Part 2 What Is Not the New Birth
Back to FROM GRACE TO GLORY or, BORN AGAIN
9. By how many is the fatal delusion fostered that, afflictions, adversity, and sorrow are, of themselves, valid evidences of the new birth! Were this a reality and not a phantom, the truth and not a lie, it would follow that this world, all enshrouded with the winding-sheet of woe, groaning and travailing in the throes and convulsions of suffering, sorrow, and death, is thronged with new-born and regenerate beings, temples of the Spirit, and heirs of the kingdom! We hasten to dispel the delusion.
There are both judicial and the parental judgments of the Most High God with the children of men. His afflictive dispensations with the ungodly are those of a Judge; with the righteous, they are those of a parent. And, although the season of adversity, the hour of sorrow, is ofttimes, in the purpose and arrangement of God, the period of the new birth--the occasion of the translation of the soul from darkness to light, from death to life--the rod of affliction driving the man from his shattered idols, his blighted hopes, his false dependences, to the Savior; yet, there is not necessarily a solitary link between the darkest adversity, the most crushing affliction, the profoundest sorrow--and that spiritual new birth indispensable to a state of grace on earth, and a state of glory in heaven; nothing but a wide, dark chasm, which can only be spanned by Divine, sovereign, and regenerating grace.
Shall I suppose you, my reader, an illustrative case? God, perhaps, has afflicted you heavily. Wealth, hard earned and stored, has disappeared like Alpine frost beneath the burning rays of a meridian sun. Health, rosy and robust, has waned and drooped as a mid-summer day dissolving into the twilight shades of evening. Death has invaded the sanctuary of your home, sundering some fond tie, withering some beauteous flower, snapping some strong stem of domestic bliss, leaving its deep, dark shadow still lingering upon that spot of verdure, sunshine, and joy. And what is the effect? What the position of your smitten and bleeding spirit? Is it not that of sullen, gloomy, cold, involuntary resignation? You had no power to avert the catastrophe, no skill to ward off the blow, and now that it has fallen upon you, and fallen with an irresistible and crushing effect--you bow your head, but not your heart; you surrender your idol, but not your idolatry; you relinquish your treasure, but not your will; you are submissive, but not resigned to the dealings and government of God.
Perhaps the affliction has had, for the moment, a subduing and humbling effect. Your heart is softened, your pride is mortified, your lofty spirit is laid low, and the subject and the ordinances of religion, for a season, engage your thoughts, rouse your interest, and command your attention. While the heavy hand of God is upon you, you seem to lie in the dust at His feet. You read your Bible, repair to God's house, retire from the haunts of worldly gaiety and from the scenes of sensual pleasure, and even suspend, for the time, the cares and anxieties of business.
But is this conversion? is this true religion? is this the dawn of grace? is this the spiritual birth of the soul? The RESULT shall supply the answer. The stunning effects of the blow are subsiding, your sorrow is lessening, your tears are drying, the deep shadows of your night of woe are dissolving into the morning's dawn of sunshine, and you have returned to the engagements and the cares of life--the mart of business and the haunts of pleasure--as indifferent to religion and the claims of your soul and the solemnities of eternity as if the hand of God had not touched you, and His voice had not uttered the admonition in your ears, "Turn! turn! why will you die?" And thus you supply another solemn confirmation of the truth that an individual may pass through all the stages of adversity and yet remain unregenerate, unsanctified, unsaved.
But has no precious visitation continue? no fearful responsibility incurred? does no solemn account remain? Yes! emphatically yes! God rode in that chariot-storm, spoke from that cloud of thunder, commissioned that crushing sorrow. He designed to humble you, to instruct you, to subdue you to repentance, and win you to faith and love. And while the cloud was upon your tabernacle, and the thunder of His power rolled above you, and the grief lay heavy upon your heart, you were awed and softened, thoughtful and mute. But, alas! the affliction passed away, the tempest subsided, health has taken the place of sickness, the dead are forgotten, and you are yet unborn again. Be not deceived! Do not think that because you have been chastened and afflicted of the Lord, that therefore you are a favorite of the Lord's. That, having drunk of the cup of sorrow at His hand, you have therefore tasted that He is gracious.
There is nothing essentially converting in the nature or power of affliction. Far from it. The furnace does not transmute base metal into gold, it burns and destroys it. And while the brass, the tin, and the lead, the wood, the hay, and the stubble, are consumed and perish, the gold, the silver, and the precious stones, by the same fire, are purified, refined, and saved.
But, blessed, thrice blessed, are they who by the storm are driven to Jesus, the Refuge and the Hiding-place; who, when God cuts up all earthly hopes by the roots, blasts the human gourd, dries the creature spring, are led by the Spirit in the dark hour of adversity to discover that they have nothing to take hold of but Christ; that, knowing their sinfulness and condemnation and emptiness, are led to see the Lord Jesus Christ to be just the all-sufficient, able, willing, precious Savior that they need--and so, as amid the fire, and as by the fire, are saved from the worm that never dies and the fire that is never quenched. Oh, what countless harpers tread the gold-paved streets of glory, chanting the praises of 'sanctified trial', and testifying that, but for the fire, the whirlwind, and the earthquake of affliction, suffering, and adversity, they would never have basked in heaven's sunshine, nor bathed them in its sea of bliss!
10. It is important, in presenting the negative aspect of our subject, that we should give emphatic utterance to the truth that, an external and avowed profession of Christis not real conversion. This, among all we have specified, forms, perhaps, the most popular, as the most plausible and fatal error. There is something in an avowed profession of Christianity so religious and holy in appearance, so apparently genuine and true, so like the actual and the real; and, added to this, there is with it a feeling of self-complacency so strong and deceptive, it is no marvel that multitudes should be ensnared by the delusion, that a Christian inprofession is a Christian in principle, that a believer in name is a believer in reality; that nominal religion is vital religion, and that the external clothing of the sheep is all that is necessary to authenticate love to, and union with, the Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the flock.
How few will be found in society who are not 'professors of religion'. The great mass wear the distinctive external clothing of heaven, the uniform of the Christian, the holy and sacred name of Christ. And yet it is one of the most appalling reflections how few will be found among these religious professors who are really savingly converted to God, being truly born again. The Word of God is solemn in its instances of this fearful and fatal delusion. Simon Magus was a religious professor, yet was in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity. Demas was a religious professor, yet loved this present evil world. Judas Iscariot was a professor and an apostle, yet betrayed his Lord and Master. These men were types of a class the most popular and numerous in this professing age of the world--those who have a name to live, and are dead.
11. It follows that the ordinances of God's house--the institution ofBaptism and the Lord's Supper, of which all religious professors are partakers--possess of themselves no converting, sanctifying, saving efficacy. Those who maintain that Baptism is an essentially converting rite, or that the Lord's Supper is a saving ordinance, contravene the direct teaching of God's Word, argue against the existence of facts the most incontrovertible and solemn. The 'automatic grace' principle, as maintained by a certain school holding semi-Romanist views--with which, alas! so many professing Protestants secretly sympathize--is an unblushing denial and blasphemous ignoring of the official work of the Holy Spirit in the new birth, reducing conversion--the divinest, most essential, and momentous change that can possibly revolutionize the soul--to the mere observance of an external rite, as destitute of its significance as of vitality and power. If this sacramental notion of the Romanized school of theology be true, then the teaching of the Bible on the subject of the new birth is false--for the two views are diametrically opposed the one to the other--a conclusion at which we shudder to arrive.
But let God be true, and every man who would contravene His word a liar. But what says the Scripture? The following declarations, because they cut from beneath us all ordinances as coming into competition with, and as substitutes for, vital godliness, cover the entire question, and are as applicable to Christian institutions as to any Jewish rite whatever--"In Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but a NEW CREATURE," (Gal. 6:15.) "The kingdom of God" (that is, the kingdom of grace in the soul) "is not food and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the holy Spirit," (Rom. 14:17.)
The order here observed by the Spirit is most impressive. First, the righteousness of Christ forming the foundation of the believing sinner's acceptance; then, peace, the effect of righteousness; and then joy, a higher order of peace--peace in its bolder range. Righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit. And shall we reduce this great spiritual change, apart from which there is no salvation--no grace here, and no glory hereafter--to a mere submission to a rite, a symbol, a sign? This were to believe that thousands are regenerate, sanctified, and saved, and when they die will die the death of the righteous, who, once baptized, are now living in all the enmity of the carnal mind against God--the captives of Satan and the servants of sin! In view of this appalling conclusion, we hesitate not to pronounce the Romish dogma of sacramental grace--the Papistical doctrine of baptismal regeneration--to be the pre-eminent lie of Satan--the most subtle and fatal weapon which this arch-foe of our race ever forged for the destruction of men's souls in perdition.
With the deepest earnestness and solemnity of feeling we address you as holding this fatal error. We appeal to your sober judgment as to the truth of what we say. If baptism be the new birth in the Scripture sense, then whatever the Bible teaches concerning the expressions regeneration, born again, or created anew, will hold true of baptism. In this light read the following passage, substituting the word 'baptized' instead of the phrase 'born of God', and see how it sounds--"Every one that is BAPTIZED sins not; but he that is BAPTIZED keeps himself pure, and the evil one touches him not." Is this true? Who will dare affirm that it is? And yet, to be consistent with your notion of baptismal regeneration, you must believe it to be true. Does baptism produce such a spiritual change in its subject as that "old things have passed away, and all things have become new?" This is true of all who are born again. But we drop the argument. We appeal to your conscience, to your condition as a sinner, to your feeling as a dying man, to your prospect for eternity.
Do not build your hope of glory upon your baptism. You are lost to all eternity if you do. You must be born again if ever you enter the kingdom of heaven. If you are not born again of the Spirit, you have not the least ground of hope. Not a solitary bright ray trembles upon the dark cloud that enshrouds your future. Plunge into eternity, clutching the airy fiction, the fatal notion, that you passed from death into life in your baptism--that in baptism you were regenerated, adopted, justified, made holy and saved--and you have staked your eternal happiness upon the most fatal lie!
But yet there is hope. Feeling your lost and ruined condition as a sinner, quickened into spiritual life by the Holy Spirit, and by that same Spirit secretly led to a believing acceptance of the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus, you may, you must, you shall be saved. With a soul-loving, yearning heart, we entreat you to pause, examine, and reflect. You lose nothing by relinquishing your delusion of baptismal regeneration--you imperil everything by holding it. Abandon it, then, at once and forever. Seek a baptism more vital, a religion more saving, a foundation more sure, a hope more true. Implore the Holy Spirit to teach you the good and the right way; to breathe into your soul the breath of life; to reveal the Lord Jesus to you as He who died for us that we might live through Him; and from your spiritual ruin, corruption, and death you will emerge a beauteous, holy, living temple of God through the Spirit, filled with His love, reflecting His glory, and hymning His praise through eternity.
12. We recur again to the thought, that a mere profession of Christianity, a submission to rites, an observance of ordinances, constitutes not the New Birth. What! is this all that Jesus meant in His memorable conversation with Nicodemus? Is this all the Bible means when it declares that, "If any man be in Christ, he is a NEW CREATURE?" My reader, be warned, be instructed, be entreated. Stake not your eternal well-being upon a lie so false and fatal as this. Attempt to keep this base, this spurious coin--bearing neither the image of Christ nor the superscription of the Holy Spirit--and yours will be the just and the terrible doom of the most daring, the most guilty, and the most fearfully condemned of all counterfeiters--the counterfeiter of a lying and spurious conversion!
13. We must limit our negative view of the question to but one more illustration. A calm, tranquil, peaceful deathcannot safely be regarded as affording a valid evidence of that great, spiritual change which our Lord taught as indispensable to admission into heaven. "He died so peacefully, so calmly, so lamb-like," is the exclamation of many who dismiss the departed to the realms of bliss with no more authentic passport, no more assured hope than this! But what is the language of God's Word? "I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death--but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men."
How many pass out of this world wrapped in the profound stupor of spiritual insensibility, which, with those not enlightened of the Holy Spirit, passes for the tranquillity of 'divine peace', for the hope of real conversion, for the holy slumber of a sleep in Jesus! Alas! it is but the fatal security, the false repose, the spiritual insensibility of spiritual death. They pass out of spiritual death intonatural death, and out of natural death into eternal death. But be not deceived! Because you have no fear of death, experience a composure in view of its dreadful solemnities, unruffled by a fear, undisturbed by a shudder, deem not yourself therefore really converted! It is a distinctive mark of the truly regenerate that, "through fear of death they are all their lifetime subject to bondage."It is a distinctive mark of the unregenerate that, "they have no bands in their death."
How unsafe, then, to rest our evidence of the New Birth upon a foundation so dubious and slender. You may, indeed, die a lamb-like death, at peace with yourself and with all mankind, and yet, with the untamed heart of the lion, at enmity against God, His Christ, and His truth. The death of the regenerate is truly a peaceful death. "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright--for the end of that man is peace." And again, "The righteous has hope in his death." But it is not the peace of spiritual insensibility, nor is it the hope of the self-righteous. It is the tranquil, peaceful, hopeful death of him who, while he lived, lived unto the Lord, and when he dies, dies unto the Lord, and going hence, he is ever with the Lord. No false peace is that, no spurious hope, which springs from faith, reposes on the blood and righteousness of Christ. Life's last hour may bring its momentary conflict and cloud, its rippled sea and shaded pathway; but this will only test the reality of the work of grace in the soul, and render all the more illustrious and precious the atonement of Jesus on the cross. But we must bring this chapter to a close.
This state of spiritual still-life which we have endeavored to portray is eminently perilous in many points of view. It is so, because it tends deeply to foster the fatal spirit of self-deception. So long as we have a name to live, while yet we are dead, we cherish the delusion that all is right with our soul. The very deception feeds and strengthens itself. And of all deceptions self-deception is the most fearful! To pass current for a true Christian, deceiving those who have recognized us as such, is most solemn; but to go down to the grave dreaming that we are truly converted, while yet the heart has known nothing of a sense of sin, faith in Jesus, and love to God, is more solemn still!
Such a state is perilous, also, because once it becomes fixed and permanent it is the most difficult of all states to remove. The Gospel proclaimed to the heathen mass completely ignorant of the existence and the very name of conversion would be a more hopeful task. The long-cherished delusion at length comes to be regarded as a reality; the fiction a fact; the profession of spiritual life for life itself. And so, all arguments and persuasions to the contrary, the unhappy victim of the delusion passes away, in many instances, undeceived until the deception is too late to rectify. Awake, then, to the conviction of your real state as having only a name to live while yet dead. Compare the state of your soul with that revealed and unerring Word which is to confront and judge you at the last day, and in its divine and searching light see and know it as it really is, concerning the great, the solemn, the essential change--the change of the New Birth.
In conclusion, we must remark that the New Birth doubtless involves each and all these negatives in its nature and actings. While false conversion may exist with them, real conversion does not exist without them. In false conversion they are but counterfeit resemblances of the real, in true conversion they appear in all their genuineness and harmony. Thus far may we travel in a religious life, and yet stop short of real and vital religion. Having a name to live, we yet may be dead. Carrying the oil-less vessel with the untrimmed, unlit lamp of an outward Christian profession, we dream that all is safe until the startling summons to meet the Bridegroom awakes us to consciousness, to conviction, to despair!
But let no trembling soul close this chapter in hopeless despondency. If the Lord has given you a holy fear of self-deception, a deep, earnest, solemn dread of false conversion, and has set you upon the task of examining your foundation for eternity, and looking well to the state of your soul, we think you may safely accept your experience as an evidence that the work within you is true and genuine--even the work of God's Spirit in your heart. Look afresh from off yourself to Jesus. Lay your doubt, and fear, and trembling down at His cross, and then look up, and rest your believing eye upon the sin-atoning Savior; and that close, believing look at Jesus will resolve doubt into certainty, melt cloud into sunshine, and calm fear into perfect peace and repose.
Did He from that cross ever dismiss a soul unblest? Look at that empaled body! gaze upon that purple stream! peer into those gaping wounds! Do they seem as though Christ could reject one true, penitent sinner who came to Him? Settle it, then, in your mind that no poor sinner ever descended from that cross into the shades of outer darkness in whose breast dwelt the holy fear that perhaps now trembles in your own. The spiritual impartation of the New Birth is not without its throes and pangs. The period may be protracted and painful. Many doubts and fears, many conflicts and despondencies may attend it, but the issue is certain, the advent glorious; and angelic strains, chiming sweetly with those which broke upon the plains of Bethlehem at the birth of the infant Savior, will ring the glad tidings through the bowers of heaven, "An heir of glory born!"
Back to FROM GRACE TO GLORY or, BORN AGAIN