My 10th Birthday

Yesterday was a significant day in the life of A.J. Chesswas. I turned 10.

Jesus said;

"I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

Another guy asked,

"How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born."

Jesus replied;

"I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."


1950 odd years later I heard about this from Mum and Dad, from church and from Bible-in-school. As a wee tacker I figured this verse was saying that being a Christian means that you have to live quite differently to if you weren't a Christian. You can't be bad anymore. Being born again means being good.

Being good got too hard for me as I got older. Especially when the older kids in the playground started beating up on me. Especially when I found out it was because I was a Christian. And it seemed like everyone I knew wasn't Christian and didn't care so much about being good.

Not that any of this excused me.

Another thing Jesus said was;

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

I don't remember being taught that as a kid, but even if I had I don't think it would have made a difference. From that point on I didn't simply hide my Christianity - I gave up any commitment from my own will to the cause. I'd still go to church with the family - kicking and screaming at times. This change was so rapid that when a new kid started school the next year, an older kid told us he'd heard this kid went to church, and I mentioned that I'd seen him at church but that I was only there because my parents forced me to. Not only that, but I went on to be one of this kid's main tormenters. I won't forget the furiousness with which my teacher sent me from the room for telling everyone this kid had AIDS! It's so easy to forget how nasty childhood is sometimes!

Anyway, my point is that my faith as a child was obviously not a very deep one. Once I learned Christianity and social mobility didn't go hand-in-hand in my community, I pretty much kicked the faith to the kerb.

Through my teens there were stops and starts where I made Christian commitments, only to go back on them really quickly. There was the time everyone got sick on a school trip to the South Island, except me. On this trip I also noticed how different I was from everyone. I figured God must be protecting me and keeping me well, and that I should see sense and be a Christian. But once I returned to the drudgery of home life as a 14 year old, being a good obedient son to my parents was just too much of a strain so I gave up on the idea! What I could never do is go about calling myself a Christian without living a "good" life. At least in this sense I had something of an idea of our need for a different spirit in order to enter God's kingdom.

Of course, once I actually became a Christian when I was 18 it seemed I couldn't go anywhere without hearing about how we can't be good people on our own efforts - that I needed the very spirit of God which raised Christ Jesus from the dead to perform a similar miracle upon this dead heart of mine. But I'm sure that before this actually happened to me I could never have understood what people meant by that. And I'm not sure it would have been helpful anyway.

When I finally made that lasting commitment, the night I think of ten years on as the night I was born again, it was more an act of surrender than an act of determination. I still desired to equate my Christianity with a commitment to be "good", but when trials and temptations came I realised the goodness I knew in Christ was more about surrendering to and relying on his work in me than valuing or doing anything of my own accord.


A friend and I had a quick chat in the car on Saturday, about the mystery of a spirituality that acknowledges God's supreme power in the work of salvation and sanctification, yet looks remarkably like a self-propelled daily determination to do good.

Now get ready for this big sentence! [BREATHE]

God's sovereignty often makes us feel like our powerlessness in living right and avoiding sin indicates an absence of God's grace. Thereby we excuse ourselves - we couldn't have done otherwise! But we can never know the degree to which God is helping us. We can never know when doing his will is experienced with a sense of salvific exhilaration, or of rugged and war-like determination. Whether God's will seems easy or hard, the fact is that without the help of his spirit it would be impossible.

And this is why no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.

But, as I said, all this sort of talk is so frustrating when you're on the other side of spiritual rebirth. If we are so much at the mercy of God, yet are not accepted into his Kingdom without that rebirth, then what on earth can we do about it?

Coming up: Christian gestation - how to be born again