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Results from: Answers On or After: Thu 12/31/70 Author: deejhermit Ordered by Date |
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Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | AO, was His John 3 not in effect? | John 4:14 | deejhermit | 103308 | ||
Was Jesus teaching that you need to be baptized in John chapter 3, as Jesus was talking to the ruler Nicodemus? The answer is NO He was not. You can only say He was, if you take the scripture out of context. Let's look at it. 5 Jesus answered, Truly I say to you, Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven. (if you stop there, maybe you make a case that Jesus is talking about baptism, but let us read on.) 6 That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Look at the parallelism in Jesus teaching. "Born of water and of the Spirit" "That which is born of flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Born of water is talking about our earthly birth, that of flesh, coming from or mother's womb, (which as we know, and of course Jesus does also, involves water). Jesus is not talking about Baptism here, but rather he is teaching Nicodemus that being born again is not talking about going back to the mother's womb, which Nicodemus mistakenly thinks in verse 4. This does mean christians are not obligated to be baptized - they are. Jesus taught that in the very tail end of Matthew's account of Jesus coming to the disciples after his resurrection, (Matt. 28: 19-20). Also in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus told the disciples, "he that believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe shall be damned." (Some try to reason away the importance of baptism in this verse, because Jesus doesn't restate it in the second half of the verse, but that will not fit when we consider God's whole revelation.) I encourage everyone to read through the the History of Acts, it is amazing that everytime someone becomes a christian they are baptized. Jesus' disciples who were promised the Holy Spirit's teaching, write about the significance of Baptism, how in it we are buried with Jesus. We put to death the old man of sin, and our sins our washed away. (Paul was told - "what are you waiting for arise and be baptized, and wash your sins away"). And when we rise out of the waters of Baptism we rise with Jesus to life. How beautiful a plan God gives! Please brothers and sisters let us stop minimizing God's plan, God's will, which he has revealed to us in the scriptures!! Do not disregard what the scriptures plainly teach, I beg... I hope this has served to help anyone with questions |
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