John 1:13

Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

I find today’s verse quite hard to understand – it’s ok to say that about the Bible! Sometimes, in the difficult bits though, there is something really important for us to see. How can someone be ‘born of God’? God can’t give birth … can He?

Like many of the themes in this first chapter of John, they come back again and again throughout the Gospel and a little later in the story Jesus raises the question of being born again with a guy called Nicodemus who seems to have been quite important at that time. Jesus tells him the same kind of thing as we see here in chapter 1:

“you must be born of God”.

Nicodemus takes Jesus literally and laughs at Him, saying once someone is born, they cannot change who their parents are and go back into their mother and be born all over again.

But Jesus isn’t talking about going back to the maternity unit, He’s using being born as a picture of what it means to belong to God. John is saying that you can change your hair or your name, but you cannot change your parents - in the same way, once you believe in God you become His child and you are His creation.

And just in the same way that our physical features might reflect our earthly parents, if we belong to God, we will reflect what He is like.