I love the fact that this conversation is taking place. I actually had a discussion with my pastor a week ago discussing with him whether or not I was born again in my baptism as a baby or later in life when I was 22 behind bars. We concluded that I was born again when I was baptized based on the Word of God. But I also have concluded that telling my conversion story as an adult actually does a lot of hindrance towards Christians who don’t have that real wild tale of their own, and so I am going to be much more cautious when I bring it out from now on.
So much good stuff to unpack-very helpful. As a former Baptist that came from that “I have decided…” testimonial framework, being now in the LCMS and seeing the beauty of God’s promises towards me is mind-blowing. As for dramatic stuff, I told our pastor recently that when he “announces” the forgiveness in absolution, knowing the Law / Gospel distinction makes me want to rejoice (somewhat dramatically)…it is truly dramatic that the absolution and the liturgy provides us all with the testimony we might feel we need to create, because it’s all about testifying about the Lord’s promises towards us.
I don't know how many times somebody has asked me if I was born again or when did I come to faith in Christ? My answer is always, "well I've always been a Christian." Or I would say, "I was baptized when I was a baby and I've always been a Christian" or I would say "I've been a believer as long as I can remember". None of these answers seem to ever satisfy these type of people. They're wanting to hear some miraculous time later in life. There's been times in my life where the light bulb went off on something and really made sense to me but I don't think it was a conversion. I think too many people take a isolated time where the holy Spirit illuminates something in their life and they label it as the time they were born again. Sometimes that could be true with adults that were never baptized. Thoughts?
As someone who grew up in Calvary Chapel circles, many pastors I've heard there taught that if you didn't have a specific, emotional, altar-call point in your life where you were born again, then that is cause to doubt your salvation. All of us teenagers in Calvary Chapel summer camps made it a point to remember this moment for our testimonies to tell others. The work of baptism was replaced with this experience since Calvary Chapel believes baptism is only a sign of what God had already done at that born-again altar call moment. We'd give the side-eye to any other Christian who thought baptism actually had any saving efficacy for these reasons, so your confusion is justified haha.
@David.1517 My trajectory went Roman Catholic (youth) -> atheist (20s) -> believing Baptist (late 20s - mid 30s) -> maybe a Lutheran or confessional Anglican in future? The problem with people thinking that you need a born again moment to be born again is real, for sure. IMO it comes from a mixture of simply not having been in your shoes with a lack of love in this regard, and a theology of faith as a free will choice or at least a decision as opposed to a gift from God. It gets to the point where you wonder if they would hear Jesus saying, "Whoever believes in me shall not perish, but have eternal life", and ask "What does that have to do with being born again?". The plus side for me with people asking that question is that I started to catalogue my life and gradually remembered loads of times as a child and teenager that God was pushing me towards faith, and several of the times when a penny dropped as an adult. Did my faith begin when I got an electric shock and saw God when I was little? Or when I was teenager and God rebuked my contempt towards my school chaplain and gave me intense love of others for a week? Or when I found I loved hearing the words of Christ when I tried going back to church? Or when I realised I wanted to choose to be Jesus' disciple all my life? Or when I found I wanted to actually share God's word with others? Or when I despaired due to my porn habit and fully believed that all my works by my own effort even with God as my helper were pointless? Meanwhile my sister had an intense born again experience but has since apostasised :( It made me realised that he's helped me ever since I was a tiny toddler, maybe even an infant. Sure, as I came to faith in a Baptist church I have reservations about infant baptism but I have no reservation about its objectivity (hence why I may end up a Lutheran), or faith being a gift from God, or faith being like a mustard seed and growing into a great big bush just like a seed actually does i.e. not overnight.
I sooner if this is sort of "child of the covenant" thing. I was raised Christian, I never had a falling away (sin yes but not rejection of the faith). I don't know that it has to be spectacular or emotional, especially if it was a natural outflow of how one was raised. John the Baptist recognized Jesus from the womb. I could be wrong though, I am not a pastor.
Pastor Bryan, you explained this excellently! I am so blessed to hear you speak God's truth. You are and have been my friend for a long time. So good to see and hear how God is using you. Keep up the good work my friend.
So I could actually tell someone, "I forgive you and God forgives you"? If so, this is a game changer. Have you ever had someone apologize to you, you forgive, them, then the other person says, "I don't know if God will ever forgive me?"
Liberating revelation overwhelming to this heart regarding giving the absolution to those who have sinned against us. Is this part of the answer? How is it, just on time delivery of the gospel? Thanks Be to God, who hears our prayers. Omnipresent, omnipotent. All time in His time. Awesome. Joy, joy, joy. Now to listen further after 8:14
Excellent talk. Thank you so much. I have always thought of those who demand a personal testimony they accept as "mormon-esque"...when did you get the burning in your bosom? Thank our Triune Creator God that He has done it.
The common denominator of personal testimony is that the testimony becomes a [usually dramatic] story about the teller. It leapfrogs over the salient fact that Christ died for ALL; His testimony of death for sinners is the most dramatic of all testimonies.
I would use Paul's conversion story to point out Law & Gospel distinction to those caught in the testimony/decisionism mode of thinking. Paul was born under the Law, tried to fulfill the Law in his own effort, had so much zeal for the Law that he outshone his peers, but that God in his grace had to knock him down and blind him to get through to him and show him the Light of the Gospel. That what he was trying to fufill (the Law) through his own efforts was garbage. All the Law could do was show him his sinfulness. It took the Light of the Gospel to show him the true path of salvation is through faith in the work of Christ, not his own works, and that his conversion occurred when he ceased from his own works (under the Law) and yielded to the work of the Spirit on his heart and life. My own testimony is that my "conversion" occurred fully when I realized that it's not my works that save but trust in the work of Jesus Christ alone. At that moment, I went from being a child under the tutorship of the Law to a son who is free and heir of all that the Father has for him.
If a layman can absolve like a pastor, can he bind, too? What if a pastor has bound someone, couldn't the bound one go immediately to his best friend to be loosed again? If anyone can loose, doesn't the binding key lose its meaning? Why do the Lutheran confessions speak that in a case of emergency even a layman absolves? It doesn't sound like laymen are doing it whenever.
I am interested in entering the ministry by way of the current SMP program. My question is this: does that process make a valid pastor? Rather than go to seminary. Are there better ways to be a pastor (as in more valid)?
Interesting at 26 minutes in and understanding the similarities of being raised in a Lutheran Home with daily bible readings and the portals of prayer with regular church attendance. Church was basically an integral part of being as in living. We, think, and forget how often after hearing the word of God after supper and then going out into the school yard and having His words on our lips and examples of how to live out or faith. Our lives were always different from most of the neighbor children. A connection was always found in faith and righteousness in God's word. Honesty, confession of sin and forgiving one and other, we being role models in confession and sin to all of our peers. Just thoughts. Revisiting those times is really not necessary as these things are still going on, and I am closer to 70 than to childhood memories. Seldom, save on an older sister or an old Sunday school teacher, will gift us with our youthful practices of love and joy and vulnerability to the world and the joy of the word into this little heart of a child at this late time in life. Ok, back to listening. I say vulnerable because my older sister reminded me I have always been overcome by the Holy Spirit and gotten all excited. This child, in me! Let it shine. :) Having the word has always found vulnerability to any word and a good speaker and then with so many years of training in the word to discern can still get things wrong. So we confess. I have sinned. Boldness then has many faces. Humility righteousness, joy, sadness, grief, love as in agape love, impatience, talking to fast, can't sit still and have to do something. Intervention, and not understanding. Yup. Hmm!
Respectfully, not completely accurate 1 Corinthians 15:9. Agreed he was not promoting evangelism. Galatians 2 also has wisdom pertaining to to Paul's apostleship.
So does that mean that if I lust over a woman, I have to walk up to her and confess the sin I committed against and ask for forgiveness (I ask the same concerning if I disobey my parent); also what if she or my parents say no?
Pretty sure laity can baptize with water. If they're looking for forgiveness from God through Jesus why not take them to your local Pastor to be Baptized?
That's odd.. I heard that pastor Packer has huge forearms like Popeye and that's why he had to cut the sleeves off, because his arms wouldn't fit through. I guess you can't trust everything you hear in the youtube comments. Thanks for the bailiff story it was helpful. For testimonies, is it ok to think about being saved as a state of being? I think I heard that about baptism. That it's more like "I am baptized" rather than "I was baptized".. My testimony is that I am saved, because I am a believer?
This absolution business is such a big deal that I have trouble understanding how you can commune with pastors who believe they have the unique power to absolve sinners. If that's false, what more offensive claim is there? I mean...it's right at the core of the gospel... it's equal to reformation issues.
I work as a teacher at a schwarmerei school. They are big on "testifying". When I was asked to do this methbapticostal rite of passage I quoted the explanation to the second article. We cannot but "testify" to what we have seen and heard: absolution from the mouth of the pastor, the flesh and blood of God given as true food and food drink, the objective written promises of God's word. I am increasingly disgusted that these kids are encouraged to put more faith in their feelings about their sick cat than objective promises of the divine Logos which called the universe into existence. Frustrating!
Funny how if you look at the Lutheran service in the hymnal, you are two different wordings...the pastor says I forgive you of your sins, while the lay person is to say your sins are forgiven. It implies that the pastor has some sort of God power of if I forgive you, then it is the same as God forgiving you. Lay person does not have that power just just confirms that fact that God has forgiven you . The fault is in the Lutheran service as found in the hymnal
By virtue of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, a priest can absolve your sins. You are incorrect. The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter the "rock" of his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and instituted him shepherd of the whole flock.(Matt. 16:18-19. John 21:15-17) The office of binding and loosing, which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of apostles united to its head.. This pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the Church's very foundation and is continued by the Bishops under the primacy of the Pope. Do you read the Bible ? Christ gave his apostles the authority to forgive sins in his name "Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whose sins you retain, they are retained" this is Scriptural.
It is always God taking “the action” in our conversion…through the water and the word in our baptism.
Thank you for the "judge setting you free and the bailiff" illustration..
I love the fact that this conversation is taking place. I actually had a discussion with my pastor a week ago discussing with him whether or not I was born again in my baptism as a baby or later in life when I was 22 behind bars. We concluded that I was born again when I was baptized based on the Word of God. But I also have concluded that telling my conversion story as an adult actually does a lot of hindrance towards Christians who don’t have that real wild tale of their own, and so I am going to be much more cautious when I bring it out from now on.
So much good stuff to unpack-very helpful. As a former Baptist that came from that “I have decided…” testimonial framework, being now in the LCMS and seeing the beauty of God’s promises towards me is mind-blowing. As for dramatic stuff, I told our pastor recently that when he “announces” the forgiveness in absolution, knowing the Law / Gospel distinction makes me want to rejoice (somewhat dramatically)…it is truly dramatic that the absolution and the liturgy provides us all with the testimony we might feel we need to create, because it’s all about testifying about the Lord’s promises towards us.
I don't know how many times somebody has asked me if I was born again or when did I come to faith in Christ? My answer is always, "well I've always been a Christian." Or I would say, "I was baptized when I was a baby and I've always been a Christian" or I would say "I've been a believer as long as I can remember". None of these answers seem to ever satisfy these type of people. They're wanting to hear some miraculous time later in life. There's been times in my life where the light bulb went off on something and really made sense to me but I don't think it was a conversion. I think too many people take a isolated time where the holy Spirit illuminates something in their life and they label it as the time they were born again. Sometimes that could be true with adults that were never baptized. Thoughts?
I have the exact same experience.
As someone who grew up in Calvary Chapel circles, many pastors I've heard there taught that if you didn't have a specific, emotional, altar-call point in your life where you were born again, then that is cause to doubt your salvation. All of us teenagers in Calvary Chapel summer camps made it a point to remember this moment for our testimonies to tell others. The work of baptism was replaced with this experience since Calvary Chapel believes baptism is only a sign of what God had already done at that born-again altar call moment. We'd give the side-eye to any other Christian who thought baptism actually had any saving efficacy for these reasons, so your confusion is justified haha.
“I was saved 2000 years ago.”
“God granted me His grace through baptism when I was an infant.”
@David.1517 My trajectory went Roman Catholic (youth) -> atheist (20s) -> believing Baptist (late 20s - mid 30s) -> maybe a Lutheran or confessional Anglican in future?
The problem with people thinking that you need a born again moment to be born again is real, for sure. IMO it comes from a mixture of simply not having been in your shoes with a lack of love in this regard, and a theology of faith as a free will choice or at least a decision as opposed to a gift from God. It gets to the point where you wonder if they would hear Jesus saying, "Whoever believes in me shall not perish, but have eternal life", and ask "What does that have to do with being born again?".
The plus side for me with people asking that question is that I started to catalogue my life and gradually remembered loads of times as a child and teenager that God was pushing me towards faith, and several of the times when a penny dropped as an adult. Did my faith begin when I got an electric shock and saw God when I was little? Or when I was teenager and God rebuked my contempt towards my school chaplain and gave me intense love of others for a week? Or when I found I loved hearing the words of Christ when I tried going back to church? Or when I realised I wanted to choose to be Jesus' disciple all my life? Or when I found I wanted to actually share God's word with others? Or when I despaired due to my porn habit and fully believed that all my works by my own effort even with God as my helper were pointless?
Meanwhile my sister had an intense born again experience but has since apostasised :(
It made me realised that he's helped me ever since I was a tiny toddler, maybe even an infant. Sure, as I came to faith in a Baptist church I have reservations about infant baptism but I have no reservation about its objectivity (hence why I may end up a Lutheran), or faith being a gift from God, or faith being like a mustard seed and growing into a great big bush just like a seed actually does i.e. not overnight.
I sooner if this is sort of "child of the covenant" thing. I was raised Christian, I never had a falling away (sin yes but not rejection of the faith).
I don't know that it has to be spectacular or emotional, especially if it was a natural outflow of how one was raised. John the Baptist recognized Jesus from the womb. I could be wrong though, I am not a pastor.
Brings the scripture into my head that says… forgive so you can be forgiven. Thank you this clears things up for me
This is so good!!
Pastor Bryan, you explained this excellently! I am so blessed to hear you speak God's truth. You are and have been my friend for a long time. So good to see and hear how God is using you. Keep up the good work my friend.
So I could actually tell someone, "I forgive you and God forgives you"? If so, this is a game changer. Have you ever had someone apologize to you, you forgive, them, then the other person says, "I don't know if God will ever forgive me?"
Strikes me you couldn’t if they’re non Christian?
Thank you both for your time and sacrifice!
Liberating revelation overwhelming to this heart regarding giving the absolution to those who have sinned against us. Is this part of the answer? How is it, just on time delivery of the gospel? Thanks Be to God, who hears our prayers. Omnipresent, omnipotent. All time in His time. Awesome. Joy, joy, joy. Now to listen further after 8:14
This was great!
Excellent talk. Thank you so much.
I have always thought of those who demand a personal testimony they accept as "mormon-esque"...when did you get the burning in your bosom?
Thank our Triune Creator God that He has done it.
Not every Christian is going to have a road to Damascus experience
The common denominator of personal testimony is that the testimony becomes a [usually dramatic] story about the teller. It leapfrogs over the salient fact that Christ died for ALL; His testimony of death for sinners is the most dramatic of all testimonies.
That's too negative a view of testimony. When done rightly, explicitly centring God, it's great. Centring it on the person is a flaw, not a feature.
I would use Paul's conversion story to point out Law & Gospel distinction to those caught in the testimony/decisionism mode of thinking. Paul was born under the Law, tried to fulfill the Law in his own effort, had so much zeal for the Law that he outshone his peers, but that God in his grace had to knock him down and blind him to get through to him and show him the Light of the Gospel. That what he was trying to fufill (the Law) through his own efforts was garbage. All the Law could do was show him his sinfulness. It took the Light of the Gospel to show him the true path of salvation is through faith in the work of Christ, not his own works, and that his conversion occurred when he ceased from his own works (under the Law) and yielded to the work of the Spirit on his heart and life. My own testimony is that my "conversion" occurred fully when I realized that it's not my works that save but trust in the work of Jesus Christ alone. At that moment, I went from being a child under the tutorship of the Law to a son who is free and heir of all that the Father has for him.
How do I tell someone they sinned against me and how do I make myself not seem prideful so I don’t sin against them?
Yeah Wicking Vicar is a great company for clerics.
If a layman can absolve like a pastor, can he bind, too? What if a pastor has bound someone, couldn't the bound one go immediately to his best friend to be loosed again? If anyone can loose, doesn't the binding key lose its meaning?
Why do the Lutheran confessions speak that in a case of emergency even a layman absolves? It doesn't sound like laymen are doing it whenever.
Wondering if laity can order shirts from that company. For me. Our pastor has enough shirts, probably.
I am interested in entering the ministry by way of the current SMP program. My question is this: does that process make a valid pastor? Rather than go to seminary. Are there better ways to be a pastor (as in more valid)?
Interesting at 26 minutes in and understanding the similarities of being raised in a Lutheran Home with daily bible readings and the portals of prayer with regular church attendance. Church was basically an integral part of being as in living. We, think, and forget how often after hearing the word of God after supper and then going out into the school yard and having His words on our lips and examples of how to live out or faith. Our lives were always different from most of the neighbor children. A connection was always found in faith and righteousness in God's word. Honesty, confession of sin and forgiving one and other, we being role models in confession and sin to all of our peers. Just thoughts. Revisiting those times is really not necessary as these things are still going on, and I am closer to 70 than to childhood memories. Seldom, save on an older sister or an old Sunday school teacher, will gift us with our youthful practices of love and joy and vulnerability to the world and the joy of the word into this little heart of a child at this late time in life. Ok, back to listening. I say vulnerable because my older sister reminded me I have always been overcome by the Holy Spirit and gotten all excited. This child, in me! Let it shine. :) Having the word has always found vulnerability to any word and a good speaker and then with so many years of training in the word to discern can still get things wrong. So we confess. I have sinned. Boldness then has many faces. Humility righteousness, joy, sadness, grief, love as in agape love, impatience, talking to fast, can't sit still and have to do something. Intervention, and not understanding. Yup. Hmm!
One last question, what if the person is not christian (on the assumption that your answer to asking forgiveness for lust is yes)?
I don’t think Paul had a chance to deliberate. No decision there. Same with me. I heard the gospel and it worked faith in me.
Jesus
But, if anyone can stand up in church and pronounce absolution, where is the order in the church?
22:22 Paul gave his “testimony”, not as a method of evangelism, but to establish his credentials as an apostle.
Respectfully, not completely accurate 1 Corinthians 15:9. Agreed he was not promoting evangelism. Galatians 2 also has wisdom pertaining to to Paul's apostleship.
So does that mean that if I lust over a woman, I have to walk up to her and confess the sin I committed against and ask for forgiveness (I ask the same concerning if I disobey my parent); also what if she or my parents say no?
Can a Christian give absolution to a non-Christian (non-baptized) if they ask forgiveness from God through Christ?
Pretty sure laity can baptize with water. If they're looking for forgiveness from God through Jesus why not take them to your local Pastor to be Baptized?
That's odd.. I heard that pastor Packer has huge forearms like Popeye and that's why he had to cut the sleeves off, because his arms wouldn't fit through. I guess you can't trust everything you hear in the youtube comments.
Thanks for the bailiff story it was helpful. For testimonies, is it ok to think about being saved as a state of being? I think I heard that about baptism. That it's more like "I am baptized" rather than "I was baptized".. My testimony is that I am saved, because I am a believer?
The example cited (by Augustine?) about the Christian baptizing his catechumen so that he could receive absolution from him was a shipwreck situation.
This absolution business is such a big deal that I have trouble understanding how you can commune with pastors who believe they have the unique power to absolve sinners. If that's false, what more offensive claim is there? I mean...it's right at the core of the gospel... it's equal to reformation issues.
I work as a teacher at a schwarmerei school. They are big on "testifying". When I was asked to do this methbapticostal rite of passage I quoted the explanation to the second article. We cannot but "testify" to what we have seen and heard: absolution from the mouth of the pastor, the flesh and blood of God given as true food and food drink, the objective written promises of God's word.
I am increasingly disgusted that these kids are encouraged to put more faith in their feelings about their sick cat than objective promises of the divine Logos which called the universe into existence. Frustrating!
Funny how if you look at the Lutheran service in the hymnal, you are two different wordings...the pastor says I forgive you of your sins, while the lay person is to say your sins are forgiven.
It implies that the pastor has some sort of God power of if I forgive you, then it is the same as God forgiving you. Lay person does not have that power just just confirms that fact that God has forgiven you .
The fault is in the Lutheran service as found in the hymnal
By virtue of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, a priest can absolve your sins. You are incorrect. The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter the "rock" of his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and instituted him shepherd of the whole flock.(Matt. 16:18-19. John 21:15-17)
The office of binding and loosing, which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of apostles united to its head.. This pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the Church's very foundation and is continued by the Bishops under the primacy of the Pope.
Do you read the Bible ? Christ gave his apostles the authority to forgive sins in his name "Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whose sins you retain, they are retained" this is Scriptural.
Yea but they weren’t Roman Catholic. They had the gospel and instruction from the Lord therefore they had the keys.
@@christhayer5034 The Church in 33 AD is the catholic (universal) church
@@aussierob7177 agreed