Twin Truths: God's Sovereignty and Man's Responsibility (John 3:11-21)

This morning we're going back to John chapter 3, so open your Bible, if you will, and come with me to the third chapter of John. We're going to take a look, an initial look at this section, verses 11 to 21. And then I'm going to kind of digress a little bit because there's something I have to tell you to set this entire passage in a proper context and to put it in your mind in a way that will be most helpful.

But let me read, we left off our discussion of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in the opening ten verses where Jesus talks to him about being born again, born from above. And we talked about the new birth. We talked about being born from above. It's a work of God; it's a divine work, a work of sovereign grace and sovereign power. It's a monergistic, unilateral work of God that's not a synthetic work where you have God participating with man. It's not some kind of coalescing of the will and power of man, with the will and power of God. It's a singular work of God by which He comes down from heaven, irresistibly brings a call--we call it an effectual call on the heart of a sinner--draws that sinner to himself, regenerates that sinner, and then justifies that sinner, sanctifies that sinner and then glorifies that sinner. It's a work of God. The new birth being born from above, in the very illustration of birth, makes the point because no one participates in his own birth. You didn't participate in your physical birth; you didn't participate in your spiritual birth.