Those who are born of God will not continue to sin, because God's seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Those who do not do what is right are not God's children; nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.
When Jesus speaks to Nicodemus in John 3, Jesus tells the Pharisee he must be born again of water and the Spirit.
When my five year old asked how babies were born, I told her this: God takes a little a bit of daddy and a little bit of mommy, and puts them together to create a seed that He then puts in Mommy. This seed grows into a baby.
It is right, technically, and it worked for my daughter, and it is how I looked at our verses for today. When we are born again, a little of God is put in each of us. And since God is righteousness, that makes us righteous as well. In the righteous there is no sin (1 John 3:5).
I believe, in a way, we can boil this down to choices. We choose to accept God, to accept Jesus's sacrifice for us, we choose to be born again, and in that gain a righteousness that we do not have the ability to obtain on our own.
I'm a late-comer to Harry Potter. I've never read the books, and I didn't see any of the movies until five of them had already been released for TV. But in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledor tells Harry "It is not our abilities that make us who we are, but our choices."
And it is so. We are human, and our ability to be righteous isn't very strong. We can do right some of the time, but without God, we will fail. When we chose to become a child of God, God's great grace and mercy cover over our great inability daily. Our choice to follow Him gives us the ability to make good choices, to do what is right, and to love our brothers and sister.Our choice to follow Him marks us a child of God!
1 comment:
To me it also shows that God is the one who does all the work here. God is the one that plants the seed (whether that seed is the Word of God or the Holy Spirit or both). God is the one who does the work of regeneration. God is the one who gives us the ability to make those right choices.
And you're so right, it is totally a choice. You are either a child of God or a child of Satan, you cannot belong to both families at the same time. It's a choice. And not choosing is also a choice.
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