In his account of the life of Jesus, John includes a late night meeting between Jesus and a prominent religious leader. It appears that the leader was afraid of being seen with Jesus in public. At the same time, he couldn’t stop thinking about the teaching he had heard from Jesus, and wanted to know more. In the conversation, Jesus uttered words that have been echoed from countless pulpits in the subsequent two millennia. He told Nicodemus that to please God, “you must be born again”.
When you think of someone saying, “you must be born again”, you may picture someone screaming on a sidewalk to passerbys. Or it may feel like insider jargon that most people today wouldn’t relate to. In reality, the description is a pretty intense picture of what life with Jesus looks like. Having just gone through the child birthing process as we welcomed our son Carter to the world, Jesus’ metaphor has been in my thoughts a good deal. Here are a couple of thoughts about how spiritual birth relates to physical birth:
You have less control than you think
The most difficult part of going through the birth process for me was how incredibly helpless I felt. There was nothing I could do to help my wife or my son, even though I wanted to desperately. I wasn’t the only one without any real control. My wife had no control over what the baby was doing, when he would arrive, or how he was progressing. My son had no control. When the big moment arrived, sticking around the womb wasn’t an option. Even the doctor had little control. She read the monitors, administered care, but she was dependent on how mom and child were doing, to help her to know what to do next.
When Jesus told Nicodemus, “you must be born again”. He was saying, you must submit yourself to a process and a journey that is out of your control. The Christian life is scary at times and unpredictable. When things get scary, most of us try to assert some level of control. We hope to calm things down, understand things more, and make things more predictable, but it never works. Life with God is beyond our control. Although it demands willingness and participation, it will not be micromanaged. In much the same way that a child is sent hurtling out of their safe place into bright lights, sounds, and a waiting family, following Jesus rips us from our comfortable lethargy and propels us into a life that is bright, wonderful, and scary.
It can be a traumatic process
After seeing my wife go through child birth and deliver our son, I can unequivocally say that women are super-heroes. The thought of all she went through still gives me chills. She was amazing, but the process was traumatic for her and our son. Entering life with God can also be traumatic. Our eyes are opened to a world of things we didn’t fully see before. We are often overcome by our selfishness and guilt from our past (even though God wipes it fully away). The thoughts of growing and walking with God can seem overwhelming. In many ways we will never be the same again, and while that is wonderful news, it is also a lot to take in.
To follow Jesus means to give up clamoring for control. We need to embrace what comes from moment to moment, and trust that God, who is in control, will use his power for good. Just because we aren’t in control, doesn’t mean that there is no control at all. God is in control and He is for us. God is good, and while, things may seem unclear and painful and times, He will as Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “cause everything to work together for the good of those who love God…” (Romans 8:28).