Born from Above: Understanding our royal birth and the process of our transformation in Christ

By Avelino V. Pajo

The book talks about how God in Christ Jesus reaches out to humanity that they may have the opportunity to be freed from the power of sin and death, as well as escape God's wrath to come. He does this by sending His only begotten Son to die at the cross as a substitute for our redemption. It talks of our sinful condition in our old being and the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958128060

Book preview

Preface

This book is written for all those who believe and are in possession of God’s grace freely given through faith in Jesus Christ (Eph 2:8). We faith journey into the substance of the things we hope for in life and encounter the evidence of things unseen (Hebrews 11:1). Our faith journey needs to be understood in the context of the prophetic gospel message of God in Christ. The Greek word for gospel is euangelion, and it means good tidings or good news. It begins with hearing the word of God communicated through various means (i.e., friends, families, church, events, reading religious materials, media, and the Bible study we participated in the past). We are then channeled to a local church of a Christian congregation of any denomination or nondenominational line and goes through the basic orientation of the Christian faith and become a member of that local church by means of the sacrament of baptism. We faith journey in our physical life on earth after we believed what we heard (John 1:1–18) and have been made alive in God’s Spirit (John 3:5–6), coursing through the developmental process of our spiritual rebirth (2 Cor 5:17), known as our transformation from our old to our new being in Christ. The visible manifestation of our existence is seen whenever and wherever we are gathered together as God’s chosen ones, called the elect. In that gathering we worship, praise, and give thanks to God as members of the body of Jesus Christ, known in the historical time line as the universal church of Christ, that encompasses the denominational as well as the nondenominational lines. They are spread in the four corners of this world. Unfortunately, their division is a historical scandal.

To know God’s revelation to us in Jesus Christ is to come across the Christian Bible that contains the New Testament He made for His chosen ones. For the Christian Bible is the sole authority that true followers of Jesus Christ recognize in matters of faith and practice. When you see Bible texts and verses in close parentheses, they point to the knowledge where they are found in the Christian Bible. They are intended for the readers to locate in the Bible where the knowledge is seen and found. The vision of the Bible’s goal in our faith journey is a wide-range concern. The faith journey we make is to grow into our spiritual maturity in Christ when we were born again from above (John 3:5). It features our freedom from the power of sin and death that God gave us in Christ and reconciled us back to a broken relationship with Him that started back in the Garden of Eden, as told in the book of Genesis. The objective of our faith journey, on the other hand, is to manifest the truth and the reality of our God-given faith in Christ as a testimony. They are the concrete evidence manifested in our thoughts, words, and deeds that make our goal come true in life. Progress towards them helps measure our advancement to reaching the larger end of our goal. The objective of such a faith journey is to know and understand the process of our being that is going through transformation, from our old sinful condition to our new state of being made alive with Christ in His righteousness. The revelation and the manifestation of our image and likeness in God (Gen 1:26) and the maturity of our faith in Christ is the end goal of our faith journey. They will be discussed as we move on.

The content and perspective laid down in this book will directly benefit and bless all who have been faith journeying in God’s presence for many decades now. They are those coming from across the denominational and nondenominational lines alike. In particular, this book addresses those whom we consider spending the last bend in their earthly life or the last quarter of their dash, the birth-to-death faith-journey experience on earth. For the followers of Jesus Christ, going beyond the world of the unknown when our physical life ends are confronted with two implications. One is of great excitement for those who know that we are sojourners or travelers in this world and are citizens of heaven/kingdom of God/the universal church of Jesus Christ. We are coming home to where we belong. The last breath we inhale/exhale in our earthly life tells that God our Father has called us home or made us sleep awhile, waiting to rise from the dead on the judgment day to come (1 Thess 4:16). It does not mean our existence in life has ended but only the physical aspect of our being. Physical-death experience brings us to God’s promise of eternal life (John 3:16). Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s will receive and usher us to the place He reserved us in His heavenly mansions (Matt 25:21, John 14:1–3). There is no fear of death (Rom 8:1) when this happens but eager anticipation to be in God’s presence (Rom 8:38–39).

The other implication is going through fear and trembling as the dreaded event approaches. When we are not prepared to face our inevitable human destiny because of living in the flesh/old, sinful condition, we will be gripped by the feeling of wretchedness and condemnation. The good news is, such experience is part of understanding what it means to faith journey into our own wilderness where God our Father has placed at the cross of Christ the guilt of our sin, being baptized in Christ’s death (Rom 6:3), baptized with the Holy Spirit (John 1:33) and fire (Matt 3:11, Luke 3:16) when we faith journey into the prophetic gospel message of God in Christ. That is how Saul of Tarsus, or the apostle Paul, chief of all sinners (1 Tim 1:15) described himself in his epistle to the Romans (7:24–25). The author believes that we do not lose the salvation that God our Father gives in His only begotten Son. But here is a fair warning in the Bible that cannot just be ignored nor dismissed. According to this account, For if we sin willfully after we received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries (Heb 10:26–27). Compare this with 1 Cor 5:1–5, how do we handle the understanding of these matter?

This is one aspect to consider in the complexities we experience as we go through the process of our transformation, the possibility of losing one’s salvation or not. We need to dig deep to understand the meaning and interpretation of this text in its Bible context. Those going through the second implication need not have to fear nor tremble. We need to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the prophetic gospel message of God in Christ and be enlightened. Enlightenment is the work of the indwelling spirit of God in us. It will make us know what we have been freed from and reconciled to. If we see ourselves belonging to any one of the implications described, it tells us that we are next in line to go. We have to be ready and be prepared for this eventuality.

The author believes that he is just an instrument of God’s indwelling presence, commanded to write everything God taught him in his own wilderness of faith journey. The knowledge he brings to God’s people was made in the path God gave him in Christ Jesus, led by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence. God led him to that path so he may preach the hidden story of the prophetic gospel message of God in Christ. Everything contained in this book—from our ultimate theological and existential concerns, the problems and struggles we go through as we faith journey from our sinful/wilderness condition together with the experience of despair that goes with it, to our transformation into the image and likeness of God in us—are lessons to know, understand, and experience. All knowledge and insights we encounter as we faith journey in our earthly life are by products/testimony of such experiences as we course through along our path. Whatever theological problems we encounter are resolved already in a clear understanding of the prophetic gospel message of God our Father through faith in Jesus Christ. Above all, it is through the leading of the indwelling spirit of God in us that we encounter and experience our enlightenment, the biblical adage/saying, The Lord has spoken and so it shall come to pass. It is of utmost importance and of a profound interest then that we hear what the Lord has spoken and know what shall come to pass.

The author wishes to orient the readers to the color of the cover page of this book and describe what they mean.

The word born is in purple color, representing the nobility of our royal birth (John 1:12), made alive in God’s Spirit (John 3:5,14–15) and entered God’s new covenant in Christ (Jer 31:33–34, Matt 26:26–27) as God’s new creation (2 Cor 5:17). He gave us such new life that we may live in the perfect, righteous, and holy character of God’s adopted children. The transformation of our being, whose depth of knowledge and understanding the Bible talks about, must be explained in our time. Its Holy Scripture basis needs to be clearly understood in contrast with the experiences we are going through, that is, Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God (1 John 3:9). Another one is Hebrews 10:26–27, For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin but a fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. The two Bible references just quoted are tall order to journey into and confront us with its impossibility from happening. Why, because from time to time, sin manifests subtly in our thoughts and gives expression to our deeds. This seems a constant feature in our experience as long as we are in the flesh. How do we see ourselves in the midst of this conflicting condition then? If the Bible is God’s word revealed to us as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, then we live our life in deception