Regeneration Conversion—Reformation 33 spiritual man. He had no conception of a changed condition as the basis of genuine reformation. But Nicodemus was not alone in his misconception. After all these centuries, many students of the New Testament, accepting the Gospel of John as canonical and genuine, stumble over the same great truth and “pervert the right ways of the Lord.” Taking the fifth verse of John 3, they accept the doctrine of regeneration, but couple it with an external act without which, in their view, the regeneration is not and cannot be completed. In their rituals they distinctly declare that water baptism is essential to and is productive of the regeneration which Jesus declares must be from heaven. They stumble over, or pervert the words used, and make “bom of water” to be baptism, of which nothing is said in the verse or in the chapter, and which the whole tenor of Scripture denies. The lexicographers, the grammarians and evangelical the ologians are all pronounced against the interpretation put upon the words of Jesus when He said: “Except a man [any one] be born of water kai spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” The lexicographers tell us that the conjunction k a i (Greek) may have an epexegetical meaning and may be (as it frequently is) used to amplify what has gone before; that it may have the sense of “even,” or “namely.” And thus they justify the reading: “Except a man be bom of water, even [or namely] spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” The grammarians tell us the same thing, and innumerable in stances of such usage can be cited from both classic and New Testament Greek. The theologians are explicit in their denial that regeneration can be effected by baptism. They hold to a purely spiritual experience, either before baptism, or after it, and deny that the spiritual birth is effected by the water, no matter how applied. And yet some who take this position in discussions of the “new birth” fall away to the ritualistic idea when they come to treat of baptism, its significance and place in the Christian system. ( I t would be easy to justify all —
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