A young man in our church shared his testimony with me. He said that even though he was born into a Christian family, did not take drugs or drink alcohol, lived a moral life, and professed to know Jesus Christ for most of his life, he knew deep inside that none of those things made him a Christian. He knew that he was not born again.

 Just like this young man, Nicodemus was a religious leader of Israel. He was respected and knowledgeable in the faith. However, he came to our Lord Jesus secretly by night to ask him a question that I am sure many of us have wondered about at some point in our lives: how can I be sure that I have a right relationship with God, that I am going to heaven?

 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God…Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:3, 10) Even though Nicodemus was a religious teacher, he was unsure about his salvation. Aren’t many of us like Nicodemus? We might have grown up in church and Sunday school, served in various ministries and called ourselves Christians for years, but we are still uncertain of where we stand in God’s eyes. Here, Jesus gives us the answer to being a true Christian. He told Nicodemus that despite his respectable status and good life record, he needed to be born again before he could enter the kingdom of God. Being born again simply means to be born from above. You ought to be born by the Spirit’s empowerment; you are to be born again because this is a gift from heaven. It is not something that man can achieve, it is what man needs to receive. It is not about what you do on the outside or what you have done in your life; it is whether God has affected the new life within you by His Spirit.

 Can you say with confidence that you are truly born again by the Spirit and only by the Spirit? Regardless of how “clean” you think your life has been or how many years you have been professing faith, my desire is that you truly believe in and look to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and become a born-again child of God.