Born Again - God's Way!

What does it mean to be “born again”?

It’s possibly one of the most over-used and least understood Christian terms. When I asked a young man named Alex what he thinks happens after we die, I was happy to hear he believes we are “born again”. But I soon found out he didn’t have in mind the same thing Jesus did when He first used the phrase so many years ago.

For Alex, being “born again” means that after we die we are born again physically into another body and another chance to improve ourselves – similar to the Hindu idea of reincarnation. Alex doesn’t have a Hindu background, but when I found out about his past, his belief in reincarnation made some sense.

I ran into Alex on his way in to a local health club for a workout. But he hasn’t always had such a focus on self-improvement, having run the streets and turned his life around in a positive direction just a couple years earlier. He made no mention of a religious or spiritual influence that caused this turnaround in his life, so I have to assume he has been motivated by self-discipline and determination.

For Alex, It’s a life of goals and objectives, and he expects to be rewarded in the end. His belief in the need to be reincarnated for another chance at improvement is, in my estimation, a humble look at where he is and how far he needs to go to achieve the level of improvement required by God.

But that’s not what Jesus meant when He first used the “born-again” reference. Jesus had been approached by a religious leader named Nicodemus, who came to Jesus late at night in what appeared to be a humble attempt to affirm him as a fellow religious teacher. Jesus seemed to see through his outward show of humility and said ““Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

This probably came as a shock to Nicodemus, who as a Pharisee would have been used to public praise and adoration and thought he had it all together. I think Nicodemus was probably the opposite of Alex, who seemed to know he didn’t have it all together and has a long way to go to get there even by his own disciplined efforts.

I think Nicodemus probably knew this term had a spiritual dimension to it, but he chided Jesus about the impossibility of being physically born a second time. After all, he had come so far in life, why would he need to go back to such an early stage in his development?

But this didn’t matter to Jesus. He told Nicodemus that just as he came into this world through physical birth, the only way to see the Kingdom of God was through spiritual birth. No one has willed themselves physically into existence or caused their own physical birth through self-determination or effort. In the same way, our spiritual birth comes about through God’s work, not our own: “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.”

We can’t will ourselves to be born again, but we can submit to the process. We can’t cause it to happen by the sheer power of our will, but we can surrender to the will of God. We die to ourselves, and live for God.

Alex, I know this is counterintuitive to all the positive changes and all you’ve accomplished over the past few years, but this is one case where the way forward means turning back. It means giving up fighting against the wind, and allowing the wind to carry you. It means rethinking all those goals you set for yourself, and giving them over to God. And it means NOT believing in yourself, at least when it comes to your own personal goodness or righteousness, and believing in Jesus instead.

Jesus went on to say “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That’s what it truly means to be “born again” – God’s way!