Spiritual birth and growth
Birth
The basics of the Good News:
2 Cor. 5:17-21 if anyone is united with the Anointed, they are a new creation; the original has passed away and become something completely new! Yet it all comes from God, the one who reconciled us to himself by means of the Anointed and assigned us to this service of reconciliation. Through the Anointed God reconciled the world to himself, not holding their sins against them, and gave us the message of reconciliation. That means we are the Anointed’s representatives and God pleads through us. So, on behalf of the Anointed, we plead with you to be reconciled to God! For this one who knew no sin was made to be Sin for our sakes, so that because of him we can become right with God.
That’s the gospel, the message of salvation, the way to heaven: Be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. Accepting Jesus by faith is the only way that can happen. To put your faith in someone is to have a deep conviction about them, to “put all your weight” on them. You can’t just say the words, “I believe Jesus is God who died for us and rose again”, you have to accept this as a personal conviction. You don’t just believe about him, you believe in him. You want to be reconciled to God.
Once you have as a personal conviction that Jesus is God who died and rose again to reconcile you, you are guaranteed to be with Jesus after this life. Yes, guaranteed!
2 Cor. 5:5 Yet the same God who put this longing inside of us also gave us the Spirit as a down payment.
Eph. 1:13-14 Likewise for you who heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation. You believed and were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the down payment that guarantees our inheritance. Praise and honor to him!
There is no other requirement, no hidden fine print, no organization to join:
Eph. 2:8-9 And it is because of this favor that you have been saved through faith. This is all a gift of God, not something you did, so nobody can brag.
Rom. 4:4-5 Now a worker’s wages are not considered a gift but a debt. In contrast, the one who does not work but instead trusts in the One who justifies the ungodly, is cleared of all charges because of faith.
A gift can only be accepted or rejected, never earned. So the gift of salvation can only be obtained by humble acceptance. And that being the case, it can never be lost by failure to “work”. Please see the chart at the end of this article for the list of things that happen the moment we’re saved, all of which would have to be undone in order for salvation to be taken away.
Essentially, salvation is like adoption. We were all born into this “orphanage” and God offers to make us his legal heirs, with the promise of taking us to live in his fabulous mansion. Yet adoption is more than a change of address; it’s a change of relationship. God wants us to accept him, not just his house or possessions, and be part of his family. This offer can’t be given by force, trickery, fear, or deception. And because this is so, after we acccept it we can never lose it.
Growth
Birth is not the end, but the beginning. A baby who never grows has a serious problem, but is born nonetheless. Yet this isn’t a license to sin:
Rom. 6:1-4 What should we conclude from that? That we should persist in sinning so that God’s favor will keep increasing? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Ridiculous! You don’t seem to understand that those who are immersed into Anointed Jesus are immersed into his death. And just as we were buried together with him through immersion into his death, so also, just as the Anointed was raised from the dead through the favor of the Father, we will keep pace with him in a new life.
We wouldn’t dream of living a life that angers or insults a person we claim to have reconciled with, so neither should we do this to God. This isn’t about meeting some minimal requirement to buy our way into eternal happiness, but an honest desire to be reconciled to God; it’s all about the relationship. We have this guarantee of eternal happiness because of the love of God for all the world (John 3:16), so love is the “meat” of that relationship.
Naturally, the next thing to do is to find out more about God, to know what pleases him and what does not. That means studying the Bible and getting instruction from the spiritually mature, who can be recognized by how well they model the life of Jesus and the disciples he chose to write the Bible. Good deeds will follow from the truly transformed life. They can be faked by the lost, and the saved are certainly spiritually “sick” if they haven’t changed or have fallen back into a life of sin. But we are to focus on our own spiritual health, not on whether others meet our personal level of spirituality. Spiritual maturity is not a means to a high position of rule, but a low position of service, of being an example to others and slowly becoming like our Master and Savior. One very important factor in our spiritual growth is to spend time with other believers (Heb. 10:24-25). This is the only way we can use the spiritual gifts God gives each believer (1 Cor. 12:7), since their purpose is to help other believers and be helped in turn by them.
So again, even though the only requirement to be reconciled to God is faith in the risen Jesus, this “rebirth” is not the end but the beginning, the start of a new life. But don’t think that an easy life awaits you. This life is a temporary testing ground, and the test is not always pleasant or easy while you’re taking it. Yet the reward is happiness for the rest of eternity. We live to please Jesus, in gratitude for salvation, to be his hands in this world.