by Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus received an extraordinary gift.
Aeolus, keeper of the winds, confined the dangerous winds in a leather bag and gave it to Odysseus, while allowing a favorable wind to carry his ship toward home. For days, Odysseus carefully guarded the mysterious bag.
His sailors grew suspicious. Perhaps, they thought, their captain was hiding some great treasure from them.
When the small Greek island of Ithaca, Odysseus’s home, was finally within sight, an exhausted Odysseus fell asleep. His curious sailors then seized their opportunity and opened the bag.
Suddenly, the winds burst from their confinement. A violent tempest swept across the sea and drove the ship all the way back to Aeolus’s island – the place from which it had departed.
It is a fascinating story – but it is mythology.
Nobody puts the wind in a bag.
Jesus used the uncontrollable mystery of the wind to explain one of Christianity’s greatest truths.
A deeply religious man named Nicodemus came to Jesus one night. He was a Pharisee, “a ruler of the Jews” (John 3:1). Yet Jesus told this respected religious leader that all his religion, learning, morality, and position were not enough. He needed to be born again.
“Except a man be born again,” said Jesus, “he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
Nicodemus was bewildered, to say the least. How could a man possibly be born a second time? That was the question he put to Jesus.
Jesus explained:
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
The ancient Greeks imagined that they could capture and control the winds. Sometimes modern Christianity makes a similar mistake about the new birth.
We develop methods.
Walk the aisle of a church.
Raise your hand during an evangelistic appeal.
Sign this card to profess your faith and join the church.
Repeat this prayer – the sinner’s prayer.
Ask Jesus into your heart.
None of these actions is necessarily wrong. Genuine conversion may certainly involve a prayer, a public profession of faith, or walking forward during an invitation.
But none of them can make the wind blow.
Being born again is not something a preacher can manufacture, a church can administer, or a sinner can accomplish by repeating the proper words. The new birth is a supernatural work of the Spirit of God.
John had already made this clear when he said:
“Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).
This does not mean that human response is unnecessary. The person whom the Spirit awakens really does repent. He really does believe. He receives Christ and enters into a personal relationship with God through prayer and faith.
Indeed, only a few verses after speaking about the wind, Jesus gives us perhaps the best-known words in all of Scripture:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
But saving faith is more than reaching the correct theological conclusions about Jesus.
Something happens within. A change begins.
The person who once made peace with sin begins making war against it. The person who once wanted sovereignty over his own life begins recognizing Christ’s sovereignty. Jesus becomes more than a religious figure or historical personality. He becomes his Savior, his Lord, and his God.
The point is that the transformation eventually becomes visible.
When the wind blows, things start to move.
That is one of the beauties of Jesus’ illustration. You cannot actually see wind. You can only see what the wind does.
Leaves tremble in the wind. Branches bend. Flags wave. A ship’s sails fill.
In the same way, no one can see the Holy Spirit regenerating a human heart. But in time, the evidence of His life-changing work begins to appear.
Repentance replaces indifference to sin. Faith takes the place of unbelief. A hunger for God’s Word develops, along with a growing love for Christ and a desire to obey God. When sin occurs, grief follows, along with a longing to be restored to fellowship with God.
When the wind blows, you can see the evidence.
Jesus’ illustration has another comforting implication.
You may not know exactly when the wind began to blow.
Some Christians can identify almost the exact moment of their conversion. Their transformation was dramatic.
Others cannot.
Perhaps they were raised hearing the gospel. They remember believing in Christ as children but cannot identify the exact day when they personally came to saving faith.
Still others cannot identify the moment of their new birth because their coming to conscious faith in Christ was so quiet and gradual. There was no dramatic crisis, no sudden turning point that they can remember. They know only that they have come to believe in Christ with their whole heart and that their lives bear evidence of His saving work.
The important question is not, “When did the wind begin?”
The important question is: Are the leaves moving? Are the curtains lifting? Are the waters rippling?
Perhaps you remember walking an aisle.
Perhaps you remember praying the sinner’s prayer.
Perhaps you remember being baptized or joining the church.
Those may be precious memories. But none of them, standing alone, proves that someone has been born again. This is so important to understand, lest one have a false assurance that his soul is safe when it is not.
Jesus calls us to something deeper.
The great question is, has God done something within you that you could never have done for yourself?
Has your relationship to sin changed?
Has your relationship to Jesus Christ changed?
True conversion is far more than performing some one-time religious act in hopes of escaping eternal judgment. It is the awakening of the heart to the seriousness of sin – the realization that one has offended a holy God – and the earnest desire to be cleansed, forgiven, reconciled to Him, and made new for a life of obedience in a fallen world.
Have you received Christ not merely as One who saves you from the fires of hell, but as the Savior who cleanses and forgives you, the Lord before whom you bow, and the One who gives you new life to live for God?
You cannot put the wind in a bag.
But when the wind blows, you can see what it does.
“Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).
