Easter Makes Everything NewSample

You Must Be Born Again

Too many of us settle for a cultural concept of Christianity: Go to church on Sunday. Stay home the rest of the week. Hardly read the Word. Even if we do have some kind of devotional life, we just battle through the same-old, same-old. Yes, we’re slightly improved, but we’re nowhere near what the Bible holds up as what our life should be: new creations.

This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God”—no one can enter into and understand the things of God—“unless they are born again” (John 3:3). Most of us know Nicodemus’ famous answer: “How can I go back into my mother’s womb?” All he could think about was natural birth. But Jesus went on to say, “No, that which is born naturally is natural. You have to be born from above, spiritually—born again to a new whole way of living.”

What Jesus was pointing out to Nicodemus we scarcely have digested ourselves. What did He mean? Born again into what? Into the kind of life that we read about in 2 Corinthians 5:17: the old is gone; the new has come. We still have our bodies and our personalities, but that’s it. Our lives are supposed to be Christ now, through the Holy Spirit. That’s what Paul meant when he said, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Paul was gone. He was messed up. “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God” (Gal. 2:20).

When we put our faith in Jesus, not only does the blood that He shed provide forgiveness for our sins, but God says, “I’m going to give you a new inner person when you’re born again. My Spirit will dwell inside you and give you new motivations, new desires.”

So the secret of the Christian life is to let the Holy Spirit—Christ living inside us—come out in every area of our lives.

When we open up to the Holy Spirit within us, we will be true new creations. We will be nothing like the people in the world. We won’t share their values, the way they reason, their mindsets, their morality. No, we will live supernaturally—on a higher level. Remember, this is the Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. If that same Spirit lives in us, and He does, then He will also give life to our mortal bodies, as Romans 8:11 says. Everything will be new.

Praise God for the new covenant. Praise God for Jesus! Let’s serve Him today, not in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of our spirits that have been born again through Jesus Christ.