“To be born again is to be baptized.”
The falseness of that statement has been proven hundreds of millions of times, by the unregenerate lives and deaths of those baptized as infants by the Catholic Church, or by other churches that practice infant baptism.
It also suffers from the problem predestinationists face - there are a small handful of verses that seem to support it, and hundreds that oppose it. To take a couple of verse and use those those twist the meaning of hundreds is backwards.
As Augustine taught, we are to use the obvious to clarify the confusing, not the confusing to mangle the obvious.
God told Ezekial, “24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” - Ez 36
Not a bad summary of the Gospel, and a passage that clearly links “clean water” with rebirth and the Holy Spirit. Since Jesus was teaching a man learned in the Old Testament about being born again by the gift of the Holy Spirit, interpreting what Jesus said in light of Ez 36 makes more sense than pretending the water of baptism causes one to be born again.
As Peter pointed out, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.”
It isn’t the physical washing that saves you, but the appeal to God. And what does “save” mean here? Does it mean justification, or sanctification?
Well, Peter, in the previous verse, refers to “the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.”
The water didn’t make Noah righteous. God warned Noah BECAUSE he was right with God already! But the water DID save them, by separating them from an evil world. It lifted them out of the evil world they were in, and brought them to a new world - sanctification.
The water of baptism doesn’t result in a new birth. It doesn’t result in a new creation. It doesn’t save a person from condemnation - Jesus said to Nic, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already”. But it DOES have a role to play in sanctification - separation from the evil world we were born in to - as Peter preached in Acts 2, “38And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
“Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
Once again, we see salvation used for more than one concept. Here Peter exhorts them to “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” Water baptism DOES have a role in that!
But being born again? That is belief. In a hundred verses.
“Not a single time is baptism by water — physical water — separated from the spiritual re-birth of a Christian.”
Really?
“12But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” - John 1
“4And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” - John 3
“10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”...13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” - John 4
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” - John 5
“26Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent....I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” - John 6
“37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” - John 7
Six of the first 7 chapters of John...would you like me to go on?
“If Jesus wanted to say Spirit, He would have said Spirit, He was not tongue-tied. He said, water and spirit, and when Peter was asked what to do, he also said, be baptised and you will get the Spirit.”
Jesus said water and spirit to a man who knew the scriptures...unlike most of us who take the Old Testament far too lightly. And his listener would have understood the “Rabbi” in that light. Context. Including the context of uncounted verses saying we are born again - justified - regenerated - saved (past tense) - by grace THRU FAITH.
Not water. And hundred of millions of baptized unregenerates - Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists and others - have PROVEN what is already clear in scripture.
It is not news to us on the baptismal regeneration side that some folks who have been baptized go on to live sinful lives.
Therefore what we are talking about must include a different idea of "regeneration."
the unregenerate lives and deaths of those baptized as infants
... or those baptized at any age who still fall pray to sin. Once you are born again, you can be dead again. No one is claiming that baptism alone ensures salvation in the end. It doesn't. It is a new birth; what one does with this new life is up to him. "There is a sin unto death" (1 John 5:16f).
It isn’t the physical washing that saves you
Who said it is? Both Ezekiel 36:24f and 1 Peter 3:21 (which I quoted to illustrate that very point that you are now making to contradict me!), and the close connection between baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost so clear from the Acts, indeed, explain the Catholic teaching, that water of baptism is an external sign of the grace conferred by the sacrament. If water is unavailable, baptism still happens, the baptism of martyrdom or the baptism of desire (see the Good Thief story, and also the fact that at least one catechumen of the Church, that is someone still preparing for baptism, was martyred and canonized saint).
The water of baptism doesn’t result in a new birth
You prove that by Acts 2:38? Good grief. The passage clearly teaches, by plain text, that the gift of the Holy Ghost is the result of baptism. And then faith comes with the Holy Ghost, called the giver of life for a reason.
Six of the first 7 chapters of John...would you like me to go on?
All you have shown is what no one disputes, that faith gives eternal life. But baptism is a necessary element of that faith (as are the good works). The living water promised the Samaritan woman, by the way, is a promise of baptism.
Jesus said water and spirit to a man who knew the scriptures
Yes. That is because baptismal water is indeed prefigured in the Jewish scriptures.