The Bible, the God-breathed book of God, offers Jesus’ words on deliverance from sin, death, the grave, and hell. We must not refuse God’s offer of salvation through the crucifixion and resurrection of God’s Son Yeshua—Jesus. “I assure you,” said Jesus, “that unless a man is born from water and from spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Flesh gives birth to flesh and spirit gives birth to spirit: you must not be surprised that I told you that all of you must be born again. The wind blows where it likes, you can hear the sound of it but you have no idea where it comes from and where it goes. Nor can you tell how a man is born by the wind of the Spirit.” (John 3:5-8 PHILLIPS) 

Through the new birth, entrance opens to “the way, the truth, and the life” in Jesus and what was lost when Adam and Eve forfeited the tree of life for the tree of knowledge of good and evil is recovered and more. Fullness in Christ or abundant spiritual life results in freedom from bondage to the soulish and the carnal and addiction to the appetites of the body. In Christ, man regains the promise of dominion lost in the garden of Eden. (See Revelation 21-22 for the end of the history.) 

Salvation in Christ involves a creative miracle of God: regeneration. And by the new birth, the realm of the Kingdom of God opens up. Yes, there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of darkness with all kinds of idols and false gods under its lord, satan, and the kingdom of Light under the headship of Jesus Christ. Once you are born again, you realize 1 John 5:19, “We know [for a fact] that we are of God, and the whole world [around us] lies in the power of the evil one [opposing God and His precepts].” (AMP)

What is regeneration? Take a look at Titus 3, “For we ourselves have known what it is to be ignorant, disobedient and deceived, the slaves of various desires and pleasant feelings, while our lives were spent in malice and jealousy—we were hateful and we hated each other. But when the kindness of God our Saviour and his love towards man appeared, he saved us—not by virtue of any moral achievements of ours, but by the cleansing power (regeneration) of a new birth and the moral renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he gave us so generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour. The result is that we are acquitted by his grace, and can look forward to inheriting life for evermore. This is solid truth.” (PHILLIPS) At new birth, God causes your spirit to be regenerated or formed again and connection to Him is restored. 

You become a new creation in Christ—part of a new race. From the new birth, you become a Christian with a new saint nature. Christ indwells you. You experience life as a branch connected to Christ the Vine. (Study John 15.) Now you have access to the life of God and can flow in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. This fruit grows as the new life of union with God unfolds. 

You now have power through the cross to enter into the crucifixion of the flesh nature with its fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, divisions, sects, envyings, bouts of drunkenness, carousings, and the like. 

“Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:21 RcV) (See the helpful book on freedom from the self, Dying to Live by Jessie Penn Lewis.)

The heart with its thoughts and intents is open and under scrutiny before God, too. Yeshua—Jesus, applied the Law to loving anyone or anything including self more than God, making anything into a god or a religion, using God’s name in vain, failing to make holy the Sabbath, failing to honor parents, refusal to forgive, holding anger and hatred towards others (having a murderous heart according to Jesus), looking with lustful eyes (adultery of heart said Jesus), stealing, practicing dishonesty and lies however slight, and coveting what others have. The verdict is Psalm 14:2-3: “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any who understood, dealt wisely, and sought after God, inquiring for and of Him and requiring Him [of vital necessity]. They are all gone aside, they have all together become filthy; there is none that does goodor right, no, not one.” (AMPC) We have all failed the good person test. 

A great incentive to turning back to obedience of the Father, Your Creator, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and wise heeding of the Holy Scriptures through receiving Jesus Christ’s sacrifice of His lifeblood as atonement for your sins, is a cold, hard, look at death and hell. 

Job 18:5-14 depicts the fate of those who reject Jesus Christ, God’s “indescribable gift” to mankind: “The light of the wicked will flicker and die, not a spark from his fire will shine, the light in his tent is darkened, the lamp over him will be snuffed out. His vigorous stride is shortened, his own plans make him trip and fall.For his own feet plunge him into a net, he wanders into its meshes. A trap grabs him by the heel, a snare catches hold of him. A noose is hidden for him in the ground; pitfalls lie in his path. Terrors overwhelm him on every side and scatter about his feet. Trouble is hungry for him, calamity ready for his fall; disease eats away at his skin; the first stages of death devour him gradually. What he relied on will be torn from his tent, and he will be marched before the king of terrors.” (CJB)

Psalm 18:4-6 gives hope: “For when the spirit of death wrapped chains around me and terrifying torrents of destruction overwhelmed me, taking me to death’s door, to doom’s domain; I cried out to you in my distress, the delivering God, and from your temple-throne you heard my troubled cry. My sobs came right into your heart and you turned your face to rescue me.” (Passion)

I encourage investigate God’s Covenant, the Bible. Say yes to receiving Jesus Christ into your being as Savior and Lord. Acknowledge that He is the Messiah and risen Son of God, confess that you are a sinner or one who has failed the Bible’s (God’s Word) standards of holiness and righteousness, repent or turn from your previous ways of thinking and acting and ask for the new birth and deliverance out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His marvelous light. Colossians 1:13 attests, “[The Father] has delivered and drawn us to Himself out of the control and the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” (AMPC) 

Your call now is 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, [God’s] own purchased, special people, that you may set forth the wonderful deeds and display the virtues and perfections of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” (AMPC) Follow Christ through obeying the Bible and seek fellowship with true Christian believers. The cost is surrender; the gain is God Himself, heaven, and many blessings and benefits. (See Psalm 103.)

Final note from 1 Corinthians 1:25-30, “[This is] because the foolish thing [that has its source in] God is wiser than men, and the weak thing [that springs] from God is stronger than men. For [simply] consider your own call, brethren; not many [of you were considered to be] wise according to human estimatesand standards, not many influential and powerful, not many of high and noble birth. [No] for God selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame. And God also selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is lowborn and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, even the things that are nothing, that He might depose and bring to nothing the things that are, So that no mortal man should [have pretense for glorying and] boast in the presence of God. But it is from Him that you have your life in Christ Jesus, Whom God made our Wisdom from God, [revealed to us a knowledge of the divine plan of salvation previously hidden, manifesting itself as] our Righteousness [thus making us upright and putting us in right standing with God], and our Consecration [making us pure and holy], and our Redemption [providing our ransom from eternal penalty for sin].” (AMPC)

The Mirror Bible paraphrases verses 26-29, “You might as well admit it, my Brothers; it was not your academic qualifications or your good looks or social connections that influenced God to represent you in Christ. It is almost as if God deliberately handpicked the wacky of this world to embarass the wise, the rejects to put to shame the noble. The ones with no pedigree of any prominence, the “nobodies” in society, attracted God’s initiative to unveil his blueprint opinion in order to redefine man. Thus he rendered any other social standard entirely irrelevant and inappropriate. (Blueprint opinion, eklegomai, from ek, meaning origin, source, and legomai from logos, the logic of God; traditionally translated as “elect.”) Every reason for man’s boasting in himself dwindles into insignificance before God.”

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Blessings in return—