What’s it mean to be born again? Living here in Houston, Texas that’s an easy question to answer. If you lived in an earlier age or somewhere north of the Mason Dixon line, you might not be familiar with the phrase. What might be considered a common phrase by a Southern Baptist is really a phrase that’s primarily used in the South and only in the last 40+ years. It’s primarily a phrase used by Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Fundamentalist groups of Protestantism.
A born again Christian is what’s described in John 3:1-5. It is known as a salvisitc experience, conversion, or a rebirth. Carholicism, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism believe that the sacrament of Baptism is the same as being born again. Born again christians do not believe that Baptism is sufficient.
Charles Colson helped make the phrase popular with his 1976 book about Watergate. And Jimmy Carter also hlped make the phrase popular.
One of my biggest concerns is that fundamentalists feel that being born again is a fait d’complait. You’ve done it, you’ve got it, that’s the big deal! Instead of being the first step in the journey to a real salvistic esperience which Phil. 2:12 tells us about, fundamentalist end the journey onn the same step that they begin it.
As I get “older”, the concept of “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, becomes more the truth than the one time event. Yes, we must open our spirits to God (spiritual awareness of the God in us), and that probably is an “ah-ha” experience many call being born again. But there is so much more of God wanting to come alive in us that the journey is more the salvation than the “ah-ha”. Was Adam born again? God breathed life into him as with us when we are born here on earth. But Adam choose not to walk in relationship with God, but to be independent. He did not experience the life of the Spirit. It could be seen as similar to a little infant or toddler who is not yet to the age of accountability (able to choose). Adam had it all, but when tested and able to make his own choice, choose to be independent. He then became accountable for his actions and lost the spiritual relationship with God. Every story in the Bible is a story of the journey back to that relationship. Every moment in our lives, is either getting more intimate with God, or less intimate. It’s the journey of growing up as His representation here on earth.
As you said, “Every story in the Bible is a story of the journey back to that relationship. Every moment in our lives, is either getting more intimate with God, or less intimate.”, herein lies the greatest challenge to modern-day Christians who are way TOO BUSY to go “there”.
My question is: why was the “tree of Life” not as appealing as the “tree of knowledge?” God uses the analogy of a “father” many times with us in His WORD, but I do not feel they had that relationship with God in the “garden,” which must have been a spiritual state of BEING, not a physical place. I feel the physical was the place they were driven to when banned from the “garden” and clothed with a physical (flesh)covering; for they died to the spiritual state, as a spirit “BEING”; the state we are journeying back to for those who desire to go that journey or not too busy to travel tht path.
One day we will know for sure won’t we.