“YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN”
What for years has given me deep concern is there a possibility of numerous church members, in our Reformed circles particularly, taking for granted that church membership is tantamount to being born again.
Our Lord Himself practically swears that we must be “born again” to enter heaven. John 3:3 reads “Verily, verily, [or truly, truly], except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Is this need ever emphasized in our pulpits, or in our Christian magazines? I personally have never as yet heard a sermon that was based on that all-important text, (outside of my own).
We do well to remember two factors in particular. One of them is the fact that our eternal welfare depends on whether, in our infancy, or later on, we actually were born again, or not. And the other one is the fact that the Savior directed this warning to a person who was as active a church member as perhaps there ever was. His name was Nicodemous, a Pharisee, and a member of the lofty church heirarchy, the “Sanhedrin.”
If we minimize the need of being born again, we fail to face the Scriptural truths that we all are conceived in sin, and born in iniquity (Ps.51:5), that by nature, we are all dead in trespasses and sins. (Eph. 2:1), that we must be saved by God’s grace, through faith, and that church membership, alone and by itself, has no significance.
For these reasons, we must “examine ourselves.” God’s Word warns that many shall think to enter, but not be able (Matt. 7:23). Do we differ from the unchurched as light differs from darkness, as God demands? Do they even hate us for being different, as Christ and His apostles were hated? Has the Lord been given the place in our lives that He demands, the first and the highest?
Should not also the perilousness of our times drive us into examining ourselves? Consider the fulfillment of prophecies regarding the Savior’s return. Whoever thinks that the multiplying homosexuality in our time and the slaughter of millions of unborn babies, as a still greater atrocity, is going to go unpunished much longer, must never have read history.
Rev, J.E. Brink 801 E. Centre Ave. Portage, MI 49081
PLEA FOR INSIDE EVANGELISM
In recent years CRC people have come to realize that the teaching published in 1892 in the book E VOTO by A Kuiper is not founded on Scripture. He taught that children born of believing parents may be presumed to be saved.
The result of this misconception is that INSIDE EVANGELISM practiced by Paul and Peter is not followed by our churches today and as a result, church growth had been stymied. Their synagogue, the covenant people, alert them to the need for salvation. Theydid not assume that the circumcised of that day, and for us the children who were baptized as infants, were exempt from the gospel challenge.
At Pentecost Peter was addressing a covenant audience when he said: “Repent and be baptized eve:ry one of you in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38).
Jesus strongly emphasized this when He taught INSIDE EVANGELISM in John 3 with Nicodemus. This Pharisee was a covenant member in the church, and yet was told he had to be born again. Jesus did NOT presume he was already saved!
Another aspect of this Kuiper false teaching is that someone can be saved because of the parents’ faith. This is nowhere taught in the Bible. When Abraham was promised that God would be his God and the God of his children, this was not a current event but a future promise. A promise only fulfilled when the child placed his faith in Jesus later in life.
At the same time, we must agree that infants who die young will go to heaven because the Lord can create faith in that little one so he or she can believe in Jesus. We cannot project from this belief and say that ALL infants are saved who live to adulthood. John 3:16 teaches that a conscious belief is prerequisite for eternal life. Only an older person implied.
Biblical church growth starts with evangelism IN the church and then branches out to the environs near us.
Peter Sluis 27 Deerfield Rd. Wykoff, NJ. 07481
