Remembering Pentecost: Born Again. What Does It Mean? And Why Are You a New Person After Being Born again?

You are born a baby, and you grow to become a man or a woman. People recognize you, and call you by name. You are unique and different from any person who has lived, and will ever live on earth. What makes you different?

The first thing people notice about you is your body. How your body has been put together is unique to you though you may resemble your parents and other people in this world.

The second thing people will notice about you is your personality. Your personality is not something physical people can touch like your body, rather people observe your actions, and how you interact with others and your environment to know your personality.

Your personality expresses who you really are. Your personality displays your soul to the world in many things. So how a person relates to others, what a person thinks, or even relates to their environment tells you something about the person’s soul, which cannot be seen with the naked eye.

What is the common trait every personality in the world displays? Self-centeredness, which shows in the selfish things we do. We all do selfish things, which lead us to lie, cheat, and disrespect others among many others. So even though our personalities may be different, they all tell a similar story about the condition of our souls: all souls are self-centered and selfish by nature.

The next question is, why are all souls born self-centered. We have talked about how we resemble each other even though we are each unique. This is so, because parents produce children like themselves.

Our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned by trusting Satan who talked them into thinking they could be gods, and control their own destiny. As soon as Adam and Eve disobeyed and ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the nature of their souls changed. The nature of their souls became a self-centered one, a phrase that describes their desire to be gods to control their own destiny. God was heartbroken and wept deep tears because he loved them very much and wanted only what was best for them. Satan had lied to them. They did not acquire knowledge! Rather, they became ignorant about God, themselves, and the beautiful world God placed them in.

Adam and Eve reproduced children like themselves in body and soul. We can only reproduce children who look like us both in body and soul even though each is unique: “When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth” (Genesis 5:3). And Jesus confirmed this law by stating that, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:18). This is a natural law put in place by a good God. The bad fruit from this type of soul soon showed up in Cain, their first born, who

killed his brother because he thought he presented a better sacrifice to God than him. He did not care how that would affect his parents or siblings or future generations. And since then,

everyone born into the world wants to control their own destiny and their own lives the way they want, which is self-centeredness. We do things to benefit us first even if it will harm many others.

God created people to love them. But God does not want to force people to love him like robots because that will not be love at all. Love is free. God wants people to love him because they know he is a good God who can be trusted. God shows that he loves us by making the sun rise each day, the seasons follow each other, and families still thrive despite many fights and

disagreements. God’s love is all around us. Look at the beautiful world God has made and the

various talents and abilities He has gifted people to invent and create things to offer solutions to problems and challenges in the world. God uses these things to call people’s attention to him and his love for them. And indeed, many have responded by seeking God because they can sense that there is someone bigger and good out there, they would like to communicate with, especially during difficult challenges in life.

But there is a problem. And the problem is the helplessly self-centered nature of the soul.

Because of the self-centeredness of people, even when we try to seek God, we seek him in a selfish way. We invent religions that benefit a few special people, or just men, and women and children are left at their mercy. There are religions that promote slavery, abuse girls and women, abuse children, offer human sacrifices, abuse other tribes, ethnicities, communities, and

countries. There are religions who teach that how to know God must be entrusted to only certain men and women. All religions have rules of dos and donts, which usually benefit a small section of their community who become very powerful and influential. Religion is something people

invent to find their way back to God. I am sure it is now clear to you that religion is another selfish activity from a self-centered soul. Some people also go the opposite direction, opposing God by siding with the devil through witchcraft and various occult and cult activities.

The question is, if the self-centered soul cannot come to God because it does only selfish things, is there any genuine means at all by which people can experience God’s love, which is only possible by giving up on their desire to be their own gods and control their own destiny?

You have guessed right. Something must be done about the soul of a person to help it give up its intense desire to be a god and control its destiny, which is self-centeredness. Have you fallen

very sick and couldn’t do anything by yourself? What happens in such a situation? Someone else must take the responsibility upon herself or himself to take care of you. This is the condition in which every human soul finds itself. We are so sick that we cannot help each other, and we need something other than a human to help us out of this condition. Since we are all helpless to help ourselves, only God is available to help us. How does God do this?

This brings us to what is called the human spirit. Do you as a person have a spirit apart from your soul? Yes. The soul has an engine room that controls it, called the spirit. Jesus calls it the heart in Matthew 15:18: “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.” Jeremiah 17:9 describes every human heart as, “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” So, the heart of the problem is the heart, which shows your true nature. The heart is the culprit. It controls your soul and tells it what to do.

Now if the engine of your car is blown out and completely dead, no matter how much you fix the electrical wires of the car, no matter how well you build a new body for the car, it still won’t work unless you change the engine. The spirit, which is the engine of each human soul is dead, dead to God. Therefore Colossians 2:13 says that “You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away.” A dead heart (human spirit) will not respond to God and His ways unless it is replaced with a new heart. You can try and reform your ways, which all have to do with your soul, but you cannot change the engine, which is the spirit. All you are doing is what experts call cosmetic changes, nothing deep, just skin deep.

A dead engine cannot travel. Likewise, a dead spirit cannot take you anywhere save remaining in your own soul and body. It cannot take you into God’s presence. And the blessings of your life are only found in God’s presence, I mean blessings that count, not just temporal. That is why the Bible says in Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.” Hebrews

10:16 completes the story of God’s work in the human heart, “I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”

Everyone to whom God reveals himself is faced with two choices: to accept the new heart He is offering or reject it. Everybody in this world gets that chance. From the very beginning God has used His Word, Jesus, the Son of God, as the only way by which he provides new hearts to those who come to Him. Every Word the prophets of the Bible spoke is about Jesus, the Word of God, and those who believed received new hearts.

Everyone who receives a new heart becomes a new person just as newborns are born with new hearts. God has given us new hearts, but the soul must be renewed. Our souls connect us to earth, and it is important that the soul can relate to people on earth and win them over to God.

The soul, which houses our personality, thoughts, and passions, undergoes renewing and

retraining to function in ways that please God when we receive new hearts, our new nature: “but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think (Romans 12:2, NLT).

Our new hearts (spirits) are already connected to heaven. That is why we are citizens of heaven even though we live on earth. You see the connection clearly now: the soul enables us to relate to people on earth and the new heart enables us to relate to God. When Jesus returns, we will each receive a completely renewed soul that can connect us to the New Earth and New Heaven because this earth in which we now live, would have passed away. The soul has something to do with the physical body, because it is the medium by which it expresses itself. That is why Jesus says we shall receive new or resurrected bodies at His second coming.

God expects us to use the Word we read in the Bible through the help of the Holy Spirit, who now resides in our new hearts, to change and renew our souls, that is, the way we think and relate to people. This becomes a big battle between the new heart (where the Holy Spirit lives) and your soul as Paul states in Galatians 5:17, “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.” What is referred to as the ‘flesh’ in the passage above is your soul. The heart can do a better job of changing the soul only by allowing the Holy Spirit to make it strong by controlling it. Paul states in Galatians 5:16, “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and

you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The stronger the new heart grows, the more power it has over the soul to change it. How does the heart grow stronger through the Holy Spirit?

Apostle Peter states in 1 Peter 2:2-3 that anyone who comes to Jesus to save them are born again as newborns, and just as newborns must drink milk to live and grow, everyone born again by the

Holy Spirit must feed on the Scriptures, that is, God’s Word in the Bible, to grow and become strong: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” The second thing that makes the heart grow stronger and stronger is learning to confess your sins regularly, as stated in 1John 1:8-9: “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” When you do these two things regularly, you give the Holy Spirit more room to make your heart strong by his power so it can change the ways of your soul.

So, are you born again? Do you have a new heart? If you have received a new heart from the Lord, then you are a new person or a new creation, as it states in 2Corinthians 5:17, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” Your old heart and its selfish ways have been gotten rid off by the blood of Jesus and God has replaced it with a new heart filled with his Holy Spirit. You are a new person at heart!

The Holy Spirit lives only in new hearts.
Are you hurting? Have you been abused by parents, the other sex? Have you been neglected by parents, been betrayed, or poor and needy, or torn from your family because of war? Come to Jesus, he has the power to heal you and turn your life around. The world is an unfair place because of the sinful hearts of people, but God is the miracle worker who can turn your weeping and mourning and pain into a beautiful music you can sing the rest of your life. Give up the control of your life to Jesus who made you to love you and knows how best to mend your life.

By Flora Trebi-Ollennu