{"id":3754,"date":"2013-06-11T11:47:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T11:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomgilliam.wordpress.com\/?p=3754"},"modified":"2023-09-01T00:25:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-01T00:25:53","slug":"nicodemus-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/?p=3754","title":{"rendered":"Nicodemus’ Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let us muse again today from John 3:4 and the Gospel according to the new birth<\/em><\/strong>. We find in our text that Nicodemus has a dilemma<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0of thinking the new birth has a likeness or metaphor in his earthly birth. I fear that\u00a0there is a Gospel\u00a0being preached today making it sound like the birth is depended on the action of the earthly person. In explaining the metaphor\u00a0Edwin Palmer\u00a0said this: In birth the baby is completely helpless. He does not make himself. He is made. He is born. There is a complete passivity on the\u00a0baby’s part. Obviously a baby could not say to his parents before he was born, “I determined that I shall now be born”, and so it is in the case of the spiritual birth. That which is not yet born cannot say,\u00a0“I now will\u00a0to be born”. That which is dead spiritually cannot say, \u00a0“I will to be alive.”. And that which has not yet been created can never say, “I will to be created.” These are\u00a0manifested impossibilities. Rather, in the case of a baby, or creation yet to be, or a dead man being made alive,\u00a0spiritual birth, or the creation of life\u00a0comes\u00a0solely at the direction of the Holy Spirit. It is He who does the deciding and not man. Man is entirely passive, the Holy Spirit is entirely sovereign regulating exactly whom He wills to be saved. Consequently John could say that the children of God or born not of natural decent\u00a0nor of human decision or by the natural will of decision\u00a0but they are born of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let us muse again today from John 3:4 and the Gospel according to the new birth. We find in our text that Nicodemus has a dilemma\u00a0of thinking the new birth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-musings-from-the-motel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5413,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754\/revisions\/5413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgilliam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}