Born Again? What Is It?

With today’s blog post, I begin a short group of questions about the Christian faith which I think are interesting. These questions have been proposed, for the most part in a Bible study established at our retirement center for people from various religious disciplines—all of whom are interested in knowing more about the biblical faith of the Christian.

The question for today’s post is this: What are Evangelicals talking about when they claim that in order to follow Jesus, a person must be “born again?”

The best answer I have to this is one given by J.C. Ryle, an Anglican preacher of the late 19^th Century: “To be born again is, as it were, to enter upon a new existence, to have a new mind, a new heart, new views, new principles, new tastes, new affections, new likings, new dislikings, new fears, new joys, new sorrows, new love to things once hated, new hatred to things once loved, new thoughts of God, and ourselves, and the world, and the life to come, and salvation.”