If Total Depravity is true, why did Christ need to hide his message in parables?

Not non sequitor at all. One's salvation is called a new birth. If one cannot resist his first birth, how is it that one thinks he can resist his second?

 

I asked first.

 

And what did Christ say when Nicodemus tried to compare the second birth to the first birth? Did Christ take the bait? After Nicodemus suggested such, ole Nick looked rather foolish.

 

He said that which is spirit is spirit. Can your spirit choose before it is born?

 

Not quite.
Here is the immediate conversation:

4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John 3:4-5)
--After Nicodemus's reference to physical birth, Christ told him that he must be born of water and of the Spirit, without which he could not enter into the Kingdom of God. Now Nicodemus had to figure out what Christ meant by that.

 

I would recommend that you invest in a good set of commentaries. You're not a good self teacher.

Christ plainly connected the ideas of natural and spiritual birth. One is a picture of the other. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

It isn't that the connection isn't plain and irrefutable, it's simply that you do not receive it. We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. And you cannot, unless the Spirit blows in like the wind and moves the curtains away from the windows and floods the room with light. Then you will not be able to deny it, and it would have had nothing to do with your work or will.

 

I have many sets of commentaries, probably more than you do. But I don't believe that Christ was referring to amniotic fluid, nor do I believe that Nicodemus would have that in mind when Jesus said being born of "water and of the spirit." I do not believe he is going back to a physical birth. You may have that interpretation; but I don't.

 

Where on God's green earth does this stuff come from?

Born of water and the Spirit simply means born of the Spirit. It's like saying Baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. But the fact remains, that he who is begotten is passive. He has no say or will in the matter, whether his birth is natural or spiritual.

 

You are taking an analogy too far in order to justify your false belief in Calvinism.

 

Go read some commentaries Aaron. That is your belief, and that one isn't even in the majority, not even among evangelicals. You cannot be dogmatic about an interpretation that most people will disagree with you on.

 

You expect me to adress every one of your incessant reasonings and objections against the way God does things (yea, that's exactly what it amounts to), but very little that I have posted on this thread that directly concerns the OP have you addressed.

 

Wrong. By Paul's own words this is not true:

11 For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man.
12 For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.
13 For ye have heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews` religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it:
14 and I advanced in the Jews` religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
15 But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother`s womb, and called me through his grace,
16 to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood: Gal 1

I reiterate from post 24:

AMEN OB !!

 

I have seen the unsaved husband of a believing wife sit in gospel preaching church Sunday after Sunday for a number of years, and sometimes with great conviction of sin, and still never get saved. The man resisted the conviction of the Holy Spirit. In God's timing he did not get saved. God sent him the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the gospel preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. One could see him struggle in his seat, so to speak. Still he refused. He did this not for a few Sundays but for a matter of years, until they moved from our area. I don't know if he ever got saved.

Saul could have repented and trusted Christ under the preaching of Peter on the day of Pentecost as 3,000 others. The very ones that nailed Christ to the cross were there. It was the Day of Pentecost, an important feast day in the Jewish calendar. Without a doubt he would have been there. God worked. The Holy Spirit worked. Why didn't Saul get saved there? He could have. He resisted.

Saul could have trusted Christ at the preaching of Stephen. He was holding his clothes, indicating that he was the one that was putting his stamp of approval on this entire event. The narrative tells how much conviction of sin there was. There was gnashing of teeth. They were cut to the heart. Still Saul did not get saved. Why did he resist the Holy Spirit then. It was as Stephen said: "You resist the Holy Spirit, even as your fathers do, so do you (resist the Holy Spirit). And Saul did.

And so God gave him yet another chance. He appeared to him, in a much bolder way to convince him beyond any shadow of a doubt. But God is not so merciful to every man. He is not so longsuffering with us all. Saul had no excuse. Like Pharaoh of old, he could have hardened his heart at that time as well, but he didn't this time. He submitted and addressed Christ as Lord. He still had the choice. It was his to make. He could have resisted once again. God wasn't going to force him. Remember: Ten plagues did not convince pharaoh.

 

Follow

In order for us to be born again, we need to first give up our old life and give it over to Jesus. It is a dead life, but it is the only life we know through the teaching of nature.

Jesus told the young rich ruler to give up his old life to give everything away and follow him, but he didn't he thought what he had was more important than eternal life.

 

Tom the drive-by poster here.

When Jesus spoke of being born of water and the spirit, I believe the water he was referring to was the word of God. This is consistent with Paul's writing in Eph 5:26 "cleansed with the washing of water by the word."

It is also consistent with John 15:3 "You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you."

The word is the instrument of our regeneration and the Spirit is the agent.

 

I think we are of the same mind on this one Tom. I remember a discussion on the new birth some time ago.

 

Did she hog tie him and drag him there each time? The fact alone that he came for all that time tells much. I'd put my money on him already have being born of the Spirit, but rejecting the commitment (or conversion) to the visible Church, or at least to that church. Nicodemus came to Christ by night (almost certainly for fear of the Jews); but the fact is that he came, he was attracted to this teacher that he perceived had come from God. The first words of Christ to him was, “If any one may not be born from above, he is not able to see the reign of God”. Nicodemus seen something in Christ; I believe Christ was subtlety telling him that it wasn't flesh and blood that had shown it to him. Christ told him, “he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God”. Yeah, I say Nicodemus was born from above already, he just didn't understand it yet.

It's as Paul has written, “....when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother`s womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me”.

All this is speculation on your's and mine part, but I say that God intended for Paul to experience that awful event of Stephen's stoning, and to witness with his own eyes this man of God praying for his killers' forgiveness while they were in the very act. Just as the Anabaptist Michael Sattler praised God with his tongue cut out all the way to the stake that he was burnt at; I have to believe that it had an enormous impact on those that witnessed it.

On a side note, concerning Stephens execution, the stones never killed Stephen, he fell asleep. God took him.

Yeah, on the day of Pentecost the Spirit convicted them alright:

“Ye men of Israel...Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you...ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay: whom God raised up”.

And those that had been made ready were “pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do?” I've no doubt that it was the Spirit that 'pricked their heart', just as it was the Spirit that opened Lydia's heart to hear the words of Paul.

 

I think we are. But for a long time I was taught that the water was the amniotic fluid. So, of water was natural birth, of Spirit was regeneration.

That sounded pretty good until somebody suggested that water was the word of God.