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Being of Two Minds

16 Monday Aug 2021

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I haven’t finished reading Hannah Whitall Smith’s The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.  It’s not a book I can race through and be done.  There are sentences that arrest me and I have to think on them for a time before I am ready to continue on.  One such is a quote Hannah Whitall Smith included from another book.  She doesn’t give the name of the author nor the book she got it from but writes; “Years ago I came across this sentence in an old book: ‘Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self-reflective acts of any kind, whether of self-congratulation or of self-despair.  Forget the things that are behind, the moment they are past, leaving them with God’.” 

She goes on to say; “This has been of unspeakable value to me.  When the temptation comes, as it mostly does to every worker after the performance of any service, to indulge in these reflections, either of one sort or the other, I turn from them at once and positively refuse to think about my work at all, leaving it with the Lord to overrule the mistakes, and to bless it as He chooses.”

This paragraph in particular struck me because I found I was indulging in reflections at the end of last week.  Hannah Whitall Smith says these reflections are of two sorts: “either the soul congratulates itself upon its success, and is lifted up; or it is distressed over its failure, and is utterly cast down.”  I tend toward the latter and such were my reflections.  I rehashed every word I’d said, pictured the faces of those I’d spoken to, and tried to decide how my words had been received, whether I’d said things I oughtn’t, and whether or not I’d been a worthy living epistle.  If such thoughts weren’t exhausting enough, I began to think about things other had said, sidelong glances I was sure I’d caught, became convinced I was being talked about behind my back, and was certain what was being said wasn’t positive.  Not that I’d heard anything myself, but I had a feeling…

Looking back, I am struck by how all this felt.  The more I dwelt on what were no doubt my own shortcomings and the little betrayals from so called friends, the smaller my world got.  I felt everything constricting around ME and my body reacted.  Muscles got taut, a band tightened around my head, and my mind was trapped on a hamster wheel of “what if they said this” and “you shouldn’t have said that” and ultimately, “why do you even bother at all?”

I thank God that there does come the “wait a minute” moment.  First, I had to take myself in hand regarding being talked about.  I did not know for certain that what I was thinking was even the truth.  My Mom tells a story of how she was once having similar thoughts and her mentor said to her that no one thought about her nearly as much as she thought about herself.  Harsh words, perhaps, but they stayed with Mom and I have found them of great use in my own dealings with other people.  Chances are I am not nearly as important to people as they are to themselves and the odds of them thinking about me enough to be talking about me are slim.  Even if my feeling was correct and I was being talked about, it isn’t any of my business.  Others do not decide my behavior: the leading of the Holy Spirit decides my behavior so, no matter what, I am to love others with the same love that is freely poured out into me, forgive as I am forgiven, and put everything in His hands. 

And so, this was not a pleasant evening for me but it was educational.  I was astonished at the difference in feeling when I am focused on myself as opposed to living in the flow of the Holy Spirit.  The first is, as I’ve shared, constrictive.  If I’d continued to wallow in it, my life would have become stagnant whereas life lived within the flow of the Spirit is expansive.  I noticed a change in my body the moment I turned my focus from myself and onto Jesus.  My posture improved, my chin lifted, and what was promising to be a raging headache disappeared.

Joyce Meyer has a book called The Battlefield of the Mind.  I haven’t read it but the title has always stuck with me.  I have been thinking of how a battle does take place in my mind.  Romans 8 is one of my favorite chapters in the New Testament.  I return to it over and over and always find something new there and ended up looking at last week’s experience in light of Romans 8.  I hardly know where to start quoting and where to finish because it all flows together so beautifully!  For the sake of space, I will quote verses 5-7: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.  For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”

Here is warfare indeed.  I have a carnal mind but I also have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).  I choose which mind I am going to have at any given time.  Will I set my mind on things of the flesh or will I set my mind on things above, not on things on the earth? Because I have been raised with Christ Himself, I will seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.  I will remind myself that I have died and my life is now hid with Christ in God.  (Colossians 3:1-3).  I will not worry about what others are thinking about me or what they may or may not be saying about me.  No, I will cast all my cares upon Him knowing that He cares for me (1 Peter 5:7) and not forgetting that He cares for them as well and desires that they too come to know the love of Christ.

I will choose to live a life of trust because, as Hannah Whitall Smith says, “having committed ourselves in our work to the Lord, we shall be satisfied to leave it to Him, and shall not think about ourselves in the matter at all.”  Lord hasten it!

Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from:

The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

All other quotes are from The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith, New Spire Edition published 2012 by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan, “Service”, Chapter 15, Pages 183-194.

Face Like Flint

09 Monday Aug 2021

Posted by in Personal Essays, Walking in the Way, Writing

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I read Andrew Murray’s 31 day devotional Abide In Christ throughout the month of July.  In it, Mr. Murray quotes from different books and, since Andrew Murry has long been a trusted teacher of mine; I figured I could trust his recommendations and acquired the books for myself.  One of their number is The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith.  What an excellent book!  It opens with a poem that put into words exactly how I’ve been feeling and each chapter has spoken to me in a specific way.  This week, I want to share a few things from Chapter 8 of this delightful book.  Chapter 8 is titled “Difficulties Concerning Guidance”.

The Gospel of John chapter 10 is devoted to Jesus being the Good Shepherd, calling His sheep by name, going before them, the sheep knowing His voice, and being guided by Him.  Verse 5 says, “Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him for they do not know the voice of strangers.”  This verse makes it clear there are multiple voices calling to the sheep.  All but one are the voices of strangers.  How do we sheep hear the One Voice, recognize it, and follow it above the din of all the others?  Fortunately, our religious systems present us with lists of Do’s and Don’ts and that makes it easy to discern the voices of strangers because they are the voices of the World and the voice of the Shepherd is found in these systems.  Right?  What if the voice you are hearing is saying something different than what you are hearing within your particular denomination?  Can you trust that voice and be guided by it?  Is it even possible the Voice of the Good Shepherd would say something different?

Hannah Whitall Smith opens Chapter 8 with, “You have now begun, dear reader, the life of faith.  You have given yourself to the Lord to be His wholly and altogether, and you are now entirely in His hands to be molded and fashioned according to His own divine purpose into a vessel unto His honor.  Your one most earnest desire it to follow Him whithersoever He may lead you, and to be very pliable in His hands; and you are trusting Him to ‘work in you to will and to do of his good pleasure.’ But you find a great difficulty here. You have not learned yet to know the voice of the Good Shepherd, and are therefore in great doubt and perplexity as to what really is His will concerning you.  Perhaps there are certain paths into which God seems to be calling you, of which your friends disapprove.  And these friends, it may be, are older than yourself in the Christian life, and seem to you also to be much farther advanced.  You can scarcely bear to differ from them or to distress them; and you feel also very diffident of yielding to any seeming impressions of duty of which they do not approve.”

This book was written in 1875 and what she wrote then is true today.  It’s been close to eighteen years now since The Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the Gospel, the heart of the Father, and the vast inheritance that is mine in Jesus Christ.  I was overjoyed when I first saw and went to share with my Christian friends who were not, to my surprise, overjoyed as well but rather concerned for me.  They had scriptures to back up their concern.  “Satan transforms himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14), and “many will fall away from the faith” (1 Timothy 4:1).  I did not think I was falling away but rather daring to believe what was written in the New Testament but there was also the possibility my friends were correct and I was not truly hearing the Good Shepherd.  What to do?  How to be sure?

The Holy Spirit brought to mind the fact that it is “by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established” (2 Corinthians 13:1, Deuteronomy 19:15).  I asked Him to confirm his word by at least three witnesses and He did so.  Hannah Whitall Smith says there are four ways in which He reveals His will to us: through the Scriptures, through providential circumstances, through the conviction of our own higher judgment, and through the inward impression of the Holy Spirit on our minds.

She also warns, “For we must never forget that ‘impressions’ can come from other sources as well as from the Holy Spirit.  The strong personalities of those around us are the source of a great many of our impressions.  Impressions also arise often from our wrong physical conditions, which color things far more than we dream.  And finally, impressions come from those spiritual enemies which seem to lie in wait for every traveler who seeks to enter the higher regions of the spiritual life.”

If we can’t trust our own impressions, what then?  Hannah Whitall Smith says her “rule for distinguishing the voice of God would bring to it the test of this harmony” for “in all true guidance these four voices necessarily harmonize for God cannot say in one voice that which He contradicts in another.”

Great care must be taken in this learning to know the voice of the Good Shepherd.  “It is not enough to have a ‘leading’; we must find out the source of that leading before we give ourselves up to follow it.  It is not enough, either, for the leading to be very ‘remarkable’ or the coincidences to be very striking , to stamp it as being surely from God…It is essential, therefore, that our ‘leadings’ should always be tested by the teachings of Scripture…as well as by our own spiritually enlightened judgment.”  

I wholeheartedly agree.  If the voice I am hearing is that of the Holy Spirit within me, it will not ever contradict Scripture.  It is the Logos and the Rhema: they cannot possible contradict each other.  Now, they might contradict how scripture has been interpreted throughout the centuries.  I never forget it is the Holy Spirit who is my teacher and who guides me into all truth.  I find study to be of incredible importance but ultimately it is He who interprets scripture for me and always, always, His voice and Scripture are in harmony.  Taking scripture as a whole is also important.  I have seen the dangers myself and Hannah Whitall Smith warns against taking isolated texts to sanction things to which the principals of Scripture are totally opposed.  “I believe all fanaticism comes in this way,” she says.

As to our spiritually enlightened judgment or “common sense”, what of this?  Aren’t we told to take care not to lean on our own understanding?  Absolutely, and Hannah Whitall Smith admonishes us to “use the interior ‘eyes of our understanding’ in our interior walk with God”.  We can trust Him to take care of even this.  The prayer in Ephesians 1:17-23 is essential to us as Believers.  And, we can trust that He who has begun a good work in us will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6) and that the precious blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ will “cleanse our consciences from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). 

Suppose then the Scriptures, the conviction of our higher judgment, and the inward impressions of the Holy Spirit on our minds are all in accord.  God has providentially arranged our circumstances so there is no hindrance to our following His voice and doing the work He has given us to do.  Suppose all our friends and perhaps even our families are still convinced the Voice is not the Good Shepherd at all?  Suppose our loved ones sadly shake their heads and solemnly wash their hands of us?  Suppose that as Hannah Whitall Smith writes, “His very love for you may perhaps lead you to run counter to the loving wishes of even your dearest friends.  You must learn, from Luke 14: 26-33, and similar passages, that in order to be a disciple and follower of our Lord, you may perhaps be called upon to forsake inwardly all that you have, even father or mother, or brother or sister, or husband or wife, or it may be your own life also.”

I don’t pretend such a choice is easy but, precious fellow Believer, does the Word of the Living God burn in the very marrow of your bones?  Have you found that treasure that is worth selling everything in order to possess?  Do you understand how so many have faced death with praises to God on their lips? Do you hear His voice and know there is no life worth living unless you follow Him?  Then, set your face as flint, fix your eyes on Jesus, and follow the Lamb, wherever He goes.  In the upper room, just before He faces betrayal, abonnement, and death, Jesus says, “Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (John 16:32). 

It is not possible that we can be alone.  Even if every friend we have and all of our family abandons us, the Father is with us.  Let us go forth in the surety that we are safe in the palm of His hand and that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ.  There is a song I used to sing eons ago in Vacation Bible School: “I have decided to follow Jesus.  No turning back, no turning back.  If you won’t go with me, still I will follow.  No turning back, no turning back.”

So be it.

I wrote a poem about my seeking the Lord. Read it here

Unless noted otherwise, scriptures are quoted from the New King James Version of the Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc. 1982

All quotes are taken from The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith, New Spire Edition published 2012 by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan, “Difficulties Concerning Guidance”, Chapter 8, Pages 87-100.

Leaving It All Behind

10 Monday May 2021

Posted by in Walking in the Way

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Over the last week, I had the opportunity to find and read a book I had never read before; a book by one of my favorite authors.  The book was exceptionally written and yet, when I closed the covers for the last time, I was left wondering if I’d enjoyed it.  There was a tone of misery throughout the entire work and I felt a bit down after I’d finished it.  This got me thinking of a previous post where I mentioned trying a book by my favorite author even though the title and description gave me qualms and where I wondered if what I was about to read meant I would have to stop reading this author. 

“Have to stop reading” sounds a bit legalistic now that I think about it and legalism was not at all what I meant to imply.  Life changes as I move forward in the Spirit. Books I used to read are no longer enjoyable.  Television shows I used to watch are no longer entertaining.  Jokes I used to laugh at are no longer funny.  These things are so not because I’m worried about GOD getting mad at me and judging me.  No, these things are so because I AM a new creation in Christ.  I have been born again by His Spirit.  The same mind that was in Christ Jesus is in me.  I have been and am still being transformed by the renewing of my mind.  This transformation has meant leaving behind many things.

I closed last week with the comment: “If our denominations, doctrines, creeds, and knowledge have become a substitute for this living in vital union with Jesus through his Spirit, let us turn from them.”  I want to take this week to expound on that and, while doing so, write more on the goodness of God.  My main scripture passage for this week is Romans 2 verse 4: “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”

What do you think of when you think of repentance?  Whatever the word originally meant, it has come to mean the doing of penance over and over.  If that is the definition we hold in our minds, then this verse also takes on a meaning far different than that intended by the Apostle Paul.  If the end result we Christians are looking for is doing penance over and over, then we need look no further than the religious institutions that define themselves by lists of rules and regulations.  We cannot help but fail if our focus is on not breaking rules and being sure we pray enough and read our bibles enough and attend enough meetings and memorize enough and serve enough.  The guilt that goes along with that sense of failure always ensures there are people flooding the altars on Sunday mornings, repenting, re-dedicating, seeking renewal and hoping enough anointing of the Lord had been received to last through another week.  At least, it always ensured I was doing and hoping so.

What freedom there is in the Spirit!  Some of the truest words ever written are 2 Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”  Liberty.  Freedom.  He does not call us to a life of doing penance over and over.  His goodness leads us to metanoia (G3341) which means “change of mind”1.  Malcolm Smith calls it a radical change of mind and indeed it is.  It is not a changing of our minds about Jesus, it is exchanging our minds for His.  “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2: 5).  “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).  As my mind is transformed, so is my entire inward life, and the outward life cannot help but change as well.

The goodness of God that leads us to this radical change of mind is not the agathosune (G19) I wrote about last week.  The Greek word isn’t chrestotes (G5544) either but a related word chrestos (G5543).  This word means “employed, useful, better, easy, good(-ness), gracious, kind”.  There is no harsh edge or admonishment associated with this word.  It is the word translated “easy” in Matthew 11:30: “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  He does not demand.  Rather, He lives in me and wroughts changes I’m not even aware of until the day comes when I realize I’ve lost the enjoyment I used to have in a thing and He bids me come away from it.  I don’t want to give the impression it’s always easy.  Sometimes it is.  Sometimes there is the realization that I don’t enjoy whatever the thing is anymore and it’s done.  Then there are the times when, even though my enjoyment has fled, I do want to keep reading, watching, or doing it.  These are times when there needs to be a subduing of my flesh but He gives the strength for that as well.  I promise this much is true: there is not one thing I have turned away from that I ultimately miss.  There is nothing I leave behind but He does not give me the greater portion of Himself.

I don’t have to work on myself and clean up my behavior before He’ll come live in me.  No, the good news of the gospel is that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is no great work I must do but I confess with my mouth the Lord Jesus, I believe in my heart God has raised Him from the dead, and I am saved (See Romans 10:9-10). Truly, He has put His spirit in me.  He causes me to walk in His statutes.  He enables me to keep His judgments and do them.  (See Ezekiel 36:27) I “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8) and His goodness leads me to metanoia. 

Amen

Unless notes otherwise, scriptures are quoted from the New King James Version of the Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc. 1982

  1.  Hastings, James, Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Fifth Printing-March 2001, Page 790

Other References:

Strong, James, LLD., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Identity

08 Monday Mar 2021

Posted by in Poetry, Writing

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I was thinking how often I say “I Am” and then say something negative about myself. By doing so, I am creating my own existence for “As a man (woman in this case) thinks in his (her) heart, so is he (she).” Proverbs 23:7. I am changing that habit and striving to say what My Heavenly Father says about me whenever the words “I Am” come out of my mouth. While trying to put my thoughts in order, I wrote the following poem:

Identity

A thousand voices call to me

Demanding that I hear

The words they speak into me

And I cannot but draw near-

I hear them clearly now I’m close

And their words make my heart sink

“We alone know what is true:

We will tell you what to think.”

A thousand voices seek for me

They call me left and right

Demanding I align with them

With what they say is right

I cannot escape from them

Though I’ve run so very far-

“You cannot know yourself,” they say

“We will show you who you are.”

One Voice cuts through all the noise

The pressures, the demands

Bringing silence, bringing peace

Assuring me He understands

The burdens I have carried

As I’ve struggled to define

Just who I am in this world-

His Voice says “You are mine.”

“I Am,” He says, “All that I Am,

I Am Always Ever Now

All that I Am is for you

Let me show you how

My life is lived inside of yours

I in you and you in Me

You dwell inside my light

I Am your identity.”

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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