By William Reid
DEAR reader, Jesus spoke of
regeneration as essential to salvation; and it is possible you may
feel as if that experience stood between you and
the “ precious blood of Christ “ (1 Pet 1:19). It seems as if it
did, but it does not; for we are saved by the washing of regeneration
and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which is “shed on us abundantly
through Jesus Christ our Saviour “ (Titus 3:6). It can do you only
good to consider the necessity of being born again, for it will shew
you at once your utter helplessness and the all-sufficiency of the
blood of JESUS alone to give you peace with God and a new heart. We
do not shrink from the fullest statement of the truth of Scripture on
this point, for it will be found that it does not clash in the very
least with the truth, which I am specially desirous to impart, that
we are not accepted as righteous in God's sight otherwise than in
Christ; for, says the Word, “He made him to be sin for us who knew
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. “
The necessity of being born again will shew us only the more clearly
that we must be saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Turn to and
read the third chapter of the Gospel by John, and then ponder the
following thoughts on this vitally important subject, and see how you
are stripped of every plea for mercy arising from yourself, and laid
down as a lost sinner at the cross of Christ, needing to be saved by
“grace” alone.
Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God,
asserts the absolute necessity of regeneration, when He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John
3:3). And farther on, He says, as solemnly and decidedly, “Except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God” (John 3:5). And He gives a fact as the reason of
this necessity: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John
3:6). “Flesh,” or corrupt human nature—man as he is—is unfit
to enter God's kingdom, and will ever continue so. No
self-regeneration is to be expected. The total depravity of human
nature renders a radical spiritual change of absolute necessity. The
whole race, and every individual “man,” is utterly depraved in
heart, his will averse from good, his conscience is defiled, his
understanding is darkened, his affections are alienated from God and
set upon unworthy objects, his desires are corrupt, his appetites
ungoverned; and, unless the Holy Spirit impart a new nature, and work
an entire change on the whole faculties of his mind by “the washing
of water through the word,” cleansing away his filthiness of spirit
as water cleanses away outward defilement, he must remain an unfit
subject for God's holy kingdom.
And observe that Jesus spoke of two
classes only—those who are “ fleshy,” and those who are “spiritual.” We are naturally
connected—as are all mankind—with those who are “born of the
flesh,” who, on that very account, cannot even so much as “see
the kingdom of God”; and we can get out of our natural state only
by a spiritual birth; for only “ that which is born of the Spirit
is spirit” (John 3:6). All of us being born of parents who were
themselves fallen and corrupt, are necessarily infected by the
hereditary taint of depravity of nature; and, besides, “the carnal
mind is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot
please God” (Rom 8:7,8), and cannot enter into His kingdom.
Attempts at morality are of no account with God. A moral Nicodemus
was told he required something deeper and more comprehensive than
conformity to a certain standard which passes with the world for
morality. God's standard of holiness is not morality , but
spirituality.
But some may say that, by publishing
such extreme views, we may make many well-meaning persons feel disgusted at religion, and go off
from it altogether.
But it is not our fault if they do so
on account of the insufferableness of Divine truth. Are you convinced
that Scripture is right when it says, “The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9)?
Do you believe
that, as a man in the flesh, you are more like Satan than
God?—incapable of knowing, loving, or serving God, and although in
reputation for the highest morality, utterly unfit for entering into
His holy kingdom?
It is, no doubt, hard to believe that
one's own self is so bad as I have indicated, and none but the Holy Spirit can truly convince us of it; but
does not Jesus represent our condition as utterly depraved—as
“flesh” ? Does He not solemnly say, that without a new birth from
above , not one—no, not even a moral, learned, inquiring
Nicodemus—can see or enter the kingdom of God? He does not say that
he may not, but that he cannot , enter—leaving it to be inferred
that it is morally impossible. And this arises from the fact of its
being a kingdom , as well as from the fact of our depravity. An
anarchist has a decided dislike to constitutional and settled
government; so a man, who hates the laws by which God's kingdom is
governed, cannot be a loyal subject of His holy administration. God
would require to change His nature before He admitted any of us into
His kingdom with our nature unchanged. But as God cannot change, we
must be changed, if we would see or enter His kingdom. Before we can
be happy and loyal subjects of it, we must be “ born again”; and,
being new creatures, have its laws written in our minds and hearts.
Besides, as a professor in one of our
colleges has well remarked, “It is a principle of our nature that,
in order to happiness, there must be some
correspondence betwixt the tastes , the dispositions, the habits of a
man, and the scene in which he is placed, the society with which he
mingles, and the services in which he is employed. A coward on the
field of battle, a profligate in the house of prayer, a giddy
worldling standing by a death-bed, a drunkard in the company of holy
men, feel instinctively that they are misplaced—they have no
enjoyment there.” And what enjoyment could unregenerate men have in
God's kingdom, on earth, or in heaven?1 Even the outward services of
the sanctuary below are distasteful to them, in proportion to their
spirituality. As long as preachers keep by the pictorial and
illustrative—and speak of the seasons of the year, the beautiful
earth, and the ancient sea, mountains and plains, rivers and lakes,
fields, flowers and fruits, sun, moon, and stars—they comprehend
the discourse and applaud it; but when the deeply spiritual and
eternally important form the theme, they feel listless, and
characterize it as dull, prosy, and uninteresting. But if we cannot
enjoy a highly spiritual discourse, it must be because we are
“carnal,” and want the spiritual “sense” which always accompanies the new birth;
for “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;
for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).
And is it not an alarming truth, that
this being “BORN AGAIN“ is not a making of ourselves better, but a being made anew spiritually by God
himself! This appears evident from what Jesus said during His conversation with Nicodemus. His words
are these, “Except a man be born of water and of THE SPIRIT, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). This great change
is effected by the Holy Spirit, through means of the living “water”
of the Word of God—the testimony of Jesus—and is of a spiritual nature, “for that which is born of the Spirit is spirit .” It
consists not in outward reformation, but inward transformation. We
must be regenerated in soul in order to be truly reformed in life.
The change is of such a nature that it is sure to be manifested
outwardly if it exist inwardly. If you wish to have a holy life, you
must be born again. Praying, weeping, striving against sin, and
obeying God's laws, is just so much labour lost, unless you have in
the first place this “born-again” experience.
Ah! but you say, as you read this hard
saying, This lays me entirely prostrate before God, a sick and dying sinner; and I may give myself up
to despair at once, for such an experience is utterly beyond my reach.
No, not at all! You may well despair of
self, for self is incurably bad, but you are by this shut up to trust in “Jesus only” (Mark 9:8). For,
remember, Jesus continued to lay before this Jewish ruler atonement through Himself, lifted up as a
Mediator, and God's free love to a perishing world, embodied in the
gift and work of His Son. You want to be born again? Well, Jesus
would have you look to the Son of man lifted up, as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, and you will thus be pardoned and made
to live. You say you are prostrated and helpless—with the poison of
the serpent coursing through you—sick and dying, and you want to
live—to experience such a new life as shall prove not only a
present counteractive to the virus of this terrible death-poison, but
also an enduring spiritual reality? Well, Jesus says, in this
conversation with the inquiring ruler, that “God so loved the
world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
God sent His Son not to condemn the
perishing men of the world to lie in their corrupt and diseased condition, and perish for ever, but
that He Himself might die that they might be pardoned and saved! And
those who are recovered from the disease of corruption, tell us that
they were “born again,” not by lying in their corruption and
crying for a new nature, and expecting it to come in some arbitrary
and different way from that of faith; but their uniform testimony is,
“Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth” (James
1:18); we are new creatures, “being born again by the word of God”
(1 Pet 1:23); and “whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is
born of God” (1 John 5:1).2 The realization of regeneration being
by faith in Jesus, you must fill your eyes with the atoning cross if
you would have your guilt removed, and you must direct your eyes to
the risen Living One at the right hand of God, and through Him get
out of the old creation with its condemnation and death, into the new
creation with its justification and life, if you would know what it
is to be “born again,” and have your heart filled with divine
life (See Rom 6 and Eph 2). This is the truth which Jesus taught in
His conversation with Nicodemus; and the whole drift of the Gospel in
which it occurs is a copy of the mind of Christ on this point; for
the writer says, towards its close, “These are written, that ye
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that
believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31).
If you still feel that you know nothing
of being “born again,” bring your mind into broad and immediate contact with THE WHOLE of
this conversation. Do not close the book and moan over the misery of
your state, as it is now discovered to you by the awakening truths
contained from verses 3 through 9; but go on until you take in the
discovery of the plain, gracious, free, and righteous way of getting
out of your death and misery, as you have it laid down by Jesus, when
He speaks (from the fourteenth to the seventeenth verse) of His own
all-sufficient sacrifice, and His Father's unexampled love and
gracious purpose towards perishing sinners, and His willingness to
save and give eternal life to every one who believes in Him. “He
that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:12).
FOOTNOTES
1. Dr. Owen says, “If a man of a
carnal mind is brought into a large company, he will have much to do;
if into a company of Christians, he will feel little interest; if
into a smaller company engaged in religious exercises, he will feel
less; but if taken into a closet and forced to meditate upon God and
eternity, this will be insupportable.”
2. “Every one who really believes is
said to be born of God ; and as every true believer is a converted
man, it follows that the production of saving faith is equivalent to
the work of regeneration ...Conversion properly consists in a sinner
being brought actually, intelligently, and cordially, to close and
comply with God's revealed will on the subject of His salvation.”—
Professor Buchanan, D.D., LL.D.
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