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).