“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me”
- Psalm 51:5
If you’ve lived five minutes in the year 2025, you have probably heard someone say, “I can’t help it, it’s who I am!” Or perhaps “It’s not my fault, I was just born this way.” It doesn’t matter what inclination someone might have; it’s treated as justifiable because of the way they were born. Now, while it’s worth pointing out that that is not true, as we are born in sin, being born a certain way or having a “natural” inclination doesn’t make that inclination okay. Something can feel completely natural and still be wrong. However, I think that’s a bit too obvious a thought, and I think we as Christians, rather than condemning that concept (though we should), could also take a moment to learn from it. I know it might sound a little strange, but bear with me.
In 1 Peter 1:23, it says, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” And in Ephesians 4:24, Paul tells us, "Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.” If we are Christians and have given our lives to Christ, our inheritance as believers is a new birthright, one of Righteousness and Holiness. What if, in our daily lives, we reminded ourselves of this fact and started telling ourselves that we were born a certain way? What if you lived a life under the banner of “Born This Way” not so that you could justify your behavior, but so that your behavior might become just? Your behavior flows out of your identity, so when your identity is born again in righteousness and holiness, your behavior follows suit.
If we have accepted Christ, if we are believers, we have been born again, and we have a new nature and a new identity. If you woke up every day with that mindset, how would that shape your decisions throughout the day? In our interactions with others, if we find our identities in being born again in Christ, how differently would we treat them? In our workplace, if our identity were that we are born again, what kind of employee would we be? Not just being born again, but making being born again a defining part of who we are, can change everything. So, maybe through Christ and what He has done in us, we can, in fact, claim “I was born this way.”
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