ANNOUNCER: Do you know when you were born again? And should anyone tell you that you’re required to know precisely when you were born again? Let’s have a discussion about that next and we’re glad you’re here with us today, friend. This is Grace in Focus, a radio and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org and one of the things that you can do there if you’re listening on terrestrial radio is that you can go there and listen to this program again. It’s always available whenever you want to listen 24 hours a day. Also at our website you can find our bookstore where our Old Testament Commentary Volume One has just been released and is for sale, along with Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel Is Still Under Siege. Find them at faithalone.org/store. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr.

SAM: All right, everyone, we’ve got another fun one. It might ruffle feathers, I don’t know, but again, this is a very, I think, a very important topic and it’s kind of a little bit continuing our discussion from the last episode where we talked about not interpreting Scripture based on our personal experience, but interpreting our personal experience in light of Scripture. So today we’re going to be addressing the issue of the moment I think I was born again versus the moment I was actually born again. And Bob, I think you had a story that I think illustrates why this is even a question. 

BOB: I have a friend, he and I were at Dallas Seminary together. We both got doctorates from Dallas Seminary. And after our 2006 conference, when we talked about this issue, that at the moment of faith you need to believe in Jesus’ promise of eternal life in order to be born again, it’s not enough to give your life to Christ, it’s not enough to believe He died in the cross for your sins and rose again, or believe He’s God in the flesh—you’ve got to believe that by faith in Him, you have everlasting life that can never be lost or the equivalent. You’re convinced that you have an eternal relationship with Him that’ll never end. You know you’re going to be forever with Him in this kingdom. You know that you’ve been justified once and for all and that can never be undone. You have permanent right standing with God. If you don’t believe that, you’ve not yet believed the message of John 3:16 or John 5:24. 

Well, at that conference, about half the people disagreed, because their experience said, no, no, I was born again at this earlier point. And the way they knew they were born again at an earlier point was illustrated by that friend of mine. The friend that got the doctorate, the next month after our conference, he spoke at another grace conference, and he argued that assurance is not of the essence of saving faith. That is, you don’t have to believe at the moment of faith that you are secure forever. And he used the argument from church history, which I thought was a weak argument, especially since it wasn’t based on Scripture. And during the Q and A time, one guy came to the microphone and said that he had been born again, I can’t remember, but I think he said like six months to a year before he believed he was secure. And at this point, my friend said, yeah, you know, my experience was even more extreme than that. I was born again five years before I believed I was secure. 

So later on that year, I got an opportunity to talk to my friend. I met with him and I said, okay, looking back on it, since at the time you didn’t believe you were secure forever, and now you do know you’re secure forever, how do you know that’s the point you were born again? Maybe that was a point in which God did some work in your life, but you weren’t born again till later. And he said, well, you’re not going to like this, Bob, but I’ll tell you how I know I was born again at that point. I had a foul mouth. And he said at the moment that I, and I can’t remember the language he used, gave my life to Christ or whatever the language he used was, at that moment I instantly stopped cussing and my language changed with no effort on my part. And he said, secondly, at that time, at that moment, I suddenly had a great interest in the Bible that I’ve never lost. And so he said, I’m sure that’s the point at which I was born again, even though I wasn’t sure I was eternally secure, but I’m sure looking back on it that that’s when I was born again. The problem with that view is, of course, that he’s saying I was born again without believing what you need to believe to be born again. 

The issue I would say on this whole issue, do you need to know when you were born again? No, you don’t need to know when you were born again, but you do need to believe the right thing to have assurance. 

SAM: I have two arguments I want to offer. One from experience, the dreaded experiential. But I also have an argument from Scripture. But first, if I was talking to this friend or someone like that who says, you know, I know I was born again because I had this miraculous change in my life. I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, whatever, you know, I stopped swearing, I know that was the time I was born again because this thing happened to me. Okay, let me give you my experience, my testimony. 

I was raised in a Christian household. My parents were always, I mean, as long as I was alive, they taught me John 3:16. I believed in Jesus. I had everlasting life. I was going to be with Him forever. So I don’t know when I first fully understood that, I guess, but I don’t remember being nine and being a smoker and a drinker and a lecher and a swearer, and then when I was baptized symbolizing that I was born again, at that point, I became a good boy. I don’t remember that. So if I’m to use, you know, that kind of framework to determine when I’m born again, how could I ever know that I was born again? Because I never had a change of heart, a change of life, nothing ever happened in my life to symbolize or signify that I was born again, I was regenerated, other than the fact that I believed. 

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BOB: You know, the other problem with this view is it leads to two types of assurance. I have another friend who I went to Dallas Seminary with, who also got a doctorate from Dallas Seminary and he speaks of assurance and full assurance. He says at the moment of faith, you don’t need to be certain that you’re eternally secure, but you do have to have assurance that Jesus is your Savior. You don’t need to be convinced He saved you forever, but He’s at least saved you temporarily. Maybe you can lose it. You may believe that you can lose it, but that’s okay as long as you believe He’s your Savior for now. This friend of mine speaks of that as assurance and then when you come to believe the promise of eternal life, that’s full assurance. The problem I have with that is assurance is certainty. So whatever is less than, I’m certain, is less than assurance.

SAM: Right. There can’t be degrees of assurance. 

BOB: Right. Do you believe that right now Donald Trump is president? If the answer is, yes, you don’t go, well, what percentage do I believe that? In the same way, if I said anything else about the Bible, do you believe Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Does anybody talk about full assurance about that? Or do you believe that Jesus died on the cross? Is there full assurance and assurance, or is it just, I’m assured that’s true? How about that He rose from the dead on the third day? You’re either assured or you’re not assured. And the same thing with the promise of life. You’re either assured or not assured, but those two friends of mine that both got doctorates from Dallas Seminary, both of them think that your initial assurance is by your works. And that’s less than full assurance. And then later on you get full assurance when you come to believe the promise of life. What they’ve just done is confuse people. 

But coming back to our initial question of do you need to know when you first believe, the answer is no, what you need to know in order to have assurance today is that today I believe the promise of eternal life. In your case, Sam, you can’t even remember a time when you didn’t believe that, right? 

SAM: Right. 

BOB: Well, that doesn’t mean you’re not born again because you can’t remember the day or the hour. What it means is, you have assurance today because of what you believe today. And the opposite is also true. The issue of when you were first born again, the only reason that’s particularly important, is because if you say you were born again before you believe the promise of life, then you’re confusing every person you give your testimony. 

SAM: Let me get my Scriptural example because I think it illustrates the problem with that argument as well. We have Cornelius who in the book of Acts, he was a God-fearer. He was searching the Scriptures. He was praying. He was a very faithful man. He had some degree of confidence in God, I would say, but he couldn’t have had assurance of everlasting life because he didn’t know about it yet. And so that’s why God sent Peter to teach him how to be saved. At that point when Peter came and taught him, that’s when he was saved. So it would be a mistake for Cornelius to go about teaching other people, “I kept the commandments and I prayed and I offered thanks and I went to Jerusalem and did these things and God saved me and I was born again and then he sent Peter to teach me that I had assurance.” That would be a mistake for him to share his testimony that way. If he was going to share his testimony, he would say, “I sought God, I was faithful, I wanted to be part of God’s family,” whatever language we want to use, “and God blessed me so greatly by sending one of the apostles to evangelize me and then I was born again.”

And so for these people that have these experiences, this is what I would encourage you, if your testimony does not line up with the promise of everlasting life, then I would encourage you to think about it and think, okay, I had this miraculous transformation in my life. I was an awful person, I was an angry person, I was a sinner, I was a smoker, I was a drinker, whatever. In one day, it all changed and I became clean and then two years later, I believed John 3:16 and I was born again. That is a perfect way to frame your testimony. God came to me, a person who was dead in trespasses, a person who was rotten to the core, however you viewed yourself and God reached out to me and sent this miracle into my life and that led me to His promise of everlasting life. That’s a beautiful way to show your testimony, but don’t confuse people like you were saying with, “I had this miraculous transformation, I was born again and when you have that transformation, you’re going to be born again too,” because then you’re going to confuse people like me. I was never transformed that way. I never overcame a great sin or addiction. So how can I ever know I was born again, it’s just not what Scripture teaches. 

BOB: Exactly and if that’s what you say then people are going to think they’re born again by works, by transformation, not by believing in Christ and that’s Acts chapter 10 that Sam’s been talking about. God can work in the life of an unbeliever and we don’t identify that as the new birth, the new birth occurs when you believe in the promise of everlasting life. In order to have assurance, the real issue now is not when was I first born again, but do I still have assurance today? 

Let’s all keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: degrees of torment in the lake of fire. All about it next time and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.