“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” —  John 3:3b (NKJV)

In this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, we find a bewildered Pharisee earnestly trying to comprehend what Jesus means by born again. He is hindered greatly by his lack of understanding of Spiritual matters, as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.”

It follows then that if we are to be born again we must be Spiritual beings, filled with the Spirit’s wisdom and surrendered to His leadership, not merely natural beings.

In natural birth, we can’t birth ourselves, it takes a mother and father to accomplish this; so too, we can’t be born again by ourselves. Faith in Jesus Christ and the leading of the Spirit is required to bring us to and through this process of being made “new.”

In the following verses after our text, Jesus reiterates His first statement, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (vs. 5). “Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again” (vs. 7).

All Christians should have the desire to enter God’s kingdom, surrendering to the process of rebirth is the only way in. It is not in our authority to debate what God has declared as necessary.

To be born again is to have the nature of the Holy Spirit within us overriding the much less Christ-like natural man. We become a new creation, made over again in God’s image as were Adam and Eve before they sinned. Our attitudes and thought processes are changed, made new, and our desire becomes what God desires for us, rather than what our flesh has always craved.

If we are going to be all that we are designed by God to be, then it will be necessary that we be born of the Spirit. The whole process may occur in the blink of an eye, or it may take some time; it begins the same way, regardless of how long it takes, we trust Jesus as our lord and Savior and follow the Holy Spirit.

We must be born again!

Rev. Bobby Thornhill is a retired Methodist preacher.