“Born again” is such a tired, misused concept in our Christian sub-culture. Yet this is a perfect phrase from God’s Perfect Word that needs to be dusted off and polished and admired in its pristine state again. One concept related to this is that of adoption, which I will touch on in a sermon this week.
Adoption has a legal aspect, or course. As a child is adopted, there is a legal process transferring ownership, responsibility, identification, motherhood, and fatherhood from one to another. But the overriding thought in adoption is not legal, but familial. When a child is adopted, the new father says in his heart, “You are mine, I commit myself to you. I give of myself to you, I give you rights to my inheritance because now you are my child, I give you—unreservedly—my love; as close to agape love as is humanly possible. I will never leave you, and when you run away, I will always take you back in. I will always forgive every sin. All this, because now you are my son.
Put yourself in this adopted child’s shoes. Imagine he was born to a crack-user living on the streets with no means to provide food and shelter, and no emotional or spiritual means to provide love. No ability or interest to teach the child how to ride a bike or review school work. No mind to teach and apply truths at home, no money for clothes or college, no chance of marriage, no luxuries and not even necessities available. More accurate to our conditionin Scripture would be that the mother and father are dead, and the child lies unconscious in a ditch on the brink of death.
As that child is adopted into a family, the description of which is the exact opposite of that above; as he is fed, bathed, clothed, and loved, tell me if he wouldn’t say, “I’ve been born again!”
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