Marvin Yoder asks," Are you saying that a person who prays a sinner's prayer is not truly born again?" I'm assuming that he's saying and never got baptized. Perhaps he's not saying that because normally baptism follows that. So, no, I'm assuming they are born again. They just got their theology backwards. One way I like to explain it, a big part of the problem is semantics. And that is what people are calling being born again, what they really mean is conversion, that they had a conversion experience.
They had a profound spiritual experience with Christ. They gave their life to Christ. All of that's good. But the term born again in the Scriptures and certainly is understood in the historic faith is referring to baptism, both of water and the Holy Spirit. So the conversion experience is not the new birth. It's the baptism in that. But it's not negating the conversion experience.
And if it's followed with baptism and you call conversion the new birth, okay, again, I think we have a gracious, flexible God who recognizes, you know, Christianity has been so divided, so much erroneous teaching. It is hard putting all the pieces together perfectly, you know, in our century. So no, I assume if that person got baptized, they're born again. Now, if they never got baptized, I would have to say no, they're not born again. They're converted. They need to get born again.
Unless there's a reason like the thief on the cross. I mean, again, the early church said that was a baptism of blood. I mean, that, you know, they recognized, again, a flexible God. If for some reason you couldn't get baptized, it wasn't your fault. God recognizes and honors that. Yeah, the book by Jack Cottrell in Baptism, he mentions that there's baptism by water. The early Christians had a few different perspectives, but it was always baptism.
It was either baptism by water, baptism by blood, if you were martyred, or baptism by yearning if you died in prison and couldn't get baptized. But they always use the term like baptism and associated it with that. Baptism. Yeah.
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