by W K Tweedie
John 3:7. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
Do not marvel at it any more than to be told that birds cannot live in the depths of the ocean, or the fish in the blue sky above us. Man was created to work for God’s eternal favour and win it: he must have a new nature before he will simply receive it by faith. Man was created at first to love God; he is now enmity against Him and must have a new nature before he can love Him again. Man was created for the service of God, and found delight in it: that service is now a weariness to him, and new likings must be created before he can delight again in God’s service. Hence the Saviour’s statement, “Ye must be born again”; hence the assurance that, unless we are converted, and become as little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of God; and hence the intimation that, “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away . . . all things are become new.”
Now, is it true, my soul, that this all-decisive change has come over you? Have you felt the Spirit’s new creative energy and submitted to it? If you cannot name the day, or the occasion when that took place, yet are you sure of the fact? Are you practising no deception on yourself? Are you honestly willing to know the truth of your condition? And have you reason to be assured that you are indeed alive to God? Then walk in the Spirit and cherish the things of the Spirit. As you have borne the image of the first Adam, see that you bear the image of the second. Being born of God, live like the child of a king and the heir of a kingdom, and thus be blessed in your deeds.
But how prone men are to be self-satisfied. The Saviour has placed the great truth of regeneration or conversion on the very frontier of His kingdom and has said, with the deepest emphasis that words can convey, that there is no other mode of entry; but many think that they are in the kingdom, while they have never yet thought of conversion. They either ignore, pervert or deny regeneration. But blessed are all they who are born of the Spirit, or born of God through the incorruptible seed. They shall never be moved.
^1 Taken with editing from Tweedie’s Glad Tidings of the Gospel of Peace.