Hidden In Him
Well-Known Member
Well you shocked me. As smart as you are, I would never consider you would come up with such a thing.
This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Besides it being biblical and an age old foundational belief it is one of the topics that has fractured Christ's church....Which I consider a crime against Christ.
Well, yes. Unfortunately it has become an issue in the church when it was never meant to be. See, I'm a strong believer in most early church traditions, and especially ones like water baptism and the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The trouble is, however, that when both these practices started to become minimized within various segments of the church, all of a sudden the question began arising as to whether or not a believer could be saved without undergoing them.
Lord willing I can post the entire passage and go through it with you, but in short, the Lord's teaching was to tell Nicodemus to communicate to the Pharisees and Jewish council that they could not simply fill the old wineskins with new wine; that they would have to die to their former way of thinking and their former lives if they would enter Heaven. Hence He was attempting to teach Nicodemus about the necessity of dying to the old man, as symbolized by water baptism and then lived out through dying to their former lives (like Paul had), and birth into newness of life through the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Now, this is the reason why (imo) He taught them that no one could see the kingdom of God unless He was born of water and the Spirit; they needed to become totally born again, and live a completely new life. This is why these practices were kept by the early church. But when forced to answer the question of if believers are saved who have not undergone these things, my belief is that neither my water baptism OR my baptism in the Holy Spirit were what brought me into newness of life. I was very much a Christian and very much a child of God before I underwent either, and just as much headed for Heaven then as I was afterwards, or now. So if forced to answer if I or anyone else can be saved without undergoing the baptisms, my position is simply that it is being born of the incorruptible seed of the word of God which causes a Christian to become truly born again. I hold that the baptisms are experiences which should NOT be excluded from the Christian life, but should they be, I don't regard either as what truly brings spiritual life to a believer.
Some people have a hard time with spiritual things...spiritual powers and events.
Yes. The baptism in the Holy Spirit, complete with prophesying and speaking in tongues especially. Departure from that one has been the most tragic of all, leaving the church largely powerless up to the present time. Few practice it today, though thankfully that is eventually going to change back to the pattern established by the early church.
Last edited: