WildB
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posted
by Cornelius R. Stam
The Pauline revelation leads us into glorious truths respecting both our position and experience as believers. Indeed, the new birth itself, as it takes place in the believer today, is directly related to the divine baptism by which Christ and the believer are made one.
How was Christ made one with mankind? He was baptized into the human race. He did not merely come to dwell with men. He became man. How? By being born into the race. Was this by natural birth? No, by supernatural birth. He was begotten of the Holy Spirit. But His baptism into the human race did not end with His birth and life on earth. So fully did He become one with man, that He even died man's death on the accursed tree. He was baptized into death (Luke 12:50) and, as we now know, into our death.
And it is there, at the Cross, that we become one with Him. The moment one looks in faith to Calvary, acknowledging: "He is no sinner; I am the sinner. Christ is dying my death"; that moment he becomes one with Christ; baptized into the crucified, risen Lord Himself (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:26,27) not only positionally, in the reckonings of God, but exponentially, by the Spirit. And thus a new life is begotten.
By natural birth? No, by supernatural birth. Some hold that the Epistles of Paul do not teach the new birth, but this is an error. His familiar word teknon, generally translated simply "child" in our English Bibles, means literally, "born one." And he uses this word with regard to our spiritual relationship to God.
Furthermore, the Apostle teaches the very truth of the new birth in Tit. 3:5, where he says:
"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost."
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That is all.....
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