Born From Above
“Jesus answered and said to him,
‘Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.’”John 3:3
Here in the beginning of the Second Week of Easter we are presented with the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus in John’s Gospel. Nicodemus was sure Jesus was from God, otherwise He couldn’t have done all the works that He has done, and Jesus replied with our quote of the day, “…unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Jesus later explains further that one must be born of water and the spirit (something we heard and read in yesterday’s readings). Jesus is saying that we must be born from above, of water and spirit.
By our baptism we have been reborn, reborn of water and spirit. No longer are we simply born of the flesh, but we have died with Christ and our lives now point to what is above. At the beginning of the Second Week of Easter we are reminded of who we are — we do not belong to the world or the flesh, but rather we belong to what is above, we belong to God. Do our lives and actions show that?
May we today be reminded about our great identity — beloved sons and daughters of the Eternal Father who has loved us with an everlasting love and who calls us each by name and whose mercy is with0ut end.
