Does being “born again” in John 3:3 indicate that Jesus taught reincarnation?
I’ve heard people quote Jesus here in John 3:3 to claim that Jesus taught that it was necessary to be reincarnated. Some people also quote Matthew 11:14, too. "And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come."
John 3:1 - 15
ESV - 1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.
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Asked August 15 2021
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Jack Gutknecht
Supporter
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Tim Maas
Supporter
Being born again is not at all related to reincarnation. The Bible says that everyone physically lives and dies only once (Hebrews 9:27-28). Also, the reference to Elijah pertains to the similarity in their prophetic missions between the Old Testament prophet Elijah and John the Baptist, who appeared hundreds of years later, in fulfillment of one of the last verses in the Old Testament (Malachi 4:5). John the Baptist was not an actual reincarnation of Elijah. The new birth of which Jesus was speaking in John 3:3 is not a physical process, but a spiritual one. It is the overriding (although not the elimination in this life) of the sinful nature that every human is born with (as a result of Adam's original disobedience of the one command that God had given him) by a new nature that is obtained by placing one's faith in Christ for the attainment of forgiveness of sin and the granting of eternal life through the indwelling of the believer by God the Holy Spirit. This faith and indwelling should lead to a process of each believer becoming progressively more like Christ (who was totally without sin) throughout the believer's life, culminating in the believer receiving the same eternal life in God's presence that Christ possesses as a result of His bodily resurrection from the dead following his crucifixion.
venkatesan Iyer
Supporter
It is different. The Bible talks about "born again only once.” The other view is "born again and again", taking birth and death again and again. The Bible talks about spiritual birth in the (only once) lifetime of a human between physical birth and physical death. The other view talks about repeated births and deaths (in human/non-human) forms.
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