The word “rebirth” is actually used in Christianity and is an integral part of faith in and with Jesus. Have we thus clarified the question of whether Christians believe in reincarnation? For now, this is more complicated than it may sound.
Do Christians believe in the new birth? Yes, Christians believe in the new birth. However, the term “rebirth” is defined differently in Christianity than in Far Eastern religions. There is a big difference between reincarnation and rebirth.
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What is the Christian reincarnation not?
To better understand what Christian reincarnation is, we should first look at what reincarnation is not. In this day and age, many people who are interested in spiritual matters have an idea of rebirth that is not Christian.
In most Far Eastern religions, rebirth goes something like this: You have to die in order to start a new life with different conditions in the next life.
At first glance, this may seem identical to the definition of Christians – but it is the definition of reincarnation. Here the body dies completely, the soul (or life essence or whatever) leaves it and slips into a completely new body, which is then first created.
But: On the whole, you can use the definition also for the rebirth in Christianity – only a Christian understands under the individual words something completely different than a Buddhist. This starts with the definition of “death” and “life”.
For this reason, there doesn’t seem to be much difference for many, and some even talk about Christianity teaching reincarnation – importantly, Christianity teaches rebirth, not reincarnation.
An important rule of thumb is this: Multiple lives are required for reincarnation. In Christianity, each person has only one life.
But how does this fit together?
What is the rebirth for Christians?
A better description of rebirth than the above is the following definition:
Man dies to sin and becomes something new.
Without this step, man is bound to the bad things of this world that lead to sin and thus separation from God, and has no real way to escape and break away from them.
However, through the rite of baptism, the believer is symbolically killed and then rises again as a new creature. This new creature is no longer bound to sin and to the dominion of the devil, but can renounce it. During the rebirth, the ownership changes from devil to God.
The second to last paragraph is not easy to understand and has a lot of new Christian terminology thrown in. Therefore, I will summarize this one in colloquial language: By being born again a Christian is given the opportunity to stay away from things that are not pleasing to God.
He is seen as something new from good, although he is still the same. Anyone who has been to a baptism will have noticed that the person being baptized does not grow new arms: the body has remained identical. It is still the same.
But for God and the Kingdom of Heaven, this person is in a different relationship with God – He died for sin, so the Bible writes. And sin cannot “work” with the dead.
Why is the difference between rebirth and reincarnation important?
Understanding the difference between the understandings of regeneration is important because they basically reflect the most important core of Christianity:
It is not a personal achievement that saves you and results in you being with God!
In the Far Eastern variant, how you have to live next life is decided by how you have lived in this life. If you have collected enough positive karma, you become something better or worse. That this idea is anti-Christian should already be understandable at this point, otherwise the following article is recommended: Karma and Christianity.
We, as human beings, cannot do anything of ourselves. We ourselves are so bad in the core that God should actually throw us into hell. Why this is so is a completely different theological topic. For the moment, we have to live with the fact that it is so.
Thus, even if there were such a thing as reincarnation, we cannot “work our way up”. God would look at us and destroy us directly instead of letting us come back into the world. By the way, this makes the existence of God incompatible with reincarnation.
So, in the case of the Far Eastern rebirth, the actual achievement would be decisive, which we cannot muster. So God alone can only give us something and we can accept this gift. In the form of rebirth, he has given us the gift that we become his property and no longer have to obey the devil and this world.
Do you get reincarnated in Christianity?
Most people understand the term ” reincarnated” as a transmigration of the soul from one body to another. This meaning is foreign to Christianity. Rebirth in Christianity means separation from sin and the dominion of Satan.
