What We Believe: Rebirth

4 August 2019

Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

You are probably familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath (anger, a need for vengeance), and laziness (sloth).  These are not so listed strictly because they are, in and of themselves, “deadly”, though they are.  Rather, what makes them so spiritually dangerous is they open the door to a much deeper level of depravity.  Just as “pride goes before destruction”, as it is written in the Proverbs (16:18), so do each of these sins lead us even deeper into a state of spiritual disrepair.  Unholy habits.

To counter these Deadly Sins are what are known as the Seven Virtues: humility (to counter pride), charity (to counter greed), chastity (to counter lust), gratitude (to counter gluttony), temperance (to counter wrath), and diligence (to counter laziness).  Where the Seven Deadly Sins open the door to further destruction, the Seven Virtues lead to sanctification, to perfection in faith and love.  Habits of holiness and the mark of the New Life.

More than just a point/counterpoint, however, what is also being displayed is the difference between one who is born of the flesh and continues to live according to the flesh,  and one who is reborn of the Spirit and strives to live according to the Spirit, learning to outgrow and overcome our natural impulses to make room for faithful and faith-filled responses.  This is on us because these Virtues do not come naturally or easily.  They are learned.  They are deliberate choices we must consciously make each day.

Just as St. Paul wrote to the Colossians to “get rid of all such things – anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language” (vs 8), we are reminded that in baptism and regeneration, we have “clothed ourselves with the new self, which is being renewed … according to the Image of the Creator” (vs 10).  Even as we are forgiven, we still must learn to let go of the shackles that hold us to our past, and we must continually choose to live into the Image in which we are created and justified … to become what The Lord intended when He breathed His Life into us.  It is a process rather than an event.

There are two points of Methodist doctrine that speak to rebirth and the regeneration of those who fall away.  First, of course, is the Methodist retention of a long-held practice in both the Anglican Church and the Roman Church: the baptism of infants.  Article VII of our Articles of Religion states: “Original sin (what we are born with) … is the corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil – and that continually”. 

More simply stated, we are born with near-animal instincts, impulses toward our own good, our own survival, our own pleasures.  This is what it means to be born of the flesh.  Our desires and demands inform our choices.  The first part of overcoming that impulse is, in our tradition, baptism.  The family of the child and the whole Church offer the child to The Lord in His Covenant.  As a Sacrament of the Church, we believe it is a Divine Act to which we respond and by which the one to be baptized is endowed with the Holy Spirit.  We do not have to teach our children to accept that remarkable Gift – we must teach them to live into it.

But, many say, how can it be if the child is not consciously aware?  Ah, but the parents are!  The Church is!  Above all, The Lord is!  And this is where the process begins – at the Beginning with the Mark of the New Covenant.  And because we believe baptism to be a Sacrament, a truly Sacred Moment wrought by The Father Himself, it is unnecessary to repeat.  Yet there are necessary measures to take as we continue to grow biologically, mentally, and emotionally as well as spiritually.

Article XII (Sin After Justification) states in part: “After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given and fall into sin, and [yet], by the grace of God, rise again and amend our lives.  Therefore they are to be condemned who say they can no more sin as long as they live here; or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent”.

One may ask how many times one can be “reborn”.  What does it say when Jesus teaches us we must forgive “seventy times seven”?  When it is considered that we are “born of a corrupt nature” and that nature can often overwhelm us, it is hoped – and it must be taught - that awareness plays a part; a conscious awareness of which part of our being is acting and reacting. 

For instance, one can be very religious, always aware of The Lord and one’s faith; but if we get punched, it is very, VERY likely we will punch back!  That is a part of our “corrupt nature” that impulsively reacts before we have had time to think.  It means we still have some work and some growing to do.

To pretend there is some magical moment by which we are completely transformed from flesh to Spirit without any effort on our part is to deny the reality of our base instinct to survive!  So to pretend we are no longer capable of sin after we are justified is just plain silly.  We may not want to commit sin, but heaven help us, to be perfected in faith and in love takes time.  And personal effort.  And taking personal responsibility for our actions and our words rather than to blame the devil. 

To be born again, truly born again of the Spirit, is a mystery.  Our Catholic friends embrace the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) in which one’s sins are verbalized and confronted – because the reality is still before us: we are humans; perfectly imperfect humans who do not always live up to our own expectations, let alone The Lord’s.

It does not make us “bad” and it does not condemn us for all eternity – but it does put us at risk and requires that we are first honest with ourselves before we can pretend to be honest with our Father who nevertheless “sees in secret” (Matthew 6:6).  And if we really are honest first with ourselves, we must acknowledge the impossibility of repenting of any sin we refuse to confront or even fail to name.

Our need to be “born again” is affirmed by Jesus Himself (John 3:3), and thus is an essential component of Christian doctrine; but the incomplete notion of “one and done” leaves us open to further degeneration when we fail to always “keep watch” – for as our Lord also affirmed, “The spirit is willing (this would be our good intentions), but the flesh is weak (the reality)” (Matthew 26:41).  In other words, old habits die hard.

So we must always “keep watch”.  We must always reach higher, and we must always continue to move forward; for the old self is in the past and renewal is ahead.  It is the Life in which we are created, the Life which is offered, the very Life we must lean into.  Amen.