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"Born again" is one of those terms that carries a lot of baggage around with it. So, if you consider yourself to be ... "born again" … can I ask you, what difference does that actually make to your life? What difference did it make yesterday? What difference is it making today?
Born again, as I said there's a term that carries quite a bit of baggage around with it and even in the Christian community. It's a term that people use without thinking through it too much. It of course comes from the discussion that Jesus had with Nicodemus one time. The old Nic was one of the good guys, he unlike most of the Jewish ruling body called the Sanhedrin, he actually believed in Jesus.
Problem was the rest of them were so anti Jesus he had to sneak over one night in the dark so no one would see him to have a chat with this Jesus fellow. Here's how that chat unfolded, John chapter 3 beginning at verse 1:
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, 'Rabbi we know that you're a teacher who's come from God for no one can do these signs that you're doing apart from the presence of God'. And Jesus answered him, 'Very truly I tell you no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.'
Nicodemus said to him, 'How can you be born after having grown old? Can you enter your mother's womb a second time and be born?' And Jesus said, 'Very truly I tell you no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and of spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh but what is born of the spirit is spirit. Don't be astonished that I say to you, you must be born again.'
What was Jesus really driving at here? His point was that just as we've been physically born into the world, as plain and as patently obvious and necessary as that physical birth was, so too if we're to enter the Kingdom of heaven there needs to be a spiritual birth. A birth that He refers to as being born again or being born from above, born of the Holy Spirit.
Now you see for the most part we kind of see that as a theological statement or maybe a statement of fact but do we really see it as a personally relevant statement? Are we impacted? Are you deeply impacted and moved by this reality? If you've accepted Jesus do you think much about the fact that you've been born again? Does it make a difference to your life?
To be honest with you as excited as I am about the life that I have in Jesus this passage hadn't really impacted on me. It hadn't impacted on how I see and feel this amazing grace that I've experienced until relatively recently. I was reading a newspaper, Spurgeon used to say that a preacher should have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, so I'm reading my newspaper and I come across an article entitled Guilt, Innocence And The American Way.
I just want to read the first part of it to you, I wonder whether it will impact your perception of being born again the way it did mine. Here's how it went:
Death row inmates who have beaten the needle are leading a campaign against capital punishment, writes Nick O'Malley. The first man to be freed from death row in the US because of DNA evidence remembers the moment his lawyer gave him the news as though it was yesterday.
'It's as clear as the vision before me now' says Kirk Bloodsworth who was exonerated in 1993 after nine years in prison. He was sitting on his bunk in a death row cell when his lawyer was ushered in and told him that he was innocent and that he would be released in a few days. He began to weep. 'Of course I cried, everyone cries at birth' he said, 'I have been born twice, once as a baby and once as a grown man and after that I saw the whole world fresh.'
There it is. Here is this man who was on death row born once, condemned to die, then born again as his guilt was removed from him. Of course it's a powerful, powerful metaphor or parable that unpacks the amazing thing that happens when our guilt is removed the moment we believe in Jesus. Every parable of course has its limitations; as does this one since of course he was unjustly condemned to death and the guilt was removed when his innocence was proven through DNA evidence.
You and I on the other hand through our rebellion against God have rightly been condemned to an eternal death separated from Him for the wages of sin is death and we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
But back to what strikes me about this man's story, it's not simply that he was elated the moment the guilt and the punishment was removed from him, that's natural, you'd expect that, hey I think I'd be doing cartwheels around the prison cell. The thing that strikes me is that it's still impacting his life today. It happened in 1993, over twenty years ago and still today he says, 'I remember it as though it was yesterday. It's as clear as the vision before me now. I've been born twice and now I see the world fresh.'
His second birth has impacted his whole life, his whole perspective. He is a changed man through that experience and I'm sure he'd tell anyone this story who was prepared to listen, I mean wouldn't you?
So why then do you and I know so many Christians who don't seem at all excited about being born again? Why does so many Christians grumble and wander through life as though nothing's changed when once they were lost and now they're found? When once they were condemned to death, they were whether they realised it back then or not they were on death row. But now the guilt and the punishment has been lifted off them and they have freedom and eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Why doesn't that change the perspective of so many Christians from that moment on for the rest of their lives? What's the matter with us people? There are so many people, people who believe in Jesus, people who call themselves Christians who are downcast, who aren't happy with their lot in life. Whose words are full of complaint, who are praying for a breakthrough when all along they've already received the biggest breakthrough they're ever going to get.
They were once on death row but now they've had a second birth and still it hasn't changed their perspective on life. Can I ask you plainly and quietly but directly, are you one of those people or has your escape from the eternal death row been a completely life transforming experience? Does it still bring you joy and a fresh perspective today?
So many people want a fresh new life and they think it comes from changing their circumstances and yet truly our externalities, our situation, our bank balance, our address, our mode of transport, our social status, none of those things are really where it's at. All of those, all the wrinkles and the bumps in them, all the things that we would rather change and have differently, they pale into significance for the man or the woman who once was on death row and was set free and born again.
What I can't understand is why we trade in our diamonds for stones, why we shift our focus from this awesome reality, the death row reality of being born again a second time to all this other stuff? Why is it that for so many Christians their second birth which in the eternal scheme of things is far more significant than Kirk Bloodsworth's escape, is less significant than his second birth is to him?
We're smack bang in the middle of a series that I've called God's Miracle Makeover For You and if you're in need of a miracle makeover I suggest this is the place to start. Open your Bible, John's Gospel, the fourth Book in the New Testament, chapter 3 and read what Jesus says about your second birth. Meditate on it, pray over it, let the Holy Spirit use it in you and through you and my friend here's what's going to happen, let me tell you.
All of a sudden a million small ailments in your life will completely lose their significance because you'll be seeing them with a fresh set of eyes, you'll be seeing them from God's perspective.
