Once Born or Twice Born?
- davidwperk
- Aug 20, 2024
- 8 min read
Devotional Reflection, Tuesday, August 20. 2024
Proper 15, the week of the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. David W. Perkins, Th.D.
Key phrases for reflection from today’s Gospel reading:
39‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. 40Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
You will find the full text of today’s Gospel reading at the end of this reflection.
Daily Office Lectionary Readings (BCP, 981)
AM Psalm [120], 121, 122, 123; PM Psalm 124, 125, 126, [127]
Judges 18:1-15; Acts 8:1-13; John 5:30-47
Today we celebrate the Feast of Bernard of Clairvaux. (See below.)
David's Reflections
I've often joked about the way some people bear witness to their faith. Having grown up as a Southern Baptist, I've heard the question often put this way, "Are you saved?" Or, “Have you been born again?” Or, “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?” One monastery abbot rebutted humorously that last question by saying, “No, I like to share him.”
People in our tradition often shrug their shoulders in response to such questions because we don't use that sort of language, and we associate it with a version of Christianity that includes tent revivals, altar calls, and hard-sell, pressure evangelism. The person asking such questions usually understands "saved" to mean "converted" or the initial act of trust in Jesus Christ, and for them that normally involves some sort of dramatic change that you can put on the calendar as having occurred on a certain day in remembered personal history.
John's Gospel actually does use the term "saved" several times. Today's Gospel has Jesus saying, "I say these things so that you may be saved." (v. 34). In John 3:17, the narrator of the Gospel says, "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." John 10:9 quotes Jesus referring to himself as the gate of the sheepfold; there, Jesus says, "I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture." John 12:47 quotes Jesus as saying, "I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world."
The writer of this Gospel is no sawdust trail preacher or hard-sell evangelist. This is Jesus, as quoted by the Fourth Evangelist. Obviously, these moderns who trouble us are drawing their language from biblical passages like these. But, their use of terms like "saved" veers off the path of the original texts. How can we know what the Fourth Evangelist understood Jesus to mean? What does it mean for us to "be saved" in the sense intended there?
In verse 40, Jesus says, "You refuse to come to me to have life." In verse 42, Jesus says, "You do not have the love of God in you." Ah, OK. There we have the essence of John's message. Jesus brings the rich, full eternal life and love of God into our experience because he is full of that very life and love. In John 14:6, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." In John 13:34, Jesus says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
To be saved, in John's understanding, simply means to have Jesus of Nazareth alive within us, sharing with us the full, rich, eternal life of God and bringing us more fully into the experience of God's love. And, we are "saved" because we exercise faith in Jesus, because we trust in and commit our lives to Christ, not because we have a certain dramatic experience. Deceptively simple, isn't it? But, an ultimately profound lifetime experience. This involves more than the initial act of trust, the initial conversion. Being "saved" in John's sense defines the entire life experience of a believing person. And, Paul can speak of us as “being saved,” salvation as an ongoing process that culminates in the resurrection. (1 Cor. 1:18).
Salvation might indeed have a dramatic beginning for an adult or older youth turning to God from a life marked by distance from God and self-absorbed living. Yet, for people like me who grew up in the church and for whom rebellion against God might involve a college freshman first semester without church, conversion happens very early in life and involves no rememberable drama, only a child opening their heart to God’s loving presence.
I recommend the excellent book by Hugh Kerr and John Mulder, Conversions (Eerdmans, 1983). The book is a series of autobiographical accounts of conversions by people like C. S. Lewis and Samuel Shoemaker (an Episcopal priest and collaborator in the writing of the Twelve Steps of AA). Consider this quote from their introduction.
Conversion is sometimes a dramatic and clearly identifiable experience, such as Paul's confrontation with Christ on the Damascus road. But it can also be a long and extended process, sometimes with no clear beginning and no clear end. In his classic discussion, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), William James described this as the difference between the ‘once-born’ and the ‘twice-born’ individual. The ‘once-born’ person is one of those fortunate people whose lives are not marked by radical breaks or deep crises; rather, they seem to go ‘from strength to strength,’ with confidence in God's sustaining love and trust in God's forgiveness and guidance. . . . they seem to be people who never remember a time when they were not Christians.
The ‘twice-born’ are those whose lives can be described as a series of signposts-of new directions taken, of ends and new beginnings, and specifically of a definite and certain experience of conversion at a particular moment. *
If you were to ask me when I “got saved” or “became a Christian,” I would answer, “I don’t know.” I was baptized as a Baptist kid at age nine but had sense Jesus’ loving presence in my life for some time before that. Whenever I first awakened to Jesus, it was a gradual step, making me a “once born Christian” in Jame’s terms.
The Anglican Bryan Green illustrated it this way. A once-born Christian is like someone who goes to bed with the blinds open. Gradually in the early morning the room fills with light but the sleeper does not know exactly when or how. A twice-born person is like someone who goes to bed with the blinds closed. In the morning they open them and the room suddenly fills with light in response to their conscious act of opening the blinds. +
+Bryan Green, The Practice of Evangelism, (Hodder & Stoughton, 1951), pp. 36-37.
*Kerr, Hugh and John Mulder, Conversions. (Eerdmans, 1983.), p. xiii.
Collect of the Day, Proper 15, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP, 233)
Today we celebrate the Feast of Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot, theologian, and poet (died 20 Aug 1153 CE).
Collect of the Feast of Bernard of Clairvaux
O God, by whose grace your servant Bernard of Clairvaux, kindled with the flame of your love, became a burning and a shining light in your church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
A Collect for Peace
Most holy God, the source of all good desires, all right judgments, and all just works: Give to us, your servants, that peace which the world cannot give, so that our minds may be fixed on the doing of your will, and that we, being delivered from the fear of all enemies, may live in peace and quietness; through the mercies of Christ Jesus our Savior. Amen. (BCP, 123)
For the Church
Give to your Church, O God,
a bold vision and a daring charity,
a refreshed wisdom and a courteous understanding,
that the eternal message of your Son
may be acclaimed as the good news of the age;
through him who makes all things new,
even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (1)
(1) This Franciscan-inspired prayer was offered by our chaplains during this meeting of the House of Bishops.. House of Bishops, ECUSA, March 2008
A Prayer for Light
Lighten our darkness, we beseech you, O Lord; and by your great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of your only Son, Jesus Christ, Amen. (BCP, 111)
A Collect for Mission
Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers which we offer before you for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. (BCP, 100)
Daily Office Gospel, John 5:30-47
30‘I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.
31 ‘If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. 32There is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that his testimony to me is true. 33You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. 34Not that I accept such human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. 35He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36But I have a testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. 37And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, 38and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent. 39‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. 40Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. 41I do not accept glory from human beings. 42But I know that you do not have the love of God in you. 43I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? 45Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?’
Daily Offices in the Book of Common Prayer
Morning Prayer, Rite 2, page 75, The Book of Common Prayer
Noonday Prayer, page 103, Book of Common Prayer
Order of Worship for Evening (Vespers), p 109, Book of Common Prayer
Evening Prayer, Rite 2, page 115, Book of Common Prayer
Compline (Night Prayer), page 127, Book of Common Prayer
Daily Devotionals, page 136, Book of Common Prayer
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