souls to the garner of salvation, but in order for this to happen, they must be born again.

We have had many of you hovering around us like birds around the fowler, but you are not, as yet, taken in the Gospel net. This state of things cannot content us—we need to see you decided for Christ and truly born again. You have long been hearers, but, alas, you remain hearers only, and are not “doers of the Word of God.” We do not want the fault to lie with us—if you continue unsaved, it shall not be because we have not preached the Gospel, and kept to preaching it as a matter of life and death! Again, then, we aim at the one point, the point of absolute necessity—“You must be born again.” We trust that if one arrow does not reach the mark, another may. At any rate, we will continue driving at the one target—the conversion of your souls.

O you who as yet have not been brought to know the Lord, may the Holy Spirit guide the arrow at this hour! And now, we will have a little simple talk about the great experience called regeneration, or the new birth, without which no man can see the kingdom of Heaven, much less enter it.

I. The New Birth is Most Thorough

The change which is worked in us by the new birth is most thorough. “You must be born again.” A new birth is the most sweeping and entire process conceivable. It is, in fact, more than a change; it is a creation. Regeneration is a great deal more than reformation of life or becoming religious, for it is not, “You must be washed, you must be improved, you must be elevated,” but “you must be born.” It is not enough that the present life, as already possessed, should be renovated; that the existing nature should receive fresh vigor and new tone. But “you must be born again”—a new life must be received, and no improvement of the present life will suffice in its place.

It is also a great deal more than any change of opinion. I am always afraid of those persons who glory in being converted from one set of religious opinions to another. The best converts to a Church are those who are brought into it from the world—those who migrate from other sections of Christianity are not often the most valuable acquisitions. Sometimes, like convicts who leave their country for their country’s good, they benefit their party best by leaving it and do not come to the newly adopted section of the Church as an unmixed gain.

The text says not, “You must change your opinions and drink in new notions,” but “You must have a new nature; you must be born again.” Notions may be altered again and again, and yet the man may be no nearer being a child of God—but let the nature be changed by the Holy Spirit—and then the matter is accomplished! This it is, and nothing short of this can land a man in Heaven—he must become a new creature in Christ Jesus.

The process of the new birth is so thorough that it is a great deal more than an alteration of a man’s way of thinking, even upon the best of topics. A man may now think it his duty to be religious, whereas once he was debauched. He may now conceive it to be his duty to be sober, whereas before he was a drunkard. He may feel it his duty, now, to be diligent, whereas before he was a sluggard. But all these put together would not amount to a new birth!

We rejoice in reformation of any sort. The less sin there is in the world, the better. But, for all that, the vital point will not have been reached with all the alterations of thought and even of life, of which a man is capable! The text remains in force after all the renovations, conversions, and reformations that are possible to unaided flesh and blood—and it cries with stern, unchanging voice—“You must be born again.”

The person concerned may have passed through a long series of ceremonies. He may have been received with a welcome into a so-called church, and from the hands of those who think themselves priests, there may have distilled the aqueous imposture which is said to regenerate the soul. But there is something more needed than priests can convey or than water can effect. Our Lord Jesus Christ meant something far more than the hocus pocus of an empty form when He said, “You must be born again.”

I say in the presence of all that have been baptized in infancy and all that have been baptized in adult age but were not Believers—you, even you, baptized infidels—“You must be born again!” If you have been baptized and re-baptized, but are still unbelievers and have not the Spirit of God in your souls, “you must be born again.”

What does all this mean? And what is the signification of this so thorough change? Do not the words evidently mean that a new nature must be created in us? For a life, a nature, is the production of a birth. At a birth, there comes into the world a life which was not there before. There must come into us a new life to which, by nature, we are perfect strangers—something far beyond that which belongs to us as we are born after the flesh—a life that was not latent in the infant, to be gradually developed in the training of the child, but a life which is altogether absent till Divine Grace implants it there.

“You must be born again”—you must be created again, or as the Scriptures say, “Begotten again unto a lively hope.” The life within you must be as fresh a creation as was the light when God spoke it, or as was the world when God formed it out of nothing! A work of Divine power must be exercised upon you equal to that which raised the Lord Jesus from the dead and gave Him Glory!

With a new life in the matter of our ordinary birth, there begins a new experience. To the new-born child, everything is new. Every pain, every sensation of pleasure is all novel to him—he has known nothing of all this before. And though we may have attained to manhood, or even to old age when we are born again, the spiritual life is all a fresh experience. There are new feelings of contrition; there is a new faith; there is a new joy, a new hope—everything is new—“Old things have passed away and all things have become new.”

Though the man may have traversed many paths and experienced many sensations, yet the moment he is born again, he is a stranger in a strange land and is led in a way which he knows not and in paths which he has not seen. All young souls just born to God, however old they may be as to bodily reckoning, rejoice in the sacred novelty of the new life, and they thank and bless God who has put His hands, a second time, to the work and quickened them into newness of life.

II. The New Birth is Most Wonderful

Now, as there is a new life, a new nature, and a new experience, so is there to the child born and the man regenerated a new world. It is all new to the child—its brothers and sisters surprise it. When it is taken into the open air and sees the green fields for the first time, it marvels at them! To the little one, everything is fresh. It lives in a museum; it is surrounded with wonders! Even the toys which grown-up people look upon with so much contempt are quite marvels to the little one—it is charmed with them all.

A Christian, a man or woman born again, lives in a new world. It is all new to him now, as I remember to have heard a young girl say, when first she found the Savior. When she came to confess her faith in Christ, she said, “Either I am altogether changed, or else the world is”—and I could not help telling her I hoped it was both—I hoped she herself was changed and that this change had produced the other, so that all things had become new.

There is a new Heaven and a new earth reserved for us, by-and-by, and even now, while we are in this world, it is no longer to us what it is to the carnal man. To the twice-born, the world is turned upside down. The things we once loved, we cease to care for. Former objects of ambition, we count but dross, while things that were contemptible become to us objects of supreme solicitude.

The Holy Spirit, having changed us, our views of all around us are entirely different. Such must be your experience, dear Hearer, or you will live as carnal men and die in your sins. You must experience this Divine creation, no matter who you may be—there can be no exceptions—you must know this great change or be lost!

You may have been dandled on the lap of piety; the name of Jesus may have mingled with the hush of your first lullaby; you may scarcely, at first, have heard any music but that of holy hymns; you may have been taught morality and sanctity by the example of many generations of ancestors. But, be you who you may, or what you may, you must receive a new life and you must pass through a new experience—and you must live in a new world or be lost!

III. The New Birth is Most Manifest

Now, let us remark, in the third place, that wonderful and mysterious as the new birth must always be, it is most manifest. The house knows when a child is born. There are mysteries surrounding its birth, but the fact is apparent enough. You shall soon hear its cry in the nursery, and before long, its prattle in the parlor. You shall see the joy of the parents as they clasp their offspring and the care with which they watch for its good.

So, in the new birth, we know not how the Spirit works, but we know that He does work, and we soon see that a marvelous change has come over those whom He has made possessors of the heavenly seed, creatures of the new life! Those who know converted persons best are among the first to perceive the transforming miracle of Grace.

Does a man say, “I am regenerate”? Come, then, Sir, what is the difference in you? What life do you lead? Have you a higher objective than the ordinary sons of men? Are you swayed by higher motives? Are there diviner impulses pulsing in your soul than those which stir the hearts of worldlings?

“For except your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees,” the best of worldlings, “you cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” If the love of Christ within does not make us better than the best of worldly men, we give no evidence of having experienced the renewing work of God the Holy Spirit!

The heavenly life is very manifest—and it is all the more so from the fact that there are certain signs which always attend and attest the new birth. Persons may be born again, and yet they may not be able to see with us in certain points of doctrine, but there are some things which all the regenerate agree about.

Every soul that is born again repents of its sin. If a man lives in his sin as he used to do, he must not pretend that he is a twice-born man, or he will mightily deceive himself. If he can look upon sin in the same light as he did before; if he can find pleasure in it; yes—if he does not unfeignedly turn from it with loathing and seek the mercy of God to blot it out—he knows nothing of what regeneration is!

Again, all the regenerate have faith. They all agree in finding the sole ground of their hope in the blood and merit of Jesus. Meet them anywhere and they will tell you they have no confidence except in the Savior’s precious blood. He is all their salvation and all their desire.

In addition to this, all that have passed from death unto life pray. If it really rises from the heart, prayer is an infallible mark of the new birth. If it can be said of a man, “He does not pray,” then he is still dead in his sins, the Spirit of God has not renewed his soul.

I might mention some other holy signs which are invariable accompaniments of the new birth, but these three will suffice for all practical purposes. You can test yourselves, Beloved, by them. Have you repented? Have you faith towards God? Do you rejoice to draw near to God in prayer? If these things are in you, they are marks of the new life, for they were never yet found in the spiritually dead!

Do you groan over sin? A corpse does not groan—gracious mourning over transgression is one of the surest proofs of inward spiritual life. Trust in Jesus is an equally clear sign of spiritual life, for the dead man does not know what it is to trust. And genuine prayer is equally a certain token of life received from above. A pang of penitential grief, a thought of holy trust, and a yearning of inward prayer are more than all the unregenerate upon earth can compass, even though they should be doctors of divinity or cardinals of the church!

This new life, the new birth, is a very manifest thing from the power that it puts into men after it has had time to develop itself. At first, converts are trembling and weak, but if they have received the new life, they gather strength and there is a power in it which the Church soon rejoices in and which the devil trembles at.

Regeneration: A Thorough, Wonderful, and Imperative Change

I cannot linger longer. Regeneration is a thorough change and a wonderful change—but it is a manifest change, and in some men, it is especially so. Be it our aim to prove to a demonstration that we are born from above!

IV. Regeneration is a Most Imperative Change

You must, you must, you must be born again! You may be rich, or you may be poor, but “you must be born again.” You may be intelligent, you may be educated, you may be talented, but “you must, you must be born again.” Many things are desirable, but one thing is necessary, imperatively necessary—you must, you must, you must be born again!

This imperative necessity may be seen from many points of view. We cannot mention them all, but just one or two. If you are not born again, you have no life—no spiritual life. The first birth gave you bodily life and mental life, but it did not give you spiritual life—it could not do so, for that which is born of the flesh is flesh and no more. Now, you must have spiritual life, or else you are dead in trespasses and sins, and to all that has to do with spiritual blessings— to a spiritual Gospel, a spiritual salvation, a spiritual Heaven—to all these things, you are dead, as the corpses in their graves are dead to the business of today.

There may be great changes taking place in politics—trade may be very prosperous, or it may be depressed—but the dead man has no interest in the nation or its commerce—how can he have? So it is with you. Until you are born again, the spiritual world is shut to you, and you are indifferent to it. Angels may be rejoicing, and Believers may be rejoicing over saved souls, but you care nothing about it. The Lord Jesus Himself may be seeing the travail of His soul, but it is nothing to you—and it must be nothing to you because you are dead!

Oh, if our bodies could take the shape of our souls, there would be many carcasses sitting before me in these pews! Ah, strange and ghastly sight! We thank God that He conceals the spiritual from our eyes, else we might, in horror, leave the places where we sit because we should find ourselves in close companionship with the dead! What a horrible thing a dead soul must be if our spirits could now perceive it as our senses would perceive a corpse!

Let us pause here to realize striking facts in this connection. Some of you are linked in marriage with the spiritually dead. Some of you have dwelling in your house the children of your care who are dead while they live. You will sit tonight at the supper table with the spiritually dead! Regard them in that light, and your hearts will perhaps be moved to pray more intensely for them than you have ever done.

You that sit regularly in this place, I would like you to remember this fact when this house is crowded. Think, “In my pew there are sitting an unconverted man and an unconverted woman—and they are dead.” We don’t expect them to feel for themselves, but we do expect the living to feel for them. My dear Hearers who are unrenewed, do you not see that you must be born again? For unless you are so, you will remain dead to spiritual things.

Furthermore, remember that a man who is not born again has no spiritual capacity. We must be receivers, first, in the spiritual life, but the dead sinner, as yet, until God quickens him, can receive nothing. How often are the saints of God spiritually comforted, instructed, and enriched under the preaching and hearing of the Word of God? But it is their spiritual nature that receives the enrichment. The unregenerate have no spiritual nature—they are carnal, sold under sin—their mental powers, as well as their bodily appetites, are enslaved. Therefore, they have no power to receive the blessing. The gracious and ever-blessed rain of the Spirit comes, but they are not like Gideon’s fleece, ready to drink it in. Instead, they are like a hard stone, upon which the drops may descend, but cannot be saturated with the moisture, nor softened by it.

Unregenerate men are broken cisterns, which it is vain to attempt to fill. Even if God’s own grace were to come to them, it could not be retained, for they have not the capacity to hold it. Only the spiritual can receive the spiritual! You must, then, be born again to have a spirit by which spiritual things are discerned and received. Do you not see that you must be born again?

Once more, you must be born again because, without the Spirit of God, you are not the children of God, and consequently, you have no spiritual inheritance. The Spirit causes us to be born—that birth makes us children, and our being children makes us heirs. If we are not born again, we are not children, therefore we are not heirs, and we are out of the heritage. For God’s heritage of Glory is for the heirs of grace and for none others. And none shall come into the eternal portion but those who are born in His house and are His true sons and daughters.

Universal fatherhood, whatever that may be, brings us common mercies, but it is the special fatherhood which God has toward the living in Zion that brings us special blessings! You must, then, be born again or lose all share in the Divine inheritance. No soul can ever cross the threshold of Heaven that has not received the new life. No matter how abundant its prayers, nor how multiplied its acts of religiousness, unless it has been born again, the gates of Paradise are forever fastened against it.

Banished from the Presence of Jehovah’s Glory, there is only one other place where it can dwell—and that must be where their worm dies not and their fire is not quenched. “You must be born again.”

V. The New Birth is Eminently Personal

I will finish my discourse by saying that this new birth is eminently personal. “You must be born again.” The idea of proxy is quite apart from the figure of the text. A man is born himself, in propria persona—no other can be born for him—so here the change which must be worked in us must be personally experienced and individually known and felt.

What delusion it is to fall back upon a parent’s godliness, or a godfather’s promises, or to imagine that the minister or the so-called priest can stand before God for us! “You”—“you must be born again,” and if you are not, you shall never enter the Kingdom of God!

Now, I think I hear passing through the congregation at this moment the whisper of many hearts who are saying, “This is very discouraging. We like to hear, ‘Only believe and you shall be saved.’ We are glad to be told that, ‘whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has everlasting life.’ But this distresses us, for it does not open the door as wide as we could wish.”

Believe me, I am very glad to tell you of the free and wide Gospel of Grace! It is joyful work for me to bring that welcome message to you, and I am sure I bring it as constantly as I come upon this platform. My most frequent note is—“Look unto Christ and be saved all you ends of the earth.” But at the same time, God forbid that you should be built up upon a false foundation, or that your faith and confidence should stand apart from the Truth of God as it is in Jesus. It will be found to be wood, hay, and stubble if it is so.

But you say my sermon is discouraging—had you not better ask, “Is it true?” A person has been building a house and we see him piling up stones, but he has never dug out a foundation! It is certainly discouraging to him to tell him that it is not the right way to build a house, but it will be a great mercy for him to be discouraged in a work which is so foolish. It will be a great saving to him in the long run if all that he has already built should come down at once, and he should even now begin at the beginning once more and lay a good foundation and make sure work of it. It would be foolish to cry out, “Do not discourage him!” He ought to be discouraged. Yes, indeed, we would discourage all that will end in disappointment.

The fact is, your efforts, your doings, and your merits, all of them, at their very best, must be a failure, and it is a good thing for us to tell you so. “But what am I to do?” asks one. That, permit me to remind you, is not the best question for you to ask, for if the work of salvation were what you must do, surely it would be left undone! You may put the question, “What must I do to be saved?” but we will point you away from doing and we will tell you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you may be saved. If you persist in saying, “What must I do?” we will tell you that the sooner you look away from all that you can do, the better—for the work of salvation from sin is the work of the Spirit of God in you, and you must come to look to Him through Jesus Christ, that He may work in you all those graces and gifts which shall adorn your future life.

Faith looks to the blood of Jesus for the pardon of sin and then looks to Him for His Spirit to overcome the power of sin within the heart—nor does she look in vain—but if you look elsewhere, you will search till your eyes fail you and never see your desire.

Would to God we could bring you, not only to discouragement, but to despair of yourselves! When you shall feel you are powerless, we shall have hope for you, for then you will leave yourselves in the hands of Him who can do all things!

“Oh, but you tell me I must have Divine power working in me.” We do tell you that—we can tell you nothing less—and if that power is ever at work in your soul, its first effect will be to bring you to confess this, and you will fall down before the footstool of Divine Mercy and say, “Lord, save me, or I perish. God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

I do not want to rouse your activity, you unconverted people—I want to rouse you to the conviction that you are lost, and I pray God the Holy Spirit may so convince you! I wish not to make you think, “We can cure ourselves,” but oh that you would feel that you are diseased and that, though you have destroyed yourselves, your remedy lies in a higher hand—that you must look to Jesus, only, for healing! To get the supernatural element into the matter is that which we would strive for, and may God the Holy Spirit help us in it. We would have you look away from what is in you or can come from you and trust to what Christ did on the Cross, to what the gracious Father is waiting still to do, and what the Holy Spirit is sent on purpose to work in you that you may be saved!

Oh, that you may begin to pray for the Divine power! May you never rest in anything short of the Divine working in your spirit. It is to this we would bring you! Now you know all this and have known it for years, the most of you. To know it—ah, how great a privilege if not abused! How great a responsibility if the knowledge shall end here! Yet to know it, oh, how sad unless you feel it!

To feel that, “I must be born again,” and to be wretched till I am renewed in heart is a good beginning! I pray that you may go home and feel, “There is no pillow in this world that will suit my head till I have laid it upon the Savior’s bosom. There is no bliss that can give me solace till I have found pardon in the wounds of my Redeemer.”

God grant you may sigh and pant in this way and we shall then believe that you are regenerate! May you receive the Lord Jesus and He will give you power to become the sons of God, for those who believe in Him were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God! Then shall you know the secret of regeneration, and the Lord Himself shall be revealed in you. Then shall you know that you are blessed of the Lord, for flesh and blood could not have revealed this unto you. May the Holy Spirit be within you evermore. Amen.

By the tender kindness of God, the journey here was made without excessive fatigue, and now I trust that genial weather will bring with it rapid restoration. This place has participated in the severe weather which has swept over the continent, so that I miss, just now, the bright sunshine to which I have been formerly accustomed. Yet it is comparatively warm, and so far is beneficial to an invalid. Rest is the main thing, and rest I hope to find, that I may come back to you strengthened for sacred service.

It is at the request of many that I write these few lines, otherwise, I would be better content to say nothing about myself. Tottering on my staff today in weakness, I hopefully look forward to the time when I shall stand among you in fullness of vigor. God grant that mental and, above all, spiritual strength may be given me for the preaching of the Word in your midst and that my long bodily affliction may assist to that end. I trust I shall not be forgotten in your prayers when it is well with you. I hope also that the various enterprises, such as the College and Orphanage, will not be allowed to languish because their President is ill.

Peace be to you all.

Yours very heartily,
Charles Spurgeon