{"id":72,"date":"2002-09-01T20:28:40","date_gmt":"2002-09-02T04:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2002\/09\/01\/thoughts-on-baptism-and-following-jesus\/"},"modified":"2002-09-01T20:28:40","modified_gmt":"2002-09-02T04:28:40","slug":"thoughts-on-baptism-and-following-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/09\/01\/thoughts-on-baptism-and-following-jesus","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Baptism and Following Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongo\u00ading dia\u00adlog I\u2019m hav\u00ading with Sean Gal\u00adlagher at his Bene Dic\u00adtion<\/i> blog<\/a>. Right now we\u2019re dis\u00adcussing what it means to fol\u00adlow Jesus, and the cur\u00adrent subtopic is how bap\u00adtism relates to that. This post will be con\u00adcise because of the blog medi\u00adum, so please let me know if any\u00adthing is unclear.<\/p>\n

Sean believes that one becomes a Chris\u00adt\u00adian upon being bap\u00adtized<\/a>. In his own words,<\/p>\n

As a Catholic, I believe that a fol\u00adlow\u00ader of Jesus is one who is \u201cborn of water and Spir\u00adit\u201d (Jn 3:5), that is, one who has been bap\u00adtized\u2026 Once a per\u00adson has been bap\u00adtized, at any age, this abil\u00adi\u00adty is nev\u00ader tak\u00aden away\u2026 even if a per\u00adson total\u00adly refus\u00ades to work with that grace <\/i>[of bap\u00adtism], that per\u00adson is still a fol\u00adlow\u00ader of Jesus.<\/i><\/p>\n

Wow. It took us exact\u00adly one round of replies to get to core Catholic\/Protestant dif\u00adfer\u00adences. <\/p>\n

One of the cru\u00adcial texts here is John 3.3\u20137<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Jesus replied, \u201cI tell you the solemn truth, unless a per\u00adson is born from above, he can\u00adnot see the king\u00addom of God.\u201d Nicode\u00admus said to him, \u201cHow can a man be born when he is old? He can\u00adnot enter his mother\u2019s womb and be born a sec\u00adond time, can he?\u201d Jesus answered, \u201cI tell you the solemn truth, unless a per\u00adson is born of water and spir\u00adit, he can\u00adnot enter the king\u00addom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spir\u00adit is spir\u00adit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, \u2018You must all be born from above.\u2019 \u201d<\/i> (John 3.3\u20137, NET Bible<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In this pas\u00adsage, Jesus tells Nicode\u00admus that every\u00adone must be born anoth\u00aden<\/a>. The word anoth\u00aden<\/i> is ambi\u00adgious in Greek. It can either mean \u201cagain\u201d or \u201cfrom above.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicode\u00admus thinks Jesus is say\u00ading \u201cyou must be born again\u201d (hence his ques\u00adtion, \u201cHow can a man be reborn? He can\u2019t enter his moth\u00ader\u2019s womb again, can he?\u201d) Nicode\u00admus has mis\u00adun\u00adder\u00adstood Jesus, and that is the con\u00adtext for what fol\u00adlows!<\/b><\/p>\n

Jesus answers, \u201cNo, I\u2019m not telling you to be born twice in a phys\u00adi\u00adcal sense. You have to be both phys\u00adi\u00adcal\u00adly born [born of water] and spir\u00adi\u00adtu\u00adal\u00adly born [born from above]. What is pro\u00adduced by flesh is flesh, but what is pro\u00adduced by Spir\u00adit is spir\u00adit.\u201d (please note the use of par\u00adal\u00adlelism here\u2013it\u2019s essen\u00adtial for inter\u00adpret\u00ading the pas\u00adsage prop\u00ader\u00adly: \u2018flesh\u2019 par\u00adal\u00adlels \u2018water\u2019 and \u2018from above\u2019 par\u00adal\u00adlels \u2018spir\u00adit\u2019.)<\/i><\/p>\n

In oth\u00ader words, nei\u00adther per\u00adson is dis\u00adcussing bap\u00adtism. Jesus says that we are giv\u00aden phys\u00adi\u00adcal life in our first birth (a birth of water), and that now we must have spir\u00adi\u00adtu\u00adal life plant\u00aded in us (a birth of spir\u00adit).<\/b> He goes on to explain exact\u00adly what that means lat\u00ader in the same con\u00adver\u00adsa\u00adtion:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor this is the way God loved the world: he gave his one and only Son that every\u00adone who believes in him should not per\u00adish but have eter\u00adnal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to con\u00addemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not con\u00addemned. The one who does not believe has been con\u00addemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.\u201d<\/i> (John 3.16\u201318, NET Bible<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In oth\u00ader words, we are made alive spir\u00adi\u00adtu\u00adal\u00adly by plac\u00ading our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure there are oth\u00ader ref\u00ader\u00adences that Sean takes to sup\u00adport salvif\u00adic bap\u00adtism, and I\u2019m eager to dia\u00adlog about them. I\u2019m also curi\u00adous to see what peo\u00adple think about the \u201cborn again\/born from above\u201d inter\u00adpre\u00adta\u00adtive issue. I find that the word\u00ading is one of those sacred cows in the evan\u00adgel\u00adi\u00adcal world even though it\u2019s an unten\u00adable trans\u00adla\u00adtion.<\/p>\n

P.S. The NET Bible<\/a> is one of my favorite trans\u00adla\u00adtions, but I can\u2019t find a way to direct\u00adly link to a ref\u00ader\u00adence them. Hence my links are to the NIV at http:\/\/bible.gospelcom.net<\/a> even though I quote from the NET Bible! If you know how to link direct\u00adly to a NET Bible ref\u00ader\u00adence (a spe\u00adcif\u00adic chap\u00adter and verse), please let me know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which I dis\u00adcourse on why we need to be \u201cborn from above\u201d instead of \u201cborn again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-of-random-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-1a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}