Mark 4:30-32 “Then He said, "To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? (31) It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; (32) but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade.”
Our Lord Jesus, when He was on the earth, stated that the kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21). The parable that our Lord described above is a picture of the kingdom of God that is in every believer. We are all born into the kingdom of God in seed form, for the Holy Spirit tells us that we have been born again of the incorruptible seed of the word of God (1 Peter 1:23). It is God’s intention that all of His children grow from that small seed, into large trees that can be used of Him to bless the lives of those around them. One of the major differences between the saints under the old covenant and the saints under the new covenant is that the saints under the new can be born again, whereas the saints under the old covenant could not be born again. And so even though the saints under the old covenant could believe and that was accounted to them for righteousness (Romans 4:5), they could not be born again. The reason for that was because they could not meet the requirement to be born again, i.e. they could not confess Jesus as Lord and neither could they believe that God had raised Him from the dead, for Jesus had not yet come in the flesh (Romans 10:9). And so Old Testament saints remained dead in spirit from their thirteenth birthday until the day of their death. And even after death the Old Testament saints remained separated from God in spiritual death and had to be taken to Abraham’s bosom under the earth, waiting for the revelation of the Messiah (Luke 16). After Jesus was raised from the dead He went into Abraham’s bosom to preach the gospel to them so that they could be born again (1 Peter 4:6). Once the Old Testament saints were made alive in spirit once again, our Lord led them into heaven where they remain with Him to this day (Ephesians 4:8). New Testament saints however, can meet the requirement to be born again because we can confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God has raised Him from the dead. And so as we will see in this section, it is our spirits that are born again. For the most part, the church has not realized the potential which has been made available to her through the new birth. Our Lord Jesus made a comment about this issue when He was on the earth, for you will recall that in commenting on John the Baptist, that our Lord said that of those born of woman that there was none greater than John. In making that comment, our Lord was comparing John to all the great men of God under the old covenant, such as Moses, David, Daniel and all the other Old Testament saints. And so in God’s view John was the greatest of them all. But our Lord went on to say that nevertheless he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John (Matthew 11:11). All who are born again are in the kingdom of heaven. And so our Lord was saying that the least saint in the church today is greater than the greatest saint that lived under the old covenant. When we look at the lives of some of the Old Testament saints, we wonder how it is possible that the least of the saints today can be greater than all of those great men of God. The answer to that question is simply because in Christ we have been born again. And because we have been born again we have the potential to walk even as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6). No Old Testament saint ever had that potential. Because it is in our spirits that we are born again, it is in our spirits that we have the potential to grow to the point where we can walk just like Jesus walked.
John 3:3-6 “Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (4) 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?" (5) Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. (6) That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
In the above account in scripture our Lord Jesus mentioned for the first time that we must be born again. Prior to this no one had heard the term of being born again. God never taught this concept to the Old Testament saints because they couldn’t be born again, but now that Jesus had come in the flesh, God could now begin to teach this concept, because the New Testament saints could be born again. And so we see that being natural in his understanding, Nicodemus couldn’t understand the concept of what our Lord meant when He said that we must be born again. Nevertheless our Lord went on to explain what He was talking about when He said, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”. The flesh in the passage refers to our physical body, while the spirit in this passage refers to the human spirit being born from the Spirit of God. Nicodemus understood the physical birth but knew nothing about the spiritual birth. And so the reason why Nicodemus couldn’t grasp what our Lord was saying was because he was thinking about a physical rebirth, whereas Jesus was speaking about a spiritual rebirth. And so we see that our Lord was telling us in this passage that it is in our spirits that we must be born again.
2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
The Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul confirms the truth to us in the above quoted passage of scripture that we receive complete new spirits from God when we are born again, for He says that those who are in Christ have become new creations. One translation of this passage speaks about a “new species that never existed before”. And so there can be no doubt that all those who become believers in Christ, are born again in their spirits i.e. their spirits have become new creations of God.
Michael E.B. Maher
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