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It also becomes before everything else in that list. How can you turn to Christ and obey Him without repentance? But we were discussing baptism... That's a good way of putting it. Really? Paul says this about Cornelius and his friends: "God purified their hearts by faith." (Acts 15:9) Now...

Baptism is presented as a believer's first act of obedience to their new Lord. In that it demonstrates their commitment to Jesus, it enables them to receive from Him forgiveness, salvation, the Holy Spirit, etc. But all this assumes that things happen in a tidy sequence: hearing the Gospel...

That is the mechanism, yes. It's not the water itself, whether "blessed" or not.

Yes - but only because, in the New Testament, baptism was simultaneous with conversion. If you separate baptism from conversion (as most churches do), then the doctrine ceases to make sense.

Neither. What I was on my day of birth isn't the model for the rest of my life, so why should it be so for the Church? There's a continuity, however, between the Church then and the Church now. The same Holy Spirit empowers us. How He chooses to manifest His power is up to Him, of course.

The truth must be spoken in love. It's generally considered better to give bad news face-to-face than over the phone, even if that means a delay. (It doesn't follow that if they don't tell you, then it must be bad news - there could be other reasons). When I was working, we NEVER gave positive...

Because that's just what priests do. Although originally, the idea may not have been so much washing away their own sins (they offered sacrifices for that) as washing off the contamination of the world.

The oil was symbolic of the Holy Spirit. The washing was separate. Jesus, after being washed (in water, like the priests), was anointed not with oil but with the "real thing" - the Spirit Himself.

Theos is a noun, not an adjective. It doesn't mean "divine'; it means "god". (It can occasionally be translated as 'divine' when in the genitive case - which isn't the case here) Whatever John is saying, it isn't "the Word was divine." It would make hyper-clear the number of times that the...

And one of the basic rules of Greek grammar is that when a noun is used as a complement and precedes the subject, the article is omitted. So in Greek, "the Word was a god" would be "Theos en ho logos", and "the word was God" is also "Theos en ho logos". So both translations are legitimate on...

But since I personally am convinced that the Holy Spirit IS personal (better than saying "a person"), I shall continue to refer to Him with personal pronouns.

It should be Guy Fawkes. The poster has already been told this on another forum, but hasn't corrected it. Same with the dates.

But anyone, of any religion (or none), can imitate the "spirit" of Christ in that sense - and many non-Christians (having great respect for Jesus' ethical teaching) do just that. That can't be what Paul is talking about. Go back through Romans a bit further, and in chapter 5 Paul says that "the...

"Neuter words require neuter pronouns" - very true, but the gender of the word doesn't necessarily match the gender of what it refers to. In many languages the word for "child" is neuter - grammatically one should use a neuter pronoun, but in practice, if the child's gender is known (it isn't...

In Romans 8:9, Paul refers to the Spirit of Christ: "You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ." Interesting that he uses the titles...

The 17th century translators used the word 'ghost' because it had a slightly different range of meaning back then - it could have the same meaning as 'spirit' (rather like 'Geist' in modern German). Nothing to do with their belief in the Trinity. Christians had already believed for centuries...

I've seen a black swan in Germany. There may well be some in the UK somewhere as well.

Baptism as such wasn't practised within Judaism prior to John the Baptist, but they did baptise Gentile proselytes (as well as circumcising them). And ritual washing was part of the consecration ritual for the high priest - followed by anointing with sacred oil (Exodus 29:4-7). So I think it's...

There is no blanket commandment "Thou shalt not ever tell a lie" in the Bible. The ninth commandment says, "Do not give false testimony" - which is lying in specific context, in a court of justice. And by extension, never tell lies about someone in order to defame (or whitewash, as the case may...

My vote goes to the NIV. It's the translation that everyone "loves to hate", so why do so many churches in the UK use it? (When I say "So many" I don't have an actual statistic, but every evangelical church that I've worshipped at in the last 40 years has used the NIV. In contrast, use of the...