Born again? How can that be?

Introduction

So in this passage from John today, a really funny thing happens. Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews of the time, he is a Pharisee. And while all the other Jewish leaders of the time don’t like Jesus, and think Jesus is lying or is fake, Nicodemus sees something in Jesus. Nicodemus starts to see credibility in what Jesus is saying, he is intrigued, he is curious. So what he does is he comes during the middle of the night so that no one else will see him, and he comes to Jesus to ask him a few questions, to really find out who Jesus is.

So when Nicodemus comes to Jesus and starts to ask him some questions, Jesus says something really bizzare! Jesus says ‘you must be born again.’ You must be born again? What does that even mean? You mean go back into my mum’s tummy? Will I even fit there anymore? I don’t know what Jesus had for breakfast this morning but he really is talking nonsense today!

This is exactly the reaction Nicodemus has. In verse 4 Nicodemus says ‘How can a man be born when he is old?’ and in verse 9 he says ‘How can these things be?’. Nicodemus is dumbfounded, he is gobsmacked! And rightfully so, what Jesus is saying biologically makes no sense at all.

So what does Jesus exactly mean when he says ‘you must be born again?’. Does he mean we literally have to be born again from our mums?

Well when Jesus talks about being born again, it’s similar to getting a heart transplant. Well, who knows what a heart transplant is?

Heart transplant explanation.

So when Jesus says ‘you need to be born again’, he is saying you need a heart transplant. Not a literal heart transplant of your actual physical beating heart, but a spiritual heart transplant. Jesus wants to take out your old heart and give you a new one. But even that is hard to understand. What does a spiritual heart transplant mean?

Why?

Before we explain what Jesus means by being born again, before we explain what Jesus means by giving us a spiritual heart transplant, we need to ask why do we even need this in the first place?

To see why we even need to be born again in the first place, let’s look at John 3:2 “This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.””

It says Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. One of the big metaphors or imagery used in John is light and darkness. And look how Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus. He comes by night. John is clearly showing us that Nicodemus is in darkness.

But what does it mean to be in darkness?

Firstly, it means Nicodemus is spiritually blind. Jesus keeps telling Nicodemus he needs to be born again, but no matter how much Jesus tells him, Nicodemus just cannot see what Jesus is trying to say. And this is because he is spiritually blind. And he is spiritually blind because he is earthly. When Jesus says to Nicodemus ‘you need to be born again,’ Jesus is telling Nicodemus heavenly information, not earthly information. And because God is our creator and we are just mere creatures, beings created by God, we are earthly. We can’t comprehend or understand things that are heavenly.

If you don’t quite get what I mean by us being earthly and being unable to understand heavenly things, then look at my dog. Explain dog & me trying to tell her to stop going through the rubbish bin. So no matter how much I tell her to stop going through the rubbish bin, she will never learn how to do this, because she is a dog, and I am a human, and she is blind to the more complex thoughts of humans. There is a big gap between how complex humans are able to think and dogs are able to think. So this is what I mean by spiritual blindness - if the gap between dogs and humans are this much, then the gap between us and God is infinite. We will never know the things of God. This is why we are spiritually blind. And this is why we need to be born again, born again in the spirit, so that when God speaks to us through the Bible, we can actually understand the true meaning of what God is trying to say to us.

Secondly, to be in darkness is to be evil, morally corrupt. Without being born again, we are corrupt and evil. We look at our lives and we might not think that we are that bad, or evil, or corrupt, but look how John describes us in John 3:19–20 “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” The light is Jesus Christ, and John says that we loved the darkness, we loved evil, and we hated the light, we hated Jesus. If we are not born again, John says we hate Jesus. You may not think you hate Jesus. But remember when the Bible speaks about hate here, it is not necessarily an emotion that you feel, that really negative emotion you feel towards someone you don’t like. Hate can also be indifference, where you just don’t care. And when you don’t care about Jesus, when you don’t care whether He exists or not and what He means for your life, then you just like to continue in your own ways, rather than listening to Jesus’ instructions about how we should live.

So we need to be born again, so that we are healed of our spiritual blindness so that we can actually understand what God says to us, and we need to be born again so that we no longer hate Jesus but love him.

What

So we have looked at why we need to be born again. What does being born again actually look like? What is being born again?

Well I said earlier that being born again is getting a heart transplant, not a literal physical heart transplant, but a spiritual heart transplant. And a spiritual heart transplant is where God creates a complete radical transformation in you.

Let’s look at Ezekiel 36:25–27 “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

When Jesus talks about being born again, He is referring to Ezekiel 36:25-27.

And here we see that Jesus says he will clean us from our evil and sin Himself, because we are completely unable to. We can try our best to make ourselves good and clean, but as we saw earlier, we are in the darkness, we are fundamentally evil and we love evil. So this is God promising to Ezekiel that He will clean us, and make us free from sin Himself.

But God not only promises to clean us Himself, but he makes a further promise. To completey transform our hearts. It says that God will give us a new heart, He will remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, and when our hearts are changed from stone to flesh, we will no longer love evil, but we will love to obey God. And He will do this by His spirit. God is promising us a complete rebirth, just like how you are a completely brand new person when you are born, when Jesus says we need to be born again, Jesus is saying that we need a radical remaking of who we are inwardly. We are spiritually blind, we are evil, we are in the darkness; there is nothing we can do to get out of this situation. We need a dramatic intervention by God, through his Holy Spirit, to completely remake, transform our hearts, so that we no longer love evil, but we love God.

That means when we are born again by the Holy Spirit, we should see change in our lives. Because God completely transforms, transplants our hearts, so that our desires change from loving evil, to loving God and loving good and loving truth. We no longer love the things we used to; we love new, good and wonderful things, so we should see the evidence of that change in our lives.

How

And do you know why any of this is possible? Do you know why God even does any of this for us? Because he loves us.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

God says we can be born again, God says that he will give us a heart transplant, because he loves us. He deeply desires to heal us of our spiritual blindness and our evil. He deeply wants to rescue us from our sin. And he loves us even though we are undeserving, and unlovable! Remember we are in the darkness and we hate God. But God still loves us even though we don’t deserve it. Humans love things that are lovable; God loves even the unlovable.

And do you know how much God loves us? Read John 3:14–15 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

When Jesus says the Son of Man must be lifted up, just like the serpent in the wilderness, this is Jesus referring to his crucifixion and death on the cross. God loves us so much, that He sent his one and only son into the world, so that he could die for us on the cross, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

This is how much God loves you. We were deserving of punishment and death because of our sin, but Jesus took that punishment for us instead, so that when we believe in the name of Jesus, we not only no longer receive this punishment, but God now gives eternal life.

And when you believe in the name His Son, Jesus Christ, that is when God gives you this incredible spiritual transplant, He makes you born again, He completely recreates the inside of you and makes you a brand new person so that:

We are healed of our spiritual blindness

We are freed from evil and darkness

We no longer hate God but now love God and all his commandments for us

And so that we no longer receive the punishment of death, and now get eternal life instead.

Conclusion

So don’t seek love from elsewhere in your life. So many people in this world seek love from the wrong places, to fill a emptiness and void in their life, from other people, or other things. Seek it from God instead, because only He can fill it perfectly. Remember he loved you so much that he sent is one and only Son into the world to die on the cross for us, even though we hated Him.

And don’t love other things more than God. Love God first and foremost.

And remember, it is not by our own efforts that these things can be true in our lives - it is only the love of God that sent his only Son to die for us on the cross, so that when we believe in his name, He gives us new birth, a complete transformation in our lives that heals us of our spiritual blindness, frees us from evil and darkness, changes us to love God instead of evil, and gives is eternal life instead of death. Believe in the name of Jesus Christ, as it is only in believing in his name that we are able to look to the cross and receive this new birth.