DAD'S RAMBLINGS -- UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL TRUTH

DAD'S RAMBLINGS – UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL TRUTH

" 'Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?' " (John 3:11-12)

Nicodemus was having trouble understanding the teaching of Jesus. It just did not make sense to him when Jesus said, "You must be born again." Nicodemus asked, "How can I, as an old man, enter into my mother's womb and be born a second time?" (John 3:4).

Of course, we understand that Jesus was using a natural illustration to convey a spiritual truth. Just as Nicodemus was born the first time in natural birth, so he needed to be born a second time spiritually. But Nicodemus was not thinking spiritually so he did not comprehend what Jesus was saying.

As we are born naturally and enter into our worldly family by our parents, so we must be born spiritually into God's family by the Holy Spirit. In the first chapter, John wrote that through our faith in the Lord Jesus, we have the right to become children of God by being born of God (John 1:12-13).

To understand spiritual truth, we must be born again spiritually by the Spirit of God. God says, "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Corinthians 2:14). Being born again opens our own spirits to understand spiritual things.

I think there is a parallel in the Old Testament. God, through the prophet Ezekiel, tells of the time when Israel will be returned to the land as a nation during the Millennium. Here is the promise of God to Israel: "I will cleanse you from all your filthiness....I will give you a new heart....I will put My Spirit within you …. I will deliver you from all your uncleanness....I will multiply the fruit of your trees" (Ezekiel 36:25-30). As God will do for the rebirth of the Nation of Israel, so He does for us as individuals through the New Birth of the Holy Spirit.

I am so glad for the cleansing, the new heart, and God's Spirit Who lives within.

Love, Dad