Significance, meaning of being 'born again'

John 3:1-3, There was a man of the pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher from God; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “I tell you the truth, unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

Many of the external reforms in our lives are potentially worthless because they deal with the outside while God is interested in the inside - our hearts - where we live and think. Publicly, the Pharisees were the best self reformers in history and yet Jesus said to them, “You are like whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside and full of dead men’s bones on the inside” (Matthew 23:27).

Long ago a preacher said, “When you paint the pump you do not purify the water.” All external efforts to cleanse human nature without changing the heart are like taking aspirin for cancer.

How does a person come to a point in their life in which they are “born again?" It is when they believe that the Bible is God’s Holy Word and, from the heart, are totally ashamed of the life they have lived apart from Christ.

I Peter 1:23, ...having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the Word of God which lives and abides forever...

We will never change on the inside because of something on the outside because of something on the outside. Changing on the inside is a God job, not a human job.

John 1:13, ... who were born (again), not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.

What are you like on the inside, where you live and think? Has God’s Word influenced the way you live, privately and publicly, to a consistently God centered existence? Or Lord forbid, are you just a modern day Pharisee: Clean and righteous on the outside; dirty and unholy on the inside?

Again, what are you like on the inside – “born again” or just a Pharisee? Your eternal destiny depends on your answer.