The New Birth
“Marvel not that 1 said unto thee, Ye must be borr again.” — John 3: 7. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” — John 3: 14, 15.
THE how of everything is mysterious. The “must be” of everything is plain. I do not know how fire burns, but I know that fire must burn if the world is to be warmed.
I do not know how corn and cotton grow; but I know that corn and cotton must grow if the world is to be fed and clothed. I do not know how taking food makes my blood red and gives strength and vitality to nerve and muscle; but I know that I must take food if I would live. I do not know how I am born again; but I know that I must be if I ever get to Heaven. “Marvel, Nicodemus. at the how just as much as you please; it is like the wind blowing. Listen! You can hear the sound in the trees, but you know not whence it cometh, or whither it goeth. Wonder at the how, but wonder not at the ’ must be.’ You cannot enjoy Heaven, unless you are born again; you are not fitted for the place.” Wicked men do not like Christian company here and they will not like it a whit better in Heaven. They do not like to be where Christ is talked about, His praises sung, and His will obeyed; and if they should go to Heaven, where nothing else is done, they would feel very miserable.
On the Bothnia, in mid- Atlantic, there were three hundred delegates going to the Sunday-school Convention in London. Mr. Blake, ut Chicago, put a great map before the delegates, representing the resurrection of Christ, and its relations to history and doctrine. A Jew, one of the passengers, as soon as he saw the name of Christ and the resurrection, began to grow red in the face, and went bustling to the captain to say that it was an insult to him and his people. Now, suppose that Jew, just as he was, should be translated to Heaven, where Christ is the centre of song, and where His resurrection is the theme of conversation. Would he be any happier than he was on the Bothnia? He would break up the choir if he could. Imagine him rushing up to Gabriel, making complaint that the saints and angels are singing of Christ and the resurrection! A man in Boston bought a ticket to a race-course, and by mistake got on a boat going to a camp-meeting, where he was among Methodist preachers, singing hymns, talking about the Bible, and speaking of their Christian experience. He came to the captain and said: “Captain, I was never so near perdition in my life. I will give you ten dollars to let me out at the nearest place.” Put that gambler in Heaven, — would he be happy? No, indeed. Good surroundings cannot make bad men happy. Unless there be a taste for spiritual things, spiritual surroundings are not happiness. “Ye must be born again.” Those
4 Milk ami Meat.
who love whiskey will not find a bar-room even on the back streets of Heaven. For all who roll sin as a sweet morsel under their tongues there will be no course of sin at the celestial banquet.
With these introductory words we come to the subject of the new birth. It is our purpose first to correct some mistakes concerning it, then to define it in God’s own words, and, finally, to show how any one who will may be born again.
I. As to the Mistakes.
The new birth is not getting re/igio/i. You have that. There is not a man in the world who is not a religious being. The religious instinct marks us off from the brute. Men worship God or money or their friends or themselves, and they become assimilated to the object of their worship. Some are just about as hard in heart as the yellow gold they have been worshipping for the last twenty-five years. The mother takes her child and flings it to the crocodile. It is her religion that makes her do it. You see a man by the highway in India with his arm erect, and he has been standing for twenty years in that position. His arm has grown rigid and hard. He has religion; and it is his religion that makes him hold up his arm till it becomes almost as hard as wood. Yonder goes another man walking with spikes in his feet, and he has started out on a journey of not less than twenty miles. Bloody tracks are behind him. That man has too much religion.
Religion in itself is not the new birth. Going into a church and sitting down where it is quiet and warm and beautiful, looking at frescoing and architecture, feeling sweet, sensuous impressions steal through you — all that may exist without the new birth. It is natural religion.
And expressing your deep religious feelings in a gorgeous ritual is not the new birth. Nicodemus, the Pharisee, was one of the most religious men of his time. He fasted twice a week — better than some of us do. Better still, he gave tithes of all that he possessed. He made long prayers, standing on the streetcorners. He made broad his phylactery. He was full of religion from head to foot. He was a sort of deacon in the church of that day. Many of the Pharisees were hypocrites; they were ritualists; but they were religious. Religion, I repeat, is not the new birth. Every man is a religious being.
The new birth is not a change of feeling. The word feeling is mentioned but three times in the New Testament. Feelings can be changed even by the weather or the state of health. I know a man who is never religious except when he is under the influence of drink. Just as soon as he gets drunk, he mounts his cart on the street and preaches the sermon he heard the Sunday before. Three ounces of alcohol can make a man entirely different, so far as his feelings are concerned.
Now, understand me, I believe in feeling. Feeling may go before the new birth. It may follow the new birth. But the feeling itself and the change of feeling is not the essence and substance of the new birth. Let me illustrate. I was preaching in a country church during August. The thermometer marked about 95 degrees, and the house was densely crowded. The people were standing in the aisles and all around the wall. At the close
The New Birth. J
of the service, according to the custom of the place, I invited those who wanted Christians to pray for them to come up and take the front seats. About forty out of the crowd pressed their way up to the front. Their friends gathered around them to talk and pray with them. While I was talking to a man on his knees, I felt my head grow dizzy. I said to myself, “I must get out of here; the atmosphere is too close.” As I walked out the door,” and met a good fresh gust of air coming in from the forest, I felt a thrilling sensation tingling to my finger tips. I felt like a new man from head to foot. It was a purely physical change, that was itself changed again by different surroundings; but it was the kind of change that I once sought for religion.
Have all the feeling you please, weep as many tears as you please, be as happy as you please; but these are accompaniments of the new birth, not the new birth itself.
The new birth is not a change of relation with men. Morality is right relation with men. Spirituality is right relation with God. A man may be all right with his fellows, and all wrong with God. When a man gets right with God, he is right with man every time. The main purpose of Paul’s letter to the Romans was to prove that righteousness, primarily, is right relation, and not right doing. It is getting right with God, and then doing right. There is no possibility of salvation without our first getting right with God. I know some men who can boast that they do not beat their wives; that they are out of the penitentiary, — do not lie, and cheat, and steal, and do bad things generally. They are upright citizens; all right with their families, but all wrong with God. In the city of Brooklyn, two or three years ago, a detective went into a drug-store, laid his hand upon the shoulder of a man about thirty years of age, and said, “You are wanted.” “What do you mean?” asked the man. “You know what I mean. You were in the Albany penitentiary several years ago; you escaped and went West. You married out there, and came back here and settled; and we have been on your track ever since. Now we have you. You need not deny it.” He said, “That is true; I won’t deny it: but I would like to go home and say good-by to my wife and child.” “All right.” They went to his home. He met his wife and little child in the parlor, and said: “Wife, haven’t I been a kind husband? Haven’t I been a good father, and worked hard to make a living?” She replied, “Yes; what do you mean?” “I mean that I am an escaped convict from the penitentiary. Since I met you, your love for me has made a different man out of me; but I am an escaped criminal, and must go back to the penitentiary.” He was all right with his wife, child, and neighbors, but all wrong with the State of New York. His being right with his wife and child did not put him right with the State of New York. You may be all right with your friends and neighbors, but all wrong with God; and, unless you are born again, you never can get right with God.
II. The New Birth Defined.
But what is the new birth? Turn to 2 Pet. 1:4, and you have a good definition: “That ye might be partakers of the Divine nature.”
That’s it. To be born of God is to become a partaker of the Divine nature. The divinity of Christ partook of our humanity. Our humanity partakes of His divinity. We are made sons of God, and the son has the same nature as the Father. Jesus Christ was born a babe in Bethlehem, and we become babes in Christ.
The new birth is the imparting of the Christly nature to the human soul, and is brought about by the Holy Spirit. We have nothing to do with it at all: that is God’s part of the business.
I do not know how my eating beefsteak will keep me alive, and yet I confess that I ate as heartily this morning as if I knew all about it, for the simple reason that my part of the transaction was quite simple. Those who make up their minds that they will not do anything they cannot understand all about, will soon be in a lunatic asylum or in their graves. A prominent man in the Southern States, a college president, made up his mind, after poring over scientific books, that he would not eat or drink until he could explain the relation between life and matter. That mail was sent to a lunatic asylum. The superintendent put him in a strait-jacket, and told him that he had to take something, whether he could understand it, or not. And he treated him right. Many people are mystified about the new birth, because they want to do God’s part.
III. Man’s Part.
What, then, is our part? Jesus explains it to Nicodemus in the second text: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” As if Christ had said: “Now, Nicodemus, you are a Jew, and are conversant with Jewish history. You remember that scene in the wilderness, do you not, when the people were bitten by fiery serpents, and God told Moses to make a piece of brass into the shape of a serpent and put it on a pole in the midst of the camp, and then proclaim to the people that whoever would look at that serpent of brass should be healed of the bite of the poisonous serpent? Nicodemus, My part of the new birth is to heal, and your part is to look.”
“There is life for a look at the Crucified One, There is life at this moment for thee; Then look, sinner, look unto Him, and be saved, Unto Him who was nailed to the tree.”
The part that we are to do, then, is childlike — almost childish. God made it childlike and simple, that it might be within the capacity of the philosopher and the fool, of the learned man and the ignorant, of the old and the young, of the strong and the weak; that salvation in its great scope might be as wide and as high as the greatest university training, and in its simplicity as low as the cradle in the nursery. He says, “Look to Jesus! “He makes it simple, direct, and plain.” Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth”; for I am God and there is none else.”
It was not looking at the pole. I do not know what sort of a pole it was. Perhaps Moses went out and cut the roughest old stick he could find, all gnarled and covered with bark, and put the serpent up on it; or he might have made it as smooth and trim as a carpenter’s knife could make it.
There arc some people who look to the pole, and expect to be saved by it. The ordinances of the church are simply the pok upon which Christ is uplifted. Baptism is the pole that holds up the burial and resurrection of Jesus. The church itself is the pole uplifting Christ. Every member of the church ought to be like a pole uplifting Christ, and asking men to look and live. It is not looking to baptism. You may be baptized in the waters of the Jordan, and be lost. Blood unmixed with water cleanses from all sin. It is your duty to obey Christ in baptism, but it is not the channel through which salvation comes. The church is a good thing, and you ought to join the church; but it is simply the pole. Trusting to the church never saved anybody. No ordinance, no organization, can bring about that experience in the human heart.
Nor does it depend upon the light in which you are looking. I can imagine a man bitten, and he sees the serpent run off in the rocks. He feels the poison coursing through his veins, and his head begins to grow dizzy. He says, “I must go and look at the serpent of brass.” There, in the distance, it is glittering in the noonday sun. From one hill-top he sees it on the other hill-top, and just the moment he looks, he is healed. Here comes another man in the gloaming of the evening; the shades of night have gathered, and he must come close, that in the misty darkness he may get a view of the serpent of brass. As he looks he is healed. Here is a man that comes in the moonlight, with its beautiful sheen over hill and valley; he has to come closer still, and there, in the moonlight, he gets a view of the serpent of brass; the moment he looks he is healed. Here comes another in the starlight, and he comes so close that he must have the serpent of brass between him and the bright starry sky yonder; as he looks he is healed. Here comes another man in the darkness of midnight; perhaps a storm is raging, and in the lightning flash he gets a view of the serpent; he is healed. Another comes with a flickering lamp and must hold it up close to the serpent of brass; but he looks by the light of the flickering lamp, and is healed. No matter, I repeat, about the kind or degree of light in which you look. “They came to Christ from every quarter,” but they came; and getting to Christ is salvation. Looking to Christ, believing in Christ, is our part of the new birth, whatever be the light in which we look. Here is one man that comes in the noonday splendor of good health and prosperity; but he knows he is bitten, and as he looks to Christ he is saved. Here comes another amid the gathering shadows of sorrow, perhaps of life itself. But he looks amid the shadows, and he is saved. There comes a man in the light of some Christian’s experience, in the light of some book, which like the moon reflects the word of God, — in the light of some Christian character, that has in it the reflection of the Sun of righteousness, and, looking in this reflected light, he is saved. Here comes another, who believes there are some good people. He believes that his mother is in Heaven, because she trusted Jesus. He looks in the darkness, and only sees by the light of a star or two; but he looks, and is saved. Here comes another man — oh, how many have thus come with the storm raging and lightning flashing around them! — and in the lightning flash of the storm he gets a look; in a moment he is saved. No matter about the light. Look to Christ, believing in Him as your Saviour, and* the moment you believe — God’s word for it — you are born again. Your part is to believe. God’s part is all the rest, about which you have no concern.
We are saved by faith. Everything is. Every good institution is saved by faith. The family is saved by faith. Wipe out faith in husband, wife, and child, and you destroy the home. The government is saved by faith. Let the people lose faith in the government, and it will topple about their ears. Commerce is saved by faith. You banking men know how it is. Let the people lose faith in a bank, and that bank soon crashes. In an English town a report got out that the bank was about to fail. Five hundred people ran for their deposits on the same day. The pastor of the dissenting church in the town was invited by the bank directors to meet them. They said to him,” Sir, if these people press us to the wall,
The New Birth. i 7
they will lose their money. If they don’t press us, we will pay every dollar,” The pastor said, “I will help you; I have some money, and I trust you.” He went home, got his money, came to the bank door, and, standing on the step, said, “Friends, you all know me; I have been living here twenty-five years, and I believe in this bank. Here are three hundred pounds that I am going to deposit. I believe the bank is good.” In less than thirty minutes every one of those people had dispersed, and the bank was saved by faith. Unbelief as to that bank was about to ruin it. The moment faith was implanted, the bank was saved. Railroads are saved! y faith. Steamboats are saved by faith. Your business, friend, is saved by faith. Every good thing on earth is saved by faith. And when the infidel rails at the religion of Jesus Christ because we are saved by faith, he is railing at every institution that this country holds dear. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”