Coffee Cup Theology

Born Again

—

by

Lauren
in

Being born again is nothing less than a beautiful, amazing thing!  Just like the way the birth of a new baby ushers in solemn awe to all those who anticipate the arrival, so does the spiritual birth of a new Christian. It is nothing less than a miracle.  An incredible miracle that began with the spirit.

It is so sad to me that there are people who claim the name Christian and yet turn around and wield the term born again as if it were a weapon, referring to those outside their sect derogatively as “Born Again Christians” or “Born Againers”.  They take something beautiful and sacred from the lips of Christ and use it as though it were nothing more than a dirty curse word.  I can only imagine that it comes from ignorance of the teachings they claim to adhere to, the teachings of scripture.  Sadly, they are uninformed or misguided.  For Christ plainly states, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  According to Christ, new birth is not optional for those who really belong to him.

baby

momandbaby

The new birth is exquisite and yet at the same time it offends our pride.  It is something that can’t be conjured up by sweaty, pick myself up by my bootstraps, self-determination that our sin nature teaches us to prefer.  Satan is perfectly content with our pharisaical morality that is not a result of new birth, but of our own inner “goodness”. This is what sets true Christianity apart from all the other religions out there.  They say that we can be good enough if we try really hard, where Christianity says, no not happening, it takes the miracle of a complete new birth for there to be one ounce of goodness in us. The Christian can take none of the credit.  Glory goes to where glory is deserved.  It was God and his spirit alone.

cute_feet

If you have been born again, what an incredible gift you have been given!  It is certainly not something to be ashamed of.  You have been moved from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of God ‘s beloved son.  You have been set apart to do good works that the God of the universe planned in advance for you to do!  You are clothed in Christ’s righteousness and are completely accepted.  When God looks at you he no longer sees your sinful life, but the perfect life of Christ’s!  Being born again is pretty amazing!

Comments

21 responses to “Born Again”

  1. Elle Mae Avatar
    Elle Mae

    Well said, my beautiful sister!

    Reply
    1. Patty Sullivan Avatar
      Patty Sullivan

      Lauren – Thank you so, so much for your words. You are so right being born again is an incredible gift. How blessed I am to be able to say that I am a “Born Again Christian.”

      Reply
  2. Lauren Avatar
    Lauren

    Elle – your mention of that passage really got me thinking about what it means to be born again. Especially as I read it last night during my devotions. Thank you! You totally inspired me 🙂

    Patty – I am so glad to be a “Born Again Christian” and that you are too! And that we have gotten to know you and your family! All the people at New Covenant are pretty awesome, if I do say so myself 🙂 :).

    Reply
  3. KC Bob Avatar
    KC Bob

    I so agree with this:

    “The new birth is exquisite and yet at the same time it offends our pride.”

    So many reflect this pride in the way that they see human beings as being immortal.

    Reply
    1. Lauren Avatar
      Lauren

      Hi Bob, thank you for your comment! That is interesting; can you explain a little bit about what you mean by seeing human beings as immortal?

      Reply
      1. KC Bob Avatar
        KC Bob

        Hi Lauren. Here is an excerpt from http://www.jewishnotgreek.com/ that speaks to it a bit.

        “Conditional Immortality” is the biblical belief that the “immortality” of the soul is not inherent (Greek thinking) but conditional (Biblical thinking) upon receiving the gift of everlasting life through faith in Jesus (Yeshua). It is part and parcel of the gospel. God alone has immortality — anyone else becomes immortal only as a result of God’s gracious gift (1 Timothy 6:16, Romans 2:7).

        Reply
        1. Lauren Avatar
          Lauren

          Thank you for clarifying! We are very happy to have contributions from individuals with varying views, especially a good friend of Brance’s dad :). We are thankful that Rodger continues to live in heaven because of new birth that he experienced during his life! Although, we would have to respectfully disagree with this. We do not hold to the teaching of Annihilationism as we do not believe it to be biblical or orthodox.

          Reply
          1. KC Bob Avatar
            KC Bob

            Hey, thanks Lauren for the thoughtful reply. I do so look forward to seeing my friend Rodger in heaven one day.

            Regarding Annihilation, I do not think that humans have anything immortal to annihilate. My view is that Jesus came to give us eternal life by way of birthing something absolutely brand new and wonderful inside of us. But if one already has something immortal inside of them it would be reasonable to think that this immortal part would first have to be killed before something new could be born. I am open to that idea but do not find it or the traditional view to be consistent with what Jesus said in John 3. But I do understand that others view it differently. Heck, even Nicodemus had difficulty in understanding it. 🙂

          2. Lauren Avatar
            Lauren

            Thank you for clarifying your comment. Like I said previously, we appreciate people sharing ideas that vary from ours!

            So here is what I am hearing. Let me repeat back to you in short what you have said/implied in your comments to make sure I understand you correctly.

            A person who has not been born again is without an immortal spirit and therefor will not suffer in a literal hell or be annihilated after death, but rather simply ceases to exist at death because they are spirit-less. To believe a non-believer has an immortal spirit is prideful.

            This is an interesting idea, but is even more difficult to support with scripture than the Annihilationism that the websites you shared express. It is not a belief held by our Christian forefathers who walked the corridors of orthodox belief. For those reasons I would be reticent if I did not say that this idea, similar to the belief of Universal Salvation, is dangerous. Not because there isn’t room for biblical interpretation in the faith, but because these ideas in particular strike at the heart of salvation and God’s holy judgement of sin 1) through Christ’s substitutionary attonement that is applied toward believers and 2) through eternal punishment in hell of those who do not repent and believe in their lifetime.

          3. KC Bob Avatar
            KC Bob

            Thanks again for the response Lauren.

            I do not embrace Universalism in any form. People who have not been born from above will not be in heaven.

            Do not understand the danger that you seem to indicate that is inherent in a view that sees eternal life as a gift instead of a birthright. I am more concerned about a human-centric view that sees all humans born immortal. To me this negates the idea of eternal life being a gift based on grace and faith.

            That said, I am really not dogmatic concerning the afterlife but I am more concerned about how God is presented in our theology of the afterlife. Especially when you consider the image of God presented views in such as Calvinism.

            Appreciate the conversation but I am not sure that I have a lot more to say on the subject. Yet I will respond if you have any questions.

            Wish you a blessed week.

            Bob

          4. Lauren Avatar
            Lauren

            This HAS gotten long :)! Thanks again for sharing your veiws. It would have been fun if Rodger could have been here to join in and talk theology with us. I always had a good time talking about these kinds of things with him. Although, I was never able to bring him over to my Calvinistic viewpoint ;). Take care!

          5. KC Bob Avatar
            KC Bob

            Calvinism?Yikes! Methinks that it would be great to have a conversation about that in person. 🙂

          6. Lauren Avatar
            Lauren

            Agreed :)!

  4. Elle Mae Avatar
    Elle Mae

    : D

    Reply
  5. Brance Avatar
    Brance

    Bob,

    You might be surprised at how close to calvinism my dad was. He didn’t like the title, and I somewhat agree with him. I don’t normally use it, but I am not ashamed of it either.

    I want to address a couple things. My purpose in doing so is not to reopen any kind of debate, but rather to clarify what Lauren and I believe on the issues raised in these comments. After all, I don’t know who might find and read these comments now or in the future, and I want to be clear where we stand and why.

    —

    Let me begin by explaining what we believe about the essential nature of man. We believe that “the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)

    We therefore hold to the view that the essence of man is made up of two parts, a physical body and a soul (or spirit). This is called dichotomy. We do not believe that man is merely physical. Neither do we believe that man is a trichotomy, which separates the soul and spirit into two distinct parts.

    The danger with annihilationism, or whatever you want to call it, is two fold.

    First, by taking the stance that mankind has no spirit until new life is given by Christ, you reduce the unsaved to mere animals with personality. If the soul does not live on after physical death, and a spirit that does so is only instilled in a person at the new birth, then in what way is an unsaved person an image bearer of God?

    If they are not image bearers, then you have introduced a whole host of issues regarding human dignity, which would logically lead to complete acceptance of abortion, and other atrocities.

    This is plainly at odds with the testimony of scripture, which declares that God made man in his image, and never qualifies that status to only those who believe.

    Having taken away the intrinsic value of being made in God’s image (i.e. possessing a spirit), you have now divorced the spiritual from the physical and are dancing dangerously close to Greek gnosticism. This sort of dualistic approach to reality can lead one to believe that the spiritual is good and the physical intrinsically bad, while scripture says otherwise. God created man, in his image, with a physical body, and declared it “very good”. Let’s not take away from that!

    And since it was God who created and gave man a spirit, this is in no way prideful or man centered, but rather it is God centered and in submission to him as our Creator.

    Second, by doing away with the eternal, conscious torment of the wicked in hell, you do damage to the character and nature of God, namely his divine justice and wrath, and in so doing, you create a mess concerning the cross, the suffering messiah, and our salvation. I know these aren’t particularly popular attributes, but they are true attributes of God, if one reads the bible plainly. God is holy. His love is holy. His justice is holy, His wrath is holy. That means they are set apart, unlike our love, justice, and wrath. His ways are far above our ways. We don’t have to understand how a God who is perfectly loving can also, and at the same time, be perfectly wrathful and just. We only have to believe that it is so because he tells us it is so.

    I imagine this is the image of God presented by Calvinism, and indeed historical, orthodox Christianity, that some find hard to accept. A God who is loving, and yet sends, or even destines, some people to eternal, conscious torment in hell, is hard to wrap our finite minds around.

    Indeed, this is a God who is unlike us. A God greater than us, wiser than us, far more holy than we are. This is a God who is glorified in all his attributes, not just the ones we prefer.

    If you believe God’s justice and wrath toward sin can be satisfied by mere extinction, then Jesus’ suffering on the cross was without purpose. He should have just died a painless death if that was the price to be paid, and then we would be free to bypass physical death. Such is not the case.

    Here’s a quote from author Dorothy Sayers:

    “There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the “cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell,” or “the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms.” . . .

    But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not ” mediaeval”: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of “mediaeval priestcraft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from “mediaeval superstition,” but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it. . . . It confronts us in the oldest and least “edited” of the gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists [gospels] through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ. (Dorothy Sayers, A Matter of Eternity, ed. Rosamond Kent Sprague [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1973], p. 86)”

    If you do away with hell as a place of eternal conscious punishment for sin, you lose Christ. I for one do not want to lose Christ!

    Finally, I would say, it is the realm of theologians to make distinctions. Here’s the distinction.

    God created all mankind in his image, possessing both a body and a soul. The body part God now has in Jesus, but that is him becoming one of us, in order to save us. The soul part is us being created in his image, with a non-material soul/spirit. The bible teaches that the body cannot live without the soul (James 2:26) but also plainly teaches that the soul can, and does, live without the body, though at the final judgment our bodies will be raised and we will be whole again.

    When Adam and Eve sinned, they died, spiritually. This doesn’t mean that their soul ceased to exist, but that it was cut off from fellowship with God. They still have personhood, but, to use the language of Romans 6, they were dead to God and alive to sin. That is the state into which every human has been born since, dead to God but alive to sin.

    When we experience the new birth, we are made alive to God and are to consider ourselves dead to sin (again, see Romans 6).

    So there is a difference between having life in Christ, and being “dead” or cut off spiritually from God. But there is a distinction between physical death and spiritual deadness. Spiritual deadness is still active, it is not the cessation of existence, but rather an ongoing state of rebellion and hardness toward God.

    So when the bible says a person is “dead in their trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2), it doesn’t mean they have ceased to exist.

    In other words, their is a life, or existence, apart from Christ that is called deadness. And their is LIFE in Christ, that is truly life. But if you want to read these words literally as life=existence and death=nothingness, then you are left believing that non-Christians are nothing other than animals, cattle or bugs.

    I don’t think that belief can be entertained biblically, and should not be entertained in our hearts!

    The view that there is no immortal soul in man from the moment of creation/birth, is outside historical, orthodox Christian belief held by the vast majority of Christians for the last 2000 years. It is not a belief we would consider faithful to scripture, or one we would consider as existing within the bounds of orthodoxy or evangelicalism (though where the boundaries of that title extend have become less clear in the last few years).

    Reply
    1. KC Bob Avatar
      KC Bob

      Thanks for the very long response Brance. I think that you and I once discussed this on my blog. I really do not want to rehash what we have previously discussed. Regarding Calvinism though (and I may be reading too much into it), the idea of creating a human that is destined for eternal conscious torment is a bit blasphemous – in my thinking anyways.

      Reply
    2. KC Bob Avatar
      KC Bob

      Interestingly, I ran across this post about Calvinism in my perusing of FB today. I resonate with what it says. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/why-calvinism-makes-me-want-to-gouge-my-eyes-out/

      Reply
  6. Brance Avatar
    Brance

    This is obviously an old (much older than either of us!), and quite lengthy, debate. So I won’t go into it. I will say that article is tilting at straw men. The author does present calvinism as it really is, perhaps because he doesn’t understand it.

    I will only say this. Calvinism presents God as I see him in scripture, and that’s what I want to be, scriptural. I see a God that is altogether sovereign, holy, just, and loving. Apart from God’s love, no one would be saved! I know my own heart, and I know that apart from his sovereign grace in my life, I would never choose to submit to him, thanks be to God that he loved me enough to shine into my heart the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ! Why? I don’t know. There was nothing in me that merited his love and mercy, and yet he has loved me with a never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love!

    The cross is the most terrifying display of God’s wrath in the history of the world. It is also the most awesome display of God’s love in the history of the world. I don’t cower in fear of the God of the bible, I rejoice and delight in him! For is beautiful beyond comprehension!

    Reply
    1. KC Bob Avatar
      KC Bob

      Hey thanks for the reply Brance. I do understand how many use the term (maybe coined by John MacArthur) “Sovereign Grace”. Yet I find the word to be code for the idea that God can do anything he wants to do even if it does not resemble Jesus in any way. I prefer to see Jesus as the Rosetta Stone that we must use to interpret all of scripture. In my view he came to show us what God was really like and to correct some of the images of God than so many embraced back then and even now. But I doubt that this is something that we could find common ground on as I am opposed to Calvinism because of the way that it maligns the character and nature of God.

      The image of the cross as the most terrifying display of God’s wrath in the history of the world is only one view. It was originally promulgated by a Roman Catholic bishop around 1,000 AD. The weight of the the Catholic Church enforced it and it became the “orthodox” view. That is not the only view however. Other theories were advanced before Anselm and some cling to them as much as you do the “orthodox” view.. You can probably google the other views if you are interested. For me, I see most of these theories as metaphors describing the cross from different perspectives. But, as with most metaphors, they simply fall apart when one tries to make them more than they are.

      On a personal note, I love that we are discussing these things. It so reminds me of the spirited conversations that your dad and I enjoyed. Maybe one day we will have a chance to discuss over coffee. Have a great evening!

      Blessings, Bob

      Reply
      1. Brance Avatar
        Brance

        Hey Bob, not intending to open any more discussion, but thought I’d share a song that just came to me. “Dear Refuge of my Weary Soul”, written by Anne Steele around 1760. Includes the line, “and can the ear of sovereign grace be deaf when I complain?”

        John MacArthur can’t get the credit for that turn of phrase!

        http://cardiphonia.org/2011/09/01/the-hymns-of-anne-steele/

        Reply
        1. KC Bob Avatar
          KC Bob

          Thanks for that Brance! I think that the idea of grace being irresistible has been around for a long time – probably back to early Roman Catholic thoughts of guys like Augustine. I do not mind the turn of that phrase (i.e. irresistible grace) because it is fairly straight forward in that it speaks to grace being something a person cannot and will not resist. Sovereign Grace, on the other hand, is not so clear.

          Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.