John 3:3 – Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Hello readers, Jesus said ye must be born again. Why? Because ye must be born again. Why? Because ye must be born again. It’s not optional, it’s compulsory. You cannot SEE or ENTER the kingdom of God without having been born again of the Spirit of God. Do you want to know God, do you hunger to know your true purpose, to find true happiness and fulfillment, to know the meaning to life, for your existence to make sense? … because all that lies in your connection to God. In him is life, he is light, he is good. He is your Creator, you were created by him and for him, and thus without him, and being so alienated from God that you cannot see let alone enter his kingdom… you won’t ever have the light of true life, true meaning, true fulfillment, true purpose. Your father and my father Adam sinned… and sin has passed upon all men, and all have sinned. There’s a great gulf between God and man, that’s why you must be born again. You need to be born into the family of God, you need to be born of God to be a son of God, to be his child… in order for your heart’s cry to be Abba Father. In order to love God, we need God’s love to be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. When you are born again you get a heavenly Father, and you are born into the kingdom of God, you are changed forever, you are a citizen of heaven, you are made spiritually alive in Christ Jesus, you are saved, forgiven, redeemed, you have eternal life. The blood of Jesus Christ washes away our sin. But before the good news we must hear the bad news, in the same way before Jesus came, we had to see John the Baptist first… preparing the way of the Lord.

You see, our first birth… we all have had one… we were all born into this world… and we all knew to sin… didn’t we? Noone had to teach us to be selfish, to be proud, to lust, to covet, to steal, to blaspheme, to lie. It’s in us. It’s our nature. It’s who we are. It’s what we do. Our nature is sinful… and that’s why… Ye must be born again. It’s expected, it’s mandatory, that’s why Jesus said marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. You don’t need to marvel, and it’s not unattainable. The Bible says the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. You can be born again. You can know truth. You can be set free. Our first birth has a nature that is sinful, that is fallen, that is under the wrath of God. Hell is the endpoint of someone who has not been born again, who has not been saved, who has not believed the record of the Son of God. You can go it alone as Adam and Eve did… look where it got them… or you can humble yourself and turn to Jesus Christ. You need to be born again, you need to be made new, and you can only be made new in Christ Jesus. He’s the only one who can make you new, he’s the only one who has power to do something like that! Just as he’s the only one risen from the dead and alive today, and he’s the only one upon whom death, hell, sin, and Satan has no power, and he’s the only one who’s God. No other religion can make you born again, nothing can change a man inside, all false religion and man’s best efforts to pull himself up by his own bootstraps does is whitewash the exterior and self medicate, but it cannot purge your conscience, it cannot cleanse your sin, it cannot give you a new heart, a new nature, it cannot give you life… it takes God, Creator God to do that.

People don’t SEE God and his kingdom today. But it doesn’t mean his kingdom doesn’t rule over all, because it does. But here on earth there is a different kingdom, the kingdom of the world of who the prince thereof is the Devil. But God’s kingdom is greater, that’s why when Jesus came, the devils went running. You can be here on earth, but in a completely different kingdom spiritually, when you are born again you stop belonging to this evil, doomed world and you are born into the kingdom of God. But unless the Holy Spirit of God works in your life, you can’t and won’t see why you need to be saved, you won’t get Christianity, you won’t get God’s word… it’s foolish to you… it’s a joke to you… it’s an offense to you. So if you can’t see God’s kingdom, you certainly can’t enter it. If you reject Jesus Christ, you’ve rejected God, as he is God, you cannot know God outside of Jesus Christ, he is the only way to God. Only a saved person has a concept of the kingdom of God… but what is the kingdom of God? The Bible says it is righteousness, joy, peace in the Holy Ghost. In the casting out of devils Jesus said the kingdom of God is come upon us. You see, the kingdom of God is spiritual, it’s spiritual life, it’s a new creature in Christ Jesus. People who are characterized by righteousness, joy, peace, holiness, purity, truth, light… where once we all walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Devils are evil spirits, you can have a clean, pure, truthful, excellent, mighty, overcoming spirit through the Holy Spirit living in you whereas you used to have an unclean, unrighteous, unholy, dark, lying, hard, disobedient, rebellious dead spirit.

Whereas you were born one way, when you get saved you are changed by God. How did it all happen? Because you learnt you were a sinner, you saw a need to repent of your sins, you saw you had a huge sin debt before God and nothing to pay it with. Many people do indeed try paying it, earning their way to heaven, or the heaven they imagine themselves through their own goodness or efforts. But learn from Cain, who made the mistake and the Bible documents it so you don’t have to go in his way.  He brought the work of his hands, the best of his garden… and God rejected it. He believed in God, it wasn’t he had the wrong God, but his error was in that he tried coming to God his own way. Man likes to do that, man want’s to do it his way, according to his reasoning, wisdom and understanding. It’s roots lie in pride. Natural men are by nature the children of pride. Cain offered a sacrifice that was rejected. You may have seen in the Bible that sacrifice is always necessary when coming to God. Why is that?

Well sacrifice is because mankind owes God. Sacrifice is to atone for transgression, to appease God, to get him to bless you. But why was any sacrifice needed? Because man sinned. Man transgressed against God. Man fell, man became dark, man became sinful. God is good, so good that he judges sin, so good that nothing bad can dwell in his presence. Nobody likes a corrupt, evil judge who won’t put a murderer or pedophile away… how much more should Holy God judge sin? There is wrath against sin, and your sin demands sacrifice, the shedding of blood to atone for your actions. All through the Old Testament they brought animals, but the blood of animals couldn’t satisfy God, that’s why they needed to be offered again and again. The blood of animals couldn’t change someone’s heart, someone’s soul, someone’s nature. Neither could it pay our debt. No amount of innocent animals slain satisfied the demands of holy justice. But God had a plan, a plan ordained before the world began.

God entered his own creation himself and sent Jesus Christ his Son, God in the flesh, to the earth, born as a human being into this world. He lived a perfect life headed towards a perfect death. Where he would offer himself as our sacrifice in our place, for each of us, that’s everyone that’s every lived! God poured out his wrath that was coming to each of us, all on his Son Jesus Christ. And the sacrifice of God’s perfect, holy, just, pure Son was accepted, and thus we can be forgiven in the sight of God based on Jesus Christ. And not only the forgiveness of sin, but Jesus came to give us NEW life. So many people don’t even understand what salvation is. Salvation is a new creature. Because what started with seeing we are a sinner, guilty before God, our hearts and consciences condemning ourselves… why do you think people hate preaching of God’s word on sin. Because it hits the heart, cutting to the heart… that’s why they stoned Stephen, it’s why the murdered God’s prophets who came to them saying to repent of sin. If you can’t accept truth about yourself you CANNOT be saved.

Jesus came not only to pay for our sin, but to give us life, and he gives us his life. We are so fallen, our first birth so unsalvageable… he just creates a new person in us. And that new person is created by God in us when the Holy Spirit comes to live in us. That all happens that moment we repented of our sin and believe in Jesus Christ… by the way… Jesus Christ is not dead… he’s alive, so it’s placing faith in the God who is alive, who death could not hold! So something real happens, something that can be talked about forever but only ever understood individually when you actually repent on your sin and call upon his name for your salvation. When you get saved, you receive the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit given to you to make you a new person. You become in Jesus Christ spiritually, and he in you.

You become all God’s, he changes you totally. Water baptism is an ordinance for a believer, but it represents a greater spiritual truth, the spiritual baptism that happens when we believe. Going into the water and under the water, that’s what happens when we were immersed fully in repentance and by the Holy Spirit. Picture a person under water in baptism, that’s what happens spiritually when you get saved, your entire body, soul, spirit comes under conviction of the Holy Spirit, and all of you gets saved by God. He doesn’t save a bit of you, he saves you freely, fully and forever. You become his, and his yours.

Many people aren’t truly saved because they love their life. Jesus said if you love your life you’ll lose it, but if you hate your life you’ll save it. Anyone truly saved knows what this means. Because salvation is seeing who we are, WHAT we are before God, in light of his holy commandments and his standard of righteousness and the condemnation associated with our complete violation of them, and furthermore just seeing the darkness and helplessness and hopelessness and vanity that we are in… and the cords of lust and pride that have bound us up and choked us out. Why do you need to be born again if you love your first birth? Answer: you don’t. If you love your sin, as many do, than you won’t get saved.

The Bible says in Galatians 6:15 – For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. A new creature… ye must be born again… that’s what salvation is… a new person. That’s why true salvation can break every chain… every addiction, any vice, any hold Satan has on you. Because that new person is sinless, the wicked one cannot touch him, that new person overcomes the world. Because that new person is born of the Spirit of God. Imagine that… God’s Spirit, that same Spirit that moved on the face of the deep in Genesis 1! That same Spirit by which Jesus lived, walked and talked. That same Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead. How could you not be changed.

In the book of Galatians, Paul was addressed a situation where people were getting circumcised because they were being told they had to do that to get saved. God through Paul established in this book that it doesn’t matter what you do, you cannot save yourself. Circumcision or uncircumcision, no matter what you do, you cannot save yourself nor keep yourself saved nor find a way to merit it. What matters is a new creature. Ye must be born again. Good works follow salvation, they are not salvation. If you are a new creature, you will do new works… but that’s because you firstly are a new creature, with a new heart.

Jesus didn’t come preaching circumcision. He didn’t say we must get circumcised to get to heaven. Because there is nothing we can do. Jesus preached to repent of our sin and believe on him. He did say do this and do that, because they are the right things to do… not because they save us. And truly we only want to do them if we are saved, because someone who is saved love’s God and hence will love God’s word. If you marry someone you love dearly, you’ll love when they speak to you. How much more should we love the word that proceeds forth from the very mouth of God? Truth be told, people don’t keep God’s commandments because they don’t love God. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. If ye love me, keep my commandments Jesus said.

We all need to be saved. Noone is above and nobody is below, we all have that first birth… we all got her being born into the world by a father and mother. People say we were created in the image of God. That’s true, we originally were, but Adam sinned… and we are born in Adam’s fallen image, not that perfect image of God. If you truly think you are in the image of God, yet you lust and are proud and swear and curse and lie… is that really the image of God being born out? Only when you have the Holy Spirit, only when born again can you live in the image of God. Because the Bible says were are CHANGED into that image, even as by the Spirit of God! That’s what the Holy Spirit does… he changes us so completely we won’t even be able to recognize who we were, how we could love and do those thing we used to do.

You see, you must be born again. Do you see a need to be born again? Are you tired of those chains on your soul, that dead spirit that you have? A spirit that is unclean, that is evil, that is overtaken of the devil… a spirit that fears, that is weak, that gets addicted, that is in slavery to and cannot say no to sin. How about that darkness enveloping your soul… just like the darkness that was on the face of the deep in Genesis 1? We can, and do, try all number of substitutes, be it reformation or religion or occupying ourselves with pleasures and pursuits… but nothing can fill that void that God created to be filled. And the earth was without form and void. God did not create it to be void, and you were not created to be devoid of the Spirit of God… and today the Spirit of God moves on the waters of your heart… but do you have ears to hear, a heart that will respond to the convicting of the Holy Spirit?

The Bible says we are all sinners. There is none good, no not one. That’s Bible. We have all broken the holy law of God, we have violated the standard of God. Look into your own conscience… what does conscience mean? It means “with knowledge”. God put the knowledge of him in you dear reader, he put the knowledge of right and wrong in you. You know… but maybe you’ve chosen to bury that conscience God gave you, to darken the light God gave you. The Bible says Jesus has lighted every man that has come into the world. You have been given light… but what have you done with it? Oh, and you say… but everyone has their own truth, everyone says they are right. God himself looked to see if there was any other god, and he didn’t find any. He is the God that judges creation, he has done it before and will again, and he judges you today, that’s why you get offended at his word, because his word created you and his word of judgement resonates as your very soul came from him, you didn’t make yourself. You weren’t even there when you were conceived, when the plan for your life was laid out, can you even remember anything before you were a young child… yet God was there, and there long before. He is God… Jesus Christ ROSE from the dead, the only man to rise form the dead, declaring himself to be God with power by the resurrection of the dead. God’s word proves itself, it is with power, it’ll change your thinking, your mind, your life, your soul, your destiny, your eternity… that’s pretty powerful.

And although it may not all be clear to you, our hearts condemn us when we are honest with ourselves before God. We all sin… we have all broken God’s law, we are all undone. So whether you get circumcised or not… we are undone, there is nothing we can do, it is not how we are saved. Jesus is the ladder to heaven. Perhaps you heard the story of Jacob’s ladder… you want to know what that story means? It points us to Jesus Christ… he is the way to heaven, he is our ladder… we can’t get there ourselves, but he did the work, he came from heaven, and he went back to heaven, and we can get there through him. He gives you his life, his forgiveness, his mercy, HIS Spirit… and he want’s you to share in all the blessedness that he has. It all starts with being born again. Are you done with a life of sin? Do you want to come to God through Jesus Christ? He is the WAY, the TRUTH, the LIFE… Jesus said NO MAN comes to the Father but by me. If you come by Jesus Christ, you will be saved, you will be born again of the Spirit of God. Jesus said, marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. It’s so mysterious, misunderstood, and you can be saved right now… that’s why Jesus said marvel not… you don’t need to marvel, you can be born again, because ye MUST be born again.

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