Website owner: James Miller
Enigmatic statements of Jesus
Jesus made a lot of enigmatic statements. One finds a lot of them especially in the gospel of John. For example:
John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
What did Jesus mean by being born again? What does being “born again” entail?
Jesus taught not just doing good deeds but real, actual spiritual transformation.
John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
What does believing in Jesus entail? At other times Jesus taught the importance of obedience, doing right, doing the things he taught. Does believing include obedience and living right?
John 4:13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
What is this water that Jesus spoke of, by drinking which, you will never thirst again?
John 6:47 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
What did he mean here?
Jesus taught the atonement of our sins through his death on the cross.
John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
John 10:9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
What did he mean?
After long experience with Christian denominations, preachers, and denominational dogma I am very untrusting and skeptical of all of them. I really don’t trust the mind of man too much. I don’t trust mankind too much. However, I do believe in the trustworthiness of the Bible and believe that Jesus was God come down to this world. I take everything Jesus said very seriously. For me it is all simply a question of exactly what he meant. I simply prefer to reflect over what he said and considering everything else he said, common sense, and what I have learned from my own experience of life come to my own opinion of just what he meant. I have come to distrust dogmatic systems. Different Christian denominations will interpret scripture differently. What life has taught me however is the importance of obedience to God, living an honest, moral, good life. That is a main theme of the Bible and I believe it to be a central teaching of Jesus. A main thrust of Jesus’ message was “repent of your sins and turn to God”.
4 Feb 2023
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