I have argued the last two weeks that there is significant Scriptural support for my claim that faith is not a sufficient condition for being born again, nor is it a necessary condition for being born again. So I’ve described what I don’t believe, although it is perhaps more interesting to talk about what I do believe. As always, my views about Christianity are formed by the New Testament writings themselves, and there is a really interesting unity shared by many New Testament writers: the analogy of people to trees, and our characters to fruit. This analogy is hammered home, first by Jesus, then James, John and finally Paul. With the exceptions of Peter and maybe Luke, that is a list of the most influential figures in Christianity.
Jesus talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:15-20. The context is that he is giving his listeners a way to distinguish between real followers of Jesus and ‘false prophets.’ In vv. 21-23, Jesus says specifically that you will NOT be able to recognize them because of what they believe. Instead, vv. 15-20, he insists that you will only be able to recognize them by their fruits – that is, by what kind of people they are. His reasoning is in the form of a rhetorical question: “Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?”
James clearly seconds this point, when he is insisting that faith is not sufficient for being born again: “Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? (Jms 3:12). This point is explored in more depth by Paul, with his listing of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22, 23). Which brings us back to where we started, in I John 4:7-8, where the unmistakable mark of one who has been born of the Spirit is the presence of agape love. How do you spot someone who has been born again - born of the Spirit of God? As I have tried to show from Scripture, you can’t always tell by what a person believes, but by someone’s true character – as Paul, John, James, and Jesus believe. This criterion cuts across time/space, national boundaries, ethnic divisions, and yes, even religious creeds (check out what Jesus has to say in John 10:16 and Matt 7:15-23).
We are by nature creatures of survival, and thus thoroughly selfish. Whether you want to believe Darwin’s story, or whether you prefer Genesis 3 – the conclusion is the same – by nature we worship ourselves. Paul describes a natural person as endowed with “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealously, fits of anger, rivalries, dissentions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal 5: 19-21). So it is completely unnatural to possess, for example, agape love. That is why Jesus is so confident that we can “recognize [true Christians] by their fruits” (Matt 7:16).
I have more to say about some potential misunderstandings of my position, and so next week I will finish this series by taking up those topics.
