You Must Be Born Again

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews (John 3:1, KJV).

As I climbed out of bed early this morning, I thought of Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the dead of night. He’d been curious to have a face-to-face discussion with Jesus, but as a respectable Pharisee, he couldn’t be seen seriously engaging with the controversial figure in the light of day. “Master,” he says, “everyone knows that you are a teacher sent from God.” (“What you speak is profound. I’m all ears. Lay some truth on me!”)

To which Jesus replies, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus asks him what exactly he means by being born again: “Can a man go back into his mother’s womb and make a new entrance into the world—make a fresh start in that way?”

Jesus just repeats Himself, expanding on His theme a little by saying that there are two different kinds of birth: one of the flesh and one of the spirit, and that a person must go through both before being able to enter the kingdom of God.

Way back when I was a new Christian (forty years ago now!), I thought this referred exclusively to what happens when we die: If we’ve experienced the second birth by receiving Christ into our lives, then we’ll be assured of going to heaven when this life is over. However, I now see most of the talk about the afterlife as an afterthought: it’s not the main deal, at least not at this point in time. What Jesus is really focussing on in this passage is the here and now: If a person is born again by the Spirit of God, he is able to see, perceive, appreciate, understand, and benefit from the reach and reign and resources of God’s kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, from this moment forward, all the way through death and beyond.

These musings about seeing and perceiving the things of the Spirit now take my thoughts to one of my favourite scriptures, found in 1 Corinthians 2. Verse 14 says, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (KJV). In other words, the natural man, the one who has only experienced the first, physical birth, the one who has not yet been regenerated by the Spirit of Christ, cannot understand the things of God. He simply doesn’t have the necessary software. Or translated into another metaphor, you hear people around you talking about Netflix and the wealth of entertainment and education available through it, but until you subscribe to it yourself, pay for your membership (oh, wait a minute: Jesus has already paid all the membership fees), and accept the terms and conditions (submitting your heart to Christ and making Him the boss of your life), you’re not going to be able to get all that good stuff streaming into your living room.

To the one who is not born again, the things of God are out of reach and beyond the understanding. He may even mock them, because “they are foolishness unto him.”

Many people have a basic belief in God and they turn to him in times of trouble. But it's one thing to reach out to God for help and comfort when we are in a tight spot; it's quite another to yield oneself to His dominion, to bow our knee and our heart to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This is where a changed life begins.

No one can change his own life. God asks, “Can the leopard change his spots?” No. What we were born into and what we grew up in has moulded us indelibly. We can make superficial changes, we can set our will to behave differently, but there are deep influences that keep seeping through, like an old, oily stain into a fresh new coat of paint. Trying to change yourself has been called pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Picture that for a moment. You can pull as hard as you like on those tabs on the sides of your cowboy boots; you can strain until you’re exhausted, but you won’t elevate yourself one centimetre, physically or spiritually, off the earthly plane you were born and raised on. It will take someone separate from you to lift you up. This is what God offers. “Humble yourself in the presence of the Lord, and He will lift you up and make your life significant” (James 4:10, see AMP).

Another verse in that Corinthians passage tells us that just as only a person’s own spirit can really perceive and know the things that are deep in that person’s heart and mind, so only God’s Spirit can know the things that are in the mind and heart of God (1 Corinthians 2:11). Read that again and think about it. Yes, we would have to agree that this is true. But the next verse brings in a revolutionary new thought: We have been given God’s Spirit! We have the software to perceive the very things that are in the mind and heart of God! Those of us who have yielded to the Lordship of Christ and are consequently born again, “we have received God’s Spirit …, so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us” (v. 12, NLT).

This is what Jesus was offering to Nicodemus: “Be born again, and then you will be able to see (know, be acquainted with, and experience—AMPC) the kingdom of God.”

But to as many as did receive and welcome Him, He gave the authority (power, privilege, right) to become the children of God, that is, to those who believe in (adhere to, trust in, and rely on) His name (John 1:12, AMPC).

Consider Yourself (Not!)

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5, KJV).

As I came down the stairs early this morning, I found myself thinking about something that happened 35 years ago. I was working with Youth for Christ, and for our weekly staff meeting that Monday morning, I had been asked to bring the devotional.

I spoke on the subject of sin, some thoughts originally inspired by a reading from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest. Although I cannot find that reading now, I recall that it directed me to Matthew 16, where Peter has the glorious revelation, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus calls him blessed, saying that flesh and blood—his human capacities—have not revealed this to him, but that it is a realization directly imparted by God.

However, moments later, Jesus explains to His disciples how he must suffer and die, and Peter reacts strongly: “Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall never be!” I remember that the margin notes of the King James Bible I had back then translated “Be it far from thee!” as “Pity thyself!” Oswald Chambers brought out the same meaning, and he described this response as the epitome of sin. (The 1599 Geneva Bible translates it this way, and as well, many scholars agree that these words, “pity thyself,” well express the original meaning.)

So I delivered my devotional based on these thoughts along with some of my own experiences and conclusions, and when I finished, there was silence in this serious group of Bible college graduates. The Executive Director was staring intently at me, the baby Christian; then he said, “That’s the best definition of sin I’ve ever heard.”

Even this morning, I remembered the flush of pleasure I felt back then at his praise. But more than that, the recollection caused me to consider the subject of that devotional, the continual human preoccupation with self, self-interest, self-preservation.

I put my porridge on to cook and sat down to some quiet time with God. I have been reading a book by Ellen G. White, an important figure in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Her writings are controversial, but I allow them to inspire me, whilst continually weighing them in the light of God’s word. I would describe them as part scripture, part extrapolation, part commentary, and part historic fiction based on a solid knowledge of the Bible.

Picking up where I’d left off in her book, Desire of Ages, I found myself reading on the subject of John the Baptist and how his disciples became jealous of Jesus as His ministry began to grow. “Rabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou bearest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to Him.” Ellen White points out that Satan was taking opportunity to tempt John with protecting his own ministry. It certainly would have been an understandable, human response. But John set his will hard against the temptation: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

She goes on to say this: “If he [John] had sympathized with himself, and expressed grief or disappointment at being superseded, he would have sown the seeds of dissension, would have encouraged envy and jealousy, and would seriously have impeded the progress of the gospel.”

“If he had sympathized with himself ….” Amazing! Here was the same subject that I’d been perusing a few minutes earlier as I came down the stairs: “Pity thyself!”

Whenever we are tempted to look out for our own interests instead of cleaving to God and resting in Him, it might be time to command, “Get behind me, Satan!” After rebuking the devil, Jesus told Peter (according to various versions), “You are an offence to me, a stumbling block. You are tempting me to sin. You are not helping me; you are in my way. You are a hindrance and a snare to me. You stand right in my path, Peter, when you look at things from man’s point of view and not from God’s.”

Ouch! Moments earlier, the Master had praised him for his God-given revelation. Now He is as much as saying, “Dear Peter, you are totally in the flesh.”

Something else occurs to me here: I think that when Jesus praised him for his discernment, Peter got a little bit puffed up. He felt like he was the man of the hour, the guy with a word in season; and in the rush of pride, he became presumptuous.

We’re like that too. It’s another manifestation of our self-centredness. And so our most exalted moments can degrade quickly into some of our most humiliating.

Pride goes … before a fall (Proverbs 16:18, NKJV).