It Just got Personal!

John 3:3 Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (ESV)

    We know that Jesus is eluding to the fact one must die to self and accept Christ as their personal savior. Unless we are born again in such a way then we will not see the things of God the way they were intended to be seen. Jesus by the response knew that Nicodemus in all his knowledge had missed the most important element to the Christian faith. Without this second birth, we are but rotting flesh doomed to an eternal damnation. Although Nicodemus was sure he knew the things of God he did not have God within his heart. Knowledge and relationship are a balance that must be present, because without the relationship the knowledge will be to our determent. The love of the Law that the Pharisees had held them back from accepting the blood of Christ in their lives. For to them Christ broke the law, they accused him of blaspheming the name of God. They were driven so by the law in a way that they were blind to the words of God. The law was instituted for the purpose of drawing man back to Christ. For apart from the law, we are free from sin, free from death. But under the law, we are bound by sin, and doomed for death. But “now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” The Pharisees could not make sense of what Paul realized, “the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.”