A NEW BIRTH

This morning (Thursday), Wanda and I were driving out to Kent and Lori’s house. A few blocks from their house we noticed some of the bushes in bloom. I have a hard time telling one flower, bush or tree from another. However, I do know one thing about the blooms on these bushes: they were beautiful. If you had driven by there only a short time ago, you would not have labeled them as beautiful. The bushes were brown and drab. There were no blooms. They appeared to be dead, lifeless. Now, with the coming of spring they have been reborn. This is true of much of nature. The trees are budding, the birds are singing, the grass is growing (uh oh get the lawn mower ready). This is probably my favorite time of year (other than the previously mentioned lawn mower).

Jesus talks of man undergoing a new birth. Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, 5). Nicodemus did not understand. He asked if a man was to re-enter his mother’s womb and be born again. Jesus explains that it is a spiritual birth. As those trees and bushes are lifeless during the winter, but bud with new life in the spring, man’s spirit which was dead in sin is cleansed and made alive by the new birth (Ephesians 2:1).

As we experience the new birth through baptism, we become a new person. Paul says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Just as a newborn baby is a new person, so it is with one who is born again. A life changing experience has taken place. The sins of the old man have been forgiven. The desires, purposes, and goals of the old life have changed. Paul writes in Romans 12:2 of Christians being transformed. The word in the original Greek is the word from which we get metamorphosis. This is the process a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly. It is a radical change. Paul says when we become Christians we are to undergo such a change in our nature and in our lives.

When we experience the new birth, we also achieve a new hope. In Ephesians 2:12, Paul writes of those who are without Christ as being without hope. He then goes on in verse 13 to say, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Paul gives a list of the type of people who will not enter heaven. Fornicators, idolaters, covetous, and drunkards are among those listed. He then says that some of them had been included in these in the past, but now they were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. They were among those who had no hope of entering the kingdom of God, but through the new birth in Christ they were cleansed and had laid hold of the promises of God.

The new birth is not some strange, mysterious, unknowable feeling we experience. It is simply believing the gospel and obeying it fully and completely. It is the only way of receiving the forgiveness of sin and the promises of our Father.
--Lamar