Born From Above

If we were sitting together tonight—I’d ask you a question that might take a second to answer.

Do you think you were ever truly good before Christ found you?

Not just “decent” or “kind” in a passing way, but good—the kind of goodness that can look God in the face without flinching. Most people would like to think so. We remember generous moments, small courtesies, seasons where we tried to be the best versions of ourselves. We speak of “good-hearted” people and believe the phrase still means something.

But then Romans interrupts:

“Those who are in the flesh cannot please God"

That verse doesn’t merely adjust the scale; it breaks it. It leaves no room for a middle category of “trying people.” It tells us the natural heart, untouched by grace, cannot please Him—not because God is cruel, but because the flesh is blind. It doesn’t love what He loves. It wants thrones, not altars.

When I first realized that, I felt defensive. Surely, I thought, there must be something noble left in us, some lingering spark of honesty or courage that God could use as a starting point. But Scripture was patient and relentless: there isn’t. The old self doesn’t need coaching; it needs crucifixion.

And that means every “choice” I once thought I had was an illusion. My will was bound—by sin, by pride, by the quiet tyranny of wanting my own way. I was free only to circle the same cage. Grace didn’t arrive as an optional upgrade to my life; it arrived as the demolition crew.

You can almost hear Paul pleading with us to stop flattering our lostness:

“The mind of the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot.”

That’s the part most people skip. “Hostile.” We think of hostility as anger, but in this case it’s more subtle—it’s independence. It’s living as though God is a consultant rather than a King. It’s the soft-spoken rebellion of “thanks, but I’ve got it from here.”

The truth is, before Christ, I didn’t want Him; I wanted His results. I wanted peace without surrender, heaven without holiness, blessing without belonging. The Spirit had to do something far more violent than moral reform—He had to give me life. Not a new leaf, but a new nature.

It’s strange, isn’t it? We talk about “getting saved” as though it were a cooperative venture—like God and I built a bridge halfway to each other. But the gospel says the bridge was one-sided, all grace, spanning the unbridgeable distance of death.

I didn’t meet God halfway. He crossed the entire chasm, lifted me from the wreckage, and breathed Himself into the lungs of my disbelief.

That’s what “born from above” really means. Not improved. Not inspired. Alive.

When that realization finally sinks in, it changes the way you see everything—the world, yourself, and even the Church. You stop pretending that the world is mostly good, and you stop being shocked when it proves otherwise. You start to understand why people can talk about love all day and still despise truth the moment it contradicts them. The flesh can imitate virtue; it cannot love God.

And yet, that same truth makes you strangely tender. Because you remember—that was me. The hostility wasn’t just out there; it lived behind my ribs. And Christ came anyway.

So when I look at the world now, I don’t feel superior; I feel rescued. And I want others to know rescue is still available.

When God raised me, He didn’t simply stand at the edge of the grave and shout instructions.

He stepped in, gathered the ruin of what I was, and made something entirely new.

That’s the part we rarely talk about because it offends our pride: resurrection is never collaborative.

You don’t meet God halfway; you wake to find He’s already finished what you couldn’t start.

He declares, “You are mine,” and for the first time your heart believes Him.

And then something even stranger happens.

The Judge who just pronounced you justified sets down His gavel, walks around the bench, and opens His arms.

He isn’t content to call you innocent—He insists on calling you child.

Adoption, that beautiful word, is the proof that resurrection wasn’t a rumor.

I remember when that truth first began to feel personal.

For years I believed forgiveness meant God had decided to ignore my record.

But adoption meant He’d rewritten it.

He hadn’t just spared me; He’d seated me.

The court case was over, and the invitation to dinner had already gone out.

Have you ever wondered what it means that we cry, “Abba, Father”?

It’s not an act of holy poetry; it’s a reflex of new life.

Infants don’t rehearse their first word—it bursts out of them.

So when the Spirit moves in, He gives you a language you never knew you could speak.

It’s the language of belonging.

And once you start speaking it, you begin to see the world differently.

You notice that everything you used to call freedom looks a little like slavery.

You notice that the people who seem most confident in themselves are also the most restless.

You notice that peace—the real kind—always sounds like surrender.

That’s when you realize why adoption runs deeper than sentiment.

It changes the reflexes.

Sin stops feeling natural; holiness stops feeling foreign.

You start hungering for the Father’s smile more than for your own success.

You find yourself longing for His voice in the quiet, not just His help in the storm.

And yet, even as the new life grows, the old one keeps whispering.

The flesh doesn’t believe in funerals.

It insists it’s only sleeping, that it can still run things if given another chance.

That’s why the Christian life feels like carrying resurrection power inside a body that still remembers the grave.

But listen—the Spirit isn’t intimidated by corpses.

He specializes in stubborn clay.

Every time you choose truth over image, humility over pride, mercy over vengeance, it’s Him—

not you—

proving again that death has lost its jurisdiction.

There’s a verse that always catches me:

“The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

That word together matters.

He doesn’t just whisper to you; He whispers with you.

Like a father teaching a child to speak, repeating the syllables until they stick:

Mine… you’re Mine… you’re Mine.

Some days I still forget the sound of it.

I chase approval, perform for love, rehearse the old orphan scripts.

But then I’ll catch a glimpse of grace—a kindness I didn’t earn, a correction that didn’t crush me—and I remember: the courtroom closed years ago.

Everything now is family business.

Sometimes I sit back and watch how easily we forget that resurrection was never meant to make us spectators.

God didn’t raise us so we could stare through stained glass at a dying world; He raised us so we could walk among the living dead and remind them what breathing feels like.

But here’s the order the Spirit always insists on: first learn to love the family, then learn to love the crowd.

We cannot carry life to strangers if we’re still wounding one another in the pew.

Christ said the world would know us by our love for each other—not by our arguments, not by our branding, but by a kind of affection that can’t be counterfeited.

When that love starts working its way through a church, it changes the air.

People stop protecting reputations and start protecting hearts.

Forgiveness becomes quicker, laughter easier, correction gentler.

It’s the first miracle of resurrection: that former rebels could live like siblings under the same roof without killing each other.

That’s why, before you or I ever talk about evangelism, we have to talk about interest.

You can’t fake interest in another person.

You either carry it or you don’t.

And you carry it when you remember what mercy felt like the first time it found you.

Real conversation begins where curiosity replaces superiority.

Instead of saying, “I have answers,” you start saying, “Tell me your story.”

You learn to ask questions that open windows instead of shutting doors.

And when you listen long enough to hear the ache behind the argument, you’re standing on holy ground.

That’s where testimony belongs—not in a debate, but in the echo that follows compassion.

You don’t have to manufacture impact; the Spirit translates honesty into language the heart can understand.

Most people aren’t resisting the gospel; they’re resisting humiliation.

They’ve been preached at, categorized, measured, and found wanting.

What shocks them is to be seen.

That’s why conversational evangelism works: it feels like love because it is love—God’s kind.

Think about it. The same God who could thunder His message through the sky chose to speak through living, stumbling people who remember what graves smell like.

He sends His children into conversations that look ordinary and turns them into rescue missions.

But He also knows we’re forgetful, so He keeps returning us to one another first.

He teaches us to practice kindness in the safety of family before we step into the chaos of the street.

Every time we forgive inside the church, every time we refuse gossip, every time we sit with someone who’s suffering and say nothing clever, heaven takes notes.

That’s the sound of resurrection rehearsing.

When you finally step out into the wider world, you’ll find that people respond the same way you once did: cautious, skeptical, hungry.

Don’t rush them. Ask a question. Listen.

Confirm the dignity that sin and shame have tried to erase.

And when the moment feels right—when the wall lowers just enough—let your story leak out.

Not a speech, not a sales pitch; just the truth about how dead things don’t stay dead around Jesus.

You’ll know the Spirit is near when the conversation stops feeling strategic and starts feeling sacred.

You’ll sense that holy nudge to speak the name that changed everything for you.

That’s not persuasion; that’s participation.

It’s Christ continuing His own conversation through you.

And you won’t win every heart.

Some will smile politely, some will change the subject, some will walk away.

That’s all right.

The Spirit’s work isn’t measured in responses; it’s measured in presence.

You showed up, you listened, you loved, you spoke truth.

He handles the rest.

There’s a strange calm that comes once you understand that.

The world will keep shouting its slogans, promising freedom while selling new chains, but you’ll see through it now.

You’ll recognize the illusion because you once lived in it.

And instead of despising those still trapped, you’ll feel a quiet compassion: they just haven’t heard their name yet.

So keep walking, keep asking, keep listening.

Love your brothers and sisters until it spills over the walls.

Love the stranger until the Spirit gives you a story to tell.

And when you speak, let the miracle of your own resurrection be the proof.

Because that’s what “born from above” really means:

that heaven still speaks through ordinary voices,

that mercy still walks on two legs,

and that somewhere tonight—maybe through your next conversation—

another heart will hear the Father say,

Mine.

There’s a moment late in the night when even the most talkative hearts grow still.

The rain has stopped, the cups are empty, and the silence feels honest.

That’s when truth has the best chance to stay.

If you were here across the table, I think we’d both sit in that kind of silence for a while.

Because there’s really no neat conclusion to a story like this—only a deeper gratitude.

None of us chose this life. We were chosen into it.

Grace did the impossible: it made enemies into sons and daughters, strangers into kin.

And now the world waits to see what we will do with that miracle.

We could hide it, polish it into private theology, let it become one more thing we know.

Or we could live it out loud—slowly, quietly, faithfully—until even the darkness starts to wonder why we shine.

That’s what I think the Father means when He calls us co-heirs.

It’s not about status; it’s about resemblance.

He wants His family to look like Him when they move through the world.

So tomorrow, when you wake, remember this:

the miracle that raised you wasn’t meant to stay indoors.

It’s supposed to leak through your words, your patience, your mercy, your laughter.

It’s supposed to remind tired people that there is still life available.

And as that love moves through us and back toward one another, something unexplainable begins to happen.

The Church stops being a collection of rescued individuals and starts to become a fortress of grace—

not walls of arrogance, but walls that protect joy, shelter confession, and echo with forgiveness.

We’ll talk about that soon—how a family like ours learns to stand firm together in a fading world.

But for tonight, just sit with this:

You were dead.

Now you’re alive.

You were a stranger.

Now you are known.

You were lost in the illusion of freedom.

Now you belong to the truth that set you free.

So breathe.

Let the Spirit remind you whose you are.

And when morning comes, walk into it as someone born from above.

-Justin Reed

Brushwood Press