Please, Genghis, no name calling. I'm not sure Lloren is a Reverend, but "your reverence" in referring to Lloren is name calling. Present your views. It is okay to disagree. But we don't stoop to name calling.
I was replying to Reverend Jim. -_-
I suppose I could have made that clearer; but after Lloren's post I was quoting Rev Jim.
The blood of Christ is the only thing which can save a person... if we do not agree on this, then reading the rest of what is below will not do any good.
Reverend, slogans clear up nothing. I still do not know what you mean by "the blood of Christ", nor any attributes you give to it. So I still do not know your position (although I can guess).
Here is how the Catholic Church defines grace, and the role grace plays in justification, and how justification is carried out:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church said:
1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God.
Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46
1997
Grace is a participation in the life of God....
1987
The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism:34
Romans 6:8-11 said:
But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.35
1988
Through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ's Passion by dying to sin, and in his Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body which is the Church, branches grafted onto the vine which is himself:36
St. Athanasius said:
[God] gave himself to us through his Spirit. By the participation of the Spirit, we become communicants in the divine nature. . . . For this reason, those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized.37
1989 The first work of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion, effecting justification in accordance with Jesus' proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."38 Moved by grace, man turns toward God and away from sin, thus accepting forgiveness and righteousness from on high.
"Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.39
Emphasis mine.
Can we agree on these definitions for grace and justification?
Baptism in water is nothing more than an outward ritual of what Christ has done on the inside of a person through the Holy Spirit. I do not need to read extra-Biblical texts in order to know this.
Oh, really?
So those who lived alongside the Apostles, alongside Jesus, alongside the earliest of the early Christians can offer you no practical input at all?
Hippolytus of Rome had this to say:"And they shall baptise the little children first. And if they can answer for themselves, let them answer. But if they cannot, let their parents answer or someone from their family."
Apostolic Tradition, 21 (c. A.D. 215).
How about Origen, who wrote in 244 in his homily on the Epistle to the Romans: "For this reason, moreover, the Church received from the apostles the tradition of baptizing infants too."
Justin Martyr wrote this in his First Apology sometime between 110 and 165: "And many, both men and women, who have been Christ's disciples from childhood, remain pure and at the age of sixty or seventy years..."
Justin says to Trypho, also, of Christ: “He stood in need of baptism, or of the descent of the Spirit like a dove; even as He submitted to be born and to be crucified, not because He needed such things, but because of the human race, which from Adam had fallen under the power of death and the guile of the serpent, and each one of which had committed personal transgression. For God, wishing both angels and men, who were endowed with freewill, and at their own disposal, to do whatever He had strengthened each to do, made them so, that if they chose the things acceptable to Himself, He would keep them free from death and from punishment; but that if they did evil, He would punish each as He sees fit.” (c. 155 AD)
Now, I understand you may not agree with me. But these are what the EARLY CHRISTIANS believed. This was before the Roman Empire accepted us in the 300s, so there's no taint from them.
Would you go so far as to defy what has been taught since the beginning?
In John 1: John the Baptist himself states it, and it is also referenced many times throughout the New Testament.
No, the Apostle doesn't say this. He does, however, say this:
[QUOTE KJV. John 1:12-13]...to them gave [H]e power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Which were born,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.[/QUOTE]
So, clearly, the blood of Christ is not the source of new birth?
Of course Christ's death and resurrection are the source of our birth to new life. But what, then, does this passage mean?
Just what it says. We are not made children of God, adopted sons, by our own will, nor by our desires and passions, nor by birth (unlike the Jewish covenant). We are made children of God by God.
That, therefore, would render being born again not as an intellectual assent to God, a "testimony", but an action in which GOD gives us the grace. That is what the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches, and many Protestant churches teaches baptism is - GOD's outpouring of grace to us. HIS action. Not ours. His.
I am not justifying baptism just here. But I am saying we are not justified by our own acceptance of Christ, and we receive no grace from that in and of itself.
Now, as for your section of John "I baptise with water, but He will baptise with the Holy Spirit", I assume? Do note that John is not God and Jesus is. So whose word is more authoritative? Jesus's, of course.
And what does Jesus say?
Mark 16:15-16: And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
I cannot say what the fate of an unbaptised person is. But I do know that Christ commanded us that they should believe AND be baptised. Their soul may not be in jeopardy if you have taught them to believe and have not baptised them. But since you do not follow Christ's commandment (as John also tells us to do), yours may be.
Matthew 28:18-20 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
I say this to you as someone who is willing to die for you: Christ commanded us to baptise in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, then to teach them. Follow His commandments. As a pastor, you have been charged, rightly or wrongly, with care for Christian children and adults. If you do not baptise them, you disobey the Lord's explicit commands to your own peril, if not theirs. Do you not trust Our Lord enough to believe that whatever baptism does, it is enough that you do it, and in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?
The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the greater baptism which only Jesus can bring a person and which can only come through the divine righteousness which He offers. Baptism itself does not save a soul, but it is an evidence and a proclamation of what Jesus has done for them.
But this is one and the same baptism. John described a baptism in the Holy Spirit, and Jesus also described a baptism, and only one: in water, in His, the Father's, and the Holy Ghost's name. In the New Testament, there is no other baptism than the one Jesus tells His disciples, and John's baptism of repentance.
To baptise meant in Greek and English to immerse, dip, or steep in water. So Jesus's baptism was, then and now, a baptism of water and of the Holy Spirit.
Before He died, it indeed was a baptism of repentance, a sign of faith because let us not forget that John was not just baptizing people, but he was preaching Jesus to them.
Christ's baptism and John's are different baptisms altogether. John did not baptise in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And Jesus commissioned baptism for the conversion of souls - or as some say, for the rebirth of souls.
Can Christ use other people? Absolutely! But He uses them to lead people to Himself -- Again it is all about Christ alone and His completed work, for there is none other by which anyone can be saved.
Exactly. But in point of fact,
He uses people and things other than Himself. Read that again.
He uses people and things other than Himself to lead us to our salvation.
God made the Earth and the world and all the things in the world are very good. And all of the goodness of the world is made to lead us back to Him.
That is the purpose of the sacrament of baptism, or any sacrament. To lead us back to God. For a sacrament makes something sacred. To make it sacred is to make it holy, as God is holy.