Skip to main content

Born Once or Twice

The Bible speaks of the natural man and the spiritual man. The natural man has been born once. The spiritual man has been born twice. The natural man has limitations that the spiritual man does not have. One of them is that he does not understand spiritual truths.

The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Years ago an agnostic English professor (he is now a Christian) told me that he would read a book recommended by me if I would read a book recommended by him. His book was Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw. Here is a quotation from the preface.

“Not long ago I asked a writer of distinguished intellectual competence whether he had made a study of the gospels since his childhood. His reply was that he had lately tried, but “found it all such nonsense that I could not stick it.”


About ten pages later Bernard Shaw says,

“Let us admit that without the proper clues the gospels are, to a modern educated person, nonsensical and incredible, whilst the apostles are unreadable.”

Bernard Shaw was only agreeing with the New Testament. The New Testament says that the natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit of God. Bernard Shaw said that he did not understand. He was identifying himself as a natural man. He thought that the shortcoming was in the New Testament when in reality the shortcoming was in him. He was brilliant, but this kind of understanding does not come with brains; it comes by the Holy Spirit. Bernard Shaw did not have the Holy Spirit. He was a natural man.

My recommendation to the English professor was Basic Christianity by John R.W. Stott.

You can contact me by calling (208) 883-0997 or by sending an email to ccm@moscow.com. Our web address is http://ccmbooks.org/.

(From Good News/Bad News)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Old

This is a post for those who are getting old or considering themselves old, from 65-100. Right now, I am 91.* I will be 92 in October. I have my own house, but I cannot live in it alone because of my physical inability to move around. One of my sons lives with me. All of us will have to make some adjustments. That includes money, relatives, your own ability and willpower to stay independent, etc. My advice is if physically and financially you can live independently, you should certainly do that. If you do, you will still need to have visits from your family frequently. You need your family. Even if you don’t need them to take care of you, you need them for the fellowship. The more fellowship you have, the longer you’ll live. If you can stay independent do it, but only if friends and relatives can see you often. In my case, I can’t walk, and I can’t do much physically. So, whether I like it or not, someone else has to get me up, get me showered, and get me dressed. I am blessed to have

Why Is Obedience So Hard?

There are several reasons why obedience seems hard. I will comment on some of them and then speak positively on how obedience is easy. We think: 1) Obedience is an infringement on freedom. Since we are free in Christ, and obedience is somehow contrary to that freedom, we conclude that obedience is not good. Yet we know it is good. Thus, we become confused about obedience and are not single-minded. 2) Obedience is works. We who have been justified by grace through faith are opposed to works; therefore, we are opposed to obedience. 3) We have tried to obey and have failed—frequently. Therefore, the only solution is to disobey and later confess to receive forgiveness. It is easier to be forgiven by grace than to obey by effort. 4) We confuse obedience to men with obedience to God. Although these are sometimes one and the same (see Romans 13, 1 Peter 2-3, Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 2), sometimes they are not the same (see Colossians 2:20-23, Mark 7, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, a

Three Types of People Christians Aren't Loving

There are three types of people in the world that Christians do not love with the Gospel . The first type are the people we witness to but do not love. The second type are the unbelievers that we do not witness to. The third are people we love but do not witness to. That sounds like doubletalk. Let’s change it. 1) We witness to people we love. 2) We love everybody and witness to them with love. As Christians, we have the fruit of the Spirit—love. We are commanded to love our neighbors and our enemies. The first thing is to have the love. The second is to choose to love our neighbors and enemies. Sometimes we can’t make the choice because we have lost the fruit of the Spirit, love. We lack the fruit of the Spirit of love because we are under the chastening of the Lord because of unconfessed sin. In order to get the love back, we must confess sin. Once we get the love back, we can choose to love our neighbors and enemies and preach the gospel to them.   Written December 22,