"The
power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore
also that which is to be born shall be called holy, the
Son of God" (Luke 1:35).
"As
many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become
children of God, even to them that believe on His name:
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John
1:12-13).
"That
which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is
born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6).
"These
things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye may have
peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good
cheer; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
"Behold
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called children of God: and such we
are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it
knew Him not. Beloved, now are we children of God, and it
is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that,
if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we
shall see Him even as He is" (1 John 3:1-2).
"For
whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world" (1
John 5:4).
In
bringing these Scriptures together, that about the birth
of the Lord Jesus and those about the birth of believers,
I am not failing to recognize a great difference. One has
always to safeguard this matter of the Person of the Lord
Jesus. He was Very God of Very God; 'God manifest in the
flesh'; 'Emmanuel, God with us'. In that He stands alone,
unique; there is not another like Him. His birth was
different, even, from the new birth of every child of
God: it was different in kind; it was different in
degree.
The Correspondence Between Christ's
Birth and Ours
Nevertheless,
there are factors in His own birth which constitute the
nature of the birth of every believer. Deity apart -
Godhead left with Him - there is yet something in these
passages about the believer's new birth that corresponds
to His birth. It is to some of these features that we are
now to give attention. You will not confuse the two, I
trust, at any point, on that matter of His uniqueness. At
the same time, and on the other side, I do trust that you
will be able to recognize what John said, that that which
is true in Him is, in its own realm, and after its own
kind, also true in us (1 John 2:8). And, in this matter
of the birth and the new life of the children of God, we
shall be able to understand better if we recognize some
of these features in the birth of the Lord Jesus. For His
birth does, as I have said, hold all the factors which go
to make up a true child of God.
The New Birth a Divine Intervention
The
first thing, which is quite patent, is that the birth of
the Lord Jesus was a Divine intervention in human life:
and that is true of the new birth of every believer; it
is nothing less than a Divine intervention in human life.
We do not stay with all the minute details of Christ's
birth, but it is perfectly clear in this way, that out
from Heaven there came a Heavenly Visitant, making an
announcement; and, from the same heaven, the Holy Spirit
came into human life and intervened, and did something -
something that we shall see, I trust, in a minute. The
point is that here is a breaking in of Heaven into human
life.
Perhaps
you wonder why this should be stressed, and given such
emphasis. But let us be clear that that is not what is
very largely conceived and taught about the new birth.
Even with the best intentions the new birth is so often
placed to man's side - it is what man does. Man has got
to do something - either raise his hand, or make some
statement, or sign some document, or make a decision,
make a profession, accept certain things that are being
stated, and so on. Perhaps such things are meant to open
the way for God; but, even if we allow that, people are
often left with this idea that it is something they have
done. They have accepted Christ; they have accepted
Christianity; they have made a gesture; they have done
something; they have become Christians by what they have
done, by their own act.
Born Not of the Will of Man But of God
Now,
being fully generous, and not critical at all, it is very
important to recognise that the new birth never
necessarily takes place by anything that we do. It never
really is consummated by some act of our own will, or of
our own desire, or of our own mind - not at all. 'Which
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man...' - the man being the case in
point, or the other man who would seek to bring it about
- '... but of God'. If God does not intervene in
human life and in human history; break right in, as it
were, from Heaven; if the Holy Spirit does not
overshadow, and Himself produce that new life, that is
not new birth; there is something lacking.
You are
wondering, perhaps, why this message. I will tell you
why. With a growing concern - and concern is a weak word
- as one moves about the world touching Christians and
Christianity, the one thing that is borne in upon one's
heart, overwhelmingly, sometimes almost to the point of
despair, is the need that those who bear the name of
'Christian' should know the real nature of what it means
to be a child of God. They seem, so many of them, to have
taken on something from the outside, by their own
volition, choice and act, and so many have really not the
faintest idea of what it means to be 'born' out from
Heaven. And in all the needed work of recovery, in every
department of Divine purpose at this time, this is one of
the needs - a recovery of the real meaning of new birth,
of what it is to be born from above, to be a child of
God.
The Coming Test of Our Standing
I have
sometimes wondered - maybe wrongly - whether the enemy is
not very pleased with putting countless multitudes of
people in a false Christian position, because he knows
the day is coming when the winds will carry them away;
and for a Christian to fall away is a greater reproach to
the Lord perhaps than anything. Oh, how we do need to get
our roots down; how we need to be grounded in the truth,
and in the truth of our very nature as children of God.
That is why we come to this message. The day is coming
when our standing as Christians will be deeply and
terribly tested - there will be a great shaking. The
Prophet Ezekiel is very up-to-date; I believe these words
will have perhaps a larger fulfilment in a not very
distant future, than they had when Ezekiel uttered them:
'I will overturn, overturn, overturn... until He come
whose right it is' (Ezekiel 21:27). There is going to be
a great overturning of what is not true - of what is
false. This judgment must begin at the House of God. So
you will understand this present emphasis.
We begin
here. As with Christ, so it must be with every child of
God: they must, at the very beginning of their Christian
life, be the result of a Divine intervention in human
history, in their own human history, in their human life.
But that is the great basic fact. Thank God that there
are many who understand that, and know what it means.
They are able to say: 'God intervened in my life; God
broke into my life; God came out, even, as it were, from
Heaven, into my life.' If we have the experience, we know
the truth; but it is sometimes helpful to have it
defined. This is it: When you and I were saved, God broke
out of Heaven - nothing less than that. It was as though
God Himself came out of His Heaven into a human life;
broke into its world, and interrupted its course of
history. Things could never be the same after that.
Not Only a Newness, But a Difference
That is
perfectly clear, is it not, in the case of the Lord
Jesus? An angel indicated this intervention of the Holy
Spirit from heaven - and it is no less than that in
principle and fact with each new birth. But the next
thing that is clear in the case of the Lord Jesus is that
this was something different; it was not only something
new that had not happened before, but it was something
different. This birth is different from all other births.
We cannot dwell too much upon the details of the account,
but that is what it amounts to. The angel made that
perfectly clear, and Mary knew it; that was her problem,
her perplexity, her wonder - How? How? It was the
perplexity of Nicodemus, his great question - How? This
contains a profound mystery which constitutes a deep, a
mighty difference. This is not the common thing; this is
not the usual thing; this you cannot find, except here;
it is different.
And that
which results from this intervention contains this
fundamental difference in its very constitution. Oh, that
all who bear the name of Christian, all who are children
of God, were fully alive to this! I think this is where
the weakness lies with so many, and it will not hurt us,
even though we know it well, to be reminded of it, to
face it again. It is something that we need to keep with
us in our consciousness continually. Our new birth is
different from all other births, and by new birth we are
made fundamentally and constitutionally different from
all other beings. You know it perhaps in some measure in
experience. The birth of the Lord Jesus was so patently a
different kind of birth. It was not in the usual natural
way; nature had nothing to do with it; man's will,
choice, decision, had nothing to do with it. And 'that
which is born shall be holy': can you find that
in nature anywhere? It is of a different kind and a
different order of being - that which is, in its very
essence, holy. That is the contrast with every
other creature and every other birth. The Psalmist cries:
'I was born in sin, shapen in iniquity' - and that is
true of us all.
The New Birth Brings Into a
Heavenly Kingdom
Now when
I say that that principle holds good in every new birth,
it needs this explanation. We know quite well that it is
not our bodies that are born again; therefore they are
not holy. We know that it is not our souls that are born
again: if our souls are our minds - our reasoning powers,
and our emotions, and our power of choice - well, they
are not different. It is the trouble of our whole
Christian life that we still have so much of that which
is not holy with us, in mind and heart and will. It is
the realm of our conflicts, our battles, our sorrows.
Nevertheless, something, somewhere, has happened,
something has come in, that is not of that kingdom at
all, that is of another heavenly kingdom; and that, which
is born of God, is holy. Do you know that? Even if it has
never been explained or defined to you, you know it in
experience. You know that there is that within you that
revolts against sin and unholiness; you know that one of
the great blessings of your life is an inward power of
reaction when things are not right, not good. As we go
on, we do become more and more sensitive to evil, to the
sin of this world. Our peril may be sometimes to accept
its presence; to take it just because it is there.
A good many years ago, I was travelling up north by train with an older sister in the Lord. We were in the dining car, and a dear girl entered and sat down at the next table, and took out a cigarette and lighted it. Of course, that is an accepted thing now. To my companion it was then new; a look of consternation came into her face; her eyes almost started out of her head! She looked at me, and I can tell you I had the utmost difficulty in restraining her from going over to that girl, and begging her to put out the cigarette and give up smoking. Perhaps I was wrong in restraining her. Being a little more a man of the world, I knew this common thing. But for her it was the deepest shock. Now, we
are in a world like that. Perhaps much of the shock has gone; but nevertheless it is true of
every child of God that there is that feeling about it -
something of a tremendous inward revolt and reaction to
sin, to evil, to unholiness. What a safeguard that is!
what a gift of God it is to have that! God forbid that
ever we should lose our sensitiveness in that realm, or
cease to be moved by the sinfulness of sin.
The Need For Sensitiveness to this
Difference
Beware,
young people, that you do not blunt the edge of your new
birth, by accommodating yourself to this world's ways,
its forms and customs and acceptances, and taking it all
as something inevitable. Ask the Holy Spirit to keep you
very sensitive to sin, very sensitive to evil; to keep
alive this difference, which is your birthright -
a part of your very birth. If you are a true child of
God, you know something about the difference, as you go
out into the world, not only in the matter of sin, but in
all kinds of ways. You are different; something has
happened to you. If it has not, it is time for you to begin to look into this matter, as to whether you are a child of God.
At some
point, this difference should have become quite clear to
you, so that you know it - not just because you are told,
not because your parents are Christians and do not like
you doing certain things and you have got a sort of
conscience which is your parents' really, and not your
own - but in your own heart, in your own self, you have
got this consciousness of being different, fundamentally
different, from those who are not the Lord's. If that is
not true as to a crisis in your life - for all do not
have a violent breaking in as in the case of Paul on the
road to Damascus - nevertheless, there has to arrive at
some point this sense: 'I am a child of God; I am
different; something has happened; a great difference has
been made deep down somewhere; I am not the same; and I
am not the same as those who are not the children
of God.'
Not only so, but it is the nature of spiritual growth that that
difference becomes more and more accentuated. It is the
thing that is making this world more and more a 'strange
and foreign' land to us - it is not our home, not our
place; and conversely, making our 'native land' more and
more so to us - making Heaven truly to be our home. Now, where heaven is I cannot tell
you; but I do know this, that, whatever heaven means,
that is where I belong. And more and more I am
discovering that I belong there, and that I do not belong
here.
The Divide of the New Birth
I speak
to young Christians particularly, that this is the very
nature of your new birth, that more and more it must be
like that. And do not be afraid of it; do not rebel
against it; accept it. It is a proof of something, of the
greatest thing that God is doing in human history -
breaking in to make this tremendous difference. It is on
that ground that the Great Assize is going to be set up.
We get our mental pictures of the judgment; well, we will
not argue as to the material side of that. But I do know
that this judgment has already begun, and it is going on, and the finality of it will be here: that
there are those who belong here, and there are those who
belong there, and there is no mistaking to which realm
these people belong. The great divide has been made. The
Lord is seeking to bring that about now. But oh, the
tragedy of many Christians, and many young Christians,
trying to bridge that gap - to hold those two things
together; instead of allowing the gap to widen, whilst
they stand on the side where they are moving further and
further away from a judged world.
An Inherent Power to Overcome
The next
thing that comes out in this matter of Christ's birth,
and the birth of the children of God, is that by this
birth there comes into us an inherent potency, an
inherent power. Now, the Lord Jesus said: 'Be of good
cheer; I have overcome the world' (John 16:33b). And John
says: 'Whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the
world' (1 John 5:4). In Christ, in the born anew child of
God, there is an inherent power and virtue which is going
to overcome the world. It is there in the very nature of
things, in the very constitution of the new life: it is
going to overcome. There may be failure - there may be
frequent failure; there may be falling in the battle;
there may be some casualties; there may be some dark
patches; there may even be some going away. But it is a
most remarkable thing, and a most heart-ravishing thing,
to see how this life persists.
I
sometimes have to smile. People tell me that they are
going to give it all up; they cannot go on any longer;
and off they go, and you do not see them for a little
while. But they are back again. And that happens a
hundred and one times. How many people have said to me,
and quite recently, 'I am giving it all up; I am
finished; I am going.' And as far as they knew
themselves, they meant it. But they cannot do it; they
are just like moths round the lamp - they cannot keep
away; back they come, and, yes - crestfallen and ashamed!
You know, if it were natural, they would not do it; I
would not do it; for very face saving, I would not come
back again, show my face again after that. But there is
something else, something more, that is stronger than our
shame, stronger than our self-reproach, stronger than our
self-despair, stronger than our constant delinquency:
there is a persistence that brings us up, and brings us
back. It is the history of most children of God. 'That
which is born of God overcometh the world.'
It was
true of Jesus. How did He overcome? Not by physical
force; not by resolve of will, not by power of brain and
mind and argument. He never did bring the world under His
feet in those ways. By sheer force of Divine character;
by the kind of Man He was; by the Divine nature in Him,
He overcame. And so, with every child of God: in so much
lesser degree than in His case, perhaps; so much slower
in expression and manifestation; nevertheless it is
there. Every true child of God knows quite well that, had
it not been for that inward grip of something, or
Someone, not themselves, they would not be where they are
today, still seeking the things of God. No! It is
inherent in that which is born of God to overcome!
The Inevitable Antagonism Against
Heaven
The next
thing, of course, is the inevitable antagonism. It
was not very long after the birth of the Lord Jesus
before it broke out. The kingdom of Satan knew who He
was, and what He was. That kingdom had many a powerful
instrument and means at hand, and Herod was one such. We
are not to know what happened during the thirty years of
His boyhood and young manhood - that is passed over. It
would not be surprising if there were many narrow escapes
even then. But we do know that, from the moment of His
stepping out from His anointing at Jordan, to take up
this work of bringing 'the other sheep', bringing the
other sons to glory, all hell was on His track. Whenever
He came into a place, the atmosphere became charged with
antagonism. We perhaps know something of those
atmospherics, but how infinitely worse it must have been
for our Lord, with His very sensitive spirit, to have
known this terrible hatred and animosity of the evil
powers toward Him, and working through men. Oh, the
constant, almost monotonous repetition: 'They sought to
destroy Him... they sought to destroy Him... they sought
how they might destroy Him.' That was the atmosphere in
which He lived. Why?
Well, it
might be put down to many causes, but the fundamental
cause was this: He belonged to Heaven, and the destiny of
the Heavenly One and the heavenly ones is to possess this
world and govern it, by the final abolishment of its
prince and his whole kingdom. And they know. Said they:
"I know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God"
(Mark 1:24). And they know every one who is holy, in that
sense. There is an inevitable antagonism in the spiritual
realm. Often it cannot be traced to any physical,
material, or temporal cause, or to people; it is just
there in the air. We know something of the antagonisms of
a spiritual kind that the Christian has to meet in this
world, without provoking deliberately or knowingly or
really, by words or deeds. When you are born again,
somehow or other the consciousness comes alive that you
are a speckled bird, a marked man or woman. And so John
says about these that are born of God: 'For this cause
the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not' (1
John 3:1b). It 'knoweth' us not. There is
a deeper meaning in that word 'knoweth' than just being
aware of us, knowing who we are. It is being able to
place us; being able to explain us, being able to trace
us, as to what we are and where we came from. To the
world there is something about us that is inscrutable;
and that constitutes an antagonism.
Let me
appeal once again to young Christians. Do not try to cut
out that kind of antagonism. Be careful not to give
unnecessary offence; try to 'commend yourself to every
man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor. 4:2b); do
things honourably before all men (Rom. 12:17b); give them
no occasion for accusing you fairly as a Christian. But
when you have done all, do not think that you will not
meet this antagonism - if you are a child of God you
will. You just cannot avoid it. Do not try to eliminate
it; recognize that this is a part of the very fact, a
wonderful evidence of the fact that you are in the
company of Jesus Christ. The world knew Him not;
therefore it knows us not.
The New Birth is all of Grace
In
conclusion, let us think for a few minutes of Mary
herself, because she is characteristic in some ways of
the vessel of the new birth. To whom, to what, upon what
ground, will the new birth take place? Here there is a
correspondence between the birth of the Lord Jesus and
the new birth of every child of God. We have, of course,
to recognize the Divine sovereignty of eternal election:
'chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world'.
Let us accept that, and leave it for the moment. We come
into the operation and activity of God in time. Upon what
ground in time, in our own lives, will this thing come to
us? Are there some grounds, are there some occasions, are
there some conditions which will always obtain where God
comes in in this way?
Yes,
always. One of the beautiful things about Mary, as
characteristic of a vessel of new birth, was that which
the angel said to her: 'Hail, thou that art highly
favoured of God.' The margin perhaps gets nearer to the
true meaning: 'Hail, thou that art endued with grace'.
That is the beginning of every new birth - endued
with grace. If there was one person in that little
country in those days who was aware - and this comes out
so clearly - of the wonder of this, the condescension of
this, and her own unworthiness of it, it was Mary. 'How
should this thing be?' He never comes to the proud, the self-sufficient, the self-confident; He never comes to those who are unaware that His coming would be an expression of infinite grace. Before this wonderful thing can
happen to us, we have often to be brought to the place
where the only word that suits the situation in our
consciousness is grace; it is God's grace; it is
all of grace. 'Thou art endued with grace'.
That is
simple, I know, but that is the beginning of everything
for the Christian life, for this wonderful miracle of
God: that we must see and be deeply impressed, as she
was, with our own utter worthlessness in this matter:
that this could never be to us if we, in ourselves, in
our own state, were the deciding factor. It is only God's
infinite mercy, His infinite grace. That is a humble and
a contrite spirit, and God is with that. But the new
birth is but the beginning. This which is of God and of
Heaven, has to grow and grow; more and more there is to
be an increase of Him; but it is all on the same basis -
the emptying of ourselves, the pouring out of all that is
selfhood, to make way for the grace of God.
Submissiveness and Simplicity
The next
thing about Mary is her simplicity and her
submissiveness. There is something very beautiful about
her simplicity, is there not? We are often too
complicated about all these things. We make the Christian
life far too complicated - projecting our mentalities and
our arguments, our contentions, and our demands for
explanation, and what-not - and we are standing in our
own light as we do so. The Lord cannot get on; that is
all rubbish in the way. He needs a heart like Mary's (and
I am not setting up Mary to be worshipped): a heart that
is simple, in this sense, that there is nothing
argumentative, querulous, awkward, about it. It is an
open heart: perplexed, it is true; not understanding;
wondering how it can be, and saying so. Nevertheless,
because of the simplicity, honesty, purity of her heart,
she arrived at this: 'Be it unto me according to Thy
word' - absolute submission, even to the mystery, and
what it would involve. The trouble with so many of us is
that we are so slow in our submission, our surrender, our
giving way, our letting go. We will argue; we will demand
an explanation. We go round and round this eternal
circle, getting nowhere, because we will not let go - we
just will not let go; and so we come back to the point
from which we started a thousand times. Mary put her
whole life into this: 'Be it unto me according to Thy
word'. And the angel departed. That was what he was
working toward.
It
involved Mary in suffering - it involved her in suffering
immediately. And then, forty days after the birth, Simeon
told her: 'A sword shall pierce through thine own soul;
that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed'. I
think there is something there that is very helpful. When
the Cross is at work in a life, people begin to betray
themselves; their thoughts begin to accuse, to make
charges; to say, This is because of so and so.... When
someone is having a bad time, thoughts come out: people
divulge what they are thinking and feeling about the one
concerned - some are sympathetic and some antagonistic.
'A sword shall pierce through thine own soul; that
thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.' It was
necessary that men should show themselves, show where
they stood, on that day of the Cross; Mary's suffering
was a part of that.
This may
seem to us something of a mystery. But the point is that
this kind of thing that happened to her, and which
happens to us, involves us in suffering. It involves us
in the offence of the Cross; it involves us in much
misunderstanding, even much ostracism. The angel left
her. She knew what it meant then. But later on Simeon
told her what was coming, along the line of this child.
What it amounts to is this: that to be a child of God is
no ordinary thing. It is something unusual, something
different, something of God. It is the result of an
intervention of God from heaven.