Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

In the beginning God created Adam and Eve, and they were good. He put them in the Garden of Eden and gave them everything they needed for life and living. Life was good – life was perfect, but in the middle of the garden were special two trees. One is the “tree of life”, the other the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. God told them they could eat from all the trees in the Garden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God wanted them to eat from the tree of life, that’s why He told them that it was special and that they could eat from it, but God being God and perfect didn’t want to command it of them. He wanted them to make a conscious decision to choose life – life with Him forever.

But Adam an Eve either by ignorance or a lack of understanding never quite made it to eating of the tree of life. Before they could get to it, they were deceived by Satan, and they disobeyed God ate of the tree that He told them not to eat of – The tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

I don’t know about you, but the clue was right there in the name – who wants to know evil? Not me. But apparently Eve and Adam didn’t quite get it, and I guess if you’ve never seen or experienced evil you won’t know just how bad evil is. They were deceived and they ate of the wrong tree and with that sin came into the world. And since Adam and Eve were the only humans existing that that point, they had effectively chosen not just for themselves but for everyone else that would descend from them – thanks guys.

God had also told them that the day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they would die, because you see if you don’t choose life, you’ve chosen death. And on the day they disobeyed God, something in them died and in it’s place sin took over.

What is sin? Who is this sin?

Simply put, sin is the producer of sins. Sin is the producer of evil and all its products like shame, and fraud and lies and strife within us and in others. And since they had chosen evil, they had welcomed him into their lives instead of Life. And sin took over.

Now this posses a problem. God is holy and perfect and good. In Him is no sin or evil. His eyes cannot behold sin. He cannot commune with sin. And this effectively separated us from God and His protection, and his cover. And since that day sin has a free reign. The world we have today is all the evidence we need to know what happens when sin has free reign.

But thankfully nothing, not even sin can separate us from the love of God. Because God loves us even when we are sinners. And God in His love decided to give us another chance to chose Life. The life we should have chosen in the Garden of Eden.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

But in order for us to be able to receive life, we need to first eject sin from within us. Unfortunately, sin said that the only way to release us is by death, for the wages of sin is death. The only payment sin is willing to collect in exchange for a person is death. Unfortunately, dead people cannot choose life because after death the only thing man has to look forward to is judgment. So there has to be another way – what if someone else died our death? What if someone else paid sin for us so we didn’t have to?

But how would that work? Since Adam and Eve effectively chose for us all, this means that sin lives in all of us, so if anyone dies, they’ll be dying for their own sin. They’ll be paying sin what they owe him so their death would serve no real purpose for the rest of us. Their death would not be able to save us. We needed someone without sin, that way their death would not be for them but for us.

This is where Our Lord Jesus comes in.

Jesus was born without sin because He wasn’t born of the seed of Adam. Mary carried the first surrogate pregnancy recorded in history because she became pregnant not because she had sex but because the seed of the life of God was implanted into her womb and she gave birth to Jesus Christ our savior. Finally, there’s hope for humanity. We now have a man born without sin, who sin had no hold over, who death had no claim on, if He died, his death would not be His. It could be ours.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

Jesus is our second chance to choose life. The life that Adam and Eve should have chosen in the Garden of Eden but didn’t. But God is still God, He hasn’t changed. And because He hasn’t changed, He won’t force us to choose Him. He’s giving us the same choice He gave Adam and Eve in the beginning to choose life, to choose Him.

How?

Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

We must be born again. I know it may sound weird cos no one is really born twice. Especially not an adult. But the wages of sin is death, and that death must be paid. The only way around it is if someone dies in our place. He receives our sin and dies for us and in exchange we receive His life. In this way sin dies in us and we get new life, Jesus’s life. This is how we are born again.

How do we give Jesus our sin and receive His life?

even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

By believing and by asking. It’s really that simple. You don’t need me to tell you what to say, use your own words, from your heart. Cry out today. The Father’s been waiting a long time to welcome you home.