You Must Be Born Again!

You Must Be Born Again!

Just what does it mean to be “born again?” There is probably no subject misunderstood more than that of genuine conversion and entrance into the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately, people have come to believe that one is “born again” on demand. Most conceive that after reciting a sinner’s prayer and acknowledging a few fundamentals of the Christian faith, they are good to go. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. The issue between man and God is not facts, but rather faith, and genuine faith at that. God is looking for our reaction to the facts, not our understanding of them. Repentance is the irreversible transforming of the heart as a result of experiencing the full weight of those facts. This means that God’s focus is always on the heart, and not the head. That moment when the weight of our sin and sorrow, meet grace and mercy in earnest, and we are left wholly undone in the presence of Christ, crippled spiritually, broken emotionally, and now dependent upon Him eternally, as we now reach out to Him as our only source of hope, then and only then, have we experienced saving faith!  

Although being “born again” begins in this moment, experientially, it doesn’t end there. Scripture teaches that our being, now fashioned as the dwelling place of God after the shadow of the Tabernacle and Temple of the Old Testament, now cleansed by applying the blood of Christ, is properly suited for the Spirit of God to dwell. Now, like the Spirit would overwhelm and fill the Temple at special moments in days of old, we are now filled with that same presence forever. In that moment, the veil now lifted, in the inner man, we behold the Glory of the Lord, the very Glory Moses cried out to see at Sinai.

Now, a heart once crushed by the weight of sin and death, is flooded with rivers of mercy, while beholding unveiled the Glory of God, now, like Jesus told Nicodemus, we are left with an unexplainable, but unmistakable event, changing us forever, and thus is what it means to be “born again!”    

 

Rev. Joel M McDuffie Jr.

2/6/2017