CHURCH MEMBERSHIP (10)

You must be Re-born to be a member of Christ’s church:

1 Peter 1.3-5. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

To share in God’s inheritance (and what an inheritance!) you have to be a family member. To be a family member you have to be born into it. We don’t become sons and daughters in God’s family by our religious upbringing. We are born into his family spiritually. It is a second birth. We are all born of water – that’s our natural birth when we emerge from a watery womb. But we must be born again to claim membership of God’s family - we must be born of the Spirit. Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water AND the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.(John 3). We have to be made spiritually alive – enlivened and motivated by Christ’s life in us. Without second birth, we remain under God’s judgement, destined for death and hell. New birth defeats the sin that controls you and sets the Holy Spirit to work in you to give you a new way of thinking, feeling, willing and acting. The church is made up of all genuine believers in Jesus Christ who have been born twice. Bottom Line? Without new birth you are not a member of God’s household. You are a very welcome visitor, but it is the children who have a secure place in a family, not the visitors. Visitors go back to their own place; the family home belongs to the children. If you have no assurance of your new birth – that is your pressing priority.