The Concept of Born-Again

The concept of Born-again.
Many a Christian preacher today seldom do their services in churches without mentioning to the congregants the need to be “born again” and build a “personal relationship” with God. This two phrases without a doubt are some of the most commonly used in various sermons in the contemporary body that forms the Church. However, this phrases also are some of the least understood of the Christian concepts. The phrase “personal relationship with God” more often confusing than it is misunderstood. 


Personal Relationship with God
Now, every person has some sort of relationship with God and that includes the wicked ones. God does not discriminate and everything he created, he loves.
The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. Ps 145:9 (KJV)
The reason I say this phrase is more a confusing one than it is a misunderstood one is because the word personal is a bit unclear as far as the nature of the relationship goes. It's a little ambiguous. Everyone can say the way they relate with God is personal.


There are three kinds of relationships a person can keep with God and the three are what would bring me to the concept of Born-again.

1. Creator-creation relationship: - This is the commonest kind of relationships that is kept by all and sundry. Any person created by God has this relationship with Him and so have trees, mountains, rivers, seas, creatures of the waters, beasts of the earth and birds of the air. If this is the way your relationship with God is, then you are to God what every tree or animal is to him.

2. Master-servant relationship:- This is the type that most Christians keep. Christians who confess to be born again but they have remained servants in the Kingdom all their life. Their Faith is premised about the notion that God will bless you according to your works. They speak of grace but they don't know how it works. All the good things they do, they do because they want to enter God's books. They are good so that God can bless them. They are like a servant who must work hard in the performance of his duties in order to qualify for a months wage. They believe that God's abundance is scarce and that hard work alone qualifies them to a part of it.
This is wrong though. This notion takes away your right to belong.

3. Father-son relationship:- This is the type of relationship that we all ought to keep with God. Any Christian who confesses to be born again is supposed to keep this kind of relationship with God. This brings me to the concept of Born again.


Born-again
This concept is most often misunderstood by those who are not born again and a good number of Christians also have an unclear understanding of this concept. In the bible Jesus Christ introduces this to a Pharisee called Nicodemus and says:

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.
4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. John 3:3-8 (KJV)

This excerpt is one of the most elaborate you can ever come across in the Bible touching on this subject. To be born again is a form of reincarnation. Stop belonging to the human race and become of a spiritual race.


When a baby is conceived it is from a different world. When it is born, it comes into a new world a totally new place for it. But more basically it has its parents to look after it. It has a father and mother of whom it's born. The person of whom a child is born is called the child's father. This is what becomes of  a person born again. He is born of the spirit and henceforth becomes a child of the spirit hence child of God.

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24 (KJV)

Those who become born again obtain the right to call Him Father. The rest are bastards. This doesn't mean that you can never go wrong and incur the wrath of God. It only means that if you find yourself in a mistake you'll be chastised and not punished. The wages of sin is death, but for those that have become His children, they are chastised.

But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Heb 12:8 (KJV)

If as an owner of a house you find that someone has broken in and stolen some item, then you'll ensure that the person is met with the full force of the law and be jailed as per the provisions of the law. But if that person is your son, then you'll have tamper justice with mercy. You'll spare your son a jail term but you'll still make him feel the gravity of his offense outside the provisions of the law. Chastisement is what sons who err face not punishment. This is what being born again does. This is the privilege of being born again.


Take a look at this verse:
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:12-13 (KJV)


To be born again therefore is to be born of God. God becomes your father. You're no longer His servant but his child. A rightful heir to His unlimited abundancy. When you ask anything of Him as a child he'll give it to you as any father would his child. By right , you qualify for whatsoever you may ask of Him. Jesus pauses:

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Matt 7:11 (KJV)

That's what to be born again means and that's what it brings along.