Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

In chapter three of John’s gospel we are presented with a term that has become a mantra for many Christians.

This is the Kingdom of God

Although this is the only gospel where Jesus makes this statement many denominations and fellowships live and die by it. You are not saved unless you are born again! I am a born again Christian! You must be baptised using a certain formulae or you cannot enter heaven!

All these statements are contentious and miss the point that Jesus was making and which is made elsewhere in other gospels. We must remember that the greatest interpreter of scripture is scripture itself. We are reminded in scripture that we should read ‘line upon line and precept upon precept’ (Isaiah 28:10), so that we do not take things out of context or skew their meaning.

Jesus taught his hearers that the kingdom of God is here. That is; the king had arrived announcing a new and dynamic kingdom where the principles it operates by are completely opposite to those of the kingdom of humanity. And so when Nicodemus approaches Jesus in secret and enquires if he could be part of his kingdom and still be a religious zealot, Jesus responded with a categorical NO! The kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom and can only be accessed by faith. However, for you to enter into this kingdom, you must believe in the king openly, renounce false religious practices and develop a new mindset (Romans 12:1&2).  

So today we are called to be ‘born again’ by believing in Jesus as the lord of lords and the king of kings; asking Jesus to baptise us in and with the Holy Spirit and living honestly and justly with our fellow men and women.

The only other person who uses the term is Peter in 1Peter 1:23 and as we have seen by embracing King Jesus his life was revolutionised.

Read John 3 and put on your spiritual 3D spectacles!