Recently I was in a sharing from another church and they are talking about being born again. They were sharing that being born in the spirit is very important. So the question raised was, How does one know that he is a born again Christian?
So to address the problems he talked about 3 points.
1. When one believes in Jesus and Accept Him, Rom 8:16
2. When one hungers for the Pure Spiritual Milk of The Word of God (1 Pet 2:1-3)
3. When he stops sinning (1 Jn 3:8-9)
And he goes on commenting on church groups who believe in sacraments of baptism. Saying that the great commission of Jesus (Matt 28:18-20) is to “Go into all the world and make disciples” and not “Go into all the world and baptize people”
He goes on to say that one only need to be born in the spirit to be saved, and the Holy Spirit is given to everyone who believe
Questions To Think About
Personally I do believe in the effect of sacraments, and they are effective because of the words of Jesus and his commands for us to perform them. But I did not want to turn this entry into a doctrinal discussion. Hence I guess will only post a few questions for my friends that are so full of wisdom.
1. Do you know that even in Jesus ministry on earth, his disciples were performing baptism on people? (John 3:22-26)
2. If Baptism is at all not necessary
a. Why did Peter tell everyone to be baptized for sins to be forgiven? (Acts 2:38)
b. Why did the Ethiopian eunuch want baptism even in the desert? (Acts 8:36)
c. Why did Paul insist to re-baptize Johns Disciples? (Acts 19:3-7)
3. With regards to the idea of receiving the Holy Spirit at the point of accepting Christ
a. Paul asked ““Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2)
b. When Philip preached to Samaria, the people believe and are baptize, but they have not received the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17)
I remember once I shared that the reluctance to undergo baptism is not really about the difficulty of getting to a baptismal site and going through to act of dipping into water. But its about having faith in the words of Jesus and having the willingness to follow it.
In the past, during the time of the apostles, faith is always complimented with actions of obedience, and they are inter-related. For if one believes the teaching of Jesus, he will naturally follows the commands of Jesus.
It is not the act of dipping into the water alone cannot forgive sin. It is made effective only with our faith in Jesus, the sacrifice of Christ (for the blood of Christ is in the water) , accompanied with our obedience to follow his commands, and the willingness to go through the exact mode of baptism.
Of course I believe that repentance and accepting Christ are the essential part of salvation, but downplaying the other commands of the Lord by claiming that it is necessary, only demonstrates our disobedience to God and choosing to do things our own way.
The Faith Of Abraham And Isaac His Only Son
Indeed, even Abraham was faith was praised by God when he attempted to sacrifice is only son Isaac onto the altar as instructed by God. I have shared this on a previous blog post .
Abraham believed that God will resurrect Isaac even if he killed him on the altar. And He complimented that faith with his actions. and God intervened before Abraham killed Isaac and praised him for his faith.
Jesus once said “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.” (Jn 8:39)
Abraham had many children, but only Isaac is his Only Son. But we know that Abraham had at least 8 children (including Isaac) (CF: 1 Chron 1:28,32)
But studying them we can learn a lot our lives. I will be sharing them in the next blog post.
The Hesitant Prize Fighter 