Featured 1 Peter 3:21 Is Not About Water Baptism

Constable does not say that water refers to amniotic fluid. In fact he makes great effort to show that it does not, pointing out that if that is the meaning it would be the only time in scripture that such meaning was conveyed.

There are two kinds of birth--physical and spiritual--the first and the second. This is explained in John 3:6. However, the use of "water and the spirit" in John 3:5 is referring only to the second birth. That is what Constable is saying.

 

I see I skimmed over that article way too fast. My bad.

I have heard of an interpretation similar to that. It is a translation that says "born of water even the Spirit," making the water symbolic of the Holy Spirit. In some cases the Greek word kai or "and" can be translated "even." Dr. Cassidy is a Greek scholar. He would know more about that than I would.

However these are your words concerning Constable:

Constable does not believe in any way that this passage refers to anything physical or water baptism. As he says,
born of water and of the Spirit must be synonymous to being born from above.
He does not believe in baptismal regeneration.

[FONT=&quot]John 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.[/FONT]
--It is evident that there are two births.

To tell you the truth, your last couple of posts have confused me. You seem to have contradicted yourself.

 

Like the "Spirit", "water", should be written with a capital letter, "Water" --- for the "Water of Life I Am", Jesus Christ.

For he who is not born of Jesus Christ the WORD of God, is not born of the Spirit the Power of God.

 

No, not everyone would agree that being born of water and the Spirit (Jn. 3;5) refers to the new birth. However, let us take it from the perspective of the audience it was spoken and written unto. Nicodemus was a "ruler" of the Jews or part of the Sanhedrin. Water was repeatedly used in the Temple for various ceremonial cleansings (cleansing of the lepers, etc.). The Priest's used the laver repititously. Water was a common theme for ceremonial cleansing in nearly all the temple rituals. The temple and all of its ordinances were established after a heavenly pattern. The temple with all of its ordinances were TYPES rather than the antitype. What was water in its use of ceremonial ordinances designed to be a type of?

We know that sacrifices were the original divine external ordinances used by God since the foundation of the world (Heb. 11:4). We know the language of redemption commonly characterized these sacrifices as they were offered "for sin" and "for cleansing" but the New Testament commentary on Old Testaments sacrifices deny that they ever could remove sin literally (Heb. 10:4) but were only "shadows" of the antitype (Heb. 10:1) that does remove sin literally (Heb. 10:5-18) once and for all.

Therefore, no Jew could deny that "water" was an external material element whereas the "Spirit" was not an external material element. What "water" was used as a type on the external part of the temple, its furniture, priests, cereminal defilements, the Spirit was the antitype that literally regenerated, cleansed through the Word of God the internal spiritual aspect of man.

The sacrifices were external types that ceremonial obtained remission of sins, but that was merely in "shadows" or type, as it is the Lord Jesus on the cross that literally obtained remission of sins.

If anyone could see the connection between water and the Spirit or sacrifices and the Messiah it should be a "ruler" of the Jew that was well versed in the Levitical ceremonial system practiced in the Temple.

However, we also realize the current Jewish cultural system in the day of Christ had perverted the truth of the gospel and turned the type into the antitype for obtaining justification and salvation (Acts 15). The Catholic church continues this perversion by the Jewish cultural traditions of confusing the type with the antitype.

In the very next chapter (Jn 4) Jesus clearly makes use of the typical design God had behind the use of "water" when he told the Samaritan woman that the "water" she was drawing from the well was symbolic of a spiritual well springing up with in her unto eternal life, and yet there was no immersion into the well demanded to obtain that reality. In John 13 where Jesus again uses water as an analogy of spiritual cleansing with the ceremonial backdrop of the Priests who had to bath before putting on their priestly garments and then after that merely wash their feet and hands, clearly an analogy to the new birth by the Spirit and then daily cleansing (hands, feet) by confessing their sins. The cleansing of the lepers in Luke 5:12-15 is another clear analogy that ceremonial cleansing by the preists did not literally remove any literal defilement as they were already literally cleansed from the defilement of leprosy by the spoken word of Christ. Rather, the ceremonial cleansing by the Priests through the ceremonial use of water was "for a testimony" of literal salvation from leprosy.

"Saved by Water" in the case of the ark is a "like" type of baptism, in that both were pictures of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which provides literal salvation (1 Pet. 3:18-21).

What Catholicism has done is taken the outward symbol and made it part of the literal antitype, thus repudiating the truth of the gospel.

John the Baptist insisted upon "fruit" of repentance before administering baptism (Mt. 3:6-8) demonstrating that the outward act of baptism did not effect or coincide with any inward grace or salvation but was conditioned upon repentance and faith in the gospel of Christ, and John did preach the gospel of Christ (Jn. 3:36; Acts 19:4).

So to be told that one must be born "of water and the Spirit" in the mind of Jew who was an expert in the Temple ordinances and use of water would make perfect sense in an analogous manner of "born of type and antitype" or "born of water EVEN the Spirit." This analogous use is clear in John 4 with the use of water coming from the well. However, Catholicism and the historical antecedents of the developmental stages of Catholicism (Ante-Nicene Fathers) committed the fundemental error of confusing the type with the antitype (Acts 15)and produced a false type of Christianity equal to the false type of Judaism in the time of Christ.

 

You mean people like Ananias in Acts 22:16? I don't know why Baptist have such a struggle with the concept of a sacrament. Their use and efficacy literally screams out from the pages of the New Testament but they seem to ignore them entirely, and when they have to confront them they contort their meaning to be something else altogether. I believe it is a modern day form of Gnosticism at work here.

 

Acts 22:16 is no more of a problem than

Lu 5:14 And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

This is included the ritual of the use of running water of two birds, followed by a bathing in water of the leper. However, it is clear that the water used in the ritual did not literally cleanse the man from his leprosy. He was literally cleansed from leprosy before he ever came to the priests, and before he was ever washed in water.

Paul repudiates sacramentalism completely in Romans 4:9-11 in regard to external rites.

The Jews had the same problem of confusing the type with the antitype when it came to sacrifices as does Catholicism when it comes to the Supper (Heb. 10:1-4).

Why is it to so hard to understand a "sign" or "type" or "shadow" and distinguish it from the literal??? It's significance is to provide an outward testimony - "for a testimony unto them."

 

The Roman Catholic Church foolishly and ignorantly call the Lord's Supper not only a sacrament but a sacrifice of Christ and thus reject the literal sacrifice of Christ on the cross and put themselves back under the Old Covenant description:

Heb. 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:....18 Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.


The popish priests can't distinguish between type and antitype, nor do they recognize there are "no more offerings for sins" other than the LITERAL sacrificial offering of Christ on the cross 2000 years ago, but go about pretending to offer up a sacrifice through the Lord's Supper for literal remssion of sins!