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bisco1
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excuse me, but who are you to interpret the word of God?
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Gorgias
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I see. So, tell me: when you were “born again”, did you attempt to “control the wind”? After all, you asked the Holy Spirit to dwell in you – just the Church does in its sacraments – and He did! Wow… I guess you “forced him to indwell,” huh?
There must be some unused parts of your Bible… the parts that talk about ‘backsliders’ and about the importance of running the race.
Yes, it is possible to resist the Spirit (although it’s horribly dangerous for your soul!).The interesting thing is that you’re making the same mistake that Jesus corrected Nicodemus for: it’s not “born again” (like Nicodemus thought), it’s “born from above.”
Let’s talk about the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit;” I’ll let you start: where do you find this, and how do you interpret it?
Ouch. Ok: so, if you say “hey, Holy Spirit” – even one time – your free will goes away (since the Spirit changes it)? Once you’ve said the magic words, you lose the ability to ‘resist’?
Ananias & Sapphira were part of the Christian community; Ananias & Sapphira had the “indwelling”; Ananias & Sapphira resisted until their deaths. Your doctrine seems a bit poorly thought out… or at least, unscriptural.
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Gorgias
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You are, it seems, mistaken. Please tell me what is meant by ‘tradition’ in Mt 15:6. Then, please tell me what ‘Tradition’ means in a Catholic context, as found in the catechism, such that you think that these two are the same thing.
I see. Are you asserting, then, that the Church is a “yoke of slavery”? The Church that Paul belonged to, which he preached, is the yoke of slavery against which he railed? In the context of Gal 5, what exactly is this “yoke of slavery”, if you wouldn’t mind telling us? (I’ll give you a hint: you’ll find it mentioned in v.2 and v.3…
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Duane1966
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I know many non-Catholics who have been born again. Many of them are a true inspiration. Some of them, after being born again and leading exemplary lives, have ended up having multiple affairs, others have left Christianity, at least two are in prison. The funny thing is, they all said the same thing you said about the Spirit, in the heights of their born again days.
Now let’s see what Jesus says:
Jesus in St. John contradicts what you say, you can have His Spirit, and still walk away.
The Vine and the Branches.1**
“I am the true vine,and my Father is the vine grower.a2He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunesso that it bears more fruit.3You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.b4Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.5I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.6**c*Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.d8By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.e9As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.
What Hebrews says:
4As for those people who were once brought into the light, and tasted the gift from heaven, and received a share of the Holy Spirit,5and tasted the goodness of God’s message and the powers of the world to come6*and yet in spite of this have fallen away – it is impossible for them to be brought to the freshness of repentance a second time, since they are crucifying the Son of God again for themselves, and making a public exhibition of Him.
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bisco1
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‘the seed that falls on good ground, will produce a harvest…’
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Silvana1961
Guest
I find more often than not, upon asking a question, it snowballs into a belligerent argument. I am not pointing or accusing anyone. I asked several questions on this forum and the result was several members debating and arguing various points of scripture. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Often I do get that scene from the movie Jesus of Nazareth in my head, hehe, when Jesus says: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Now please don’t be insulted, these are just my thoughts. It is in my humble opinion that sarcasm, innuendos and belligerence have no place in our quest for the truth of Gods word. Christ asks us to speak gently, 2timothy 2:25, if we feel an opposition to the truth of the word. We are here as Catholics to share the word, and bring us closer to God. I had asked the question, of what did Christ mean about being born again. Many answers, and some arguments. Ok, I was baptized at two months old. I know God loves me, as I love him. I hope no one can debate that. We have an awesome and merciful God,yes? There are points in scripture that are probably beyond human comprehension, no? Christ came to fulfill the law, no? I know for sure, I will be joined with our Savior, in his kingdom because I am a child of God, and my faith in him will always lead me back to him. Peace be with you, my brothers and sisters, and may the Holy Spirit guide you and keep you all safe from darkness.
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bisco1
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the church has the answers to most of your questions, we are just imperfect members, trying to make our way to the light…
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Gorgias
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Agreed. Yet, even Christ exhibited righteous anger when He saw how His Father’s word was being twisted and misappropriated at the temple, didn’t he?
Sometimes it’s difficult to bear, hearing people belittling the Church and her teachings…
(BTW, to your original question: I alluded to it earlier, but the crux of the discussion is Nicodemus’ misunderstanding of what Jesus said. He said that we must be born anothen, which is a Greek word that can mean either ‘again’ or ‘from above’. Nicodemus misunderstands him to mean “born again,” and Jesus corrects his misunderstanding. You see, Jesus really meant “born from above” – that is, in water and the Spirit – and Nicodemus didn’t understand this. This text is precisely a foreshadowing of Jesus’ instruction to “baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, which He gives us before He returns to heaven.)
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Silvana1961
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Yes of course! Righteous anger! Jesus did so! But key word righteous! But let’s lay that one to bed. Thank you for your answer! Let us all seek the truth with a loving kindness, as we are all brothers and sisters of the church. I feel it is vital for the church to survive and flourish, unity amongst us in these very trying times, I myself want so much for the church to be answer to our salvation, but we have to stick together as we lose so many daily…through love we can conquer evil. Humility with our own not pompous arrogance, we are called to love one another, come on guys!Agreed. Yet, even Christ exhibited righteous anger when He saw how His Father’s word was being twisted and misappropriated at the temple, didn’t he?
Sometimes it’s difficult to bear, hearing people belittling the Church and her teachings…
(BTW, to your original question: I alluded to it earlier, but the crux of the discussion is Nicodemus’ misunderstanding of what Jesus said. He said that we must be born anothen, which is a Greek word that can mean either ‘again’ or ‘from above’. Nicodemus misunderstands him to mean “born again,” and Jesus corrects his misunderstanding. You see, Jesus really meant “born from above” – that is, in water and the Spirit – and Nicodemus didn’t understand this. This text is precisely a foreshadowing of Jesus’ instruction to “baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, which He gives us before He returns to heaven.)
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Seth
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I didn’t even ask the Holy Spirit to ‘indwell’ me. It was a gift from God. His own doing. John 6:37, John 15:16, John 17:2,6,9, Galatians 1:15, Acts 13:48, Ephesians 1:4,11, Romans 8:33, 1 Corinthians 1:27,29,31,I see. So, tell me: when you were “born again”, did you attempt to “control the wind”? After all, you asked the Holy Spirit to dwell in you – just the Church does in its sacraments – and He did! Wow… I guess you “forced him to indwell,” huh?
Those who are ‘born again’ do not become ‘unborn again’. Those who backslide were never born again to begin with. Those who are born again WILL run the race till the end because the Holy Spirit causes them to persevere.There must be some unused parts of your Bible… the parts that talk about ‘backsliders’ and about the importance of running the race.
1 John 2:19, 1 Corinthians 1:8, 1 Thesselonians 5:24, Phillippians 1:6, 1 Peter 1:5
desiringgod.org/articles/can-the-regenerate-be-erased-from-the-book-of-life
Nicodemus thought Jesus was being literal…like going back inside of his mother’s womb. I am not making that mistake. When I say ‘born again’ I understand it as being born of the Spirit rather than born of the flesh.
Let’s just say I agree with this guy, desiringgod.org/sermons/what-does-it-mean-to-receive-the-holy-spirit
You don’t even get to say ‘hey, Holy Spirit’, because you are dead and you hate God. Ephesians 2:1-10, and because God either created you as a vessel of mercy or a vessel of wrath, you didn’t get to pick which one, Romans 9.
I think this one proves my point more than yours…these two were both baptized (probably) and part of the Christian community…but NOWHERE does it say they were indwelled by the Holy Spirit or that they were born again….and so we can clearly see that being baptized and part of the church does not mean you are regenerate.Ananias & Sapphira were part of the Christian community; Ananias & Sapphira had the “indwelling”; Ananias & Sapphira resisted until their deaths. Your doctrine seems a bit poorly thought out… or at least, unscriptural.
1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
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bisco1
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so, you don’t know if you’re born again?
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Duane1966
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I notice you did not address my post, where Jesus and Hebrews contradicts what you say. Two questions for you.
1.) A person has a born again experience, makes an altar call, he prays fevently for the Jesus to enter him, and believes he is saved. He KNOWS in his heart that he has the Spirit. In the course of his life, let’s just say, as you put it, he ** backslides **. You would say that he never had the Spirit, correct?
2.) Why did Lucifer turn from God, when he was in God’s presence?
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Duane1966
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False Assurance, Charles Templetonwas a prominent televangelist in the mid-twentieth century, the host of a weekly religious show, and a close friend of Billy Graham’s. If you were to ask him if he was saved, he would have undoubtedly said yes. So would those around him. But in 1957, he announced that he had become an agnostic. He went on to write a book calledFarewell to God, and apparently died an agnostic (or an atheist). What good is assurance of salvation if we can’t tell whose assurance is real, and whose is false? That’s not much ground for certainty.*
The above is from this website. catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2014/01/three-major-arguments-against-assurance.html?m=1
What about all those people who were watching him and trying to grow in their spirituality? Some must feel sorry for them, because they were listening to someone who never had the Spirit!
The above is from this website. catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2014/01/three-major-arguments-against-assurance.html?m=1
What about all those people who were watching him and trying to grow in their spirituality? Some must feel sorry for them, because they were listening to someone who never had the Spirit!
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Gorgias
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Agreed. The grace of baptism is purely gratuitous, a gift from God. You seem to have a problem with ‘asking’ for this gift, through the baptism which Christ himself instituted as a means of ‘discipling’ the world (Mt 28:20).
I’m not asserting this. I’m just asserting that it continues to be a possibility that they turn from Christ.
The man whom Paul rails against in 1 Corinthians – was he ‘born again’? Having an incestuous relationship certainly qualifies as ‘backsliding’, doesn’t it?
Your interpretation doesn’t hold up, here. If those who are born again must necessarily persevere, then why does John tell those who are ‘born again’ “my children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one” (1 Jn 2:1)? Why does he constantly warn the ‘born again’ to “remain” in Christ and “not be deceived” over and again in 1 Jn 2? If the born again ‘automatically’ remained in Christ, then 1 Jn 2 would be the rantings of a madman! It would be like me exhorting you, “breathe! never stop remembering to breathe!”
That doesn’t make sense: in Eph 2:8, we see that “by grace you have been saved through faith.” The important words here are “through faith.” If the believer is ‘dead’, such that he cannot reach out to God in faith, then I guess that none of us are saved, since we don’t have the faith that’s a prerequisite for receiving God’s grace? :nope:
Or, perhaps, that the regenerate, too, can backslide. Your ‘proof’ doesn’t exclude that possibility…
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qui_est_ce
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I’d like Seth to reply to this.
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qui_est_ce
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Are you saying we can’t pray for this gift to increase in us?
Ephesians 2:1-10
like the rest.c
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But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us,
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d even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ* (by grace you have been saved),
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raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,e
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that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.f
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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;g
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it is not from works, so no one may boast.h
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For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.i
Nowhere in that verse does God tell us we are created EITHER as vessels of mercy or of wrath. Rather, he tells us All have fallen, and by God’s mercy we are saved. God did not create people to go to Hell.
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PJM
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SURE
The reference here is a SPIRITUAL rebirth.
Because humanity is “born in sin” [Original sin]
Our Catechism: 407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man’s situation and activity in the world. By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails “captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil”.Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals".
1263 By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin. In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adam’s sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God
God being “Just and Merciful” imposes the penalty AND provides the antidote. Christian Baptism.
Baptism IS the REBIRTH Christ speaks of as necessary for salvation. Baptism makes anew, man’s soul. Man is like God at that point perfected until he sins again. The reference is to spiritual death, not a physical death, and a spiritual rebirth NOT a physical one.
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Gorgias
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The ‘vessels of wrath’ language is found in Romans 9…
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qui_est_ce
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Well, of course Paul was talking about the Mosaic law there.
Funny how James never gets quoted.
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bisco1
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doesn’t suit the protestors purpose.
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