John 3:
Nicodemus:2 ‘We know that you are a teacher having come from God. For no one is able [dunatai] to do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’
Jesus:3 ‘Truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot [dunatai] see the kingdom of God.’
Nicodemus:4 ‘How can [dunatai] a man be born when he is old old? Can [dunatai] he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’
Jesus:5 ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot [dunatai] enter the kingdom of God. . . . The wind blows where it wishes…’
Nicodemus:9 ‘How can [dunatai] these things be?’
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John 6:44
Jesus: No one can [dunatai] come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
65 Jesus: And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can [dunatai] come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
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Romans 8:
Paul: 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot [dunatai]. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot [dunatai] please God.
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1 Cor 2:
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able [dunatai] to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
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In contrast:
1 John 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.”
Comment: In the original Greek, the verb tenses in this verse are very revealing. A literal translation reads as follows: “All the ones going on believing (pisteuon, a present tense, continuous action) that Jesus is the Christ has been born (gennesanta, perfect tense – an action already complete with abiding effects) of God.”
The fact that someone is presently going on believing in Christ shows that they have first been born again. Faith is the evidence of regeneration, not the cause of it. Since both repentance and faith are possible only because of the work of God (regeneration), both are called the gift of God in Scripture (Eph. 2:8, 9; Phil. 1:29; 2 Tim 2:24-26).
“[The] term ‘decide’ has always seemed to me to be quite wrong. A sinner does not ‘decide’ for Christ; the sinner ‘flies’ to Christ in utter helplessness and despair saying — Foul, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die. No man truly comes to Christ unless he flies to Him as his only refuge and hope, his only way of escape from the accusations of conscience and the condemnation of God’s holy law. Nothing else is satisfactory. If a man says that having thought about the matter and having considered all sides he has on the whole decided for Christ, and if he has done so without any emotion or feeling, I cannot regard him as a man who has been regenerated. The convicted sinner no more ‘decides’ for Christ than the poor drowning man ‘decides’ to take hold of that rope that is thrown to him and suddenly provides him with the only means of escape. The term is entirely inappropriate.”