Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”(John 3:3)
We can imagine Nicodemus scratching his head as he leaned in and listened to Jesus Christ the night they met up to chat. Nicodemus was one of the top religious leaders of the country, respected and admired by everyone who knew him. He was devoted by keeping a rigid set of religious rules to prove to God that he was worthy. That’s what all his friends taught, and that’s the system he had known all his life.
But then Jesus Christ rocked his world. Probably with a twinkle in His eye because He knew He was stretching Nicodemus’s mind, Jesus Christ announced a revolutionary new way of relating to God. It wasn’t through all those rules and rituals Nicodemus has been following. This new way was through the Spirit of God transforming people’s hearts and making them alive as they’d never been before. It was so radical that Jesus Christ called it being born again.
God promises for rich, full, meaningful life as the result of experiencing His forgiveness and transformation. But some of us can’t accept the fact that it’s a gift. We still want to prove ourselves by following some set of rules, so we push Jesus Christ offer away instead of gratefully accepting it.
Jesus Christ is incredibly patient. Though Nicodemus didn’t seem to understand that night, he eventually grasped the fact that he could never follow enough rules to impress God. Nicodemus believed, that he was born again.