FRIDAY 24th
We return today to the same verses as yesterday John 3:3.
NIV (v3) – ‘Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’’
ESV (v3) – ‘Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’’
In verse 7 of the same chapter Jesus says, ‘Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’’ After hearing it the first time, Nicodemus was a little confused, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’ You can only wonder what Nicodemus was imagining! But it was a good question, ‘Hang on, if I want to see the Kingdom of God, I have to be born again?’ ‘Yes, but it is not how you are imagining it to be, just as you have been born of the flesh, so also you need to be born of the Spirit.’
The term or phrase ‘born again’ is still just as much misunderstood today as it was when Nicodemus misunderstood it, often you will hear the term being used in a derogatory way, as a form of mocking, ‘Oh, they belong to the ‘born again’ people’ or as I have often had it asked to me ‘Are you one of those who talks about being born again?’ And yes, I do belong to them, and yes, I do talk about it, not because there is anything weird about me, not because we are a group of weird people, but because I have really known what it is to be born again by the Spirit of God. It is not weird, it is wonderful – in the words of an older hymn, ‘It is a thing most wonderful, almost too wonderful to know, that God’s own Son should come from heaven and die to save a child like me to know.’
What seemed ridiculous to Nicodemus and still sounds ridiculous to many today is the most important thing that we can all do and need to do, the ‘born again’ experience, because without it, as Jesus told Nicodemus we will not see or enter the Kingdom of God. And the alternative is not pleasant!
Being born again, is being made anew, it happens as we come to Calvary’s fountain and are washed in the blood of the Lamb, at that moment we are made anew by the Spirit of God, we have a fresh start, we become new creations, we are ‘born again’. I know I am talking about things we already know, but today, let me encourage us all that being ‘born again’ is nothing to be embarrassed about, or ashamed about when our unsaved family, friends or peers may try to mock us or laugh at us, and use the phrase in a derogatory way, for just as our natural birth was essential to bring us into this natural world, so a spiritual new birth is essential to bring us into the kingdom of God.
Weird? we are the most favoured in the world, because by being ‘born again’ we enter the family of God, the household of faith, whereby we know him as Father and he knows us as his sons and daughters.
In the words of the chorus, ‘I am a new creation, no more in condemnation, here in the grace of God I stand.’ I am happy to be known as weird by the unbelieving world, if at the same time it means that I know that I am a child of God, no longer under condemnation.
2 Corinthians 5:17 ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.’