Good Morning. Last time we thought about 1 Peter 1:22, which says, “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,”

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the end of the verse is not the end of the sentence. The passage goes on: “… having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because ‘All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.’”

So, if you think about it, Peter is tying his exhortation to love one another fervently with a pure heart to the concept of the new birth. We’re exhorted to love and have the motivation to love because of the fact that we have been born again.

What does it mean to be born again? “Born again” is not a label to be used carelessly as an attachment to the word “Christian.” It is an actual event that takes place in a person’s inner being. In John 3, Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of God a person had to be born again. Jesus expected Nicodemus to know what this meant, but he didn’t. Jesus told him that all human beings have a natural birth of the flesh, that is of flesh and blood. But a birth of the Spirit is also necessary if he wants to see the kingdom of heaven.

When Nicodemus asked how this could be, Jesus told him that the Spirit moves here and there like the wind. You can’t see the wind, but you can see and feel its effects. In the same way, as the Spirit moves, we see and feel the effects of His work.

In our passage in First Peter, Peter tells us that we are not born again of corruptible seed, but of the Word of God which is incorruptible. Putting these two ideas together, I take it to mean that as the seed of the Word of God is preached it lands on the soil of a person’s heart (See Matthew 13:18-23), and the Spirit works with the Word to regenerate the person.

I think one reason Nicodemus should have known this is because the New Covenant, which Jesus initiated with His blood when He died, promises “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). That description of the changes God makes in a person sounds like a description of someone who has been born again.

There is a lot to meditate on there. Hopefully you and I will have time to do that during the days ahead.