Renounce Your Religiosity

Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus reveals an essential teaching of the Christian faith: No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he or she is born again – or more accurately, born from above. Theologians call this regeneration: the gracious and mysterious act of God’s Spirit that makes us alive to God and able to trust him by faith. But why would Jesus emphasize this truth to Nicodemus, a scrupulously moral, highly educated and influential man? Because his very religiosity was getting in the way of knowing his desperate need for grace. Likewise today, we who tend to rely on religious knowledge or activity must learn to renounce our own religiosity, living instead by the dynamic new ways of life in the Spirit. Though the Kingdom of God is not yet here in its fullness, everyone born of God begins to experience it already in this life.