The Necessity of the New Birth

There is an absolute requirement to enter into God’s kingdom, and that is that you be changed by God. That God the Holy Spirit lets you out of prison. That God the Holy Spirit changes the disposition of your soul. Because by nature, you do not want God in your thinking. It is your normal fleshy makeup to flee from the presence of God and to have no affection for the biblical Christ. That the affection that you have in your heart today for Christ, if you have any at all, is because God the Holy Spirit—in His sweetness, in His power, and in His mercy, and in His grace—has been to your funeral, has been to the cemetery of your soul, and has raised you from the dead, so that now you are alive to the things of Christ and rejoice in the kingdom that He brought to bear.