How being born again frees you
and where in the Bible this idea comes from
As we continue our journey from Garden to Garden City, it is important for us to now turn our attention to Jesus and how he fulfils his mission. Last time we saw that Jesus proclaimed his mission statement and you can read that here:
Chapter 31: Jesus' Mission Statement
The words “Mission Statement” conjure up pictures of a boardroom a whiteboard with a half formed sentence on it, and a room full of people arguing over the precise meaning of words so they can make sure the company’s mission statement precisely reflects what the company wants to accomplish. We do the same thing in churches when we want to “revision” the church and give it a new direction. One of the reasons we do this is because...
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Today we turn our attention to the teachings of Jesus as we see him living out that mission statement. The first teaching we are going to look at is Jesus’ teaching on being born again.
Near the start of Jesus’ ministry there is a wonderful story in John 3 about how Jesus meets with Nicodemus. Nicodemus approaches Jesus and tells him that he (Nicodemus) recognises that Jesus must be from God, because Nicodemus has seen Jesus’ miracles and no one can do miracles unless God is with him. What is interesting about this is that Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and a ruler of the Jews. Being a Pharisee meant that he had dedicated his life to obeying the Jewish law in order to live a life pleasing to God. Being a ruler meant that he was a powerful person who had a lot of sway and influence in his community.
Jesus meets this powerful man and this is what happens:
John 3:3-7
“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
This is where the whole idea of being born again comes from. It really has nothing to do with a supernatural spiritual experience of the Holy Spirit which sets some people aside to be especially “Christian”. Nor does it have to do with some Christians who want to particularly be discipled in contrast to other Christians who are happy to just have a “simple faith”.
No, being born again is what is required for someone to become a Christian in the first place. It is to change your ancestry, your parentage. To be born again is to move from the lineage of Adam to the lineage of Christ. The reason this is needed is precisely because of what you inherit as a child of Adam and Eve - a sinful, broken, heart. The problem, as we have seen as we have travelled from the Garden of Eden, is that no matter what we do, human beings always end up reverting back to living out the sin that lives in our hearts. We cannot do anything with our sinful hearts, we can’t regenerate them or change them, or get rid of them. We need to be adopted into a different family. In short we need to be born again.
Nicodemus was a religious leader and a pharisee. As he approaches Jesus here, he comes with a worldview that says Israel is God’s special chosen people. That he is in the covenant community because he is a descendent of Abraham. Father Abraham had many sons and Nicodemus was one of them!
But Jesus cuts through that and tells him that that doesn’t ultimately mean anything now that Jesus has come. In fact Nicodemus’ heritage as a child of Abraham, and of Adam condemns him before God. The very thing that made Nicodemus who he was, is the very same thing that means he will not inherit eternal life.
This is a concept that is difficult for Nicodemus to understand, and he goes on questioning Jesus. “How can this be?” he asks. Jesus goes on to explain that in order to be accepted by God, in order to have eternal life, people have to put their trust in him. It is in this context that that perhaps the most famous verse in the whole Bible is found:
John 3:16
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
This is the only thing required of people - they need to believe and trust in Jesus. Unlike all the other ways in which the people of our story have tried to save themselves, justify themselves or make themselves acceptable to God, Jesus here gives us the only requirement: Don’t trust yourself - you come with a sinful broken heart. Trust in Jesus to deal with that, and you will be saved.
This breaks every religious narrative that has ever existed and stands contrary to every religion that exists today.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a group of Israelites who strictly adhered to the Torah - the law given to them by Moses and then expanded on through the teachings of the rabbis. They focused on being morally and ethically pure and performed all the rituals and cleansing to be ritualistically clean. They were deeply religious.
But now Jesus breaks into this religion and proclaims that the Torah won’t save them. The Torah didn’t deal with their deeper heart problem. No matter how strictly they observed it, they could never do enough to be saved. They needed a new heart, they needed to be born again. This could only happen when they “laid their deadly doing down, down at Jesus feet.” They needed to stop trusting in their religion, and start trusting in Jesus.
The thing is, we shouldn’t be too hard on the Pharisees. They were stuck in the same pattern that humanity has always been stuck in. Every religion follows the same basic pattern: Earn your way into the salvation.
Buddhism says if you understand the four noble truths and follow the eightfold path, then you will work your way into Nirvana. In Islam you need to follow the commandments of Allah as revealed in the Quran and proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammed, and if do this diligently then you will earn salvation. In Hinduism to achieve salvation (Moksha), you need to break free from the cycle of reincarnation. To do this you have to follow one of several paths that will ultimately lead you to salvation should you devote yourself to that path sufficiently. I could go on, but in each and every case the religion says “Do this, and you will be saved”. What the “this” is changes each time, but in essence all religions follow the same pattern: Earn your way into salvation.
What Jesus says here is radically different. Trust in him instead of your religion and you will be saved. Jesus reveals that this is what is required for us to be born again. This is still a challenge to us today: will we give up trying to save ourselves, or will we trust in him instead?
So how does it work, how does trusting and believing in Jesus actually save us? Well, that is a story for next time…