Are you BORN AGAIN ?
BORN AGAIN
Are you born again? Some of the ‘Bible only’ believers will ask you, pointing at Christ’s words: “ Amen, amen I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (Jn 3:3). You have to accept Jesus in your heart as your personal Lord and Savior? That is the way to be born again, they continue.
The problem is that Jesus never have said so . He says something completely different: ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God, without being born of water and Spirit ‘(Jn3:5). In another words, He points at the necessity of baptism. The events mentioned in the Bible make it very clear. St Peter writes it in his first Letter: “…in Noah’s time when the ark was build. In it only a few, that is, eight souls , were saved through water. It is the baptism corresponding to this water which saves you now… (1Pe 3:20 -21).
St Paul in his Letter to Titus speaks the same words: God saved us by means of cleansing water of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit (Tt 3:5).
In the day of Pentecost, after the talk given by Peter, the deeply touched listeners asked him: What must we do? He didn’t say: ’You must accept Jesus in your heart as your personal Lord and Saviour’. Peter said something different: "You must repent and, Peter answered and everyone of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Ac 2:37-38). After his conversion to Christ, Saul of Tarsus has been baptized (Ac 9: 17-18).
Jesus has never said to the disciples: 'go all over the world and teach the nations to accept Me as their personal Lord and Savior'. He instructed His desciples with words: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you… ‘ (Mt 28:19-20).
The baptism is the way to be born again as the Bible shows us. To explain it differently, is only a human invention, a human tradition. It has nothing to do with the words spoken by Jesus, regarding 'being born again'.
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