April 9 - Born Again?

April 9 – Born Again?

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:1-8)

It just all makes so much sense when Jesus explains, doesn’t it!  But that didn’t happen easily for Nicodemus, so Jesus went a little further.

The see the kingdom of God, we have to be born again.

Athanasius (very ancient church father) tells us that Jesus came to redeem the sin that came into the world when Adam and Eve chose to disobey the only commandment God gave to them.  From that point forward, sin entered the world and humanity found it easier to live in sin than to live in complete relationship with God.  No matter what we want or what we try to do, we can’t escape the relationship we have with sin.

When Jesus came to earth, He redeemed the world from that sin.  We are no longer held captive to it.  His life, death and resurrection offered the world a chance at re-creation, re-birth, re-newal. 

When we are born (as all of us are), we come into the world as flesh and blood … Jesus says that we have to then be re-born along with Him.  This is the connection that we make with God through the Spirit.  Re-birth, re-creation, re-newal.  We are made new and the great chasm the sin placed between us and God is bridged.

We must be born again.

And just as the wind is invisible and mysterious … we know that it’s there, but we can’t see it … we can only see the effect of the wind, we can only experience it … so, too is life in the Spirit.
The world won’t understand it, there are those that will never understand why we follow Christ.  But, the effect is just as real in our lives and in our impact on that same world.