Introduction

“Ye must be born again” is a favorite sermon topic, but relatively few Christians really understand what it means to be born again. Why is it such a rare thing to hear a simple exposition of what the new birth means and what takes place when one is born again? This has always perplexed me because the fact is our supernatural birth is as real as our natural birth.

To understand the birthing, what it truly means to be born again, a historical setting may be helpful. In the Old Testament, salvation was of the soul. That makes salivation easy to understand because most of us grew up in religion where we learned a vocabulary to express the concept of salvation through soul- winning campaigns and being a soul-winner. The use of the word soul is primarily Old Testament terminology. In the Old Testament, the saving of the soul was the only salvation available because salvation of one’s spirit by Christ was not yet a reality. Christ had not yet died on the cross, and no provision had been made for an exchange of spirits wrought by Christ in the person at that time. This exchange takes place in the believer’s spirit: Satan out and Christ in. All soul salvation was of self-effort, and the person had to do something to make it happen.
An example of this would be Abraham, who was said to be a great man of faith, but the Scripture states that what made him a great man was his obedience—which is self-effort. Obedience salvation requires that you do something. All salvation in the Old Testament was soulish with no exchange taking place in spirit.

In the Old Testament, the word soul is used eight times more than in the New Testament. In Paul’s epistles, he uses the word soul only nine times. There is little mention of soul in the New Testament because once Christ is birthed in the spirit of the believer there is nothing you can do to improve the condition of the spirit. In the Old Testament, salvation was done soulishly, and the human spirit (Satan’s nature, kindly referred to as “Adamic nature”) was brought under subjection. That was very tenuous because even the greatest people in the Old Testament had a difficult time bringing their spirit under subjection.