Building on the Foundation

  Last time , we saw how God’s Word often compares His people to newborn babes and little children. When a person repents, gets baptized, and receives the Holy Spirit, then he or she also receives new life. That person becomes, as Peter described in 1 Pet. 2:2, a newborn babe consuming the milk — the most basic principles (Heb. 5:12-13) — of God’s Word, and spiritually growing thereby. And if one is a newborn babe, then one must also have been born again. You cannot be a newborn babe without being born! As we also saw, God’s Word nowhere compares His people to babes in the womb. No such analogy exists in Scripture. Furthermore, both the Greek gennao and the English “begotten” mostly refer to those already born. For example, Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of His Father, even though He has long since been born. To this, it could be added that gennao doesn’t mean “conceive”; there are other Greek words for that. Likewise, in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament, yalad (“...

  Have you ever tried to wrap your mind around the concept of eternity? That God has always existed and always will? Heb. 7:3 describes Melchizedek, the form of Jesus Christ who appeared to Abraham, this way: “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God….” For me personally, it’s mind-boggling to think that someone had no beginning, that He always existed. Though I know it’s true, I can’t wrap my brain around it. Everything we see came into being at some point, but God didn’t. He was always there. And can you imagine never growing older? Never getting tired, hungry, or thirsty? Or what about possessing all power and wisdom? Not being bound by any physical laws, but able to walk through walls, read everyone’s thoughts at once, hear everything anyone says anywhere in the world, and process it all instantly? The spiritual realm is hard for us human beings to comprehend. Though we’re aware of it, it’s...