Jesus Mission Author Says Being Born Again Is Not What Most of Us Think

 In his book The Jesus Mission (2011 Waterbrook)  Steven Scott tells the remarkably true story of Jason, a survivor of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11. Starting his workday that Tuesday morning in 2001 on the 104th floor of the South Tower, Jason heard what he describes as a big whoosh. From his window, he witnessed the horrific scene that included a giant hole in the World Trade Center’s north tower. Jason and his assistant headed to a stairwell and began the long flight down hundreds of steps. When they finally arrived at the sky lobby on the 78th floor, Jason and his assistant heard a series of announcements coming over the building’s PA system. “This building is secure. Please return to your offices immediately.” The announcer also declared that the explosion in the north tower was “an isolated event” and that no danger was posed to the south tower.

While his assistant started to head back up to their floor, Jason didn’t quite believe that his building was safe. As Steve Scott puts it, “he didn’t feel right about going back to the 104th floor. It was as if a voice were warning him, ‘Get out of the building as fast as you can.’” Although he tried to convince his assistant to join him, Jason would make the trek to the bottom of World Trade Center Two alone. Overweight and out of shape, Jason hurried down the remainder of the seventy-eight floors while his co-worker and other friends waited for the elevator to take them back up. Jason had made it down exactly one floor when he heard and felt a terrible explosion.

“The impact was so violent,” Scott writes, “that it felt as if the tower swayed to the ground and then sprang back up.” Everyone in the stairway with Jason was thrown down. But the urgency of this new situation was enough that they resumed their long trip down.

It turns out that this second explosion, the one that occurred in the south tower, was caused by the second hijacked plane, whose wing cut through the 78th floor, killing Jason’s friends as they waited for the elevator to take them back to their offices.

“Once on the ground, Jason felt he had to run as fast as he could to get far away from the building The voice told him to keep running, and so he did.” Scott wraps up the story saying, “After questioning the Port Authority’s instructions (to remain in the building and return to his office) Jason had survived the worst day of his life.”

Steven Scott uses this true story from 9-11 to illustrate what he calls The Danger of Trusting the Wrong Authority. It begins a subject covered by three chapters in The Jesus Mission. The chapter titled Being Born Again is Not What Most of Us Think poses the question: Are you ready to risk your eternal destiny on your definition?

Scott reminds his reader that Jason’s friends and co-workers did exactly what their trusted authorities told them to do. The authorities, he clarifies, acted in good faith, but their actions were based on the only information available to them. And did their actions, based on this limited, and eventually incorrect, information lead to the deaths of hundreds? Thousands?

This same tragedy, Scott insists, is being repeated with millions of sincere church members and professing Christians—but with infinitely worse consequences. “People who followed the Port Authority’s instructions paid a terrible price for their misplaced faith,” Scott writes. He also says that an even more terrible price will be paid by millions who entrust their eternal destiny to the guidance of sincere religious leaders. “These religious teachers and pastors continue to teach that there is an accepted formula for receiving eternal life,” the author says. “However, Jesus did not give us a formula.”

Instead, Steven Scott argues that it is Jesus Himself that defines terms like “born again.” A second birth is a spiritual one and, according to Scott, a spiritual birth is not a mere act of the human will, but is initiated by God, independent of a person’s will or impulse. Since it is an act of God, Scott argues, its exact time of occurrence can’t be calculated by anyone on earth. Scott also insists, however, that when a spiritual birth takes place, it creates an effect and produces evidence that can be seen by others.

Scott writes: “Formulas have their place, but when it comes to eternal life, our tendency to fall back on formulas has steered untold numbers of people wrong.” Scott says that while well-meaning Christians often teach that praying a certain prayer or walking down a church aisle and “accepting Christ” produces a born-again event that Christianizes a person that Jesus—when asked directly about eternal life—said nothing of the sort.

Steven Scott asserts that the formulaic teachings have it backward. “Most of the supporting Scriptures that are used to defend a certain prayer or baptism...are taken out of context. They are broadened to apply to something beyond what their context specifies.”

For people choosing to follow Christ in the first century, the idea of confessing, believing, and receiving was a totally different commitment from what we know when compared to how these terms are used today. During New Testament times, anyone who was a Roman citizen was required to have only one “lord,” that being Caesar. So for someone then to publicly confess that Jesus is their Lord was to commit treason against the government. At the same time, Scott tells his readers, to believe in Jesus and His claims was to knowingly abandon all the rights of Roman citizenship. “They were trading a respected and highly valued citizenship in an earthly empire for a life of ridicule, rejection, and the real possibility of imprisonment and execution.” So basically, for the first-century Christians, the notion of confessing and believing equaled total abandonment to the person and ways of Christ. And it was costly.

For Steven Scott, the primary way that a person can know he has been born again is evidenced by fruitfulness. He quotes John 15:5 and 1 John 2:3-6 to support his assertion.

Chapter seven continues with incredible examples of what Scott called “God’s birthing process.” But this, and the preceding two chapters are almost a sidebar clarification in a book that claims that Christ completed twenty-seven missions while on earth and compels you to take up the four assigned to you.

Steven Scott is the best-selling author of The Greatest Words Every Spoken, The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, and The Richest Man Who Ever Lived. An entrepreneur whose start-up companies have earned billions in sales, Scott says he learned the laws of success by studying Proverbs. His resume includes co-founding Total Gym, The American Telecast Corporation, and Max International. The Jesus Mission is available here.