Friday, August 20, 2010
How do you know you're right? (Schill)
Has anyone else ever wondered if we, as Christians, are really right about all this "stuff" about God and Jesus? What if we have completely missed the mark? I mean really though, if the Bible was just made up and God was just a "being" that we, as humans, thought we needed to help answer questions about where things came from...we might feel pretty stupid.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
John 3:3 - "born againism" does it miss the point (jay)
I have been mulling over this one for sometime now and I would be interested to see what the theo-convo thinks about this.
I propose that the term "born again" has been misused for a very long time. The current excepted meaning of this term is "regenerated". I would agree that at conversion we are regenerated and all who are truly saved are indeed regenerated. So in that sense if you equate born again to regeneration it is certainly true that every must be "born again". So here is my qualm: John 3:3 was part of a midnight discourse between Jesus and a prominent Pharisee, likely there was no gentile audience. Moreover, the entire force of John 3 seems to be that salvation was not only for the Jews ie John 3:16 "for god so loved the WORLD...". I submit that this verse has nothing to do with regeneration, but instead is jesus' declaration the being of Jewish decent was no longer sufficient for salvation. If you look at John 3:18 it seems to pronounce condemnation upon the unbelieving Jew. Again recall the audience was a Pharisee. I think one of the primary reasons we have this dual covenant gotta stick with Israel at all cost mindset is because we have not seen the real implications of this text. John 3:3 is a convenient text for regeneration to be taught from, but I don't believe that is what Christ was talking about. Any thoughts?
Sorry for any spelling issues I posted this from my iPod.
I propose that the term "born again" has been misused for a very long time. The current excepted meaning of this term is "regenerated". I would agree that at conversion we are regenerated and all who are truly saved are indeed regenerated. So in that sense if you equate born again to regeneration it is certainly true that every must be "born again". So here is my qualm: John 3:3 was part of a midnight discourse between Jesus and a prominent Pharisee, likely there was no gentile audience. Moreover, the entire force of John 3 seems to be that salvation was not only for the Jews ie John 3:16 "for god so loved the WORLD...". I submit that this verse has nothing to do with regeneration, but instead is jesus' declaration the being of Jewish decent was no longer sufficient for salvation. If you look at John 3:18 it seems to pronounce condemnation upon the unbelieving Jew. Again recall the audience was a Pharisee. I think one of the primary reasons we have this dual covenant gotta stick with Israel at all cost mindset is because we have not seen the real implications of this text. John 3:3 is a convenient text for regeneration to be taught from, but I don't believe that is what Christ was talking about. Any thoughts?
Sorry for any spelling issues I posted this from my iPod.
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