To See the Kingdom of God

Here is a meditation on John 3:1-17 that I wrote for the Goshen College Online Lenten Devotions for February 15, 2008

What does it mean to be born again? In one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s last speeches, "Where Do We Go From Here?" the great nonviolent leader retold the story of Nicodemus's night visit to Jesus. King interprets Jesus's instructions to the young Jewish ruler -- "you must be born again" -- to mean that "your whole structure must be changed." In this speech, King was attempting to convince the Southern Christian Leadership Commission to support him in calling for an end to the Vietnam War. King knew that nothing less than a radical change of heart -- reflected in structural change -- would motivate Americans to end the war. This was obvious to King because he himself could "see" from a perspective of rebirth, but many of his supporters did not share this vision.

I've always assumed that the phrase in John 3:3, "no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above," meant that we will not go to heaven if we are not born again. But in light of King's speech, I began to understand this passage in a new way: that without a rebirth -- a structural change within our hearts and minds -- we cannot see -- or even be aware of -- the extent to which the kingdom of God is present in our lives at this very moment.

Birth is not an instant process, even though the ways in which the phrase "born again" is bandied about in our culture might suggest otherwise. Birth is a journey, a crossing from one state into another, fraught with pain, uncertainty and danger, as well as joy. When we trust God to truly change our hearts, we embark on a journey which utterly changes us -- from the inside out.