The New Birth is a new beginning. We have all at one time or other stumbled at the start. Everyone knows what it is like to have to "start over." For example, perhaps we started the song in the "wrong key." We want to begin again. Children often ask if they can have a "do over." The New Birth is starting over. Because of something called "sin," we all need to begin again.
New Heart
The New Birth requires a new heart. Something has to change on the inside. Without the new heart nothing changes. We speak about a person "losing heart." By that we mean something is damaged or something dies inside a person that caused him to stop trying or to give up. Everyone knows how being "half hearted" results in failure. On the other hand, we have all heard of loving someone "with all your heart."In the New Birth, God gives us a New Heart.
New Direction
Before a person experiences the New Birth and is Born-Again, he is going in the wrong direction. We are all lost. The New Birth involves an about face, a turning around. Heaven and life is in one direction. Hell and destruction is in the other.
New Connection
Once a person is Born-Again he enters into a new and eternal relationship with God. We become attached to and a part of something much larger and greater than ourself.
New Goal
The New Birth changes everything. This new life not only has new goals, it has right, worthy and correct goals. A person who has been Born-Again lets God set the goal posts, hoops, and hocky nets (so to speak). God not only sets the rules but chalks the field, and like it or not, keeps score. The new goal is doing God's will.
New Role
The New Birth involves a relationship. In the New Birth we become a Son, a Servant, and a Sojourner. We also become a Student, a Subject and a Citizen.
New Course
Not only do we have a new direction, we walk a new way. The New Birth sets us off on a long and exciting journey home, or to what the Lord Jesus Christ called "my Father's house."
New Force
The New Birth required a power we did not possess. This new life requires a new nature which the Holy Spirit of God provides. That is why the New Birth comes with a guarantee. Now it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do God's pleasure.
"You must be born again."
This is what Jesus told Nicodemus "Ye must be born again." If Jesus was right (and He is) then the New Birth is urgent. Jesus taught that without a New Birth a man would "perish." Anything short of a new birth will fail in the end. God is not offering a new leaf, He is offering a new life. The new birth is vital, is radical, and it is real.
