The One Thing Nobody Can Do for You

There is something about birth that is entirely personal. Your natural birth happened once, and although other people were involved in bringing you into the world, nobody experienced it in your place. Your mother gave birth to you, your father was part of the circumstances surrounding your birth, and other people may have been present, but the life that entered the world was yours. It was your beginning. Nobody else could have it for you, and nobody else could substitute themselves for you.

Jesus chose that very idea when He spoke to Nicodemus about spiritual life. “You must be born again” was not a statement about becoming more religious, improving your behavior or making a decision to become a better version of yourself. Jesus was describing a birth, and birth means the beginning of something that did not previously exist in that form. There is a before and an after. There is a life that begins.

That is what makes the new birth such a profound truth, and also one that is easy to misunderstand. Christianity can surround a person for their entire life without that person ever experiencing spiritual birth. A person can grow up in a Christian home, attend church from childhood, learn the Bible, know the language of Christianity, participate in religious traditions and genuinely respect the things of God, yet still have no personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They may be surrounded by the evidence of somebody else's faith without ever having encountered Christ for themselves.

We sometimes confuse familiarity with transformation.

A child can inherit a Christian upbringing, but they cannot inherit the new birth. A person can inherit their parents' religion, their denomination, their church, their traditions and even their understanding of Scripture, but they cannot inherit their parents' relationship with God. Faith is not passed down through a family tree. Salvation is not transferred through a bloodline. Being raised around Christianity does not make someone spiritually alive any more than being raised around a hospital makes someone a doctor.

This is why Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus is so important. Nicodemus was not an irreligious man who knew nothing about God. He was a respected religious leader, a man who had devoted his life to the study and practice of his faith. Yet Jesus did not tell him that he needed more religious knowledge. He told him that he needed to be born again.

That should cause every one of us to stop and examine what we have assumed about our own relationship with God.

It is entirely possible to know about Christ without knowing Christ. It is possible to become extremely familiar with Christianity while remaining personally untouched by the reality at its center. We can become accustomed to the language, the music, the sermons, the holidays, the traditions and even the moral framework associated with Christianity, but none of those things, by themselves, constitute the new birth.

There is a reason the language of birth matters. Nobody gets to decide that they were born because they happen to like the circumstances surrounding their birth. Nobody earns their natural birth. Nobody becomes alive by becoming sufficiently religious about life. Birth is something that happens to us, and spiritually, Jesus is pointing us toward an act of God that brings a person from spiritual death into spiritual life.

That does not mean every person's testimony will sound the same. Some people can identify the precise moment when everything changed. Others cannot give you a date or an hour because their understanding of Christ unfolded over time. Some came to Him after years of rebellion, while others came to Him with very little outward drama. God knows each person completely, and He knows how to bring each heart to the point where the truth is no longer something being observed from a distance.

The experience is personal even when the circumstances are different.

And that may be one of the reasons the Christian faith can be so difficult for people to explain to someone who has never experienced it. You can describe what happened, you can testify to what Christ has done in your life, you can explain the Gospel and you can point another person toward Scripture, but you cannot give them your spiritual birth. You cannot believe for them. You cannot repent for them. You cannot surrender to Christ for them. At some point, what God is doing becomes a matter between that person and God.

This is also why church membership, religious affiliation and Christian identity deserve to be examined carefully. A name on a membership roll tells us that someone belongs to an organization. It does not tell us that the person has been born again. A person can sit in a church for fifty years and remain spiritually unchanged if all they have ever done is participate in the outward life of Christianity without surrendering their life to Christ.

The question is therefore not simply whether Christianity has been part of your life. The more important question is whether Christ has given you new life.

There is a difference.

You can have a Christian background without having a Christian conversion. You can have Christian knowledge without Christian transformation. You can have Christian surroundings without the indwelling presence of Christ. You can know the story of Jesus and still have never answered His call to follow Him.

That is why the words of Jesus to Nicodemus remain as confronting today as they were when He first spoke them: “You must be born again.”

Not someone else.

You.

Your parents cannot do it for you. Your pastor cannot do it for you. Your church cannot do it for you. Your religious background cannot do it for you.

The new birth is God's work, but the question of what you will do with Jesus Christ is personal.

And there are some things in life that nobody can do for you.

Being born again is one of them.