The Evidences of the New Birth
Part 2 The Evidences of the New Birth
Back to FROM GRACE TO GLORY or, BORN AGAIN
"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature--old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."--2 Cor. 5:17
It demands great skill in the holy art of dealing with Christian evidence--the evidence of the life of God in the soul of man. The fact we seek to confirm is so momentous, the evidences of that fact so varied, and the counterfeits of those evidences so many, that the work of sifting the true from the false, the genuine from the spurious, is more difficult and delicate than appears upon the surface. He who undertakes faithfully to delineate the new creation of the soul has need to adopt as his sole guide the landmarks of God's Word, watchful of the false lights which gleam along the narrow channel through which he courses his intricate way, which seek to decoy the unwary voyager upon the shoals and quicksands of error which line the shores.
It is thus we must deal with the subject of which the present chapter treats--the EVIDENCES of the New Birth in the soul. That these evidences vary, and that they are counterfeited, we have already intimated. It is of the utmost significance, then, that no reader of these pages should in matters of such infinite importance be misled. Born again or not born again, spiritually dead or spiritually alive, are the two spiritual conditions of our present being. And, seeing that between these two conditions there is no neutral position, and that either one or the other decides and foreshadows our future state of being, how great the responsibility resting upon him who deals with these evidences! Solemnly conscious of this, we shall adhere as closely as possible to the description which the apostle gives us of the New Birth, in the words placed at the head of this chapter, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature--old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;" and, presenting what Bacon terms, "a gentle crush of Scripture," shall give a running exposition of the passage in its order.
1. The doctrine of the indwelling of the renewed soul in Christ is the first truth that arrests our attention. "If any man be IN CHRIST." To be in Christ is to be in union with essential life. Life can only communicate life. The soul quickened with spiritual life is a reproduction of the life of Jesus. It is not that the soul lives, as that Christ lives in the soul. In Christ our death is quickened into His life, our demerit is merged into His merit, our unrighteousness merges into His righteousness, our blackness is lost in His loveliness. And thus Christ is the Divine principle, the root, the substance, the alpha and the omega of all that is godly in us.
"Christ, who is our life." From the commencement to the completion of grace in the soul--from the first tear of godly sorrow wept on earth, to the first note of holy joy sounded in heaven--Christ is essentially and indivisibly one with His people. The spiritual life of the soul springs from the cross, is entwined with the cross, is fed by the cross of Jesus; and, when that life springs into heaven, it will be from the foot of the cross that shaded and sheltered it in all the vicissitudes through which it passed in its journey from grace to glory.
The New Birth, then, is the spiritual reinstating of the soul into Christ. Sin broke the stem of Eden's beauteous flower--the sinless creature man--and flung it, a poisoned weed, upon the dark, seething waters of the curse, henceforth to drift away upon the treacherous current toward the yawning gulf of endless woe. But the New Birth recovers this broken stem, reinstates it into Christ, henceforth to bear the precious fruits of grace here, and, in full bloom, to be laden with the golden fruits of glory hereafter.
With every step in this divine and marvelous recovery of man it is instructive to trace the union of the Lord Jesus--how all flows from Christ, leads to Christ, and through Christ conducts us up to the Father, from whose ineffable love it first springs, and to whose divine glory it shall eternally redound. The Church was loved in Christ, chosen in Christ, blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ, is called in Christ, preserved in Christ, and with Christ will be ultimately glorified. How clearly and impressively does His inimitable figure illustrate this truth, "I am the vine, you are the branches."
Sweet to trace all 'streamlets of grace' to JESUS--eternal election, preservation in unregeneracy, effectual grace, full pardon, free justification, divine adoption, full salvation, endless glory. Not a link can we strike in this golden chain of covenant blessing but it echoes the name of Jesus! Touch the lowest on earth, and it sends its vibration of faith and love up to the central throne of heaven, where sits and reigns and intercedes the Lamb that was slain. O believer, how ennobling your union, how exalted your position, how secure your standing! You are in Christ--vitally, inseparably one with Him, your life is with His life, your heart is enshrined within His heart, your interests are entwined with His interests, your hand is locked in His hand, and His eye, beaming with love, bends ever over you. The Lord, having espoused your person, has become surety for all your interests, temporal, spiritual, and eternal.
So entirely are you spiritually incorporated with Christ, your sins are drowned in His blood, your demerit is lost in His righteousness, your hell-deservings are annihilated in His heaven-winning merits, your entire self is absorbed in Him, and you stand before God without one law-condemning charge, or one guilt-effacing spot. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."
What! am I now and forever acquitted at the bar of infinite justice--all my accusers silenced, all my charges met, the indictment quashed, and the sentence of full and free justification pronounced? Yes! Jesus has done it all, leaving me nothing to do butbelievingly to accept the free gift of His love. His obedience honored the precepts of the law, His death satisfied the claims of justice, His resurrection ratified and sealed the engagements He undertook, and I go forth to breathe the free air and to bask in the warm sunshine of a present and a full salvation. The debt is cancelled, the prison is thrown open, the lawful captive is delivered, and heaven shall ring with hallelujahs, and God shall be eternally glorified. "Be astonished, O heavens, at this!"
Reader, endeavor to get into Christ. Rest not short of it. Be not satisfied without the assurance that it is your true position. Christ is an open door to all poor comers--enter and be saved. Wait not to mend one filthy rag, to obliterate one dark spot, to heal one festering wound; approach and enter, all sinful and unworthy as you are, and once in Him, your filthy garments are exchanged for beautiful attire, your soul is made whiter than snow, the bruise is healed, the scar is effaced, and you are COMPLETE in Him.
What a consolatory truth is this, also, in deep trial! Christ's interest in His people is not a divided interest. He does not separate their persons from their circumstances. One with you, He is one with all that appertains and attaches to you. He moulds and pencils all the events of your life--giving to each its form and complexion; is pledged to the supply of every need, to guide each step, sustain in every sorrow, and to keep you by His power unto the end. Oh, the blessedness of being in Christ! Here alone is liberty, security, and peace. The foe cannot assail you, the arrow cannot wound you, the storms cannot reach you, encompassed by His divine perfections, and pavilioned within His living, loving heart.
Living in Christ, it is the privilege of the believer to depart hence in Christ. "Those who sleep in Him." It is not death to die in the Lord. It is life in all but the name. We call it death, but He "has abolished death," and the believer in Jesus shall not see death. And when the last enemy approaches, all armed for the dread battle, he finds the soul he had thought to claim as his victim has become his victor, and he retires vanquished from the field amid the shout of the departing conqueror, "O death! where is your sting?" And when the Lord shall descend from heaven, all those who died in the Lord shall swell His train. "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." "And the dead in Christ shall rise first."
2. A new creation. But the second truth brings us still nearer to our present subject, "If any man be in Christ, HE IS A NEW CREATURE," or, a new creation. The Word of God scarcely supplies a simile more expressive of the New Birth than this. Was not that a new creation when God, from the disorder and darkness of chaos, educed this magnificent world, teeming with life and radiant with beauty? It is true, matter existed, but the earth was without form and void, and darkness flung its sable mantle over all. But the Spirit of God moved upon the face of creation, and a new world floated into view.
The spiritual analogy is perfect. The New Birth of the soul is emphatically a new spiritual creation. The same Divine power that formed the original elements of creation, that woke it from its deep sleep, quickened it with life, and clothed it with light, recreates the soul of man, and forms it a new creature. Behold all things are new! The regenerate soul has found a new life, for the Second Adam, who is a quickening Spirit, has breathed into him the breath of life. He never before felt the power, or tasted the sweetness of life until now. He surveys the past of his existence, and it seems as if he had been dwelling in a tomb, wrapped within the winding-sheet of death. But now born again from above, quickened by the Spirit, he emerges from his "grave of sin" into newness of life, and henceforth he lives for God. A new principle of life animates him, a new atmosphere of life encircles him, a new object of life engages him, and he finds himself bathing his soul in a new element of existence, worthy of his dignity and destiny as a rational, accountable, and immortal being.
Even the world of NATURE seems to him as a new-born creation now that he has passed from death unto life. The sun shines brighter, the air breathes softer, the flowers smell sweeter, the landscape is clad with deeper verdure and richer loveliness; in a word, the whole creation appears in new-born beauty and sublimity, since seen by an eye that traces in all a Father's hand.
It may be truly said, that the spiritual creation of the soul in the New Birth presents the being and character of GOD in a new light. It is like a new revelation of Jehovah to the mind. The unregenerate man does not worship the God of the Bible. The God therein revealed and made known to us, only in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. Worshiping a god of his own imagination, he rears his altar to "THE UNKNOWN GOD." Divesting the God of Scripture of His divine perfections--His holiness, His justice, His truth, His power--he completely undeifies Him, robbing Him of His glory, and annihilating His very being.
But, now born again, a new creature, lo! the God of the Bible bursts upon his new-found vision and his wondering gaze, as a newly-revealed God. Clothed with new attributes, arrayed with new perfections, bathed with new glory, standing in a new relation, the new creature falls down at His feet in adoring admiration and love, exclaiming, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear--but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Never did the being of God appear so true, the perfections of God so glorious, the character of God so great, the government of God so holy, the relation of God so endearing as now. Born into a new world, the GOD Sun of that world--the GOD of the new creation--unveils to the eye as infinitely, ineffably lovely.
Like a being born and grown up in a dark mine, and brought to the earth's surface to gaze upon the sun in its noontide effulgence, the new created soul is astonished, bewildered, overpowered by the splendor, glory, and greatness of the being, character, and perfections of Jehovah.
Reader, test your conversion by the experience of this truth. What is God, the God of the Bible, the God who gave us Christ, the God whose glory shines in the face of Jesus, the God who has revealed Himself as reconciled--what is this God to you? What is He as a God of holiness, of spotless purity, who cannot look upon sin but with abhorrence? What is He as a God of righteousness, just and upright in all His ways? What is He as a God of truth, keeping covenant, fulfilling His word, in which it is impossible for Him to lie? What is He as a God of love, sending His dear Son into the world that we might live through Him--a God pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin? What is He as a God pacified in Christ Jesus, all His perfections harmonized, bending upon you a Father's eye, and sending His good Spirit into your heart, awakening the response, "Abba, Father?"
Oh, see if the God you love, the God you adore, the God you worship, the God you hope to dwell with through eternity, is the God who sent the Bible, who gave His beloved Son to die for sinners, who was in Christ reconciling us to Himself, not imputing our trespasses unto us. This is the God who dwells amid the new creation of the soul, pronouncing it very good, taking infinitely more delight in it than when He spoke the universe out of nothing, irradiating every faculty of the soul with His glory, and tuning every power with His praise.
And in what a new-born light does the SAVIORappear to the new creature! Until that moment of quickened life, when the veil is withdrawn from the heart, and the scale falls from the eye, Christ was never truly, experimentally, savingly known. He may have acknowledged Him with the lip, have bent the knee at the mention of His name, and called Him, 'our Savior,' and this was all he knew of Jesus. But, born again, he has found a new Savior, has discovered who Jesus is, and what He is, and he marvels that he never until now saw His glory, discovered His beauty, realized His presence, or felt His love.
Now he sees Jesus to be the Sin-bearer, the Atoning Sacrifice of His people, the physician, not of the whole, but of the sick; the Savior, not of saints, but of sinners; receiving and saving, not the righteous and the worthy, but the vile, the ruined, the lost. Probably there is nothing which more truly and distinctly evidences the new birth than the revolution it creates in all our apprehensions of the Lord Jesus Christ. It transposes every view, changes every conception, transforms every thought, and revolutionizes every feeling relating to the glorious and precious Savior of sinners.
The soul quickened with spiritual life is brought to its grand center, Christ. Finding that center, it has found God; it stands in the focus of His love, in the sun of His glory. The Lord Jesus Christ is both the Revealer and the Revelation of God. The fullness of the Godhead bodily dwelt in Him, and, "no man knows the Father but he to whom the Son shall reveal Him." How glorious and excellent does Christ, then, appear to the soul born again of the Spirit! How the eye admires Him, how the heart loves Him, how the spirit adores Him, how closely, inseparably, and supremely does every faculty, power, and desire of the whole being center in, and entwine around, this matchless, peerless, altogether lovely One--the Lord Jesus Christ!
How precious, also, to the believing heart, does He now become. His Person, as the God-man--precious. His blood, cleansing from all sin--precious. His righteousness, justifying from all things--precious. His grace, subduing all iniquity--precious. His sympathy, soothing every sorrower--precious. His intercession, presenting us to God in heaven--precious. His name, as ointment poured forth--precious. Truly, "unto those who believe He is PRECIOUS."
My reader, what do you think of this Christ? Is He lovely to your eye and precious to your heart? Is He the Teacher at whose feet you sit, the Pattern whose example you imitate, the Savior in whom you trust, the All in All of your soul? Then you are born again! Flesh and blood revealed not to you this wondrous Christ; nature taught you not to admire and accept, to love and serve Him whom the world hates, despises, and rejects. The love that glows in your heart to Him, though it appears but as a spark; the discovery of His excellence which you have made, though but partial; the sight of His cross which you have caught, though but dim; and the desire to depart and to be with Him which you cherish, though but feeble--all evidence the great, the spiritual, the blessed change through which, in the sovereignty of Divine grace, your whole being has passed.
You are a new creation. Jesus is its Sun, the Spirit its Author, and God its glory. On earth there are none to be compared with Jesus; in heaven there are none to surpass Him. Whom have you in heaven but Christ, and who is there on earth that you desire before Him?
"Jesus! the very thought is sweet!
In that dear Name all heart-joys meet;
But sweeter than the honey far
The glimpses of His presence are.
"No word is sung more sweet than this,
No Name is heard more full of bliss;
No thought brings sweeter comfort nigh,
Than Jesus, Son of God, Most High.
"Jesus! the hope of souls forlorn,
How good to them for sin who mourn,
To those that seek You, oh, how kind!
But what are You to those that find?
"No tongue of mortal can express,
No pen can write the blessedness;
He only who has found it knows
What bliss from love of Jesus flows.
"O Jesus! King of wondrous might,
O Victor glorious from the fight,
Sweetness that may not be expressed,
And altogether loveliest!"
The reader will infer from the preceding statement, touching the nature and evidence of the New Birth that, as a spiritual and divine work its Author must be supernatural. The Scriptures of truth leave us in no doubt as to this essential point. We are told by our Lord emphatically that, "it is the Spirit who quickens, the flesh profits nothing." Again--"Born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." To the Holy Spirit, then, the third person of the ever blessed Trinity, the breathing of the divine life in the soul, the new spiritual creation of man, is ascribed. Having already adverted to this truth in the preceding pages, a brief reference to it in this connection is all that will be required. And yet, how momentous it is that we keep perpetually and distinctly in view the divine and sole agency of the Holy Spirit in conversion! Ignore or lose sight of this doctrine, and Baptismal Regeneration is in the ascendant. And from this soul-destroying heresy the Lord deliver His Church!
The Spirit of God commencing this work of the new creation of the soul, carries it on to final and eternal completion. He who unsealed the first tear of godly sorrow for sin, and created the first trembling touch of faith, and inspired the first thrill of holy joy, carries forward the work from step to step, from stage to stage. It is the Spirit who teaches us more of Jesus, increases our knowledge of God, deepens our sanctification, seals to us the pledge of our inheritance, witnesses to our sonship, speaks the promise, and conveys the consolation of the Lord of all comfort to our soul. Oh, the debt, the deep, the eternal debt, we owe to the Spirit--what arithmetic can compute it? Shall we not give Him divine honor, acknowledge His personal glory, listen to His still small voice, obey His holy injunctions, and in all things seek to please and magnify Him?
My reader, is your professed conversion the work of the Spirit? Is He the author of your hope for eternity? Has He discovered to you your guilt, danger, and universal corruption of your nature? Has He roused you from a state of carnal security, of spiritual stupidity and indifference, to an affecting view of the holiness of God, of the purity and strictness of His law, of the terrors of its penalty, of the great evil of sin, and of your exposure to the Divine displeasure because of it?
Has He, thus giving you to pass through these pangs and throes of the New Birth, unveiled to you the cross of Calvary, revealing to your faith the Redeemer of men, the Savior of sinners, hanging upon that tree, wounded and bruised, bleeding and dying for our transgressions?
Has He enabled you to let go everything else--baptism, and sacraments, and church, self-righteousness, and unrighteousness--and look to the cross, and touch the Savior, and grasp Him as the limpet the rock, and stake your eternal salvation upon the blood, the righteousness, the merit, the finished work of the Lord Jesus? Have you got, as Rutherford expresses it, "a grip of Christ?" These are vital questions, which must be met and answered and disposed of graciously and savingly now, or to our eternal confusion and condemnation in the great day of judgment.
But there is one view of this new creation which we must earnestly vindicate and scripturally and distinctly place before the reader, seeing that there exists so many ideas that are vague and erroneous concerning it. Let it be clearly understood that the new creation of which we speak is not an integral, component part of the old creation, or a mending and improvement and development of the fallen and corrupt nature which we possess in the first Adam. Far from this. It is entirely, totally, essentially different.
It is a new, a divine, a holy nature imparted to the soul; so that the believer becomes the possessor of two natures--the one, the old nature, essentially and totally sinful; the other, the new nature, essentially and totally holy. The new creation of the believer is not a superadded, supplementary thing engrafted upon the old; it is a substitution, a thing wholly and entirely distinct in itself, essentially, incorruptibly holy. The Scripture statements of this truth are clear and unmistakable. "That you put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be RENEWED in the spirit of your mind; and that you put on the NEW MAN, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," (Eph. 4:22-24.)
It is in the light of this truth we get some insight into the meaning of the apostle John, when, personifying the renewed nature, he employs this remarkable language, "Whoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him--and he cannot sin because he is born of God." This, and similar declarations in the epistles of the same evangelist, have received various interpretations from different writers. Some, by an unwarranted accommodation of the passage, have pressed it into the service of teaching, and countenancing the doctrine of sinless perfection. But nothing can be clearer than that the apostle, neither here or elsewhere, nor any of the apostles, taught a doctrine so opposed to the whole teaching of divine truth, and so contradictory to the uniform experience of the entire Church of God. "If we say that we have NO SIN, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
Others have interpreted the text as teaching the inability of the Christian to sin wilfully, or habitually, or, "in such a sense as to lose all true religion, and be numbered with transgressors." But neither can we accept this as the mind of the Holy Spirit by the apostle. What, then, is the meaning?
The evangelist is now speaking of the new nature, which is the divine nature in the soul of the regenerate. He personifies this new nature thus--"And that you put on the NEW MAN, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," (Eph. 4:24.) "And have put on the NEW MAN, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him," (Col. 3:10.) Now, it is of this new, this divine nature in the soul of the regenerate of which the apostle speaks that IT cannot sin. "He"--the new man--"cannot sin, because he is born of God."
The new nature of the believer is so essentially holy, it cannot be tempted to sin, for it is incorruptible; it is so essentially divine it cannot of itself sin, for it is of God. "We know that whoever is born of God sins not." Such we believe to be the true and only logically correct interpretation of this remarkable text. That the best of God's saints have fallen into the worst of sins, is a fact patent in the history of the Church of God. That the most holy and matured Christian is perpetually battling with the existence of sin and the propensities to evil within, is equally true. To what conclusion, then, can we arrive but this, that, while in the flesh of the regenerate dwells no good thing--flesh remaining flesh until corruption returns to corruption--there exists in the renewed soul"the NEW MAN, created according to God in righteousness and true holiness;" and this "new man," essentially, perfectly, and unchangeably holy, is not, as we have previously shown, an engrafting of grace upon the old and fallen nature by which its evil is either exterminated or else changed into good; but is a separate and distinct nature in the believer, intrinsically divine and holy, the result of the creative operation of the Holy Spirit, and forms the germ of his future, higher, and nobler state of spiritual being, before long to be unfolded in its perfection and glory in heaven, dissevered from all that would taint its purity, mar its beauty, or shade its luster.
Part 2 The Evidences of the New Birth
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