That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (ယော 3:6).
We have a spirit, စိတ်နှင့်ကိုယ်. The question you might ask yourselves is: am I carnal and do I live after the flesh? In other words: does my flesh direct my steps and actions? Or do I live after the Spirit, and does my spirit direct my steps and actions?
You can live after the flesh or you can live after the Spirit. If you walk after the flesh, then the result will be bad. But if you life after the Spirit then the result will be good.
What a man sows, he will reap. If you sow in the flesh, you will reap corruption and if you sow in the Spirit, you will reap life everlasting (ဖတ်လည်းဖတ်ပါ။: သင်ကြဲသောအရာ, ရိတ်ရလိမ့်မည်။).
But let’s have a look at what Jesus meant by the new birth. What He meant, when He said, that you can only enter the Kingdom of God if you are born of water and Spirit. (Jn 3:3, 7)
If Jesus needed to restore the union, it means that union was there once, but was broken. ထို့ကြောင့်, we need to go back to the Garden of Eden to understand the necessity of the new birth.
Throughout human history we see, that people chose the way of the flesh; walking in obedience to the devil, instead the way of the Spirit; walking in obedience to the Father. This started already in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve chose the carnal tree of knowledge rather than the holy tree of life. Because they desired and chose the carnal tree above the holy tree of life, God was compelled to pronounce the sentence of dead upon them.
Adam was a living soul
Adam was a living soul, ဝိညာဉ်တော်မှ မွေးဖွားလာ၏။. He was one with God. But after he sinned, the death sentence came upon him. And God said to him, that as he came from dust, and was dust, he also would return to dust.
Before Adam sinned, his predominant characteristic was spirit, but after he became disobedient to God and sinned, his predominant characteristic was flesh.
That sentence of death, that carnal disposition, was passed on to the entire human race. လူတိုင်း, အဘယ်သူသည် လူသားမျိုးစေ့မှ ဖွားမြင်သနည်း။, would carry the death. Therefore everyone, who is born on this earth is carnal, and is a prisoner of the sin nature. There’s no one excluded.
How do you enter the Kingdom of God?
Because we are carnal and carry the sin nature, we cannot enter in this status the Kingdom of God:
But the natural man receive not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 ကောရိန္သု 2:14)
Now this I say, ညီအစ်ကိုတို့၊, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption (1 ကောရိန္သု 15:50)
God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth (ယော 4:24)
What is the necessity of the new birth?
Now you see the necessity of becoming born again. Only by the new birth can we receive eternal life and enter the Kingdom of God.
This spiritual life can ONLY be achieved through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is the catalyst that brings us to an encounter with the Holy Spirit, who regenerates us, so that we are born into the heavenly realm just as you were once born into the earthly realm.
Necessity of the new birth emphasised in other places
The necessity of the new birth is emphasised in other places:
- The universal results of sin demands it:
ထို့ကြောင့်, အပြစ်တရားသည် တယောက်သောသူအားဖြင့် ဤလောကသို့ဝင်သကဲ့သို့၊, အပြစ်တရားအားဖြင့် အသေခံ၏။; လူအပေါင်းတို့သည် သေခြင်းသို့ ရောက်လေ၏။, လူအပေါင်းတို့သည် ပြစ်မှားကြပြီ။ (ရွမ် 5:12)
ရေးထားသလိုပဲ။, ဖြောင့်မတ်သောသူမရှိ။, မဟုတ်ဘူး, တစ်ခုမဟုတ်ပါ။ (ရွမ် 3:10)
- Unregenerate man is unable to understand or receive the gifts of God
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Co 2:14)
- Without the new birth everything we do, every impulse and action is defiled
For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, အိမ်ထောင်ရေးဖောက်ပြန်မှု, fornications, လူသတ်မှု, Thefts, လောဘစိတ်, ဆိုးသွမ်းမှု, ပရိယာယ်, ကြင်ကြင်နာနာ, an evil eye, blasphemy, မာန, မိုက်မဲခြင်း: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man (မတ်လ 7:21-23)
- Unless we are born again we have no escape from the judgment of God
And you hath he quickened, ဒုစရိုက်အပြစ်တို့၌ သေသောသူ၊; ရှေးကာလ၌ သင်တို့သည် ဤလောကလမ်းစဉ်အတိုင်း လျှောက်ခဲ့ကြကုန်၏။, လေ၏ တန်ခိုးရှင်၏ အလိုအရ၊, the spirit that now worth in the children of disobedience: ငါတို့ရှိသမျှသည် ငါတို့၏ဇာတိပကတိတပ်မက်ခြင်း၌ လွန်လေပြီးသော ကာမဂုဏ်တို့၌ ကျင်လည်ကြကုန်၏။, ဇာတိပကတိနှင့် စိတ်၏အလိုဆန္ဒကို ပြည့်စုံစေ၏။; အမျက်ဒေါသ၏ သားသမီးများ ဖြစ်ကြ၏။, အခြားသူများကဲ့သို့ပင် (ဧဖ 2:1-3)
