By HAMUKULI HAMASAMU –

HAVE you ever been met by a professedly Christian brother or sister who greets you and immediately asks you, “are you born again?” And between you and I, if this question has ever landed on your ears, then you know how out of place you and I felt.
So today I am writing to try and highlight one or so points on what it really means to be born again and also to prove that it is not only necessary that all be born again but that it is an imperative from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Fasten your seat belt.
In the first place, I will strive to answer the question, what does it mean to be born again? Let us listen to the author and perfector of our faith Himself as He explains to us in the book of John chapter three.
The preamble is John chapter two, where the Saviour goes into the temple at Jerusalem and finds this traffic of business in the temple courts and overturns the tables of the money changers and opens the storage facilities of all kinds of animals and birds that were waiting to be sold.
Jesus exclaims,” Make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.”John 2:16. Later  on, the Jews  confront Jesus and ask him as to who he is for him to clear the temple and by performing a sign or a wonder or miracle but he declines and says no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.
The Pharisees I undoubtedly believe had an closed-door meeting and one of the Pharisees, Nicodemus fearing to be seen by both his colleagues and the people decided to meet Jesus in the night and asks the Lord,” what must I do to inherit the Kingdom of God?
And the Lord simply responds to him that he must be born again. And the teacher of the law further asks as he exclaims because the knowledge is too deep for him by saying, “how can that be that an old man be born again? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born again?” John3:4.
Next is the imperative to be born again given by the Lord Jesus himself in verse five. It is the baptism of water and the HOLY SPIRIT.
This is a must take for all of us who profess to be CHRISTIANS and unfortunately many of us have only received the birth of water alone and have closed our hearts to the birth of the HOLY SPIRIT. The two births of water and the Spirit are inseparable, they are like twins or better still a phone and a SIM card one cannot operate without the other.
Being born of water is an outward symbol of what is going on in the heart, a work of sanctification by the Holy Spirit. One may then ask, is it possible to be born of water and fail to be born of the Spirit of God? The answer is to be found in the book of Luke 3:7-16.
This will conclude this issue of being born again. Join me into the highlights of the verses stated in Luke chapter 3:7-16.
First, John the baptist is in the Jordan River conducting a mass evangelistic campaign and people begin to flock to him and desire to be baptised by him but he rebukes them because as the Holy Spirit sees through him, the people are not genuinely converted at heart and so he challenges them in verse seven not to come for baptism as a result of freeing the judgment or not wanting to burn in Hell.
Secondly, he gives the solution to their predicament that their lives should begin to reflect the fruit worth repentance and indication that the Spirit of God is indeed at work in their hearts by doing justice in their lives, by doing Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kind, good, meek or humble ,faith, and temperate or self-controlled.
Which brings us to how we can know that someone is born again instead of asking them as if to mock them? In the first place of how we can tell that one is Born again is the fruit of LOVE. Once I am born again I will love everyone the same without considering their status or position in this wicked World we are living.
Love so divine that it causes people around you to say that you are not normal because when people mistreat and insult and do all sorts of evil to you, you still love them anyway.
This is because the Spirit of God rules and abides in your soul and in all you do, it is to the glory of God in the highest heavens. No matter how much we sin, God still gives us rain, sunshine, air, food, etc. and when you are born of water and the SPIRIT you possess the power of a child of GOD as it is in John 1:12- 13.
*(The author is a third year Theology student, Rusangu University).