Being born again means just what it says! Jesus first used the phrase ‘born again’ when speaking to Nicodemus, one of the Jewish leaders at the time, who asked to see the kingdom of God. Jesus answered him by telling him that in order to see the kingdom of God he would have to be born again. Using the phrase, ‘born again,’ Jesus was referring to a man or woman’s spirit, which was dead in trespasses and sins, ‘coming alive,’ through a new birth. Nicodemus, understanding that he had already been born once into the natural world, asked how it would be possible to enter once again into his mother’s womb. Just as amazing as the first birth, Jesus spoke to him about being born of the Spirit of God, regenerated and enabled to see God's kingdom—made alive by a second birth!
 
The Apostle Paul picked up on this concept when writing to the church in Ephesus when He said, "And you, he made alive who were dead in your sins." Paul was saying that Adam's sin way back in the Garden of Eden had ‘killed’ man’s spirit and his connection with God, who is also Spirit, but that these Ephesian church members had been born again—made alive—out of their sinful darkness inherited from their forefather Adam. What Jesus did in dying on the cross and then rising from the grave—becoming alive again—enables those who ask Jesus to become Lord and Savior, to have their spirits ‘made alive’ again also. Only Jesus, as I have already mentioned can make your dead spirit come alive by the power of His Holy Spirit, making you a child of God. It’s about a whole new life, one in which your spirit has come alive and you are enabled to see the kingdom of God, the things of the spirit.
 
When someone says they were born again, they are saying that their dead heart inherited from their father Adam because of a heritage of sin, was replaced with a New Heart, a new and living heart, given to them by God the Father, and paid for by Jesus Christ. No one can give themselves a new heart. It is given by God through grace alone to those who recognize that Jesus paid off their sin dept and want Him to become their Lord and Savior by faith.
 
It is this New Heart that the Old Testament prophets prophesied would make things completely different from the old Jewish way of living, and what Jesus was referring to when he said to Nicodemus, "Unless you are born again, you can't see the kingdom of God." Being born again is on God's agenda for everyone: every ethnicity, every race and every gender, no exceptions, it is available to all through Jesus Christ. If anyone wants to see God and His Kingdom in this life and the next, just as Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born again."