Born again

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 21-04-08)

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and enduring word of God.  For, ‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field’.  1 Peter 1:23

There are moments in life when we are told that something has happened that changes our status and our future forever.  You are now a citizen of the United Kingdom… I pronounce you man and wife…You have a baby boy… You have been born again.  

You have been born again.  We can appreciate the emotional impact of getting married or having a baby, but we can too easily lose sight of the depth and power of this picture of what being a Christian means – made new as a child of the living God, transferred from the perishable, where all human glory fades, to the imperishable.  John speaks in the same way of being born not of natural descent, but born of God. (John 1:13)  Now we are clothed in immortality and the power that takes us and makes us new is the living and enduring word of God – the word that spoke and a universe was born out of nothing, the word that will endure forever.  

It’s unfortunate that the phrase ‘born again’ is used popularly as a mainly derogatory term for Christian, as is ‘fundamentalist’, ‘bible-bashing’ or ‘tub-thumping’. I asked a group of Christians what their answer would be to the question, ‘Are you a born-again Christian?’  They would be tempted to reply, ‘What other kind is there?’  But they agreed that they would probably change the terminology and describe themselves as committed Christians to avoid the negative overtones of ‘born again’.    

Maybe we need to reclaim the title and status and tell ourselves this morning that we have been born again.  We have a fresh start, forgiven and reinstated, with an inheritance that will last forever.  That should put a spring in our steps.  Especially if we are more than usually aware this morning that ‘our days are like grass, the wind passes over it and it is gone’ (Psalm 103:15,16).