It is particularly John, following the teaching of his Lord, who is in a unique sense the ‘theologian of the birth from above.’ It is he who records Jesus’ ‘birth from above sayings’ in his discourse with Nicodemus in John 3:1–15; 3:3, 5, 7, 8: ‘I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again [ἄνωθεν], he cannot see the kingdom of God … I tell you the truth, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God … You must be born again [ἄνωθεν]. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’
In every other place in the Gospel where it occurs, 3:31; 19:11, 23, ἄνωθεν means ‘from above.’ I would urge therefore that ἄνωθεν means ‘from above’ in the ‘new birth’ passages where it occurs (3:3, 7). That is to say, strictly speaking, Jesus is not talking about ‘new birth’; he is talking about ‘birth from above,’ that is, from God.
When Jesus teaches that only those who have been ‘begotten from above’ (ἄνωθεν) can ‘see’ and ‘enter’ (figurative expressions for ‘faith activities’) the kingdom of God, he surely intends that regeneration is essential to faith as the latter’s causal prius. This is brought out quite clearly in John 1:12–13:
‘… to all who received him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—those not of natural descent [born], nor [born] of human will or a husband’s will, but born of God.’
John’s statement in 1 John 5:1, ‘Everyone who believes [πιστεύων] that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten [γεγέννηται] by God,’ also bears out the sequential cause and effect relationship between regeneration as cause and faith as effect. It is true, if one were to restrict his assessment of John’s intended meaning to only this one verse, that one could conceivably argue that John, by his reference to regeneration, was simply saying something more, in a descriptive way, about everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ—that he ‘has been begotten by God,’ but that he need not be understood as suggesting that a cause and effect relationship exists between God’s regenerating activity and their faith.
But when one takes into account that John says in 1 John 3:9a that ‘everyone who has been begotten [γεγεννημένος] by God does not do sin, because [ὅτι] his seed abides in him’ and then in 1 John 3:9b that ‘he is not able to sin, because [ὅτι] he has been begotten [γεγέννηται—the word in 5:1] by God,’ we definitely find a cause and effect relationship being affirmed between God’s regenerating activity as the cause and the Christian’s not sinning as one effect of that regenerating activity. Then when he later makes the simple statement in 1 John 5:18 that ‘everyone who has been begotten [perfect tense] by God sins [present tense] not,’ though he does not say so in so many words, it is surely appropriate, because of his earlier pattern of speech in 1 John 3:9, to understand him to mean that the cause behind one’s not sinning is God’s regenerating activity. What is significant in 5:18 for 5:1 is his pattern of speech. When John declares in 5:1 that everyone who believes (πιστεύων) that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten (γεγέννηται) by God, it is highly unlikely that he intended simply to say about the Christian, in addition to the fact that he believes that Jesus is the Christ, that he has also been begotten of God and nothing more. His established pattern of speech, as we have seen from our exposition of 3:9a and 5:1, would suggest that he intended to say that God’s regenerating activity is the cause of one’s believing that Jesus is the Christ and conversely that such faith is the effect of that regenerating work.
When one finally adds to all this Paul’s insistence in Ephesians 2:1–4 that he and Christians generally had been spiritually dead in their trespasses and sins until God, ‘who is rich in mercy, because of his great love by which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive [συνεζωοποίησεν—Paul’s term for regeneration] with Christ,’ the conclusion cannot be avoided that the Spirit’s regenerating work must causally precede a man’s faith response to God’s summons to faith.
Reymond, R. L. (2001). John, Beloved Disciple: A Survey of his Theology (pp. 86–88). Fearn, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications.