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The Cleansing Word

21 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by in Gospel and Letters of John, Studies

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In The Grammar of Complexity, I shared the idea that “born of water and the spirit” from John 3:5 means being born of the Word of God and the Spirit of God.  I believe this interpretation because of my personal experience, a baptism story I find in the Book of Acts, and various scriptures throughout the New Testament. First things First.  I have been the recipient of an immersion baptism and it happened like this:

It was only a few years after my devastating car accident.  I’d moved here to Colorado and was feeling somewhat adrift.  What was I supposed to do when the planned on college degree was no longer an option and I still had yet to figure out what being differently-abled really meant?  One of my mother’s old friends came into town to attend a conference given by an evangelist she liked and invited me to go along.  I did so and ended up receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  I attended the church that had hosted the evangelist and was a regular attendee for close to two years before I was baptized.  I did it all backwards if water baptism is supposed to be part of the new birth.  The word in seed form had been planted in me throughout my childhood by various teachers at various times and was sinking roots and growing even though it often times didn’t feel like it, then I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, and finally was baptized in water.  That water baptism was my declaring a change that had already taken place and my commitment to the new life that had been birthed in me.

I imagine you saying, “I’m not concerned with the experience of some random person.  Experience does not theology make.”  I agree which is why I turn your attention to Acts Chapter 10.  There is a fascinating story here about a centurion named Cornelius.  No one among the apostles was looking to baptize Cornelius.  The entire chapter shows God at work bringing about what He wanted.  I encourage you to read it: it’s a wonderful chapter.

In brief, Cornelius was fasting when an angel of God appeared to him and told him to send for Peter.  The angel told Cornelius what city Peter was in and who he was lodging with before departing.  Cornelius sends two from his household in the company of one of his soldiers who, it appears, was also a believer.  They go to Joppa to get Peter and bring him to Cornelius.  While they are traveling, Peter has the great vision of the sheet bound at the four corners descending from heaven filled with all sorts of animals and creatures he’d been forbidden to eat.  The command came from God to kill and eat to which Peter strenuously objected and then came the reply; “What God has cleansed you must not call common.”  This happens three times and then the sheet is taken up to heaven.

While Peter is wondering what his vision means, the Spirit tells him there are some men seeking him.  He goes down to Cornelius’ men, hears why they have come, and the next day he and some of the brethren return with them.  Meanwhile, Cornelius has called together his relatives and close friends in anticipation of Peter’s arrival.  Peter arrives and explains why he came and Cornelius shares his vision.  Peter begins preaching the word that is Jesus coming, crucified, and resurrected and something amazing happens.  The Holy Spirit falls on everyone who heard the word.  The brethren that came with Peter were amazed because the Holy Spirit had been poured out on Gentiles and I imagine a great part of their amazement was because most of these Gentiles were Romans.  It is after this, the word preached and the Holy Spirit poured out, that Cornelius and his household are baptized. 

The lack of water baptism was no hindrance to God.  A metanoia had already happened in Cornelius and how I wish it was described in scripture!  Imagine a man growing up in the Ancient Roman world with its myriad gods coming to know the true God of Jacob.  How did that happen?  I can only imagine.  God Himself had Cornelius send for someone to preach the word to him and his household, then came the outpouring in the Holy Spirit, and then baptism.  It’s all backwards, if indeed water baptism has anything to do with being born again.

In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul addressed some contentions that seem to have arisen due to who had baptized whom. Paul says, “for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel” (verse 17).  I am convinced that if “born of water” meant water baptism, and that NOT being baptized in water was serious enough that a person could not enter the kingdom of God (John 3:5), Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles would have looked very different.

In closing this week’s post, I wish to share a few scriptures:

Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. James 1:18

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him.  1 John 5:1

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever. 1 Peter 1:22-23

Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. Ephesians 5:25-26

For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, “’This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days,’ says the Lord: ‘I will put My laws into their hearts and in their minds I will write them’ (Jeremiah 31:33), then He adds, ‘Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more’” (Jeremiah 31:43). Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.  Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Hebrews 10:14-22

To be continued…

Scriptures taken from the New King James Version

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Baptize to Repentance

14 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by in Gospel and Letters of John, Studies

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In this week’s post, I continue looking at John 3:5 and the question; does “born of water” refer to water baptism?  I have yet to be convinced it does because I cannot find anything that suggests water baptism being performed by John would have occurred to Nicodemus in answer to Jesus’ words.  I had hoped I would find an easy answer in the Old Testament thinking that the phrase “born of water” might have been used somewhere and so I looked through my lexicons looking for said phrase.

I couldn’t find it.  I do admit I might have missed it: to be thorough I looked up “born” and, since James 1:18 in the King James Version uses “begat” rather than “birthed” or “born”, I looked up “begat” as well.  There was a great deal of begetting in the Old Testament.  Knowing I may not have read the scripture lists with as detailed an eye as I ought, I went to Google.  The search engine was not able to return a single instance of the phrase “born of water” in the Old Testament.  Just for fun, I looked up “water” and encountered many phrases I’d like to take a look at another time (what does it mean to drink the water of iniquity?) but found nothing that suggested someone intimate with the Old Testament scriptures like Nicodemus would associate the water baptism of John with being born anew/born of water and spirit. 

What was the baptism of John?  Mark 1:4 tells me it was a baptism to the repentance of sins.  I want to take a look at the word repentance because it doesn’t mean in this passage what general usage says it means.  My New World Dictionary defines repentance as “a repenting or being penitent; feeling of sorrow, etc., esp. for wrongdoing; compunction; contrition, remorse.”  Repent is further defined as “to feel sorry or self-reproachful for what one has done or failed to do, be conscious-stricken or contrite, to feel such regret…as to change one’s mind about…”  Repentance is made up of the Latin “re-again” and “poenitere-penitent.”1

There is a word for this in the New Testament: metamellomai (G3338).  It is the word used in Matthew 27:3 where Judas “repented” and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.  It is a word that expresses “a desire that an action might be undone, express regrets, or even remorse, but does not imply an effective change of heart”2.

I am careful whenever I find someone using the word repentance.  It’s critical to understand what is being said.  Is repentance being used to mean “to be afflicted in mind”, “to be troubled for our former folly”…”a being displeased for what we have done”?3  Is repentance being used to mean performing penance over and over again?  If so, then it is not the same repentance used in accordance with the baptism of John.  The Greek word used there is metanoia (G3341) and “where there was a difference made (in meaning), metanoia was the better word, which does not properly signify the sorrow for having done amiss, but something that is nobler than it…metanoia and its verb refer to a true change of heart toward god.”4

I found an article online that said that baptism was used for ritual cleansing of Gentile proselytes and that John applied it to the Jews themselves: all needed to have a true heart change toward God.  No wonder that the Pharisees refused to step into the water! (See Mathew 3:5-9).  And, this is why I am convinced that Jesus never meant baptism when he spoke to Nicodemus about being born of water and spirit.  I doubt that it ever would have occurred to Nicodemus-religious leader and teacher of Israel-that he needed to have a change of heart toward God.  

I must also take into consideration the fact that Jesus could not have meant water baptism because John’s baptism was a forerunner to what did not yet exist.  Christian baptism is the physical demonstration of the identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and has a much deeper significance than the baptism of John (See Acts 18:24-26, 19:1-5).  I cannot agree with Dr. Vincent when he says “Jesus’ words included a prophetic reference to the complete ideal of Christian baptism”5.

Yet I do agree Jesus clearly expected Nicodemus to know what He meant.  Nicodemus’ place among the upper echelons of the Pharisees meant he could not be in ignorance of all that had happened in recent years.  Consider first the coming of the wise men as related in Chapter 2 of Matthew’s gospel.  Their appearance troubled Herod the king and all Jerusalem (verse 3) and Herod had to call the chief priests and scribes to him to inquire where the Christ was to be born (verse 4).  Here’s a thing that blows my mind: the priests and scribes are called into the presence of the king to answer the wise men, they quote the prophet Micah, and then what…go their way?  No one seemed the least bit curious.  Selah!  (pause, and calmly think of that!)  Then comes the devastating slaughter of the children in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16-18, Jeremiah 31: 15).  Then there is John the baptizer.  He quotes Isaiah and declares he is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23, Isaiah 40:3). 

I wonder if Jesus expected one so familiar with the prophets and not ignorant of what had been happening in the region, to recognize who he was meeting at night.  I wonder if that is what Jesus meant when he asked, “are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things?”  I wonder if when Jesus said “you must be born of water” he wasn’t thinking of His own words to Jeremiah when He called Himself the “fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13, 17: 13) and of his words to Ezekiel when He promised a new heart and His own Spirit. 

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13)

To be continued…

1.  Guralnik, David B. Editor in Chief, Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Cleveland * New York, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., 1976

2. New Koine Greek Textbook Series Supplements, 2nd Edition, Richard Chenevix Trench’s Synonyms, Repent, 2018, 145-146

3. New Koine Greek Textbook Series Supplements, 2nd Edition, Richard Chenevix Trench’s Synonyms, Repent, 2018, 145-146

4. New Koine Greek Textbook Series Supplements, 2nd Edition, Richard Chenevix Trench’s Synonyms, Repent, 2018, 145-146

5.  Vincent, Marvin R., D.D., Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament Volume II, Peabody, Massachusetts, Hendrickson Publishers, Gospel of John Chapter 3:5. Born of Water and the Spirit, Page 92

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The Grammar of Complexity

30 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by in Gospel and Letters of John, Studies

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In last week’s post I one, mentioned my study of John 3:5 was pointing me to Ezekiel chapter 36: 25-27 and two, I quoted the commentary for John 3:5 from The Jewish Study Bible.  I am currently doing a word study on Ezekiel 36.  I am taking notes and also noting ideas I hope to share in later posts.  For this week, I wish to address hendiadys. 

The last sentence of The Jewish Study Bible’s commentary on John 3:5 says “…the grammatical construction (hendiadys) indicates that “water“ is a descriptor of the Spirit, as in Ezekiel 36:25-27”1.  I had to look up hendiadys.  I shared a link to the definition in last week’s post but am including it here from dictionary.com:  hendiadys =  a figure in which a complex idea is expressed by two words connected by a copulative conjunction: “to look with eyes and envy” instead of “with envious eyes.”  That must mean then that being born of water and the spirit are one and the same thing and no inference to baptism can be made.   

And yet the commentary by Dr. Vincent states that “We are not to understand with Calvin, the Holy Spirit as the purifying water in the spiritual sense: ‘water which is the spirit’”2.  Dr. Vincent then goes on to make his case for water baptism, portions of which I’ve quoted before.  I cannot speak with any authority on the beliefs of Calvin.  I’ve got books on religion on my shelves which I’ve had time to do little more than peruse and thus know little more than the broad strokes of Calvin’s beliefs.  And so–for the sake of argument and this post, I set all these authorities aside and am supposing that being born of water does NOT mean water baptism and instead seek to know if the grammatical structure IS saying that born of water and the spirit expresses a single complex idea. 

Bear with me…

The commentary on John 3:5 in The Passion Translation says that the water in John 3:6 is “the water of the Word of God that cleanses and gives us life” and directs me to Ephesians 5: 25 and 26, James 1:18, and 1 Peter 1:23.  Ephesians 5:26 does indeed say “that He might sanctify and cleanse her (the Church) with the washing of water by the word.  James 1:18 says “Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures”. 

J. Preston Eby quotes 1 Peter 1:23 in his teaching on John 3:5:  “Scripture abounds in figures, and Jesus always spoke in symbolic terms.  When He said, “Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life in you,” He certainly was not advocating cannibalism!  He was using a natural figure to illustrate a spiritual truth.  So when He says one must be “born of water” do not understand water to mean what we are accustomed to think of as the natural water that men drink or wash in.  It is a figure of THE LIVING WORD OF GOD.  New birth ever, and only, is by the Word of God and by the Spirit of God.  These are the only two agents directly involved in the new birth throughout the scriptures.  “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (I Pet. 1:23).  Some have thought the water to mean baptism.  But there is no mention of baptism in chapter three of John, nor is baptism ever connected anywhere in the New Testament with the new birth. A man can no more be born again by coming up out of natural water than he can be born again by entering the second time into his mother’s womb.  Both are physical, natural, earthly, temporal and corruptible things.  They are not agents of the spiritual world at all.” The Kingdom of God-Part 6

In the first post of this series, I listed scriptures used for reference by Dr. Vincent; namely Psalms 51:2&7, Ezekiel 36:25, and Zechariah 13:14.  Zechariah 13:1 says, “In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.”  When I quoted this in the first post, I remembered the story of the woman at the well told in the 4th chapter of John’s Gospel where Jesus said to her, “If you had only known and had recognized God’s gift and Who this is saying to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him [instead] and He would have given you living water”. Jesus says in verse 14: “But the water that I will give him shall become a spring of water welling up (flowing, bubbling) [continually] within him unto (into, for) eternal life” and then in Chapter 7 verses 38 and 39: “’He who believes in Me [who cleaves to and trusts in and relies on Me] as the Scripture has said, From his innermost being shall flow [continuously] springs and rivers of living water’. But He was speaking here of the Spirit…” (Amplified)

Does being born of water mean being born of the living word of God? If so, are they separate but equal agents? Does born of water mean the living water that Jesus gives which is the spirit? Am I failing to grasp a concept which is, really, quite simple?

My confusion clears when I consider John 14:16 which says: “And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Comforter…”  The Greek word for another is this passage is allos (G243). Vine’s Expository Dictionary says there are two words for “another” in the Greek: allos and heteros.  “ALLOS and HETEROS have a difference in meaning, which despite a tendency to be lost, is to be observed in numerous passages.  Allos expresses a numerical difference and denotes another of the same sort: heteros expresses a qualitative difference and denotes another of a different sort.  Christ promised to send “another Comforter” (allos, another like Himself…)”5

Perhaps the grammatical structure of John 3:5 is expressing something that can that only be understood by the Spirit and that is the very being of God. Father, Son, Spirit: They are Three and They are One. Hendiadys.

To be continued… 

Some extra study links:

Living Water

  1. The Complete Jewish Study Bible, 2016, Peabody Massachusetts, Hendrickson Publishers Marketing LLC, Gospel of John, Commentary, 3:5, Page 1524
  2. Vincent, Marvin R., D.D., Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament Volume II, Peabody, Massachusetts, Hendrickson Publishers, Gospel of John, 5. Born of Water and the Spirit, Page 91
  3. https://www.godfire.net/eby/Kingdom6.html   
  4. Vincent, Marvin R., D.D., Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament Volume II, Peabody Massachusetts, Hendrickson Publishers, Gospel of John Chapter 3:5. Born of Water and the Spirit, Page 91
  5. Vine, W.E., Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1997, Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Another, Page 52

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