Choosing Birth

Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?" (John 3:4)

Yesterday I heard someone talk about this and they pointed out something that I had never thought of before. Nicodemus was obviously a good Jew and as most Jews believed, the way you were counted as a person in God's kingdom was by virtue of your ancestry. Therefore, when Jesus started talking about the kingdom of God, automatically any good Jew would instantly assume that they were already in it because of their birth to a Jewish mother.

So when Jesus asserts that one must be born again to see or enter into the kingdom of God, Nicodemus' mind began to mull over the impossibility of a grown person trying to successfully achieve this requirement once again. In his mind, he was already part of the kingdom of God because he was born to a good Jewish mother. But here was Jesus claiming that this assumed requirement had to be done yet again.

This is where it starts to become evident that Jesus is revealing the end of the era where God's chosen people were centered in the Jewish nation as a race. The time was quickly approaching when the Jews would fully reject God's covenant with them and God was already preparing an alternative group of people to be his chosen representatives on earth. This new group of people would be those who not only were born in the normal human way in water from their mother's womb but would also go through a similar experience of being birthed by the Holy Spirit in ways that paralleled that of their first birth.

But unlike their first birth, this time their birth would be a result of their own choice to cooperate with God's desires and plans for their life. When they were born of the flesh from their earthly mother's they had no choice in the matter. But to be born a second time into the real kingdom of God each individual must surrender themselves to be drawn into the very womb of God, to enter into intimacy with God's heart and to allow heaven to enter into their heart in ways very different from the life they had experienced up to this point.

What is also interesting to me in regards to this comment by Nicodemus is that what he was asserting as impossible was in fact exactly what Jesus Himself had done. Jesus had by His own choice and unlike any other human, actually chosen to enter into His earthly mother's womb in order to be born of flesh. If Nicodemus had realized the truth about who Jesus really was he would have realized to his amazement that the One in front of him had actually already done what he was saying seemed impossible. Jesus had entered into His mother's womb, and while it was not a second time of birth for Him as a human it was a Spirit entity being born again as a being of flesh.

While this is not possible for us humans to replicate or follow as an example, we can choose to do something very similar. We are already born of flesh but need to be born of the Spirit. Jesus was already a Spirit but chose to be born again as a fleshly being. In so doing He entered into a new state which had origins in both the Spirit and the flesh. What He is saying is that we too must make a choice to be born a second time in order to become something very similar to what He is, a human being that is also born of God's Spirit, something of a dual identity.

In doing this we embrace the identity of this new creation that Jesus pioneered. Jesus in a sense started a new breed of beings by His incarnation and He desires us to join Him in this new race of saved humans who will spend eternity with Him and with the rest of heaven enjoying His presence. It is our privilege to accept His invitation to be born into Christ so that we can spend eternity being ravished by His love for us.

This is highlighted in verse 15 where He declares that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. When we choose to allow God to rebirth us through surrender to His Spirit in our hearts, we will be born into Christ and become a new creature along the order that Jesus is by virtue of His dual identity. Being in Christ brings with it the presence of eternal life which is the very essence of Jesus Himself. As we enter into this new dimension of existence and grow up into Christ, our eternal life will be a light that will shine ever more brightly from our hearts and lives attracting others to join us in Christ.

No longer is being born into a certain race of humans a requirement for being one of God's chosen people. Neither is it a membership in some particular denomination or political affiliation. God's kingdom is a heart-based kingdom that is only recognized by those who have chosen to let God birth them into it by His Spirit. They do not need to be Jews or any other human race to be part of God's kingdom but they do have to experience what it means to be “in Christ”.

And according to these words of Jesus to Nicodemus, an important requisite for being in Christ is a choice to believe in Him. The real meaning of those words is still something I continue to explore, to ponder, to meditate on and to pursue in my own heart and spirit. I have spent years puzzled by these words and wondering just what this belief really involves and it is slowly becoming more clear to me. But it is also the growing passion of my heart to believe in this God who is revealing the real truth about His beauty, His truth and His glory to me which induces faith within me to trust Him even more.

I continue to marinate in this passage, partly because I want my own heart to be filled with new revelations about God that fill these words of Jesus. I want to believe much deeper, to believe not only facts about God that impress my left brain but to believe in God's trustworthiness, compassion and love that I am only just beginning to perceive with my right brain and my heart. I want both my intellect and my emotions to be deeply involved in my belief. I have a growing intensity of desire to experience this new birth every day even deeper than before. I want to know the joy of eternal life here and now and to become a better reflector of that light to attract others to Him.