Part 2 The Evidences of the New Birth
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3. The evidence of the new birth.
But from this unfolding of the nature of the new creation in the soul of the regenerate, we pass to consider its evidence as laid down by the apostle. "Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." This is the Spirit's comment upon His own previous declaration. "He is a new creature," says the Spirit. The evidence?--"Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." The first idea suggested by these words is, the VISIBILITY of the New Birth. We are invited to look upon it."Behold!" The change produced by the internal regeneration of the Spirit is often thus described as open and seen. It is the visible expression of an invisible work; an alteration of life consequent upon a change of heart. If conversion revolutionizes our entire being, molding our principles, sanctifying our minds, purifying our hearts, shaping and tinting our spiritual feelings, our words and actions, then the passing away of old things and the taking their place by new must be discerned by ourselves and be discernible to others. The great spiritual change is so real that it cannot be concealed--the effect on the life is so palpable it cannot be mistaken.
The WORLD takes knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus and have learned of Him. They behold our light--for it shines. They mark our faith--for it works. They trace our love--for it constrains. They behold our religion--for it influences. How writes the apostle Peter? "Be careful how you live among your unbelieving neighbors. Even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will SEE your honorable behavior, and they will believe and give honor to God when he comes to judge the world." 1 Peter 2:12.
The best of men, as were Christ and His apostles, are exposed to the shafts of an ungodly world. The man of God may not always be able to avoid false accusation, misinterpretation, and malicious calumny--even the doctrines he holds and the good he does shall be evil spoken of. But, by the grace of God, he may so live as to refute the calumny and even to convert the calumniator. We thus see that the New Birth is a visible thing in its effects. It should be so. Our Lord and Master justly expects that those who assume His name should honor it; that those who profess His religion should exhibit it; that, confessing Him and His words before men, they should everywhere be known and recognized as truly His disciples. That, children of the day, they should let their heavenly light shine, as lighthouses shine, illumining the dark ocean of life, and guiding, it may be, the perilous pathway of some benighted and bewildered voyager, so bringing glory to God.
The religion of a child of God should be visible and unmistakable. An epistle of Christ, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God--a living epistle--the writing should be manifest, legible, and readable. He should not so live as that those who see him are surprised when they are informed that he is avowedly a professor of religion, a disciple of Christ, a guest at the table of the Lord. "What! he a Christian, a follower of the Savior, a partaker of the Spirit of Christ? I would not have thought it possible!" But, if old things are passed away and all things are become new, it will be said of him, "Behold an Israelite indeed!" Be this our highest aim to reflect the image of Christ.
If Christ in truth is in us, our Christianity will be as the light, pure and visible, transparent and illuminating. It will not be that weare seen so much, as that Christ is seen in us. The New Birth will be manifest in our Christlike temper and mind and spirit. The old things of our unrenewed nature will give place to the new things of our regenerate nature--and this will be manifest and visible. The moroseness and churlishness, the pride and selfishness, the worldliness and frivolity, the levity and man-pleasing which cropped up so luxuriantly from the soil of our unsanctified heart, will now, in a great measure be supplanted by the fruits of righteousness springing from a heart changed, sanctified, occupied by the Spirit of God. The walk and conversation of a renewed man will be the outward and visible reflection of an inward and invisible grace.
As the stream cannot ascend higher than its level, neither can fall below it, so the holiness of the Christian's life will be in proportion to the sanctification of his heart. As the hands of a clock moving upon the face of the dial indicate the condition and working of the hidden mechanism of the timepiece, so the holy living and conversation of the regenerate point to the divine power from which they originate, and evidence the renewed and sanctified heart from whence they flow.
Let, then, beloved, your conversion be manifest, your religion be molding and visible. Let it impress its divine shape and impart its hallowed tint to all your actions, pursuits, and recreations. Let it influence and sanctify all the domestic, professional, and social relations and doings of life. Let its home power be visible and influential. Move amid the domestic circle as a new creature, a being of holiness and love, living for eternity; a beam flowing from the infinite sun, irradiating, softening, cheering in its hallowed influence on all around. As a parent, and as a child, as a brother, a sister, a domestic, so let your light shine, so let your life evidence its reality, so let your religion be visible in its lowliness and gentleness, its loveable and loving spirit, as to command from all who see it the admiring exclamation, "Behold! old things are passed away, and all things are become new!"
O Lord, let the new nature within me be an open vision, a luminous and faithful copy of Your own. It is Your nature, united though it be with frail, and sinful, suffering flesh; Your own divine workmanship, destined hereafter and forever to reflect Your glory and hymn Your praise--and upon Your head, O Christ, shall the crown flourish!
The effect produced by the new creation of the soul is radical and thorough. "ALL things are become new." The work of God, like Himself, is perfect. The conversion which man would effect has respect to a partial reformation only, leaving the heart untouched and unchanged. But God's work of grace is radical and thorough. It begins at the center and works its way to the farthest circumference of the whole man.
The heart--once so hateful and hating--has now become a fountain of sweet waters, transmitting its pure and holy streams throughout the whole soul, changing the entire conduct of the individual, and working out, in its degree, a universal holiness of his whole being. "Old things have passed away." The world he once loved is now as a crucified thing. The pleasures he once indulged have lost their charm. The sins he once committed are now loathed and forsaken. The society he once enjoyed no longer attracts or pleases. In a word, old things have passed away with the old nature, and with the advent of a new nature behold all things are become new! How comprehensive the words, how vast the change!
Trace it in some of its radical results–
IMPENITENCE is replaced by a broken and a contrite heart. The old hardness and insensibility of the unrenewed nature have passed away, and God has made the heart soft by grace, and the Holy Spirit has wrought that godly sorrow for sin which lays the mouth in the dust, and dissolves the soul into holy contrition at Jesus' feet. Sweet contrition! Sweeter far the bitterest tears for sin at Christ's cross, than the sweetest pleasures of sin in tents of worldly enchantment.
Reader, has the old impenitence and hardness of your heart passed away, succeeded by a heart spiritually softened and divinely sealed? Has the Spirit emptied, humbled, and laid you low? You know nothing experimentally and savingly of Christ until He has. He is the Great Healer, but He heals with His blood and binds up none but sin-wounded consciences and guilt-broken hearts. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit--a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." What, my reader, is yours?
The old principle of UNBELIEF is passed away, and the new and divine principle of faith in Christ has succeeded. And with this new-born principle in the soul, behold, all things are become new. Faith changes the character and the aspect of everything in the experience of the believer. It revolutionizes the entire range of his vision. It diminishes things that are present, and enlarges things that are future. The visible things fade upon the sight, the invisible things unveil their grandeur. It is microscopic in its view of things that are seen and temporal, it is magnifying in its view of things that are unseen and eternal. It looks alone to Christ, and in Him it sees the Father revealed, and beholds the glory of God in that face once marred more than the face of any man. It deals only with the blood and righteousness of Christ, rests alone and confidently in His merits, obedience, and sufferings, and commits the keeping of the soul to His hand, and exclaims, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." Thus the old unbelief which rejected Christ, and excluded the soul from salvation, has passed away, and behold the new principle of faith which receives Christ, and rests in Christ, has succeeded it; and with the advent of this divine and new-born principle are the first fruits of glory in the soul.
My reader, do you believe in the Son of God? Have you the faith that travels--sinful, poor, and empty-handed, to Christ, and accepts with child-like, unquestioning trust, the full and complete salvation which Jesus purchased at a price so costly, and gives with a love so free?
Not less conspicuous among the evidences afforded of the reality of the New Birth is, the essential change which takes place in the views and feelings of the regenerate with regard to SIN. Originally shaped in iniquity, and conceived in sin, the love of sin, and the hatred of holiness, are born with us. But when by the Holy Spirit we are born over again, and are made partakers of the Divine nature, this original and natural love of sin, and hatred of holiness, are reversed. A new and heavenly principle is implanted which leads the regenerate to hate sin and love holiness. In nothing are the reality and divinity of this momentous change more apparent than in this.
We have shown that the new nature in the regenerate is essentially and inalienably holy. It not only is of itself uncorrupted, but it is incorruptible by any power whatever--it CANNOT sin. Now, it is in this divine principle that the love of holiness in the believer is implanted, and a power in antagonism to sin is implanted in his heart. What a reverse now transpires! The regenerate now love what they once hated, and hate what they once loved. We loved sin, lived in sin, in some of its many forms--intellectual sin, gross sin, refined sin, open sin, secret sin. "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life," the power of Mammon, the fascination of the world, the idolatry of the creature, the love of self, some or all these forms of sin maintained the supremacy, held their unbroken, undisputed rule.
Oh, how changed a man is he now! The sins which he before committed, the objects which he loved, the tastes which he cultivated, the sensualities in which he indulged, have lost their power to fascinate, to please, and to enthrall. The principle of sin may still exist embedded in the renewed heart; but the new man, day by day increasing in strength, advancing in holiness, and, growing in grace, gradually obtains the ascendancy; and so the believer puts off the old man with his deeds, and puts on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
O Lord, give to me this evidence, that I am born again! Implant in my heart the principle of holiness, deepen in my heart the love of holiness, strengthen in my heart the power of holiness, adorn my heart with the beauties of holiness, and enrich my heart with thefruits of holiness. Whatever brilliant gifts You withhold, whatever active service You forbid, whatever great achievements You restrain, whatever sacred honor You shade, oh, grant that I may be a true and humble partaker of that divine HOLINESS--deepening, ripening, perfecting--arrayed in which I shall behold Your face in righteousness, satisfied when I awake with Your likeness. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
The spirit and carriage of the renewed soul under ADVERSITY is no slight evidence of the reality and blessedness of the New Birth. Adversity before conversion, and adversity after conversion, seem not the same discipline. Affliction BEFORE the New Birth transpires in the soul, unsanctified by the grace of God, stirs up the enmity of the natural heart, increases the rebellion of the carnal mind, and arms the hostility of the will against Jehovah. The natural man kicks against God, flies in the face of His providence, and is as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke.
But when the new nature, descending from heaven, makes its triumphant and glorious entrance into the soul, oh, how changed is everything! The rebellion of the will transformed into submission, the enmity of the mind changed into love, the hostility of the soul subdued into harmony, the afflictive and corrective dealings of God are now interpreted and received as the righteous, wise, and loving discipline of a Father, who because He loves chastises us, who because we are sons scourges us.
Mark the spirit of the chastened believer--"And Aaron held his peace." Listen to the language of the afflicted child--"The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" Contemplate the picture of the sorrowful saint--"I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother--my soul is even as a weaned child." Truly have old things passed away, and all things have become new! Afflicted and chastised one! be your spirit and demeanor under God's present dealings a bright reflection of this. The hand of God may be heavy upon you. Dark may be the cloud shading your tabernacle, mingled the draught brimming your cup, and painful the sword which enters into your soul--nevertheless, in all this God is love--paternal love, unchanging love; and His present discipline of sorrow is but to bring your soul more deeply into the experience of His love, and to increase and burnish the evidences of your new and heavenly birth.
You are traveling the family-road to heaven--the King's highway to glory, trodden by the King Himself. Through much tribulation we are to enter the kingdom. Your present affliction, your present trial is in the covenant, appointed and ordained by everlasting love, infinite wisdom and righteousness. God, your own covenant God and Father, has appointed all, has shaped all, is overruling all, and is with you in all. Dark and mysterious as is this event, it involves a wise and loving needs be. God deals intelligently as well as righteously, wisely as well as lovingly, with His children. Every trial has its mission, every cross its lesson, every sorrow its blessing.
We little comprehend how much wise love is contained in what at first sight seems directly adverse to our best interests, to militate against our true happiness. A trial that seems a severe correction is often a wise prevention; a cross that wears a threatening aspect often proves a timely and wholesome check. The path of worldly sunshine, and often that of spiritual prosperity, may be as a sea of ice; and so God strews it with the sand of affliction, that our feet may not slide. He roughens the smooth way, that we may be safe.
When the Holy Spirit restores to the renewed soul the lost image of God, repencilling it with the lineaments of His holiness, the Lord sees fit that the newly-created vessel should pass through the fire, in order to deepen, consolidate, and perpetuate the sacred imprint. The Divine likeness is burned indelibly in the soul. This led the holy but afflicted Job to exclaim, "When He has tried me I shall come forth as gold." And so shall every furnace-tried believer issue forth a vessel purified and fit for the Master's service.
Do not think, then, O afflicted one, that God is dealing with you strangely! It is by the discipline of sorrow--it may be sickness, bereavement, loss of earthly substance, or the calamity befalling one we love--that our Lord is assimilating us to Himself. And is there not a holy congruity that the disciple should be as his Lord? Who would not be like Christ? Shall the Head be thorn-crowned and tried, and the Body be exempt from sorrow and suffering? Shall the Bridegroom be a man of sorrows, and the Bride a wife of pleasures? Oh, no! forbid it, love! forbid it, faith! forbid it, hope of glory! Jesus left us an example of suffering, that we should follow His steps.
The Lord tries the righteous, in order to deepen, mature, and bring forth their righteousness in noontide light. Sanctified trial develops and advances the new nature in the soul. The effects of trial in the godly are in striking contrast with the effects of a similar discipline of the ungodly. While affliction stirs up the corruption of the unregenerate heart, it stirs up the grace of the renewed heart. The one emits a noxious and loathsome exhalation; the other breathes its sweet and fragrant aspirations, bounding heavenward as the springing of a fountain of perfume. Oh, marvelous grace, that can extract purity and sweetness from hearts so vile as ours!
Lord, of Your own we give You; Your grace shall wear the diadem of praise, of all that is divine, and holy, and lovely within us! In the light, beloved, of these truths read the present discipline of God. He may now seem to be taking you down, but it is only to build you up and put you together again--a fairer, lovelier, and more symmetrical temple. He is teaching you, also, by trial as you could learn in no other school. Now you interpret the dark symbol which before was so difficult to decipher--that the saints' afflictions stand for God's blessings--blessings, indeed, when He is blessed for sending them. "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, BLESSED be the name of the Lord."
What if He has imposed a daily cross, heavy, and chafing? You have not long nor far to carry it. "This light affliction is but for a moment." The "little while" of cross-bearing, of furnace-trial will soon be past and gone--gone like the foam that crests the ocean billow--and you will stand triumphant upon that shore, washed by no waves but bliss, and will awake the golden strings of your harp to the sweetest praise of Immanuel for every cross, tribulation, and trial.
Oh, could we even now but see the reason God has for appointing each sorrow--the wisdom that ordained it, the goodness that sends it, the power that controls it, the grace that sanctifies it, the sympathy that soothes it, and the mission of love on which it bends its dark wing to our abode--we would not feel a moment's anxiety or trouble in our mind; but, like David, behave and quiet ourselves as a weaned child, calmly, confidently waiting the blessed outcome--our more perfect fitness by grace for a perfect heaven of glory.
Let, then, your spirit and deportment under trial evidence, beloved, that with you old things are passed away and that all things are become new. Glorify God in the fires. Be meek, mute, resigned. Nothing but love is in this deep, dark calamity. Then shall grace triumph over nature, and your heavy affliction shall but unveil the love, illustrate the power, and increase the glory of Jesus. He, once the sorrowing and the suffering One, but now the loving and the sympathizing One, has not left you alone in this adversity. In all your afflictions He is afflicted; and His grace will heal the sorrow, and His love will control the grief, and His power subdue the rebellious will, and His sympathy soothe the suffering; and so the name of the Lord Jesus shall be glorified in you.
We ought to refer for one moment to the INDESTRUCTIBILITY of the new nature in the regenerate. Old things have passed away, never more to reassert or regain their ascendancy. The new nature may pass through varied and trying vicissitudes, for the Christian life has its lights and shadows; but it continues the same nature still, uncorrupted by the sin in which it dwells, unmixed with the alloy of earth through which it travels, unshaded and unextinguished by the clouds and waves through which it courses its way to glory; its path is as the shining light, which shines more and more unto the perfect day.
"He that has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." Nothing shall arrest its progress or imperil its safety. It is a good work, and what is good is imperishable; it is God's work, and God's work is perfect. And since He annihilates nothing that He has made, not an atom of matter, do you think that He will destroy, or allow to be destroyed, the work of His new creation in the soul? Will He permit one grain of precious faith to perish, one spark of holy love to expire, one life-look at Jesus to be death-glazed? Will He allow a soul redeemed with the heart's-blood and the death agonies of His Son, quickened by His Spirit, called by His grace, kept by His power, to perish? Never, no never!
The new nature of the believer is as holy, as indestructible, as immortal as the God who created it. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. He will never revoke a pardon He has given, call back a grace He has bestowed, efface a divine lineament He has pencilled upon the soul. Angels shall never be summoned to hush their harps to silence because of the apostasy, the final ruin, of one over whose repentance and conversion those harps once woke their jubilant melody.
Cheer up, then, dear heart! You weak and trembling saint, your touch of faith has saved you; your look of love has won the heart of Jesus, and no poor sinner that once crowned Him with the weakest faith, or clung to Him with the faintest love, shall ever hear Him say, "Depart!" Listen to His own assurance, and with this we close the argument of the final perseverance of all the regenerate--"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man (any one) pluck them out of my hand." And thus the new creature which could not sin because it was born of God, and which could not perish because God was in it, shall advance towards its destined completion, from grace to grace, until it is changed from glory to glory.
Before we close, let us solemnly and personally ask the reader, Have you these evidences of the New Birth? Are you a real Christian, a visible Christian, a thorough Christian, a growing Christian? Do not think that we exaggerate the importance of the great change, or that we demand evidences of its reality so high that you cannot attain unto them. If you question the correctness of our view of the subject, examine the Scriptures for yourself. Suppose that, after all, we should be right. Then what is your hope for eternity? And that we are right, it is spoken--spoken by Him who is the Truth, and who cannot lie--"you MUST be born again." What could be more explicit or more solemn? It is unequivocally appointed of God that you pass through this spiritual change. It is absolutely necessary in order to your entrance into heaven. Your eternal and changeless destiny turns upon the balance. Heaven or hell--the undying worm or the unfading crown--the quenchless fire or the eternal song--with demons and lost souls, or with Christ and glorified spirits forever are the solemn, momentous issues suspended upon your decision. Search the Scriptures, examine your heart, look into your life, and ascertain if of a truth you are BORN AGAIN.
But there yet remains one test of the reality of the new creation of the soul--the last and most solemn, the all-important hour whenDEATH, the foe of nature but the friend of grace, approaches, loosens the silver cord, and translates the believer from earth to heaven. That all death-beds of God's people are precisely alike, that all exhibit the same jubilant joy, and exultant hope, and triumphant entrance into glory, we do not affirm. But whatever may be the dying experience of the departing saint--whether God puts His child to sleep in the dark or in the light--whether he departs hence with the lowly prayer of the tax-collector, or with the triumphant song of the martyred apostle breathing from his lips, the renewed nature will evidence its reality and exhibit its power; and no holy watcher of the solemn scene shall retire from that chamber but with the conviction that it was not the Christian, butdeath that died.
You may go down to the bank of the river in fear, in gloom, and in tears, but you shall pass through it in confidence, in light, and in song. Oh, how will the new creature prove its heavenly birth, unveil its divine wonders, and evidence its deathless existence then!Emerging from its long and deep veiling--the sin that enwrapped it, the infirmities that impaired it, the sorrows that shaded it, the body of sinful, suffering flesh that imprisoned it--it will burst forth into a reality and a grandeur that will awe while it delights, astonish while it entrances the spirits of saints and angels gazing down intent upon the spectacle.
In all this, how glorious and precious will Christ appear! Living or dying, Christ is all in all to the believer. IN Christ has been his heaven below; WITH Christ will be his heaven above. To Him we owe all the grace that saves us now, and will ascribe all the glory that glorifies us hereafter. Blessed Lord Jesus! You who stooped to my fallen, sinful, sorrowful nature to raise it into union with Your own divine, pure, and happy nature--You who carried my cross in weariness, in shame, and woe, that I might sit with You upon Your throne--oh, claim my heart for Yourself, and rule and reign without a rival!
"My heart is fixed, Eternal God,
Fixed on Thee;
And my immortal choice is made–
Christ for me.
He is my Prophet, Priest, and King,
Who did for me salvation bring;
And while I live I mean to sing,
Christ for me.
"In Him I see the Godhead shine,
Christ for me.
He is the Majesty Divine,
Christ for me;
The Father's well-beloved Son,
Co-partner of His royal throne,
Who died for human guilt alone,
Christ for me.
"Let others boast of heaps of gold,
Christ for me;
His riches never can be told,
Christ for me.
Your gold will waste and wear away;
Your honors perish in a day;
My Portion never can decay,
Christ for me.
"In pining sickness or in health,
Christ for me;
In deepest poverty or wealth,
Christ for me.
And in that all-important day,
When I the summons shall obey,
And wing my heavenly flight away,
Christ for me!"
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