Once before I spoke to you from the words found in the Gospel of John, third chapter and part of the seventh verse, "Ye must be born again." I want to come back to the same text and begin where I left off.
It was the Lord Jesus Himself who said, "Ye must be born again." Nicodemus, startled and amazed at these profound words, asked, "How can these things be?" (v. 9)
In His response, Jesus Christ teaches the absolute necessity of a personal Christian experience. He urges the necessity of that experience in the conversation with Nicodemus three times. He drives the point home when He says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." (v. 6) "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." (v. 7)
Listen! Don't you see that to take a man...without changing his nature, and to put him up among the angels in glory would be to put him in a worse hell up there than he would be in below? He would be so out of place!
Supposing you could get to heaven at this moment, with all your sin, would you be happy up there? Without your garments washed and made whiter than snow, purified from guilt and the power of sin―would you be happy in that beautiful world? Would you? Of course, you know you would not. If you are to go there, even common sense tells you that you must conform to the atmosphere of holiness with those heavenly characteristics put into you; in other words, you must be made a new creature, a new man.
You say, "How is it I do not seem to understand?" Well, that is not God's fault; it is not your Bible's fault, because the Bible is open to you, and God would teach you. He waits to show you what His mind is, for in Jesus Christ all belongs to you: pardon for sin, cleansing for vileness, assurance for acceptance, strength for weakness, the joy of salvation, the victory of salvation―all in Christ for the man and the woman who claim it by faith. If you have not got it it is because you have never laid claim upon it by taking the gift of Jesus Christ.
Do you have faith? If you do not, God help you to be honest and say so, and fall on your knees in secret before Him now. Seek it now. Don't live another day without it. It is your blood-bought inheritance. Don't live another hour without the assurance. It belongs to you. Claim it; you may have it now if you will surrender and trust. God help you to do it.
May God help you to reach that point now. God is for you, and His Son died for you. He loves you to the breaking of every fetter and the snapping of every chain; and now He will make you a new creature, if you will but trust Him.