Since the latest response from
@Dave bypasses the main lines of argument, I think his response can be answered briefly without reopening settled ground.
Spirit-baptism is not the new birth
Galatians 3:2-3, 27 speaks of covenantal incorporation, not rebirth. Paul's aorist "begun in the Spirit" (
enarchesthai) refers to their reception of spiritual gifts authenticating their justification by faith; it does not refer to regeneration.
1 The phrase "baptized into Christ" in verse 27 is objective covenantal union language, matching Romans 6:3-4 and Colossians 2:12; in every case the
eis construction denotes a transfer of
forensic solidarity, not the secret work of implanting
new life.
In 1 Corinthians 12:13, Paul describes ecclesial placement—"in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body"—where the emphasis falls on "one body," the visible covenant community. Regeneration is invisible and individual; Spirit-baptism is public and corporate. Conflating the two levels disregards Paul's covenantal ordering: faith appropriates Christ, Spirit-baptism seals that faith, and gifts follow (Eph 1:13-14).
And with 1 Peter 3:21 any lingering ambiguity is removed: "baptism … now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a good conscience." Peter guards against sacramental realism; the water is a sign whose saving efficacy lies in the believer's appeal to God for a cleansed conscience, itself the fruit of prior rebirth (1 Pet 1:3, 23). Far from equating baptism with regeneration, Peter clarifies that its power lies in what it signifies, not in what it is.
Condemnation lifted in the context of faith
Dave posits that the Father lifts condemnation antecedently, in order that the sinner may believe. But scripture reverses that order: "having been justified by faith, we have peace with God" (Rom 5:1). Justification follows faith. To place the lifting of condemnation
before faith is to grant covenant benefits to the unregenerate sinner while he is still outside Christ, violating John 3:18: "Whoever does not believe is condemned already." The proposal is therefore
ad hoc, unsupported by exegesis, and internally self-defeating—for if condemnation can be lifted without faith, why is faith required at all? Paul is clear: "There is no condemnation"—for whom? "For those in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1). Condemnation is lifted in the context of covenantal union, which presupposes faith.
Regeneration predates Pentecost
Deuteronomy 30:6 promises heart-circumcision "so that you will love the Lord your God," a grace already operative in the remnant (cf. Deut 29:4). The difference is the scale of the Spirit's work, when the grace that touched only the remnant will sweep across the whole covenant community. What was once partial and hidden becomes widespread and manifest. Ezekiel 36:26-27 announces this same reality in exile, yet David himself knew its power centuries earlier (Ps 51:10-12), pleading not for the Spirit's arrival but his renewal. When Christ speaks with Nicodemus, he treats the new birth as an existing reality Nicodemus should have known: “You are the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?” (John 3:10). The perfect tense of "has been born" (
gennēthēnai) is what grounds the present believing. Pentecost amplifies and extends the Spirit’s ministry (Acts 2:33); it's not where his life-giving work began.
1 John 5:1 briefly revisited
"Pas ho pisteuōn hoti Iēsous estin ho Christos ek tou Theou gegennētai." The perfect-passive
–ge reduplication prefix in the word
gegennētai denotes a completed act with abiding result—has been and remains born again—and John places it prior to the present-participle
pisteuōn.² That temporal asymmetry rules out simultaneity: believing is the consequence of the new birth. The verbal forms are not simultaneous, and the theological implications are not optional.
"Everyone currently believing
is born again," Dave said, "because when that faith began they
became born again"—utterly violating the Greek text. Every believing person
has been born again, John said. Not is, not will be, but has been. The perfect passive indicative is decisive here; ignoring it mishandles the text.
There is irony in the fact that he accuses me of eisegesis immediately after he ignored the tense of a cited verse in order to make it say something it does not.
In closing
None of the newly cited proof-texts overturns the order established by scripture: regeneration begets faith; faith receives justification ("no condemnation"); Spirit-baptism seals and empowers. Dave's proposed "judicial removal" has no exegetical warrant, and his Pentecost exclusivism collapses in the face of evidence for pre-Pentecost regeneration. Unless supported by fresh exegesis, continued repetition will obscure rather than clarify the matter.
---
[1] For the timing of sealing, see Richard B. Gaffin Jr.,
Perspectives on Pentecost: Studies in New Testament Teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1979), pp. 34–38.
[2] Daniel B. Wallace,
Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Zondervan, 1996), pp. 574-575.