Born Again

Do you, brother or sister in Christ, know anyone who has risen from the dead? Well, if you still believe that you have never met anyone in whom this miracle has taken place, run to a mirror and greet yourself.

Yes, there was a time when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, and by the grace and will of God, He raised you to a new life so that you would no longer be a conscious slave to such wrongdoing (And He made you alive, who were dead in [because of] your trespasses and sins Ephesians 2:1). We were buried and raised with Christ by the hand of God in an irreversible act of grace and mercy toward our sinful nature. It is not I who say this, but God Himself: Buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead. (Col. 2:12)

On the last day, our resurrection will have another meaning; it will be different, because we will walk hand in hand with God and live in eternity. So what does it mean that God has raised us to a new life here on earth so that we may live in harmony with one another and have full fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ?

Our very lives depend on it, for it means setting our eyes on the things above and renouncing many of the things down here, thus being transformed from glory to glory into His very image (2 Corinthians 3:18), living a life that pleases Him through faith that prompts, from the heart, works that glorify the name of the Lord. Without death there is no resurrection. If God raised us “while alive,” it is because we truly were dead “while alive” because of our transgressions and rebellions against our Creator. M. Henry comments that sin is the death of the soul and that the state of sin is the state of conformity to this world. How right he is! How greatly the world needs to know this truth! Christianity is not about debtors and creditors, but about love.

He loved us first and made us sit in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6) to display the abundant riches of His grace (Ephesians 2:7) through the extraordinary act of making us His workmanship to do good. We could not be indebted to Christ for two reasons: the simple fact that our salvation has been a gift from God, and because, humanly speaking, we could have done nothing to attain it. The glory, the merit, belongs to God alone. No one can boast of having attained salvation through their own merits.

Have you looked into the mirror of your conscience and realized that you are a new creation because God raised you from the dead? If you have time, I invite you to look up and meditate on the passage of Ephesians 2:1–10 in your Bible. I am sure it will be an incomparable delight to you.

Our ultimate freedom was given to us through Christ’s resurrection from His death on Calvary, but let us not forget that what we are today is the result of a new life in Christ, because God also led us to a spiritual crucifixion from which we emerged as a new creation, to honor only Him who created us in our mothers’ wombs and brought about the spiritual birth that left behind the disorderly desires of the flesh.

Look upward, toward divine things—not with the ecstasy of a religious spiritualism swollen by an emotional faith that does little or nothing to build us up, but in order to seek Him who is at the right hand of God the Father and with the daily longing to be filled with His Spirit; that is, to allow yourself to be led by and to obey that voice of God that we all have within us.

One of the most beautiful things God says about His children is that we are accepted in Christ. His blood covered all the disorders and sins that caused us to wander through the world, vagabonds amid every kind of human misery (without even knowing it), like sheep without a shepherd and at the mercy of the deceiver’s tricks. But one day—and surely you remember it—He called you and me, crucified those disorders with Christ, and raised us together with Him. Since then, despite the daily and inevitable ups and downs of the Christian life, our lives have never been the same. We are blessed and, by far, more than conquerors in this new birth in the Spirit. Nothing compares to that great blessing.

God bless you!