Are You REALLY Born Again?
Hey, you reading this… are you born again?
My guess is… no. Even if you think you are… you’re probably not.
Now, that's not because you're a bad person or because you're on your way to Hell. No, it's mostly because the Christian church hasn't been telling and teaching believers what they should be teaching: what Jesus said and taught about being born again.
(John 3:3)
A lot of Christians like to go around telling people that they’re “born again”. In fact, many of them throw around the phrase “born-again Christian” like it’s an exclusive club - like there are “regular” Christians and then there are the real, true, special, “born-again” Christians.
When you ask them what it means to be born again, they almost always answer with something like: “I’m a new creature in Christ.” Or: “I’ve been saved by the blood and baptized into the newness of Christ.” Or something else that supports their salvation.
That's what we've been taught by most of our Christian teachers, preachers, and church leaders for centuries; but that doesn't sound anything like what Jesus taught Nicodemus about being "born-again".
Jesus tells Nicodemus (and us) three things about the whole “born-again” thing:
- you can’t see the Kingdom of God until you’ve been born again (John 3:3)
- you can’t enter the Kingdom of God until you’ve been born again (John 3:5)
- the person who’s born again is like the wind. With the wind you don’t know its source, you don’t know where it ends, and the only way you can know it’s there is by watching how it affects, alters, or influences things around you (John 3:8)
So, instead of asking "Are You Really Born Again?" how 'bout we rephrase that question - to make it easier to answer…
Can you see the Kingdom of God? If not, you haven’t been born again.
Have you entered the Kingdom of God? If not, you haven’t been born again.
Are you affecting lives in a way that people feel the impact and experience the benefits but can’t quite figure out why you make the sacrifices you do (source) or exactly what it is you get out of it (end)? Well, you probably haven’t been born again.
If you’re not already living in, working in, and selflessly affecting lives in the Kingdom, I'm sorry but, according to Jesus - the one person who should know - you haven’t really been born again.
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