We are evangelical Christians, which means a number of things. First, we profess our faith in the evangel, the Greek word for gospel, or good news. This is in evidence every week when we declare the good news summarized in the Apostles’ Creed.
Second, we hold that in order for a man to be saved, the Holy Spirit must bring about the new birth in him. This new birth is testified to by the preaching and sacraments of the church, and in the case of those who are in fact regenerated, in part brought into being by them. But the new birth not to be identified with such things, lest we make Caiphas into a good Christian.
But evangelicals need to remember that affirmation of a particular doctrine does not mean that the person affirming it has experienced what he is talking about. This is certainly the case with the doctrine of the new birth. Not everyone who holds to it has experienced it, and more than a few of those who dispute it have experienced it.
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So in the final sense, evangelicals are those who have experienced the transforming power of the gospel. They have what one Puritan called a felt Christ. This is not stated in the sense of reducing everything to emotional feelings—but it is intended to keep us from thinking that we can be anything worthwhile spiritually speaking simply by nodding our heads at the appropriate times.
We are the new creation. If God has in fact called light out of darkness in this world, it should be as easy to find a Christian as it is to find a star in a black sky.