a blog for Ashfield Baptist Church
The Bible readings for Sunday 11 and Monday 12 November are -- 1 Samuel 3:1-5:12; Ps 62:1-8; Pro 13:23-25; Jn 3:1-21.
Labels: cross, faith, Holy Spirit, love, salvation
posted by Ps John @ 11:42 PM
1 Comments
Hi and welcome. Ashfield Baptist Church is a "caring community church sharing God's love". We are very diverse in our nationalities, backgrounds and ages, but united in our desire to grow spiritually and to reach out and help others. Our vision is "to be a body of Christ-like people living out the great commandment and the great commission in the Holy Spirit's power". This blog is mainly for people connected with Ashfield Baptist Church. It has been set up as an "info & chat space" as we start the "THRU IN 2" challenge. This is our program for reading the Bible right through during 2007 & 2008. Many are using the Every Day With Jesus Bible which also has daily devotions from Selwyn Hughes. As we read through the Bible together over these two years, we can use this blog to share insights, stories, reflections, questions etc. The goal is to grow spiritually together. So leave your comments. Together we can help each other grow. Blessings. Ps John. To leave a comment about the readings for a particular day, or to view the comments of others, just click on "comments" at the bottom of the post.
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This passage must be one of the best known and best loved in John's Gospel, and in the whole of Scripture. Perhaps partly as a result, there are a couple of hotly debated issues related to the passage.
Firstly, how are we to understand "water" in "born of water and the Spirit" (3:5)?
* Perhaps it stands for purification, with a backward look at John's baptism. (See 1:33, 2:6, 3:25.)
* Perhaps it realtes to procreation. Water can refer to amniotic fluid or even sperm. This seems to me to be the more likely and seems to better explain the contrast and the whole flow of the conversation about being born again.
* Perhaps it refers to Christian baptism. As a strong supporter of believers baptism by immersion, I'd like to think this is the meaning, but I doubt it. John may have been thinking of this when he wrote it, and his hearers may have thought of it as they heard it, but it is unlikely Jesus intended this with Nicodemus because as yet Christian baptism hadn't begun.
Secondly, where do Jesus' words finish and where do John's comments start? In my homegroup, some had Bibles with quotation marks right to the end of v21. There were even a couple of "red letter" Bibles with all these verses in red, indicating that they were the words of Jesus. But my RSV ended the quote at the end of v15.
In the first century, there were no punctuation devices to show when speech finished. Most agree Jesus said v15 because "Son of Man" is a term only occurring on the lips of Jesus in all 4 Gospels. I think that's where Jesus' speech ends. V16 seems to refer to the cross as past. Also after v15 there are a number of expressions which are more typically John's than Jesus' eg begotten, believe in the name, doing the truth.
Despite these somewhat technical issues, the main points about new life through belief in Christ remain crystal clear. No wonder this passage is a favourite!
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