Your Born-Again Life Is Wonderfully New

When you hear the word regeneration or born again what comes to mind? Gratitude? Humility? Hope for someone you love?

All good responses. But one crucial response is often missing astonishment.

New birth is not a minor moral improvement or a spiritual fresh start. It is a supernatural miracle one in which God opens your eyes, reorients your desires, and transforms your soul. It is the very creation of a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17), and it should leave us stunned with joy.

Here are just three reasons the born-again life should fill us with wonder: new sight, a new source, and a new taste.

New Birth Gives New Sight

Before God intervened in our hearts, we weren’t just spiritually disinterested we were spiritually blind. “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers,” Paul writes, “to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

We walked in the dark, bumping into truth, tripping over grace, but never seeing it for what it was. We were face to face with majesty in Christ, and we didn’t even blink.

But then, God spoke: “Let there be light.” And suddenly, we saw. Our eyes were opened not by effort, but by command. The same creative power that spoke galaxies into existence brought sight to your soul.

And now, like David, we say, “One thing I ask... to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4). We hunger for glory because we've glimpsed it. And even though our sight is still dim (1 Corinthians 13:12), the looking itself is a gift of grace.

New Birth Draws to a New Source

Before Christ found us, we were desperately thirsty dry and dying inside. But instead of coming to the Fountain, we dug our own broken wells (Jeremiah 2:13), trying to fill our souls with success, approval, pleasure, or distraction. It never worked.

But in regeneration, the Spirit turns us from cracked cisterns to living water. God doesn’t just give us a cup. He becomes our Source. He floods our desert with rivers of mercy.

Isaiah 41 paints the picture:

“When the poor and needy seek water... I the Lord will answer them… I will open rivers on the bare heights… that they may see and know... that the hand of the Lord has done this.” (Isaiah 41:17–20)

We no longer drink from wells we dug in our own strength. We drink from the river of God’s delights (Psalm 36:8). He becomes our soul’s satisfaction the never-ending Source who quenches us with Himself.

New Birth Inspires a New Taste

There’s a strange comfort in realizing we didn’t just ignore God before we were saved we didn’t even want Him.

We didn’t have the capacity to enjoy His beauty. Holiness tasted bitter. Righteousness felt restrictive. We preferred spiritual junk food to the feast of God’s glory. That’s total depravity: not just doing wrong, but desiring wrong and being powerless to want anything different.

But when God regenerates a heart, He gives new spiritual taste buds. We suddenly enjoy what we used to avoid. Like Augustine confessed, “You who are sweeter than all pleasure... You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

God doesn’t change our preferences by coercion. He changes them by awakening joy. We don’t follow Him out of guilt we follow because we’ve tasted something better.

As John Piper puts it, “The taste for God that begets saving faith is God’s very taste for Himself, imparted to us by the Holy Spirit.”

That’s regeneration: not mere decision, but delight.

You Were Made New Wonderfully New

C.S. Lewis once said that to change someone’s taste, you don’t shame their favorites you teach them to enjoy something better.

That’s what God does in salvation. He doesn’t just demand we give up idols. He shows us Jesus. He opens our eyes. He gives us a new Source. He awakens a taste for glory.

This is the miracle of new birth. “You were dead... But God made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:1–5) “He saved us... by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:5) “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Christian, you are not the improved you. You are the born-again you wonderfully new.

So let your worship be full of wonder. Let your obedience flow from joy. Let your life bear witness to the miracle that God has done.

And let your story point others to the Fountain, the Light, the Feast.

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