Born Again

2018-09-02

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (4) Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? (5) Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (6) That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (7) Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. (8) The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John 3:3-8)

When Nicodemus, a religious leader of the Jews, came to Jesus by night, he secretly confessed to the Lord that He must be a teacher from God. Jesus answered the question that he did not ask: how to be saved.

  1. To be saved, you must be born again. Being born again implies that you cannot enter heaven the way that you are now. We are sinful and without hope. We cannot choose to stop sinning and obey God, as we are sinful and evil by nature. We need a fundamental change of our spiritual nature, and that change is being born again. John 3:3
  2. Being born again is not like being born the first time. We are not born from our mothers again. A spiritual birth must take place. The Bible says that we must be born of water, or flesh, and the Spirit. John 3:6 restates 3:5 in another way to define that being born of the flesh is the same as being born of water. We were all born in the flesh: we were born on our birthday by our mothers. But we must also be spiritually reborn.
  3. You cannot look at a human being and know they have been born again. Just like we cannot see where the wind came from or where it is going, we cannot look at people’s appearance and see the difference. It is a spiritual transformation; it is not of the flesh. John 3:8

We still have the same flesh, and therefore we still have just as much propensity to sin as we did before. However, as a born-again believer, we have a new spiritual nature. We are now children of God, who have started over in a new family lineage, not of Adam, but of Christ. Because of this, we can now choose not to sin by faith. The Bible also tells us,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3)

We were begotten again by the resurrection of Christ. We are united with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, and we have that resurrection life in Christ. The old spiritual nature is crucified with Christ, and we are made new spiritually. Because of this, we have “a lively hope.”

Believing on the Son of God and His death for our sins, burial, and resurrection, we are born again, never to spiritually die: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).