In the previous chapters we have seen what life is and what the real experience of life is. In this chapter we will see the first experience of life, the beginning of the experience of the divine life, which is regeneration.
John 3:7 says, “Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew.” Here the Lord uses the word must; regeneration is a “must.” But why must we be regenerated? The simple reason is this: We need the life of God. We need to be born again simply because we need the divine life, which we do not have by our natural birth. We have a life which is created by God, which we received of our parents, but this created life is not the real life. It is a picture, a type, a shadow, of the real life. Therefore, we need to have another life, a second life, the real life. This is the divine life, which is God Himself in Christ through the Spirit as life to us.
We need the divine life. If we as humans want to be real persons, we must be born twice. If we are born only once, we are not real persons; we are false persons, merely shadows. A shadow is not a real man. When we were born the first time of our parents, we received the shadow life, the figure life. Now we must be born a second time of God in order to have the real life, the eternal, endless, indissoluble, divine life, which is God Himself. Our human life was made as a vessel to contain God. Thus, the human life is not the real life; it is only an empty vessel to contain the real life, which is God Himself. Therefore, we must be born again to be filled with God, to contain God as our life.
Today many in Christianity preach regeneration on a very low plane. When I was young, I was taught much about regeneration on the lowest plane. I was told that we need to be born again simply because after the fall of Adam, man became sinful and corrupted. Many who preach in this way use several verses. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things/And it is incurable;/Who can know it?” Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Cushite change his skin,/Or the leopard his spots?/Then you also may be able to do good,/Who are accustomed to do evil.” Romans 7:18 also says, “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells.” Those who preach in this way say that since we cannot change our sinful nature, we need to be born again.
Without a doubt, it is true that our life cannot be changed, and we all need to receive another life. However, even if we had never become corrupt and sinful, we still would need to be born again because as vessels we still need to be filled. Even if we did not fall and were still as we were when we were created by God, we still would need to have the divine life. Consider the picture in Genesis 2. Immediately after Adam was created, God put him in front of the tree of life. At that time, Adam was one hundred percent proper, having nothing sinful. However, Adam did not have the divine life, so he still needed to take the fruit of the tree of life. We must be born anew not simply because we are sinful. Even if we were not sinful, we still would need to be born again, born of God, in order to have God’s life. No matter how good we are, as long as we are only born of our parents, we do not have the life of God. In order to have the life of God, we must be born of God.
John 3:5 says that unless we are born anew, we cannot enter the kingdom of God. Every kingdom has its own life. To enter the kingdom of the birds, for example, and to understand the things in the kingdom of the birds, we must be born of the birds to have the bird life. Likewise, in order to understand the things of the kingdom of God, we must be born again of God to have the life of God.
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