You must be born again!
Photograph by Justin Dream via Unsplash
Rev. Elijah Gipson-Davis
In 1982, James Cleveland and the Gospel Music Workshop of America Mass Choir recorded “You Must Be Born Again,” live in Houston, Texas. I remember hearing a choir sing this song during a fall revival at my home church. It stuck with me so much, I spent the next day trying to find the song. I listened to it on repeat. My favorite part of the song is toward the end of the vamp where the song says “if you want to see King Jesus, you must be born again.” Growing up at the New Macedonia Baptist Church in Riverdale, Georgia, I was taught about the Second Coming of Christ, when He would descend from heaven, raise the dead, and separate the righteous from the wicked. As a babe in Christ, my natural concern was avoiding eternal damnation, yet I questioned — what does being “born again” mean? Surely, my new birth in Christ would not present me with a completely new life and body, so what did this rebirth the saints spoke of really mean?
I wrestled with this concept for a long while, up until seminary when my womanist theology professor challenged my churched rhetoric by asking me to define the purpose of ‘being born again.’ The question sat with me honestly, because I still had the language which I curated through my love for Gospel music. Without shame, I stated in a jovial manner “because I want to see Jesus.” Just like the song declared, “if you want to see King Jesus, you must be born again.” At some point in my naïve deconstruction journey, I became weary of the intricate and complicated jargon apologists used to defend the faith and turned to music.
Since I can remember, I have always loved music. My family would often say that I could sing before I could read, which may be true, considering I learned to read singing hymns. My great-grandmother would only play the Gospel station whenever I was in the car with her, either Atlanta’s Praise 102.5 or cassette tapes from church services years earlier. I often enjoyed listening to those cassette tapes, especially when the music began to sound more like a talk show. On many occasions, I recall singing with my grandmother and the choir from the recording. Hence, my early faith-forming years came from the lyrics in the songs I was exposed to.
Emilie Townes, in her essay “Cultural Boundaries and African American Theology” names music as “a cultural production that carries the theological worldviews of believers.”[i] After wrestling with the question my womanist theology professor asked, I wonder why not turn to the music that I loved so much to understand the rhetoric of my faith tradition. Listening to the song for the umpteenth time, I discovered a new favorite part where the tenors sing “born of His spirit, baptized in His name.”
We must seek after God’s spirit, time and time again. We must drink from Jesus’ well, the well of eternal life.
To some, my conclusion may seem rather taboo, yet I offer what I consider to be a more faithful doctrine of regeneration. In my understanding, regeneration is the state by which one is oriented toward the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. As John Calvin wrote, “faith flows from regeneration.”[ii] In order for us to born again, we must first have faith. Baptism is that symbolism which displays our confession of faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Not only is baptism a confession of faith, but drawing from Tertullian’s treatise “On Baptism,” immersion functions as the threshold towards regeneration.
Regeneration — being born again — however, is the orientation towards the work of the Holy Spirit. After Jesus had been baptized, Matthew’s gospel tells us that the Holy Spirit came as a dove. It was only after the baptism that a voice from Heaven said, “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Let us also consider the Apostles in Acts 19, only after they had been baptized did Paul lay hands on them and the Holy Spirit came upon them. Regeneration in this sense, becomes the platform for the Holy Spirit’s impartation.
In my definition, being born again is a daily renewed commitment to being a vessel for the Holy Spirit. Regeneration requires a yearning. Hebrews 11:6 reminds us that God rewards those who diligently seek him. In the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, Jesus tells the Samaritan sister, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14 NIV). We must seek after God’s spirit, time and time again. We must drink from Jesus’ well, the well of eternal life.
The Holy Spirit is not merely means for ecstatic and dramatized worship, but the Holy Spirit is the consciousness of God’s more just future. Our being born of the Spirit is our joining in partnership with God to allow the Holy Spirit to work within us to bring transformation to the world. I invite you to join me in “being born again,” not a natural birth, but a spiritual birth sanctifying ourselves to the work of the Righteous One, who was, who is, and who will come again.
The Reverend Elijah Gipson-Davis is the former Minister of Administration at The Historic Myrtle Baptist Church of West Newton and recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] Emilie M. Townes, “Cultural Boundaries and African American Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology, ed. Katie G. Cannon and Anthony B. Pinn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 485.
[ii] John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel According to John, trans. William Pringle, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1949), 44.
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