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This contradicts the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that you need water baptism to be united to God and to form his Church. As the human race is populated and created by birth, so the Church is created by baptising. The whole edifice of Roman Catholicism is built on this assumption. For example, if you are not baptised you are not a member of the Catholic Church, the one true Church, and you won't go to Heaven. The true Church is supposed to be infallible. If the Church is not properly baptised then it follows that the infallible decrees of bishops and popes are not infallible at all. It follows that the Church could be wrong about everything including what books should be in the Bible. It follows that we can laugh at Church teachings such as that contraception is always wrong and that Jesus is God and that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are his body and blood and so the whole thing collapses if it is wrong about baptism.
John 3:5. When having a chat with
Nicodemus, Jesus claimed that only a person born of water and the Holy Spirit
could go to Heaven, “Unless a man is born of water and [even] the Spirit, he
cannot [ever] enter the
The Roman Catholic Church used its supposed infallibility to decree that the meaning of this verse was that water baptism is necessary for salvation and forgives sins and unites one to God and the Church. This took place at the Council of Trent. The verse is capable of many different interpretations. The Church says that infallibility means that research has to be done to find the right one. But to find the right one the Church would need a testimony from the gospel author that it was the right one. This it has not got. The Church just has to weakly argue that tradition always said the verse meant what the Church says it means. But the gospel writer himself mentioned a false tradition that went out in the early Church and among the apostles so that gets us nowhere.
What we read in John 3:5 was said before Jesus died for our sins and rose again. If it was the law then that disciples of Jesus had to be baptised then we can take Jesus' meaning to be what the Way International would say it could be. One has to be born of water first to join Jesus' spiritual class ie baptised in water. In that class you get the gospel in its fulness. The gospels say that Jesus was keeping his most sacred teachings for closer disciples. The gospels indicate that there were indeed such classes. When you get the gospel and understand it, you can accept salvation and then be born of the Holy Spirit. Thus you see that the water is not saving anybody or forgiving anybody. It is what the baptised do afterwards that counts. The Roman Church admits that sacramental baptism wasn't practiced then. Jesus said he expected Nicodemus to understand. How could he then? The Catholic interpretation is the worst interpretation of them all. The Mormon interpretation that the words refer to water baptism, born of water, and confirmation, born of the Spirit, is a better one!
Catholic priests have said, you must be baptised and confirmed to enter the kingdom of God. This parallels Jesus's words. They certainly did not mean to imply that confirmation is as necessary to salvation as baptism for they believe that baptism alone can be enough.
There are other understandings of the verse.
The water may be a symbol of washing from sin
for the word Spirit may be really wind in the original Greek. The “Spirit” translation is just a guess
(page 135, All One Body – Why Don’t We Agree? Or read the notes in the New American Bible
for this passage. In its dictionary –
look up SPIRIT – it says that the word pneuma means
spirit and several other things.) Water
and wind are emblems of the Holy Spirit so Jesus may be saying that we should
be born of the Spirit and not of literal water plus the Spirit.
The water may be the water in the womb.
Jesus may be saying that unless we are born of this water and the Spirit
we cannot enter into the
The Christian book, When Critics Ask (page 406), tells us that
since Jesus when he said man must be born of water and the Spirit to be saved
he was answering Nicodemus who asked if born again meant having to go back to
your mother’s womb that Jesus by water was referring to the water of the womb. This is the right explanation and
understanding for the context determines the meaning. So Jesus meant that unless you are born of
the water inside your mother and then by the Holy Spirit you cannot be
saved. Some might say that is strange
because you don’t tell people they have to exist to be saved. You would if you wanted to poetically show
that spiritual rebirth is as necessary for salvation as physical birth. There is a lot of poetry in the passage. Jesus would have said, “Unless you are born
of baptism and the spirit,” if he had been thinking of baptism.
Let think more on this, “Unless a man is born of water and the spirit he
cannot enter the
Another excellent answer to the Catholic interpretation given in the same
book takes note of the fact that Jesus was instructing a Jew who was probably
intended to share the same instruction with other Jews. The born of water could then refer to the
baptism of John which was a baptism of repentance and not a sacrament and the born
of the Spirit could mean the baptism of the Holy Spirit which had to be
received by faith alone. So Jesus was
saying that unless you repent and accept God’s mercy by faith alone you will
not be saved. He was not saying
everybody has to be born of water and have John’s baptism but just fitting the
plan of salvation into a Jewish context.
In other words, he was asking that salvation by repentance and faith
must be worked into Jewish tradition if people want to do it that way and the
way to do the repentance is by being baptised in water in that case. In any case, it is clear that Jesus envisaged
not babies being baptised but adults. If
Jesus say recommended a prayer to say to get saved it would not matter if you
changed that prayer or prayed by intention and not using words. It is the same thing here, the method of
salvation does not change but the way you can exercise the method or express it
can and that is okay.
Jehovah of the Watch-Tower tells us that Jesus was referring to a baptism of repentance when he
said we have to be born of water and that we have to be born of the Spirit as
well (page 151). The book correctly
observes that there is no other water baptism but the baptism of repentance in
the Bible. There is no baptism of
regeneration. It is entirely possible
that Jesus went through a baptism in the
So we have to be born of water and the spirit. The water may be a symbol like the water
mentioned in Isaiah 12:3; 55:1 and Jeremiah 2:13. Jesus told Nicodemus that he should
understand these things being a teacher of the Old Testament which makes it
likely that he was annoyed at him for not understanding what the water symbol
stood for. This instruction is the key
to understanding. The Old Testament
never mentions salvation by literal water but only by symbolic water. It appears that had Jesus meant baptism, he
would have said that a man is born again by baptism and the Holy Spirit for
Nicodemus was a good Jewish scholar and Judaism did not practice baptism as an
official cleansing of sin so Nicodemus had no reason to assume that water had
to mean baptism and though Jesus took John’s baptism he never even baptised
himself which he would have done had Nicodemus understood him to mean
baptism. The apostles performed baptism
later so Nicodemus had no reason to think that Jesus meant baptism or was into
water baptism. And the gospel of John
says that John said he only baptised Jesus as a sign that he was the one they
were waiting for, the Lamb of God. Jesus
later said that he washed people with the word of God (John 15:3).
Paul wrote in the New Testament (1
Corinthians 12:13) that we all drank from the same Holy Spirit indicating that
water was an emblem of the Holy Spirit and was not literal water.
The primitive Christians understood the Holy Spirit to be a cleanser from sin and
predictably they took water as a symbol of the Spirit. Jesus could have meant unless
one is born of the cleansing and the Spirit, etc.
Water represented some kind of mystical experience and not water in the
writings of John according to his First Epistle.
The fact that the Old Testament says people can be saved without baptism
means nothing for things are different now that the saviour has come (Hebrews
9, 10). Even if the verse did say that
the birth of water was required for salvation it would not make it a sacrament
or a magic rite. God could make an
ordinary rite necessary for salvation.
The Catholic dogma of baptism is based on this text for nothing else in
the Bible can really justify it which makes it more certain that some
understanding that is opposed to the Catholic one is correct.
The Catholic doctrine contradicts Jesus’ teaching that God is love for it
claims that God holds babies and adults from him like filthy rags until the
priest casts a spell on them with the rite.
A truly perfect God would not be able to endure the wait. He would not put the needs of the spirit in
the hands of a man. He’s the one that
condemns procrastination.
The Seventh-day Adventists say that we are
born of the Spirit at conversion and born of water at baptism and deny that
Jesus is saying that the birth in water is the same as birth of the Spirit. Yes, there is no reason to assume the two are
identical. Jesus is promising that
baptism will be administered to the person who is really converted and is a
sign from him that the conversion is real.
Of course fakes can be baptised but the important thing is the assurance
of the Holy Spirit that Jesus agrees with the water baptism being
performed. That makes the
difference. So even if you accept that
the water is baptism you still are not obligated to follow the Catholic
interpretation. Jesus would have said,
“Unless a man be born of water which is the same as being born of the spirit he
cannot enter the
John 3:5. Jesus said, “Unless a
man is born of water and [even] the Spirit, he cannot [ever] enter the
There is no reason to translate Spirit here for the word in the original
also means wind. Water (Ezekiel
36:25-27) and wind are symbols for God's saving energy, the Holy Spirit, so
Jesus may be asserting that we need to be saved by the Holy Spirit. This verse is no foundation for the notion
that without water baptism there is no salvation.
Water and wind. Is this just an interpretation?
Even if it is, it still proves that the verse can’t definitely prove
baptismal salvation. But Jesus himself
implied this interpretation. First he
told Nicodemus that rebirth was necessary for salvation. Nick thought that he meant reincarnation so
Jesus set him straight saying one needs to be born of water and the
Spirit. Jesus then told Nick that he
should know that being a teacher of
An important clue regarding what Jesus meant is to be found when Jesus
told Nick that Nick should understand him for he was a teacher too. Jesus said that he was telling him of earthly
things and wondered how Nick could believe anything he would tell him of
heavenly things when he could not believe his utterances about earthly
things. So Jesus was saying this being
born of the Spirit was an earthly thing.
What Jesus meant was that Nick was unable to understand that the body is
born of water and the mind is born of Spirit for flesh is born of flesh and
spirit is born of spirit and that you need to be born again but by the power of
God because the spirit and the flesh are in opposition for they are too
different. So Jesus said that when a man
needs to be born of water and the spirit to enter the
If we are born again of the Spirit when we are baptised then why did
Jesus not say that we are born again of the Holy Spirit and of water and not
water and the Holy Spirit? The order is wrong
suggesting that water is a symbol not real water. Even if baptism in water could save you, it
would be because of the Holy Spirit. The
order is a clear hint that the water is not real water and that Jesus is saying
you have to be born of water and wind to be saved.