Born Again

If through faith you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, you are now a Born Again Christian.  Just like your natural birth was an act beyond your own power, it is through the power of God that you have been born again into a new creation.

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.  So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:1—8

How can you know that you have been born of the Spirit?

The Word of God says that you “have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit…”  1 Peter 1:22
Read that again, because it says that you obeyed “the truth through the Spirit.”  The act of obeying the truth through the Spirit is linked to your new birth.  It was through the power of the Holy Spirit that you were able to obey the truth, which resulted in you “having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because
“All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away,
But the word of the Lord endures forever.”

Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.”
1 Peter 1:23-25

The praise and glory for our salvation goes only to God and not to our works or our faith because “when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior…”
Titus 3:4—6

In your heart you might believe that you have always been and always will be a good person, especially when compared to others.  Can you really trust your heart?

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.”
Jeremiah 17:9—10

It is because God knows that our hearts are “desperately wicked” and that we cannot change our own hearts, that He promised to give us a new heart.  "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”  Ezekiel 36:26

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
2 Corinthians 5:17

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision [Jews] nor uncircumcision [Gentiles; non-Jews] avails anything, but a new creation.” 
Galatians 6:15

Why did God choose to make you a new creation?  “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” 1 Corinthians 6:19  You might want to read that again:  “…your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own.” If you are a true born again Christian, the Holy Spirit is in you and “you are not your own.”

You now belong to God.  Why?  Because He chose you “before the foundation of the world.”

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.

In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. 
Ephesians 1:3—14