what does it mean to be born of the Spirit ?

The Bible emphasizes two things that God will do for us when we submit our lives to Jesus. The first thing he will do is to forgive our wrongdoing. Paul is fond of using the word “justify”, which is a legal term meaning that we are acquitted of all the charges against us – declared innocent. “Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Jesus paid for our sins on the cross and now credits to us his own perfect righteousness. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). A wonderful transaction!
The second thing that God does is to come in the person of the Holy Spirit to literally live within us, his Spirit uniting with our human spirit. This experience of receiving the Holy Spirit is what Jesus is talking about when he says we are to be “born again”. In fact he went on to call it being” born of the Spirit” (John 3:5,8). This experience is also spoken of as a resurrection, “God…made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:4); as receiving eternal life, “God has given us eternal life” (1 John 5:11); or as being recreated, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Before we receive the Holy Spirit there is a gulf between us and God. We are “dead in…Transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). After we receive him we are united with him in an intimate relationship. We are “born” into his family – we have spiritual life – a new relationship with God, who is now “Father”, and a new relationship with other believers who are our “brothers and sisters”.
We also have a new spiritual home which is “heaven”. It is interesting that, whereas John and Peter use the metaphor of being born into God’s family for this experience of becoming a Christian, Paul prefers the idea of adoption. “You received the Spirit of adoption. And by him we cry…Father” (Romans 8:15 – literal translation). The first metaphor emphasizes our union with God, sharing his nature by his Spirit within us. The metaphor of adoption puts the emphasis on our legal standing, with all the rights and privileges we share as children of God.
This experience of reconciliation with God and transformation, through spiritual birth, is made possible for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was foretold 600 years before those events by the prophet Ezekiel, to whom God declared, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities…I will give you a new heart…I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees” (Ezekiel 36:25-27). It is not the turning over of a new leaf, but the receiving of a new life – not just a new start, but a new heart.

As the American evangelist, Billy Sunday, put it, “A lot of people think a man needs a new grandfather, sanitation, and a new shirt, when he needs a new heart.” It is not necessarily a change in our temperament, or our abilities. These come to us largely through our physical birth. Neither is it the addition of some new attribute. Rather it is an inner transformation springing from a new relationship with the living God. Its chief effect is on our motivation, goals and values. Ultimately, as we grow in that relationship, it can transform every area of our lives.
If you have found religion hard work, a bore, uninteresting, or merely a duty you feel you ought to do something about, then maybe you need to go back to the beginning. Plutarch told the story of a man who attempted to make a dead body stand upright. He tried various schemes of balancing, and experimented with different postures. Finally, he gave up, saying, “There’s something missing on the inside.” For the relationship with God to come alive, as Jesus said, You must be born again” (John 3:7). The life must be given to us by God; we cannot generate it ourselves.