BORN AGAIN - WHAT JESUS MEANT 1: (Born From Above)

BORN AGAIN - WHAT JESUS MEANT 1:
(Born From Above)

If you are using the King James translation, John 3:3 will read as follows;

*[[Joh 3:3]] KJV* Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be *BORN AGAIN*, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
(emphasis mine)

But this rendering has been the cause of a lot of confusion. The older manuscripts do not say BORN AGAIN, rather, BORN FROM ABOVE. Several other translations, especially the literal ones maintain the original term...

*[[Joh 3:3]] ISV* Jesus replied to him, “Truly, I tell you emphatically, unless a person is *BORN FROM ABOVE* he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Growing up, I loved God and I loved to read about Jesus in the Bible. I always had joy in my heart when I talked about Jesus. Then one day, I was asked by someone, "Are you born again?". I said I did not know what that meant and this person went ahead to explain that I have to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour. So I repeated a prayer after the person and I was finally declared 'Born Again' by this person.

After this, I got myself some books on how to become born again and things to do afterwards. Later, I learnt about 'soul winning' and how I must get others born again to make the angels in heaven rejoice. Hence I equipped myself with the popular 'born again scriptures' (i.e. John 1:11-13; John 3:3, 16, Rom 3:23; Rom 6:23; Rom 10:9-10; 2 Cor 5:17, 1 Jn 5:1-5, etc.) and went about 'doing good'.

Sometimes we prided ourselves in the number of souls we've "won" for the Lord. But in order to get a person to become 'born again', we would begin with the 'original sin' theory and let them know how sinful they are. We would also throw in 'Hell' just in case the person isn't scared enough by this time. This was the modus operandi we went by. But today, I do not go round trying to get people 'born again' because I have come to understand better what Jesus really meant in John 3:3 (He said *"born from above"* not *"born again"*). Let's explore it together.