With that goal, it can be said that the problem with this Easter sermon is not merely that it omits several doctrines. The deeper problem is that it presents the new birth in a way that makes regeneration appear to be chiefly an inward resurrection-power for moral renewal. That emphasis is not simply incomplete. It misunderstands and misrepresents the new birth.

The sermon repeatedly says that believers are “raised” with Christ. It teaches that Christians have already been resurrected “on the inside” and will one day be resurrected “on the outside.” It connects this inward resurrection with being “born again” or “born from above.” The sermon is therefore not merely speaking about resurrection in general. It is giving an account of regeneration.

The sermon does not plainly deny these truths. Yet it so narrows and relocates the meaning of the new birth that the only fair conclusion is this: the new birth is misunderstood and misrepresented.

Spiritual death is reduced to lost vitality

The sermon’s weakness begins with its account of spiritual death. When it explains what it means to be dead in trespasses, it says that the sinner “lacked the Holy Spirit within us” and was “not as alive as a human being was originally and initially created to be.” There may seem to be some truth in this language, but it does not account for Adam’s sin which we have inherited. It makes spiritual death sound primarily like the absence of spiritual vitality.

In Scripture, however, the sinner is not merely incomplete or underdeveloped. He is guilty, condemned, alienated, enslaved, corrupt, in Adam, and under wrath. He does not need only inward animation. He needs pardon, righteousness, reconciliation, adoption, and union with Christ. If spiritual death is defined mainly as a lack of vitality, the new birth will naturally be defined mainly as restored vitality. That is what happens in the sermon.

This is why the sermon’s doctrine of regeneration is already distorted at the foundation. The new birth becomes the answer to weakness more than guilt, to lifelessness more than condemnation, to inward deficiency more than rebellion before the holy God.

Ezekiel 37 is used as a resurrection image, not as a summons to new birth

Ezekiel 37 should have pressed the necessity of sovereign regeneration with force. The dry bones cannot move, decide, believe, reform themselves, or return to life. The vision presents utter helplessness answered only by the Word and Spirit of God.

Yet the sermon uses Ezekiel 37 mainly as a general resurrection motif. It moves quickly to the idea that because Christ has been raised, believers are raised inwardly now and bodily later. That is true as far as it goes, but the text’s searching force is blunted. Ezekiel 37 exposes the death-like condition of God’s covenant people and displays divine restoration by sovereign grace. It should have raised urgent questions: Are you spiritually dead? Can dead bones raise themselves? Must you be born again? Do you need the Word and Spirit of God to give you life?

Those questions are not pressed. Instead, the sermon largely assumes the congregation’s participation in resurrection life and applies that life to moral perseverance. In doing so, it turns a prophetic picture of helpless deadness and divine re-creation into a framework for Christian encouragement. The necessity of the new birth is therefore weakened.

John 20 does not control the meaning of life in Christ

John 20 also could have sharpened the doctrine of the new birth. John does not present resurrection life as vague spiritual vitality flowing from Easter. He presents the risen Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and summons hearers to faith in his name. Life is not an abstract power. Life is in Christ, and that should be understood as including his offices as prophet, priest and king.

The sermon mentions Thomas and the bodily reality of the resurrection, but it does not allow John 20 to define regeneration. The wounds of Christ, his peace, his identity as the Christ, and faith in his name are not made central. The movement is instead from Christ’s resurrection to the believer’s inward resurrection.

That distinction matters. The new birth is not merely that Christ’s resurrection produces new vitality in the believer. It is that the Spirit unites the sinner to the crucified and risen Christ, so that the sinner receives Christ himself and all his benefits. Saving faith rests on Christ as the sin-bearing Mediator: his obedience, blood, sacrifice, righteousness, resurrection, and intercession. Without that emphasis, the sermon’s account of the new birth becomes too inward, and too detached from the person and work of Christ.

Colossians 2 is cited, but forgiveness and the cross are not made central

Colossians 2:13 is crucial: God “made [us] alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.” The text does not allow being made alive to be separated from forgiveness. The surrounding context speaks of the record of debt being cancelled and nailed to the cross.

The sermon cites the verse and mentions forgiveness, but forgiveness does not structurally govern the sermon’s account of new life. The cross, debt-cancellation, justification, imputed righteousness, and adoption remain underdeveloped. As a result, regeneration is heard chiefly as inward renewal rather than life granted in union with the Mediator whose finished work has answered guilt and condemnation.

This is a serious distortion. The Spirit who gives life is the Spirit of the crucified and risen Christ. The sinner is made alive with Christ as one whose trespasses are forgiven, whose debt is cancelled, whose condemnation has been borne, and whose acceptance rests on Christ’s righteousness. To preach new life without making those realities central is to misrepresent the new birth.

Sonship and freedom are asserted without their gospel ground

The sermon tells believers that they are no longer enemies but God’s “friend and child,” no longer under wrath but blessing, no longer rejected but embraced. It also urges them to “live free.” These are warm phrases, but they are not scripturally grounded.

In Reformed theology, adoption must not be collapsed into regeneration. Regeneration gives new life. Justification declares the sinner righteous in Christ. Adoption receives the justified believer as a child of the Father. Sanctification renews the believer in holiness. These graces are inseparable, but they are not identical.

When the sermon speaks of being God’s child without clearly grounding that status in union with Christ, justification, and adoption, sonship begins to sound like the direct result of inward resurrection. Likewise, when it says “live free” without defining Christian liberty as blood-bought freedom from guilt, wrath, the curse of the law, bondage to Satan, and the dominion of sin, “live free”  risks becoming a slogan for self-expression or moral performance.

The result is a dangerous pressure on the conscience. The hearer may come away thinking: You have been inwardly renewed; now prove it by fighting sin. But the gospel says something better: You do not fight for acceptance; you fight from acceptance. You do not obey in order to become God’s child; you obey because in Christ you already are God’s child. You do not mortify sin as the ground of assurance; you mortify sin as the fruit of union with Christ.

The experience of the new birth is narrowed to moral combat

As the sermon progresses, it becomes evident that the sermon’s dominant practical application is that because believers have been raised inwardly with Christ, they must put sin to death. That is not false. Regeneration does produce holiness. Colossians 3 does command the believer to put off the old and put on the new.

But the sermon makes moral combat the controlling experiential meaning of the new birth. The believer is raised “on the inside” so that he can fight sin now, persevere through suffering, and await bodily resurrection later. That is far too narrow.

The new birth does not merely equip the Christian to resist sin. It brings the sinner into communion with God. The regenerate person begins to know God, love God, worship God, delight in God, walk with the Father, commune with Christ, and live by the Spirit. The goal of new life is not simply moral improvement until glory. It is the beginning of eternal life: glorifying and enjoying God now and forever.

This is where the sermon’s imbalance becomes clearest. Christ’s resurrection is treated mainly in terms of what happens inside the believer: renewal, freedom from enslaving desires, perseverance, and future bodily restoration. But the living God himself is not sufficiently presented as the end of regeneration. The sermon relocates the centre of the new birth from communion with God in Christ to inward moral renewal.

The necessity of the new birth is not pressed upon the hearer

An Easter congregation may include believers, nominal Christians, the self-righteous, the careless, visitors, and awakened but anxious souls. A sermon that invokes Ezekiel 37 and John 3 categories should say plainly: You must be born again. You cannot raise yourself. You are dead in sin apart from Christ. You need the sovereign Word and Spirit of God. Come to the crucified and risen Christ.

The sermon does not press that necessity with sufficient clarity. It speaks mainly to those who already trust in Christ and tells them that they have been raised inwardly and should live accordingly. That is a valid pastoral aim, but it is not an adequate preaching of the new birth. The unconverted hearer is not confronted with helplessness, guilt, condemnation, sovereign grace, and the necessity of coming to Christ for life.

This omission is not incidental. It follows from the sermon’s narrowed account. If the new birth is treated chiefly as inward resurrection life for Christian obedience, then the urgent question “Must I be born again?” recedes. Regeneration becomes an assumed Christian benefit rather than the indispensable divine act without which no one can see the kingdom of God.

Conclusion

The sermon should not be described as openly heretical. It may be a that a form of Gnosticism is present, or perhaps even the error Paul corrected in Galatia. It affirms true things about Christ’s resurrection, inward renewal, the fight against sin, perseverance, and future bodily resurrection. But its handling of the new birth is seriously imbalanced, and that imbalance is not minor.

It defines spiritual death too much as lost vitality. It uses Ezekiel 37 as a resurrection image without pressing human helplessness and sovereign re-creation. It cites John 20 without making faith in the crucified and risen Christ the centre of life. It appeals to Colossians 2 without making forgiveness, debt-cancellation, and the cross structurally central. It speaks of sonship and freedom without adequately grounding them in justification and adoption. It applies regeneration chiefly as moral combat rather than communion with God.

Therefore the conclusion must be sharper than saying the sermon is incomplete. The new birth is misunderstood and misrepresented. In the sermon, regeneration becomes too much like inward resurrection power for fighting sin and not enough like the sovereign work of the Spirit by which a guilty, condemned, helpless sinner is united to the crucified and risen Christ, justified by his righteousness, adopted by the Father, indwelt by the Spirit, and brought into communion with God.

The regenerate sinner is not merely raised to fight sin. He is raised in Christ to know, love, glorify, and enjoy the triune God now and forever.

A copy of the full sermon is available at The Reformed Pastor YouTube channel

More articles are available in The New Birth In Exile page.