Why Must We Be "Born Again"?

“My mother is Buddhist, I’m not a Christian, so does that mean I’m going to hell?”  This question was asked of a preacher during a television interview that I saw recently.  The preacher quickly answered, “Yes, if you are not saved.”  The preacher, unfortunately, did not get into the specifics of salvation.  As I thought about this, God helped me to understand why a person must be saved to enter Heaven and what it means to be saved. Saved from what?

            Many probably have asked at least one of these questions: What is salvation? What does it mean to be born again and why must we be? The answers to these questions are simple, yet complex. In short, if we are not saved or born again, then heaven would become polluted with a bunch of unrepentant people, in effect, turning it into the same sin-filled world earth is. The reason why answers the question what must I do to be saved.

            The first step in salvation is recognizing that we are sinners and that we are living in contradiction to the commands and the will of God. Once we recognize that, we need to ask God to give us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us. In other words, we need to be changed. He will send His Holy Spirit to convict us and urge us to repent. Unless we repent, we will not change, no matter how hard we try. Repentance involves having a change of heart, an inward desire to stop living contrary to God’s desire. It means having a desire to live as God would have us to live. Repentance leads to the acceptance of God’s grace, which in turn, leads to transformation. This process is called salvation. This is what it means to be born again, or born from above (original Greek).

            What are we transformed into? We are being transformed into the image of God’s Son. What is that image? It is one of submission, obedience and righteousness. This is what God wants for us. Let’s look at a prime example of this—Saul of Tarsus.

Saul of Tarsus was a man who hated Christ and hated the church. He saw them as heretical. Of himself, Saul said,

“[I] was circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless (Phil 3:5-6). “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today. ⁴ I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women, ⁵ as also the high priest bears me witness, and all the council of the elders, from whom I also received letters to the brethren, and went to Damascus to bring in chains even those who were there to Jerusalem to be punished” (Acts 22:3-5).

Yet, on the road to Damascus, Jesus got a hold of Saul. That encounter led to Saul’s born again experience. The Bible illustrates his transformation by referring to him as Saul when he was persecuting the church and as Paul after his transformation.  He was no longer Saul the Persecutor but Paul the Apostle. What did Saul’s transformation mean? It meant that he no longer wanted to do the things that he thought were right but the things that God said were right.

          Being born again also means being regenerated. This happens when we are transformed by His Spirit. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If any man be in Christ, he [or she] is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” Not only is our eternal destination new, but so is the way we thing about ourselves, the way we carry ourselves, the way we behave, the way we treat others, and the way we worship God.  We start our journey of change by studying God’s Word. It tells us what He expects of us. As we grow in His Word, His Spirit begins to change us from the inside out. This transformation is called sanctification. Paul said it like this, “Stop conforming to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may be able to prove that good, perfect, and acceptable will of God (Romans 12:2, emphasis added).”

This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus on that fateful night that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, or to even see it, he must be born again. Jesus was telling him that he must be changed, transformed, renewed in his mind and spirit. Try reading John 3:3 like this: Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is [transformed, changed], he [or she] cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:6-7 would read like this: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh[ly, carnal], and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit[ual, holy]. ⁷ Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be [changed, transformed].’”

This is why one must be born again or saved to enter into Heaven. Without this transformation, God would have to deal with the same type of insurrection, rebellion, and insubordination that He dealt with eons past with Lucifer. Why? Because, even in Heaven, unchanged people would still be envying, backstabbing, cursing, stealing, and doing the same evil things they do now. But Heaven will be a place where there is no sin and a place where righteousness dwells because it will be filled with people who have been transformed by the grace of God.

            In this posting I discussed the ‘why’. In my next posting, I will discuss the ‘how’. How are we redeemed? Is Jesus the only Way to heaven and why?

Stepping Out on Nothing

This is a repost of a previous blog that has been updated.

Genuine Biblical Faith

Click edit above to add content to this empty capsule.

Perhaps you have asked, “What is faith?” I’m sure you’ve heard sermons on it and attended Bible studies regarding it. But what exactly is it? How do we exercise it? How do we walk in it? We are all familiar with Hebrews 11:1—“Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things unseen .” But what does that mean? I believe the Holy Spirit has given us the answer.

Faith is believing in that which is not likely or is impossible to happen. Real faith does not just believe in what is improbable , but what is impossible . Real faith doesn’t simply believe in that which is not likely to happen but in that which cannot happen, given human reasoning. Real faith is not believing in the face of the odds but believing in spite of the odds. Real faith is believing for that for which there is no earthly way possible it could happen.

Let’s allow a few heroes of the faith bear witness:

· Noah exercised faith by building an ark to be saved from a flood, even though up to that time no rain had fallen on the earth. Noah had to believe in something he had never seen nor experienced.

· Abraham exercised faith by believing God for a son when he and his wife were elderly and she was unable to bear children!

· David walked in faith when he entered into a battlefield to face down Goliath, an experienced and armored giant warrior. He exercised his faith by believing that God would give him the victory even though every natural and military law would have marked him for dead.

· Peter literally walked in faith when he stepped out of the boat and stood on the surface of the water even though every natural and physical law dictated that he should have sunk to the bottom like a rock (no pun intended ).
I remember exercising genuine biblical faith on the day I was to graduate from high school. The weatherman had forecasted that it was to rain. If it rained, the graduation was going to be held in the gym. We only had 5 tickets and I had many relatives that came in from out of town to go to my graduation. The sky looked ominous. Surely, rain was on the way. However, I didn't put my trust in the weatherman, who could only predict the weather, but in the One who could control the weather. I took my concerns to Him. Long story short, we had our graduation on the football field and all my relatives were able to attend.
This happened again later in my ministry. We had planned a cookout for the neighborhood kids. It would include BBQ and games. Everyone was looking forward to it. Members from the church were coming out to help. Yet, again, the skies threatened rain. I remembered how God came through for me once before. So, I talked to Him. Although it did sprinkle during the event, it was not enough to call anything off. We had the event and cleaned everything up before the skies opened up. God is good.

The best definition of faith I can think of is line from one of Shirley Caesar’s songs, Faith Moves God . “Faith is stepping out on nothing/landing on something .” Essentially, that is faith. It is believing God for what you want or need even though everything is against it happening. Neither circumstances, laws, nor situations bind God. God is God. He can do exceedingly abundantly above all that we may ask or even think.

Genuine faith does not just believe in something or for something that could possibly happen. Genuine faith believes in something or for something that cannot. In short, faith says, ‘yes,’ when everything else says, ‘no.’