1 John 5:1
ESV
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
Believing that Jesus is the Christ is a mark, a characteristic of faith, that proves God has made you born of God. That is why you believe.
God grants you your faith in Christ, that is shown in many scriptures.
The interesting fact is God first makes someone born of God, then they believe, and since salvation like this is eternal, it is an accomplished work of God in your life that cannot be undone.
Your individual salvation, your faith, belief, your very life, God has given all of that to you that makes up your entire life.
While we do make a choice to believe it is an accomplished work of God that led you to that, something that none can resist. Look at the life of Saul becoming Paul. Even while persecuting the church, God was at work in Paul, but Paul was resisting God until God sovereignly moved to an extreme divine revelation.
But at that revelation Christ did for Paul, he then at that point had already made Paul born of God, otherwise Paul would still have fallen away in unbelief later on. Yet still before that God was at work directing Paul to this place in his life, even though not yet born again.
Acts 9:5
And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It
is hard for you to kick against the
goads.”
John 1
10 He was in the world, and
the world was made through Him, (hint he came before creation so was not of this creation, uncreated, but His body was created by God) and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His [
c]own, and
His [d]own did not receive Him. 12
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the [e]right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Even His own did not receive HIM as God's Christ, only reason anyone receives Christ is God has first made them born of God.
You do not receive HIM by your will of your flesh, the will of man. It is the Spirit which gives LIFE, the flesh profits nothing!
Another example from the OT, is how Israel had seen all the might acts of God, but still, they did not believe in God, as God had not changed their heart, ears, eyes to understand. the unregenerated do not continue to follow Christ, they will all fall away eventually.
You must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. To enter the kingdom of God you must believe Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father, that HE is the I AM that came down from Heaven to do the will of God to be your savior. Being born again always come first.
Deuteronomy 29
1 These
are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them in Horeb.
2 Now Moses called all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land— 3 the great trials which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to [
a]perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this
very day.
The reason people do not enter the 'promised land' is they do not believe the promises of God.
Today the promised land is the New Covenant, eternal life with God as a citizen of Heaven.
Yet you can not come to Christ and believe in Him unless God has granted that for you, otherwise you will not believe. That is the ugly state of being bound in sin, how Satan has blinded the minds of those who do not believe who are perishing. Only Christ can set you free from Satan's mind control.
Salvation is never assigned to a group of people, it is always individually given by God.
John 6
Christ came down from HEAVEN, sent by GOD, Christ was not just a man, He was God come in the flesh, born into a body God had prepared for Himself. If Christ was only a man, he was lying when HE said HE came down from heaven.
43 Jesus therefore answered and said to them, [
h]“Do not murmur among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’
Therefore everyone who [i]has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. 47
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes [j]in Me has everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 51
I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”