JD Martin Baptism interview

Hello and welcome to the Reform Rookie video podcast. My name is Anthony Uvinio and I'm your Reform Rookie host, bringing you all things reform today. The goal of this video podcast is to take the deep-rift truths of the reform tradition and break them down into smaller, more understandable pieces.

I want to help you see the beauty of these doctrines and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better. I want you to see how all of God's plan is interconnected. Understanding these truths will help us better know the God of scriptures and help us better appreciate the hope and the confidence we have in Jesus Christ.

And to that we say, soli deo gloria, to God alone be the glory. Today I have a special guest on the show by the name of J .D. Martin. Welcome, J .D. It's good to be on the show, brother. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule and your family to spend some time with us. J .D. recently did a four-hour panel discussion on baptism with four other guests who held wide-ranging views on that topic.

That's what precipitated my call to him to get him on the show. Now, J .D. holds a reformed Baptist view of baptism, which is also known as believer's baptism, which I hold to also. So I thought it would be good for him to come on the show and to discuss his view and my view and then the other views to see how these do or don't affect the gospel and then examine the scriptures to see what they have to say.

So today we're going to talk about baptism and the gospel. J .D., once again, welcome to the show. Could you tell the listeners where they can find your stuff online? Yeah, so they can find my stuff.

On YouTube primarily at Exploring Theology. I have a YouTube channel where I'm putting out content from there. They can also find me on Sermon Audio under J .D. Martin as well. I do some sermons for my church that I put on there as well as content from the YouTube channel, but primarily Exploring Theology on YouTube.

And if you just put my name J .D. Martin, I'm just Exploring Theology, but you put my name J .D. Martin as well, you can find some debates I've done on other people's.

Channels as well. Great. Yeah, no, you've done several debates. In fact, Malin just put up your cross-examination on the baptism panel discussion, which was great to a good refresher for me to watch.

I'm eager to get into our discussion, but before we do that, I always ask first-time guests to the show to share their testimony into Reformed Theology. So J .D., could you tell the listeners how it is you came to be Reformed?

J.D. Martin’s Testimony and Journey into Reformed Theology

Yeah, so I initially was not Reformed.

I was initially hostile to the concept. I remember just hearing the gospel, believing the gospel, and being saved. And then I started immediately getting into apologetics early on from the internet. And this is back in the days of chat room and all this other stuff.

And I remember, you know, the first time I ever encountered Reformed Theology was actually people warning me, be careful. There's these crazy heretics called Calvinists that are roaming the internet, and you need to stay away from them.

It was like, Jehovah Witnesses are bad, Mormons are bad, but Calvinists are real bad, stay away from them. So that was kind of the way it was presented to me. And so I remember talking to my dad and having a conversation about, you know, have you heard about these crazy Calvinists that are hiding on the internet trying to destroy souls?

And my dad said, yeah, and a matter of fact, I'm a Calvinist. And I remember being so disgusted. It was like him telling me he was a Jehovah Witness or something. I didn't even know what Calvinists believed at that point.

Okay. Or it was very ignorant of you. I barely understood what they believed, but I couldn't believe it. I'm like, and I said, I literally looked at him and said, I guess you're a heretic too. I think I actually said that to him in probably, hopefully it wasn't a disaffectful way.

But then he, and then we got into an argument and it really didn't go well. He tried to give some arguments and I just attacked and I was not having it. And then he said, well, what Bible do you have?

I said, well, I have a new King James. He said, no, no, no. What study Bible do you have? I said, well, this is a John MacArthur study Bible. And he said, well, did you know he was a Calvinist too? And I said, well, I guess he's a heretic too.

I guess so. But, and then he said, well, before you declare him on heretics and so forth, why don't you, why don't you just hear the other side? Why don't you just see this presented? And so then he gave me some tapes from John MacArthur and he was going through total depravity and unconditional, like some of them told me that it was just for grace, first minutes of saints.

And I remember listening to him and saying, well, I mean, certainly this man has a lot of scripture. This isn't just, he's not just coming up with this out of nowhere. He's at least seemingly bringing this out of the Bible.

And so at that point, I went and decided, you know what, let me read the matter. And I remember being very much struck by the gospel of John, some things in the gospel of John and then in Romans and some other places.

But it was particularly a passage in the gospel of John's, which says that no one comes to the light whose practice is evil. Okay. Everyone who practices light, everyone who practices evil hates the light and refuses to come to the light, lest their evil deeds be exposed.

And I remember thinking about that passage and thinking, well, well, wait a second. Everyone practices evil. If everyone who practices evil does not come to the light, then why did I come to the light?

Right. And then I, because of that, I ended up becoming convinced that this must be the doctrine of total depravity being expressed here. And then the solution must be unconditional election, irresistible grace, first minutes of the saints, the tulip.

And so that's really what brought me into reform theology. And then what's really kept me in many ways is the churches that I had gone to before that were non-Calvinistic were not very healthy, to be honest.

Now they were dispensationalist and fundamentalist and all that. So I don't want to say that every non-Calvinist church is unhealthy. That's not the case. However, it's been my experience that as I've gone to Calvinistic churches, these people are not leftist.

They are conservative, Bible-believing, just healthy Christians. The health of the church has been such a blessing to me. And I've been so blessed by being in reformed congregations. And so I would say for anybody, anybody thinking about reform theology, I would just say, come and see a least before you make a definite decision, at very least attend a church before you, because a lot of people will declare all Calvinists as evil, mean, self-righteous people.

And I would say, before you make that kind of assessment, go off the internet into an actual church where you can see, maybe are they self-righteous or are they some kind of people?

And my experience is they have been very godly. Amen. Amen. Thank you for that. So I was going to ask you, do you get opposition, but actually you are opposition because you're debating Calvinism frequently on the internet.

Do you ever feel like going back? In other words, did you ever question, you know, maybe these doctrines just aren't right. Maybe I really do have a free choice in the matter and I should go back that way.

Yeah. I don't think you're going to like.

My answer here. I think that we always need to ask the question, am I wrong? We cannot be afraid of that question. Am I wrong? And so I think that's something that's healthy that we always have to continue to do.

And as we see new data from new scriptures, we can look at it differently. We say, hmm, and then we can harmonize that into the whole. But sometimes if you do that enough, you have to step back and say, am I harmonizing all this in a whole or do I need a paradigm switch?

And so for me, I'm constantly in the point of re-examination. I don't want to follow a tradition. I want to follow the Bible. So for me, every time I pick up the Bible and I see a passage that challenges me, I go, hmm, how did that fit into the whole?

And so I just want to be biblical and say, what does the Bible say? And if a beloved tradition ends up not checking out, I don't want to hold on to it to the point where I had to twist scripture. Now what's beautiful is your tradition and the scripture mesh together and it's that perfect harmony.

So that's how I feel about that. I love that view. And that's the right view to have. I mean, if scripture is contradicting something that I hold dear, well, I'm the one who's in contradiction, not the scriptures, right?

Yeah. So again, the principle semper reformata, always be reforming, constantly looking at our beliefs, constantly looking at our lifestyle. You know, how can we better adapt to the scriptures? That's what it comes down to.

So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. And that's, that's a terrific testimony. I hope your dad's forgiven you.

He has, he has. He was, he was thrilled to see me switch sides. Amen. Amen. All right. So since.

Tonight's topic is baptism at the end of the gospel, can you give a succinct answer as to what.

What Baptism Is and Why It Does Not Save

Baptism is? What does it do? Yeah. So baptism is the first act of obedience, right? If you look at the new Testament, um, what you don't see is altar calls. Um, you just don't see it. You don't see people saying, come down here to the altar and say a prayer and repent of your sins.

Um, now maybe they did do that, but we certainly don't see any evidence that they did do that. What we do see is an ax to chat next to, or elsewhere. We see people say, believe in Jesus and be baptized.

So the very first act of obedience outside of believing in Jesus as a Christian is to be baptized. And so when I was doing that debate, what I wanted to express to people was, okay, what is the salvific status of an unbaptized believer?

Instead of this being some quaint or hypothetical question to me, this is fundamental. What is the status of a unbaptized believer? And this isn't some hypothetical, this is the position of every person who's correctly baptized, right?

Because we're like baptized believers. And maybe we want to talk about that as well. Um, is that person becoming saved and currently not saved or is that person saved? And I think that, um, if you have a robust understanding of the gospel, namely that we are saved by grace through faith, it doesn't say grace to faith through baptism.

That's not part of the soul. That's not part of the scripture. Ephesians two eight says you're saved by grace through faith. This is not of yourselves. It doesn't say you're saved by grace through faith plus baptism.

And this is not of yourselves, right? So, um, so the Bible is a hundred percent clear on this, that if you believe in Jesus, you will not perish, but have eternal life. Amen. Okay. So that means that before the person has gone into the waters of baptism, the salvific status of this person is that they are saved.

And so their act of obedience to Christ and obeying one of his sacraments, one of his ordinances is a good work. And that is a fruit of your salvation. Just like we have two ordinances, right? We're, we're, we're formed here and historic, uh, Protestant Christians.

There's only two ordinances or sacraments that God, that Christ has given his church baptism and the Lord's supper. Okay. You don't get saved by participating in the Lord's supper. That isn't actual obedience.

That is a good work. Right? So, so to what baptism does not save you. And Ephesians two eight is a great example. It says you're saved by grace through faith, not of yourselves. It's to get to God, not of good works, less any man should boast.

And we, a lot of people stopped there, but the very next passage says that we are created in Christ Jesus as these new creations for good works. Amen. And what's one of those good works be baptized. So I don't know that answer your question, but that's how I would see the, the, the relationship between baptism and salvation is the same relationship between.

Good works and salvation. Right? So what would you say salvation is? I know you just said,.

On a Lord Jesus Christ, but what is salvation? Yeah. So salvation. Um, so what I like to do is salvation is the gospel. Uh, what is the gospel? The gospel is good news, but before you can ever know the good news, you got to know the bad news.

And here's the bad news. Romans three, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You've lied. You're stolen. You committed adultery in your heart. You've coveted. You've broken God's commandments, right?

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving neighbor as yourself. You have broken both and a whole bunch of others. And so, um, Romans six says that the wages of sin is death. Okay.

So you're walking around as a center with condemnation and no matter good works can, can free you from that, those punishments, right? You're not in trouble because of your good works. You're in trouble because of your bad works.

So you could have done a thousand good works in your life. It's not going to matter because you are a center condemned to die, right? That is the bad news. The good news is that God so loved the world that he has provided a propitiation.

He's provided an appeasement. He's provided a way of salvation so that you don't have to die, that you don't have to be cast into hell, that you can be forgiven. And that's by Jesus Christ. So that's where John three 16 comes in for God.

So love the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. So if you find yourself believing, you will find yourself having eternal life and not perishing and all your sins will be wiped away and you'll be cleansed from any, everything that the law could never cleanse you from.

Only Christ's blood can cleanse.

You from your sins. Amen. And once you find yourself believing, you'll be baptizing, right?

And once you find yourself, okay. So once you find yourself believing in Christ, right? You have repented of your sins. That means you turned away from your sins and turned on the guy. You said, God, I'm giving you the keys to my life.

You're not cleaning yourself up. You're saying, God, I give you, I don't want to say give you permission, but I give myself over to you for you to clean me, cleanse me up. And now that the Lord is the Lord of my life, he tells me what to do.

What's the first thing he tells me to do? Be baptized, join the church. So, so we obey Christ in obedience to him and go into the waters of baptism. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Um,.

The Presbyterian, Lutheran, Church of Christ, and Dispensational Views

So now when you were in this panel view with the four of the views, we had a Presbyterian view, we had a dispensational view, we had a Lutheran view and a church of Christ view, correct? That's right.

Okay. So now the Presbyterian view, which was held by Greg Strawbridge,.

Which I understand that you have a debate coming up with. I don't know how you knew that, but yes,.

I do. I think I'm subscribed to your channel and a little blurb went out that that's happening. So I can't wait for that. And before we leave, just make sure you, you tell my listeners where we can watch that.

Cause that'll be, that'll be terrific. So from the Presbyterian, what is the Presbyterian.

View quickly? So the, you know, the, the Presbyterian view, if you want to be honest and Greg Strawbridge is kind of on the, I want to say the, the left or the right, however you want to look at it, he's on kind of the appendage of the view, but, um, and there's just a flexibility to view, but basically, so what they would disagree, what they all can agree on, and we disagree on is they believe that both believers and unbelievers should be baptized.

And that's radical. I mean, I hate to put it that way, but that's what you're saying, believers and unbelievers. Now don't put it that way. They say believers and their children, right? But they know that some of their children are unbelievers.

So they're saying believers and unbelievers should be baptized. Namely the believers of, uh, the children of believers should be baptized. So they held to pedo baptism, infant baptism, right? That's the first thing.

Uh, the second thing is most of them, Greg Strawbridge is kind of strange in this view, but most of them would say that it is a sign and a seal of, of the covenant, which that doesn't really necessarily disagree with it so much.

I'm not using that terms a lot, but, but basically it points to a future reality. It's just like circumcision. It points to covenant inclusion and it's forward pointing. And so somehow, um, giving the sign to an infant, they'll look back on it and see that the truths that were signified are now true of them, even though they weren't necessarily true to them at that time.

But the main difference is they want to baptize infants and we don't. And, um, that, that's kind of the main difference. And then they have some kind of nuance about, you know, exactly what baptism would do to an infant.

And it kind of gets where it gets a little strange and some people would try to make it mean more than others. Right. Okay.

Okay. Um, how would, is that similar to the Lutheran view? Okay. Yes. Similar to Lutheran.

View. And again, Greg, he seems to almost be Lutheran. If he looks into the debate, he's almost like, amen. And these guys and attacking me the whole time. It's unbelievable. Um, but, but, uh, historically though, and he's, again, he's seems to be a little bit of anomaly, uh, historically that the, the Presbyterians would disagree with the Lutherans.

They're both baptizing infants. Okay. And they're both obviously baptizing believer, but what they would distinguish is the Lutheran is saying, I know exactly what baptism does to an infant. It regenerates them.

Now the Presbyterians will get all the way up there almost, but they won't go that far, right? That they will not say that that baptism itself is regenerating the infant. And I also think, and someone might be correcting me, but I'm pretty sure the Lutheran also say that baptism regenerates the believer as well, but they just hold to baptism regeneration across the board.

Um, but they would, they would also do it with the, uh, with infants.

Okay. If you could just slow down one second and explain what that word regeneration means.

Regeneration, New Birth, and the Meaning of John 3

Yeah. So regeneration, we get this idea, um, from Jesus in John chapter three, there's elsewhere, but Jesus, um, talks about, you must be born again. Okay. So, um, we were originally, um, in an unfallen state in union with Adam and we'll get people confused.

Let's just think about Adam. Um, Adam started off as pure and holy and good. Then he fell into sin and he was corrupted just like creation, right? Creation out there is not what it ought to be. Creation used to be good.

There was no thorns, there was no thistles, there was no death, corruption, pain, destruction, any of that. Okay. But when Adam sinned, and you can see this in Romans chapter eight, that God or the creation was subjected to futility.

And part of that was also our natures. We used to be inclined to truth, now inclined to evil. We used to be inclined to peace and now inclined to violence. Okay. So we have corrupt natures. And so in this fallen, corrupt, sinful nature that we have, we cannot enter the kingdom of God because we are sinners.

And so what God does is he regenerates us and restores us, cleanses us from, um, the effects of, at least a lot of the effects of original sin, makes us new creation so that now we have new hearts where we now long for God.

And the imagery is he takes a heart of stone and makes a heart of flesh, right? So that we become these new people that now long after God and now have a heart for God. So regeneration is a, is a crucial step for salvation.

Titus, I think it's Titus three five that says that he saved us by the washing and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Right. The regeneration is absolutely crucial. It's, it's essentially, there's two stages.

Justification is God declaring you righteous. And same regeneration is God in some ways, starting to produce righteousness in you and cleansing you from your sin and making that new creation. We need regeneration, right?

So.

Regeneration basically means spiritually alive, whereas prior you were spiritually dead, dead, meaning separated from God. Now you're in union with God. Um, the spirit lives within you. You have a new heart, new, new desires.

You surrender to Jesus as Lord. You repent, which means you sever all ties to whatever else was Lord in your life. And now Jesus is your Lord and you're pursuing him. That's right. Yep. And what they want to tell us is that that happens in baptism.

Yes. Okay. I don't think so. I don't think so either. Now the, the, the, uh, the church of Christ view was similar to that. They would only baptize believers. That's right. So it's.

Kind of interesting, right? So if you look at the views, so the, the Lutheran view and the Presbyterian view agree that you should baptize infants. They, but the Presbyterian agrees with us that it does not regenerate, right?

The church of Christ agree with us that we should only baptize believers, but agree with the Lutherans that it does regenerate. So it's like, it's like.

Mixing and matching, right? So they would baptize believers, only believers, but believers are not regenerate until they're baptized. That's right. So baptism in their view would have to be part of the gospel.

It's not just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. It's believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized. If you're not baptized, that's the sin qua none. It's it's,.

It's, you're not saved until that. Yeah. I mean that you're right. I mean, it seems like a lot of people are kind of realizing that the challenges and the problems of that view. So, you know, they'll kind of say, well, normally they'll kind of kind of parse this out.

Well, normally you need to repent and be baptized, but you know, God can be merciful even if you don't, but yes, normally repent and be baptized just like, you know, normally they would, some people would even argue that you have to believe in the gospel, but you can make an exception for maybe people who are retarded or infants and so forth.

They're basically making an exception sometimes, but the gospel, like you pointed out is repent and be baptized. Right. Okay. Now the oddest view.

That I saw out of all five of them was the dispensational view. And that view was basically that you were. Baptism was only supposed to be performed on Jewish believers, not Gentiles.

Yes. I would say, yeah, the extreme hyper dispensations, it hurts my heart to even say that's a dispensation with you because I know so many dispensations that would scream and say, how dare you associate me with such a crazy view.

But yeah, the extreme dispensational view was argued that basically baptism is an old Testament slash very, very early church that ended with Peter essentially practice that was done away with by Paul.

And in watching the refresher thing.

That Marlon put out the other day on the gospel truth, he asked you a question, Kimmy, can you give me one verse where it says that we're supposed to baptize Gentiles after, after they believe. And I almost fell on the floor because it's like, that's Matthew 28, 19, going to all the world, right?

Baptizing them in the name of the father, son, Holy spirit. I will be with you till the end of the age. And the funny thing is the only verb in that phrase is make disciples. All of the others are participles.

So go baptize, teach. Those are subsequent to make disciples. So you would make disciples and because they're disciples, the first act of obedience would be.

To be baptized and then teach them. So it just makes sense. You make disciples, then you baptize them, then you teach them. That's exactly what's in the book of Acts, right? That is the order.

You would, you would think so. So, okay. So let's, why don't we hit John three and five, three verse five, because this is, this is one that everybody encounters. And I think there's a lot here that we can land clarity on, especially with you.

So John three, verse three says, Jesus answered Nicodemus truly are truly. I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, truly, truly. I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. So it's clear as day, JD, it says you need to be.

Born of water. Don't you understand that? Yes. It certainly says that one must be born of water, but to me, it's not clear as day that water refers to baptism. Just because you are baptized by water doesn't mean that every time that water is being brought up, that a baptism is occurring, right?

So to me that one has to make an argument that this water here actually refers to baptism instead of referring to something else. And so there's several different interpretations of this. Yes, it is true that many Christians, even early on Christians, some early Christians believe that here water referred to baptism.

And is that an impossible interpretation? No, it's not an impossible interpretation, but it's certainly not the only interpretation. I would say it's not even the best interpretation. So there seems to be two plausible views here.

The first plausible view is that this term water here and the spirit are, it's a hendiatus. It's really, it's two words expressing one idea. And the idea is that the spirit symbolically washes and renews, which is symbolized by water, our spirits.

And this is the washing and regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. And the thing that would point maybe that this is the right interpretation is that Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, an Old Testament believer and someone who had the Old Testament canon.

He didn't even have the New Testament. This is the first time I've even heard of this concept, at least from Jesus's mouth. And so what he seemed, and he says that, you know, Nicodemus saying, how can these things be?

I don't understand at all. And then Jesus said, well, you're the teacher of Israel. How do you not know these things? Right. And again, he's saying that you should already know these concepts. Well, where was he supposed to know these concepts at?

Well, a couple of places. One, there was always the idea of getting heart circumcision. So he should have known this concept of renewal should have been in his mind, but that's not necessarily the same.

It is pointing to the same thing without the same language, at least of being born again. But this language of the spirit and water shows up in Ezekiel. In Ezekiel, it talks about the spirit. And even it talks about in Isaiah that he's going to the thirsty ground is he's going to, you know, send water on a thirsty ground is going to grow and plant, you know, fruit and all that other stuff.

So this picture of the spirit and water and renewal and birth and all of that stuff is certainly Old Testament language. So it could be the simply that water here refers to the work of the spirit symbolically as what he does is causes you to grow new.

That's possible. I personally think that that's not the right interpretation. Rather, I think that what water he refers to is natural birth, because what he's saying is that he starts off in verse three.

Truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. Okay. And then Nicodemus says, you know, how is this possible? Can a man enter his mother's womb and be born again? Okay.

And in response to that, Jesus said, truly, truly, I said, I say to you, unless one is born of water, I think that corresponds to the mother's womb and the spirit. He cannot enter the kingdom of God. So you need to have not only a normal birth right in the womb, the water of the womb, but you also need a spiritual birth if you're into the kingdom of God.

And then in verse six, he said, that which is born of flesh is flesh. Well, that corresponds with being born of water, right? People in the flesh are born of water. That was born of flesh is flesh. And that which is born of the spirit is the spirit.

So he's contrasting two types of births in verse six, very clearly. And I'm suggesting he's also doing that in verse five. He's saying you need two types of birth. You need a fleshly birth and you also need a spiritual birth.

And again, that corresponds to chapter verse four right before where the guy says, how can we enter our mother's womb a second time? So this idea of mother's womb is already there in the context. This idea of fleshly birth is already there in the context.

We all know that within the mother's womb, there is water there. And that's why when the water breaks, the woman about to have birth, we say her water broke and we see water everywhere, right? I don't know if you, anyone else on this call, I'm sure has seen a baby come out.

I grabbed several of my babies, right? And they were full of water. They were wet. In fact, it's so interesting. Uh, this idea of being burned out, born out of water is there's, uh, women, many women are having a natural birth and those who are doing that kind of stuff have water births.

They actually have the baby in the water. The baby can come out, swim in the water and not suck any oxygen because they've been in water the whole time. They don't breathe. And it's until they hit the air that they, Oh, they start to breathe.

So to me is very well established. This idea that is very well could be that being born of water.

Refers to natural birth. Sure. That's certainly a, a, a very plausible, very plausible view. Um, there's, there's two other things that, that I want to point out in this passage, cause you get to verse 11 and it says truly, truly, truly, truly.

When Jesus says truly, it's like, listen up. Yep. Right. I say to you, we speak of what we know and be, we bear witness to what we have seen. So this, if he's, if Jesus is continuing to speak about the new birth, he's saying, we're going to, we, we know this could be him and the prophets or maybe a reference to the Trinity.

We speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen past tense. So this new birth is not something new or forthcoming. This is something that's happened already and has been happening. Right.

Paul points to Abraham being justified by faith. We know that you can only be just, you can only receive faith as per, you know, the, via the new covenant. So they were old Testament saints that were born of God's spirit.

This is very good. I like where you're going with this. Right. And, um, Nicodemus should have known this. He was the teacher of Israel. Um, you know, Romans one referring back to Habakkuk, the just shall live by faith.

Faith, you know, comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. So this is not something new or novel that Jesus is introducing or else he wouldn't chastise Nicodemus this way. That's right. And then if this is speaking about baptism and you need to be baptized, what's the culmination of the argument?

John three 16, whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

He doesn't even mention baptism. No, that's, that's really good. So let's look at that real quick. Um, so that's excellent because look at verse nine, nine says, Nicodemus said to him, how can these things be?

And that's what he says. You had to teach of Israel. You don't know these things. I said, I told you earthly things you do not believe. How then can I tell you heavenly things? Right. And he goes on. Uh, and then he, then he says, no one is in heaven, except he would descend from heaven, the son of man.

And then he points in verse 14 to the picture of the gospel and Moses lived up to the serpent in the wilderness. So must the son of man be like that. Whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Then John three 16.

And he's again, he's still answering the question. How can these things be? Right. But God still loved the word. He gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Perfect time. Right. To mention, Oh, by the way, you also need to be baptized. No mention. Right. It's either true or not true. If you believe, and that's, that's kind of where I built my whole case. It's either true that whoever believes in him should not perish, or whoever believes and his baptized.