The “Must” of the New Birth
Chapter 1
“Ye must be born from above” (John 3:3, 7).
This was Christ’s opening sentence to Nicodemus, who came to Him under shadow of the night. “Except a man be born from above, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God . . . Marvel not that I said unto thee . . .”
But if we are forbidden to marvel at the method, surely, we may marvel, first, at the extraordinary opportunity presented to us of becoming the sons and daughters of the Eternal God, and second, that any should treat such an opportunity with neglect.
It is the most marvelous thing in the whole range of human possibility that we mortals should have the offer and opportunity of becoming sons and daughters of the Almighty Eternal God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be!” Yet, it must be so, else the Son of God would never have come to inform us of the wondrous possibilities within our reach. It would be the wonder of eternity if angels were invited to so lofty an honor; but they have never fallen as we have fallen, or sinned as we have sinned. But that we, the children of a fallen race, should have the opportunity of becoming, in the most intimate sense, the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty, invited to share His glory – when we quietly consider it – becomes too great for words!
The wonder becomes even greater whenever we get a glimpse of our own evil hearts! “Surely,” says Jonathan Edwards, “it cannot be unreasonable, that, before God delivers us from a state of sin and liability to everlasting woe, He should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which He delivers us, that we may the better appreciate the value of what He is prepared to do for us.” And Joseph Alleine tells us that in view of the evil of his own heart, he cried out; “O Lord God, I am lost, and if Thou dost not find out some new way, I shall never be saved. O Lord, have mercy!” And what could be more terrible than the condition of S. H. Hadley, who after his conversion became the rescuer of hundreds in Jerry McAuley’s Mission in New York. This is what he says:
“One evening I sat in a saloon in Harlem, homeless, friendless, dying drunkard. I had pawned or sold everything that could bring drink and I could not sleep unless I was dead drunk. I had not eaten for days, and for four nights I had suffered delirium tremens. I had often said, ‘I will never be a tramp. I will never be cornered, for when that time comes, if ever it comes, I will find a home in the bottom of the river.’”
Tens of thousands of the lowest and most abandoned have been lifted from the gutter to the throne of the Lamb. They were idolaters, effeminate, adulterers, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners – but they were washed, sanctified, justified, in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit. “And as many as received Him, to them He gave the right (R. V.) to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God” (John 1:12, 13).
Our Tripartite Nature
Our chart will help us here. We are capable of touching three levels.
The soul is the apartment of self-consciousness. It is the seat of our personality. There our individual character is formed and reigns. God says: “All souls are mine.” Along the soul-level lie the faculties of conscience, will, thought, affection, business-faculty – all that contributes to our existence as individual units. From this soul-level is a stairway upwards to the spirit, through which we come in touch with God and the spiritual world, and a stairway down to the body, by which we come in touch with the world of matter. Alas! that the carpeting on the spiritual stairway is almost as fresh today as when first laid down, whilst that on the physical is almost worn to a thread!
Thus man was made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26).
God is a Trinity in Unity: Father, Son, and Spirit, yet one (2 Cor. 13:14).
And each of us is equally a Trinity in Unity: Spirit, Soul and Body (1 Thess. 5:23).
In the little child, the body first appears, then the soul awakens to recognize, to express its needs, to cry, to talk, to act. Whilst after a while, as the child is taught to close its eyes and pray, a mystic look on the little upturned face reveals its capacity for the unseen, the eternal, and the divine.
It is in the spirit that the birth from above takes place. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:16). The spirit, also, equally with the body, has its five senses, which come into use when we have been born from above.
It is through the spirit that we come in touch with the Saviour. It is with the spirit we welcome the Lord, who stands and knocks. It is by the spirit that we pray and meditate and grow in grace. It is by the eyes of the heart (another name for the organ of the spirit) that we come to know what the hope of His calling is, the riches of the glory of His inheritance, and the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe! (Eph. 1:18, 19).
The Method of the New Birth
One day as I was walking with a friend in his garden, of which he had every reason to be proud, he said: “This year all my scarlet-runners have failed.”
“Why so?”
“Because there have been so few bees about; I think that they must have been killed by the hard winter.”
Of course, I understood what he meant. When bees alight on a flower for the purpose of extracting honey, they, of course, do not realize that they are carrying on their bodies the precious pollen or seed, for which the receptive organ in the flower is waiting. The seed must enter it before fruit can be born, and if there are no bees to carry the seed to the flower, there can be no birth of fruit. Fruit is born from the conjunction of the pollen-seed with the flower that attracts the bee by its beauty or scent.
Similarly, the life of God, resident in the Word of God, must be received into our nature, that we may be born from above, not from perishable, but from imperishable seed, through the message of the ever-living God, for all earthly life is as grass. The grass fades and its flower falls, but the Word of the Lord abideth forever. See 1 Peter 1:23, 24.
It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that we should circulate the Scriptures. They are the divine seed basket! Let children learn them! Let ministers preach them! Let Bible societies circulate them! The letter of the Word kills, whilst its spirit gives life! “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man. The field is the world; and the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom” (Matt. 13:36, 37).
The Hour of the New Birth
In many cases – perhaps the majority – God’s children are not conscious of the exact hour when they passed from death into life and the great act of regeneration took place. That was the case with myself. I have no recollection of the time or place, when, as a child, I received into my heart “the incorruptible seed.” It may have been, when, as a child, I knelt by my mother’s knee to say my evening prayer. In after-years, I remember being greatly exercised in my mind by hearing a minister insist that we should know the time and place at which we passed into the family of God. And it was a profound comfort to hear Mr. Spurgeon say: “A man might be sure that he was alive, although he didn’t know his birthday.”
It may be, that in heaven, some angel will be able to show us in the Lamb’s book of life, when, by faith, we passed into the family of God. But in the meanwhile, John, in his first epistle, gives us at least five signs of our having become sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty:
But the most convincing and helpful sign of all is that supplied in John 1:12, 13! “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to them that believe in His name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” As the hand outstretched with the back towards heaven and the palm towards earth; so the act by which we become born of the Spirit into the divine family is known in heaven as “birth from above,” and on earth as trusting Jesus!”
The New Birth Must Come from Above
The Mineral cannot force its way up into the vegetable kingdom; but the wheat may reach down to incorporate into its texture the metal from the rich soil.
The Vegetable cannot force its way up into the animal kingdom; but as when the cow or horse feeds in the meadow, either can incorporate the grass and lift it into its own organism.
The Animal cannot force its way up into the human, and yet, in the intimacy between its owner and a highly intelligent dog, there may be a kind of uplift into the human level.
So the Human cannot force its way into the divine but, as in the Incarnation, the divine can stoop to our fallen level, uplift, and incorporate us, so that we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption, which is in the world, through lust. In addition to this, as we shall see in the next paragraph – “His divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him, who has called us to share in His own glorious character!” See 2 Peter 1:3, 4.
The Inheritance of the Born Again
In Luke 15:31, our Lord once gave His ideal of what is included in the holy relationship into which we enter when we are born into the family of God and become His children through His regenerating grace. “Child, thou art ever with Me, and all that I have is thine.” These words contain God’s ideal for us all.
(a) There is Community of Nature. We become children, not merely by adoption, but by birth, through which we become partakers of the divine nature. Each child of the human race is invited to become a child of God, and He will send forth the Spirit of His Son into the heart, crying, “Abba, Father.”
(b) There is Community of Fellowship. “Thou art ever with Me.” The father in the parable longed for the companionship of these two lads. It may be that their mother had passed away, leaving him desolate, and he thought that in their companionship his loneliness would be relieved. The earthly parent longs as much for the abiding fellowship of his children as God does for ours. He goes far, when He says, “Son, give Me thine heart,” but no words can exaggerate the yearning of infinite love for the close fellowship of those for whom He spared not His own Son.
(c) There is Community of Possession. “All that I have is thine.” We are called to be sons; and if sons, “then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” It is incredible, but it is true! Just now, we are in our minority, and are not entrusted with our full property. We are under stewards and guardians until the time appointed by our Father; but it is certain that we are not bond-servants, but sons, and if sons, then heirs of God. All things are ours, whether life or death, things present or things to come, and, best of all, the unsearchable riches of Christ.
O, soul of man or woman, I pray thee never to rest, till by simple faith in the Savior, thou becomes a child and enterest upon thine inexhaustible heritage!