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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman The
Church's Primary Problem The most important thing
my Methodist heritage taught me while being raised in the 1950's and
1960's was that I must be born again.
I needed the Holy Spirit within me.
My salvation is more than a matter of my mind.
It's a matter of my spirit. This
doctrinal reality that I needed to experience, and have, was important
within the Evangelical church in my youth, but is it today?
It is my opinion this
doctrinal reality of being born again has sadly morphed into a mere mental
acknowledgement of a Biblical belief system that includes the divinity of
Jesus. Jesus rejected this
doctrinal distortion when He told Nicodemus that he must be born again
because his intellectual approach to God was insufficient (John 3:1 - 5).
God is spirit, and must be worshiped in both spirit and in truth,
as Jesus said on another occasion (John 4:24).
Jesus continued his born again conversation with Nicodemus by
saying what we read in John 3:16. "For
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
It recently dawned on me
how we consistently read John 3:16 as a stand-alone verse apart from its
"born again" literary context.
Yes, the term "born again" isn't seen in John 3:16 but it
is implied when we understand the word "believes" from the Greek
text. In the West we tend to
view believing as a matter of the mind, a mental process whereby we
determine something to be true. That's
not how we should understand "believes" in John 3:16.
The word
"believes" in John 3:16 is translated from the Greek word
"pisteuo" that is rooted in the Greek noun "pistis"
that simply means "trust." In
the final analysis, trust is a matter of the heart.
Concerning my salvation, I trust my entire life with Jesus, and I
do from the depth of my heart. That
is more than an acknowledgement of Jesus' existence.
This is why the Amplified version of the Bible inserts the word
"trust" into its text when it reads, "whoever
believes and trusts in Him will..."
The fact that the word
"believes" in John 3:16 is a Greek participle is important.
A participle is a verbal noun, a descriptive word that can be a
noun or a verb. In John 3:16
it describes the person who has eternal life as being a believer, or as I
say, as being a trusting-in-Jesus one.
It's about being someone, not just thinking something.
It's being the person the participle describes.
Our word
"believes" in John 3:16 is a "present active" Greek
participle, suggesting that the one who has eternal life is right now in
present time, an active trusting-in-Jesus person.
That's who he is in real time, not just what he thinks.
He is that because he is united with Jesus in spirit (1 Corinthians
6:17) and has been transformed into a newly created spiritual person (2
Corinthians 5:17). John 3:16 states that
anyone who has been born again, who presently is an active
trusting-in-Jesus person, will not perish but will have eternal life.
You become this trusting-in-Jesus person, a believer, only when the
Holy Spirit enters your very being. Believing
in Jesus, then, is far more than a matter of the mind.
It's a matter of the spirit. Thankfully,
my Methodist roots taught me about being born again.
It's what today's Evangelical church needs to rediscover, because
its present failure in this matter is its primary problem.
Post
Script Our God-given rational
processes are important, but being a Christian is also a spiritual
process, involving the Holy Spirit. It's
why many holding to a Biblical belief apart from being born again are
deconstructing their Christian faith, leading them to a faithless atheism.
What can you expect. A
mere mental acknowledgement will not withstand today's atheistic
arguments.
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