Wow what a worn out statement and again a misunderstood one. Currently about the only thing this "Born Again" means is,"Have you accepted Christ as your personal savior". To fully grasp this phrase we need to understand a lot more. I am not saying you have to know these things to be "Born Again" well then again maybe I am. The intention of this blog is not to convert but to clarify and strengthen the understanding of anyone who reads it.
The words "Born again" were first uttered to Nicodemus by Jesus and you will find it in John chapter 3:3. The statement that Jesus made was to a religion professor in the Jewish teaching system, an expert in religion, and Nicodemus didn't know what the term meant either. The key to this statement reaches back to the Garden of Eden when man disobeyed God's command. You see when man was created God breathed into his nostrils the "breath of life" this should be understood as follows, "God blew into man the Holy Spirit" and man became a living soul. When man disobeyed that Spirit was withdrawn and man spiritually died. Every child born to mankind after that suffers the same fate and is spiritually dead, it was this condition that Jesus was referring to when He spoke to Nicodemus. In response to this Nicodemus had no idea how to get his mind around this it was a statement that while true and extremely deep, was the essence of Jewish teaching. The problem with Nicodemus was that somewhere in his education they had glossed over this little tidbit and the entire thrust of Nick's teaching was one of doing instead of being. At the time Jesus walked the earth as a man the Jewish people were nit picking about every little point of law and had lost the purpose of the law which was to point out that man was spiritually dead.
If you follow what I'm saying you realize that anybody who breaths is spiritually dead and for that to change they have to be made alive spiritually if they are to dwell in a place of spiritually living beings or Heaven. So how does that happen? Consider this, if in the beginning God breathed into man the Holy Spirit or Breath of Life and man became a living being what do you think has to happen if we, who are physically alive but spiritually dead, are going to come alive spiritually? Makes sense that the thing that originally made us alive would be the thing we need to make us alive again. This is exactly what Jesus told Nicodemus, "You have to be born of water and the spirit. So to conclude mankind in our natural state from birth are spiritually dead and need to have God breath once again the Holy Spirit into us. The reason Jesus came and died was to pay the price Justice demanded and you have to remember this isn't a mean old god who made Jesus die, it was God Himself in the form of His Son who paid the price.
When Jesus died on the cross He did so with the knowledge that on the third day He would rise again, but that is not the end of story, He did rise, but the mission was not over it required more. In the Old Testament the priest was required to bring the sacrificial blood to the altar and present it to God for the forgiveness of sins. A scarlet rope was tied to the priest's ankle just in case things went wrong, if things did go wrong the people outside the Holy place would drag the dead carcass (the priest) out and dispose of it. Jesus stayed with His disciples for a few weeks after the resurrection, but then told them He had to go to complete His mission. At that point He rose up into heaven, the Bible tells us that when He got to Heaven Jesus went before the throne of God with His own blood and offered it up as the payment for our salvation, which was what Justice demanded. It is at this point that many Christian teachings stop and that leaves us at the Nicodemus point, I don't want to do that so the next time I will attempt to bring this entire series on faith to a conclusion.
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