Friday, August 15, 2014 Greetings to you, brothers and sisters in Christ. May God grant you strength as you humbly proclaim His word this weekend. The problem with being ‘born again’, as the term is used in our modern lexicon, is that it is used in the context of a one-time event. Many of my evangelical friends would describe the time when they were ‘born again’ as a liturgical event during which they were re-baptized publicly. They proudly point to this as the definitive moment in which they accepted Christ. Now, I don’t mean to alienate any of you, and I apologize if I already have. Please know that in no way am I qualified to judge your journey with Christ or the means by which the Holy Spirit chooses to commemorate the covenant between Christ and the Christian. I cannot say that there is a right or a wrong way to go about exercising your faith. Rather, I mean simply to have a conversation about semantics. In my opinion, unless we are remarkably capable of avoiding sin after having first accepted Christ, we must be born again…and again… and again. We must be ‘born again’ each time that we repent of our sins because when we repent we are quite literally dying to sin. Being dead to sin implies rebirth, as we are not corporeally deceased, thus we must be ‘born again’. And because we are in constant need of repentance, we must necessarily die to sin repeatedly. Frankly, I’m probably ‘born again’ to the average tune of 15 times a day. You see, repentance is not to be confused with forgiveness. God forgives all of mankind’s sins through His gift of Atonement on the Cross. Forgiveness is what God does and we, in response, repent. Repentance is not simply saying you’re sorry to God, though. True repentance, by definition, requires behavioral and mental change. It is not enough to ‘be sorry’. We must take measures to reject sin in the present and the future. Conversely, baptism is something that only happens once. Baptism is our promise to follow Christ and to learn more about Him. In the case of infant baptism, it is the promise of the parents, sponsors, clergy and congregation to raise the child in such a way that they come to know and choose Him freely. While baptism is a promise, God knows that none of us can promise to be sinless. He does not ask us to make a promise that we cannot keep. Thus, it is merely a promise to pursue Him. Back to the subject of repentance, I really enjoyed Chambers’ quote today, “This new life exhibits itself in our conscious repentance and through our unconscious holiness.” While we do have the power to consciously ask for forgiveness, or repent, we cannot choose to be holy. Our holiness is an unconscious thing because it is a byproduct of following Christ’s example. It is right to assume that if one is to live without sin, then one becomes more like Christ. Since Christ was obviously holy (the physical manifestation of the Triune God), one must inadvertently ascertain similar qualities of holiness by themselves becoming a living manifestation of Christ’s example. This is why John writes, “…Unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John 3:3) The Kingdom of God is holy, as could be guessed. If we associate holiness with purity, then it follows that the Kingdom is inaccessible to anything that is unclean. Thus, since repentance leads to our death to sin and rebirth as a follower of Christ and because following Christ results in our own holiness, we must be ‘born again’ in order to see the Kingdom of God. I apologize if you find this exercise in semantics and logic to be tedious. It is a departure in context from my usual posts. However, I get a little geeky about things such as this and frankly, I’m the one doing the writing…. Again, I do not presume to know everything (that would be a sin of pride) or to judge your liturgical practice to be right or wrong (that would also be a sin of pride…and possibly heretical…). I do however know this: I know that I am a sinner and that it is only by the Grace of God that I am forgiven (constantly). I know that I am incapable of ceasing to sin and thusly am obligated to repent (constantly). Thank goodness I have Oswald Chambers to remind me… Yours in Christ, Nate Blum
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 20:57:58 +0000
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