Born Again

I had my dna tested for genealogical purposes at ancestry.com and you’ll never guess my background. 38% Irish was the highest reading. No surprise there. Little strawberry blonde girl with freckles on her nose with white skin that sunburns easily and green eyes. Yes that’s me.

Then there is the 25% Scandinavia, 23% Western Europe, followed with Italy/Greece, Britian, Finland/Russia, and a tiny amount of less than 1% Native American, which is after all some Native American.

I am very sentimental about things like this, and I am not the only one. It was very important to the Jewish people to be able to trace their own genealogy. Now when you bring up the subject of genealogy, there is always one person who mentions the quote from the Bible about endless genealogies.

Paul tells Timothy in First Timothy 1:4, “ nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.”

As I understand this scripture, Paul is not saying we can’t trace our family tree, but that we shouldn’t base our salvation on our genealogy, as the Jewish people did. They traced their family tree back to the Patriarchs, as descendants of Abraham, and looked to that ancestry as the basis of their salvation.

On what are you basing your salvation? Do you consider yourself a Christian because you live in what has always been considered a Christian nation? Do you believe that because your family has belonged to the same church or denomination for generations then that means you are a Christian? Perhaps you consider yourself a Christian because you were born into a Christian family and reared in a Christian home.

However we must consider what Jesus had to say about it. A man came to Jesus at night and asked, “What must I do to be saved?”

Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3.

You were born into an earthly family and that is your genealogy; you must be born again into the family of God and that is your salvation.