Forgiveness through Christ’s blood
One of the supreme and crucial teachings of the entire Christian doctrine is Christ’s condition for those desiring eternal life, which is to be born again. But John Piper invented a damnably heretical born again teaching.
The word “gospel” means good news. And biblical gospel refers to the good news according to the Holy Bible. If it is not scriptural, it is a counterfeit gospel. We need to shake that off at all costs. But what is this good news or biblical gospel? The short answer is Jesus Christ.
I found on Facebook zillions of sarcasm about the born-again experience. Someone said it was demonic. He cited the extra-biblical Pentecostal experience where the congregants fell to the floor and did crazy things. But it is not the born-again experience we are examining here.
The apostle Paul is one Bible character who testified that he was controlled by the love of Christ. What was Paul’s purpose in pointing up this experience of closeness with our Lord? “For the love of Christ controls us,” he said. (2 Cor. 5:14) What especial instance that had led the apostle to write his experience that the love Christ controls him?
The emphasis in this book is the born-again experience lived by true Christians. It is this experience of truth that Christ’s followers chose death over recantation. It explains the willingness of William Tyndale, the father of the English Bible, to be burned at the stake. The unbelievers and atheists see the second birth as a subject for amusement and mockery. But there’s no truth in their misjudgment of Christians for the reality they don’t have any understanding at all.
Our belief of a deathless life in heaven is the most remarkable Christian expectation and confidence in this life. Why, because “it has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Our Christian hope of immortality and a blissful life in heaven—in a new, incorruptible body (1 Cor. 15:51-54)—is not mere utopian or quixotic dream. It is a living hope that will always survive with the Holy Spirit watering such seed of anticipation of the forgiven soul. The Apostle Peter called this Christian hopefulness as the living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.