Romans 10:9-10 “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (10) For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
So what must an individual do in order to be born-again? In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul teaches us that there are two simple steps that must be taken. Firstly the person must believe in their heart that God has raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And then secondly the person must confess with their mouth that Jesus Christ is their Lord. Everyone that fulfils those two simple requirements qualifies, and they are instantly born-again in their spirits and they once again become children of God.
1 John 5:1 “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him.”
The apostle John confirms to us in the above quoted passage of scripture that all who believe that Jesus is the Christ is then automatically born of God, and the reason they are born of God is because they have been born-again in their spirits. Those who are born of God i.e. are spiritually alive, are once again a part of His kingdom and are destined to spend eternity with Him and the Lord Jesus in the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem. As an aside, there are some (not many) that give their hearts to the Lord Jesus before the age of thirteen, and in those instances those individuals remain born of God before He holds them accountable for their sin and thus never incur spiritual death.
Philippians 1:23 “For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”
We have seen in the previous section that all Old Testament saints are currently in heaven with the Lord Jesus. That same truth is applicable to all New Testament saints as well, for all are spiritually alive and are therefore able to ascend directly into heaven when they die physically. The apostle Paul confirmed that truth for us in the above quoted passage of scripture, when he told the church at Philippi that he was considering leaving them to be with the Lord Jesus in heaven, which was a far better option for him rather than continuing in the persecution that he was enduring at the time, for Paul was in prison again. If you read the full account you can see that Paul decided to stay a while longer on the planet to help the saints in their walk with the Lord, nevertheless the point remains that Paul was fully assured that when he died that he would depart from this life to be with the Lord Jesus in heaven. In another portion of scripture the Holy Spirit confirms that same truth to us, when He tells the New Testament saints that for them to be absent from the body in this life is to be present with the Lord Jesus in Heaven (2 Corinthians 5:8). In other words all saints that physically die are instantly transported from their bodies to be present in heaven with the Lord Jesus for all eternity.
Michael E.B. Maher
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