The Truth About Being Born Again (Part 2)

If anyone is united to Christ, he is a new creation.  Old things have passed away.  Behold, all things have become new.  Paul to the Church in Corinth

"God isn’t focused on what you do, but who you are."

"It’s not about doing but being."

These two statements, and the assumptions behind them, intensely anger me.

Why?

They leave me with a vague notion of what rebirth and the new spiritual life is all about.

My physical birth was involuntary, but having been born, spiritual rebirth must be voluntary. Like Nicodemus said to Jesus when Jesus said, "to see the kingdom one must be born again": 
"How can a person reenter a mother's womb?"

And as Jesus responded, “Physical birth is physical.  Spiritual birth is spiritual.”

We don’t reenter our mother’s womb. 

We become conscious of God, and consciously God conscious.

In other words, the “sinful nature” is spiritual and volitional passivity. 

The new nature is submission to God, consciously and deliberately.

“Sinners” are those who refuse to be God conscious.  This is primarily done passively.  It’s a spiritual lack of care for God or his will.  Simply put, they just don’t bother thinking about God.  Those who blaspheme and rail against God for the atrocities of the universe are closer to actually meeting Him than those who have a vague “love for God,” or for the idea of God.

So what happens to us when we approach the possibility of rebirth?

God, somehow, gets and keeps our attention long enough for us to decide:

Submission or Rebellion.

God’s will or our will.

All of our lives we passively float through life like leaves in the wind of passions and imaginations and self centered assumptions.  Even the so called strong willed or strong minded are only so in relation to themselves, their desires, their opinions.  But these come from who knows where.  The self centered person assumes these are simply manifestations of who they are.  So they are slaves to passions of which they themselves can’t be the origins.  Heredity and history is their slavery.

But when reborn, for the first time, we consciously decide to be and remain God conscious. 

Conscious God consciousness is rebirth, and the new spiritual life. 

This is the truth about being born again.