The Necessity of the New Birth

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

John 3:3 RSV

We cannot explain the mystery of our physical birth, but we accept the fact of life. What is it that keeps us from accepting the fact of spiritual life in Christ?

Just as surely as God implants the life cell in the tiny seed that produces the mighty oak, and as surely as He instills the heartbeat in the life of the tiny infant yet unborn, as surely as He puts motion into the planets, stars, and heavenly bodies, He implants His divine life in the hearts of men who earnestly seek Him through Christ.

This is not conjecture; it is a fact. But has it happened to you? Have you been twice born? If you have not been, you are not only unfit for the Kingdom of God—you are cheating yourself out of the greatest, the most revolutionary experience known to man.

This new birth is an eternal birth. The Bible says, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (1 Peter 1:23). Our physical birth in life is consummated at death; but if we have been born again, death becomes the bright threshold of eternity.

That unknown writer who said, “Better never to have been born at all, than never to have been born again,” never uttered a truer statement.

Our Father and our God, I celebrate the fact that I have been born again and that I am a new creature. That new birth has cleansed me, saved me, and made me Your child for eternity. Help me to be a child of whom You can be proud, Father, just like Jesus, the perfect One in whose name I pray. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).