I have heard of and used the term born-again Christian for
many years, and have recently come to realize that it is an amazing misnomer to
describe A person who has transitioned from the kingdom of darkness into the
kingdom of God…
Whichever one turns it, to say that a person who is a child
of God is a born again Christian is (in my opinion) an incorrect statement.
What makes a Christian a Christian, is the fact that he has
been born into the kingdom of God, and so if he is dubbed as a Christian who is
“Born again” what has he been born again into? Yet another kingdom, or back
into the kingdom of the world.
Jesus never used this term “born again” as being descriptive
of a status, but rather as the mode of translation into the kingdom of God.
So being born again is the process by which one gets transitioned
into the kingdom of God by believing in the Son of God. Others may now
perceive this change and call such a person A Christian by virtue of
the fact that they now display Christ-like qualities, and other members
of the kingdom may recognize him as a believer… but for a Christian to
be born-again, to me it connotes that such a one has transitioned out of
the kingdom of God (God forbid!)
The road to eternity is a one-way street called the Word of
God, and The Spirit of God powers forward propulsion on it…
It is impossible for one to be powered
backward on the road to eternity, and that is the reason for the scripture
below:
4 For
it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once
enlightened—those who have experienced the good things of heaven and
shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come— 6 and
who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back
to repentance; by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing
him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame.
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And so I am going to make the bold
statement that for Christian to call himself a born again Christian is actually not a good thing!
Some may say that I’m getting caught up on semantics, but I submit that
semantics is what lends meaning to our words in our world…
se·man·tics
səˈmantiks/
noun
noun: semantics; noun: logical
semantics; noun: lexical semantics
·
The branch of
linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. There are a number of branches and
sub-branches of semantics, including formal semantics, which studies the
logical aspects of meaning, such as sense, reference, implication, and logical
form, lexical semantics, which studies word meanings and word relations,
and conceptual semantics, which studies the cognitive structure of
meaning.
·
The meaning of a
word, phrase, sentence, or text.
The term born again is not what I have a problem with; it is
the tagging on of the word Christian to it that I believe gives it an entirely
different and rather undesirable meaning…
So who am I if I am not a born again Christian? Simple – I am a child of God born into the
Kingdom of God by God’s Spirit and most importantly, I am a child of God Born
into the family of God by the one of God, propelled by the Power of God’s
Spirit - I am a believer in Christ Jesus, transformed and not conformed!
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