New Birth - A Fundamental Difference (continued)
Those of you who have any spiritual sense and understanding and knowledge at all know how true that "Otherness" is. It is the thing upon which perhaps we have fallen back again and again as the last word in an argument, or debate with ourselves over our own Christian lives. That is, there are times when by reason of various conditions or circumstances, trials, difficulties, dark passages of experience, the enemy hedges us up in a corner, and makes us question the reality of everything; the reality of our own experience, the reality of our own salvation; and what is our last word in this argument? Very often in my own case the last word has been: Whatever I am, or whatever I am not, this "Otherness" is the greatest reality I know. I know by experience, that when for me certain things have been totally impossible, spiritually, mentally, and physically, this "Otherness" has come to the rescue and accomplished them. I know that my experience is not the product of my own genius; I know the work that I have done is not the outcome of my own ability. I know perfectly well my limitations, but I know there is a history which cannot be accounted for by anything of my own. I know it when every ounce of my being on its best side argues in a certain direction, and that "Otherness" will not go with me and persuades me against it, and the issue proves that that "Otherness" was right and I was wrong at my best. What is that "Otherness"? It is the Lord the Spirit. That is the essence of the birth from above, the Lord Himself. He is not as we are - He is "Other".
The New Birth - Its Basis
The third thing, the basis of the new birth. It is the accepting of the end of the possibilities of the old birth. That so far as the Kingdom of God is concerned and all that relates to it of character and conduct, of being and doing, of knowing and understanding and functioning, the natural birth provides absolutely no possibility, it cannot bring us there. We cannot naturally see the Kingdom of God. Even on the high level of a Nicodemus-equipment, religiously, intellectually, ecclesiastically, morally, we cannot see the Kingdom of God at our very best by nature, or by human achievement. Of course I know I am saying commonplace things to many, but be patient; it is very important that in taking the first thing we should say familiar things, and say them strongly. It is not settled as to why the Lord Jesus changed the order of His answer to Nicodemus in the fifth verse from the third. One thing is clear, that Nicodemus had misapprehended His statement Nicodemus had taken Him up as meaning what our Authorized Version seems to suggest: "Ye must be born again." That conveyed to him an altogether different idea from being born from above. The Greek word used allows of that conception and apprehension; indeed the same word is used elsewhere in the sense of again, a second time. Nicodemus just dwelt on that particular aspect of the word, that the Lord's statement in terms of a birth repeated. The Lord, in His changed address, language, evidently intended to deal with that misconception and misapprehension, and that is the only way in which you can explain what He meant in His second statement: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Now some think that the Lord, using the word "water" referred to the Word of God. Others, and I think by far the greater number, hold that it refers to baptism. The word here is: "... out from water and the Spirit." Now if it does mean that, in the Lord's usage, it touches immediately what we were saying in the earlier statement; but whether the Lord meant baptism and the Spirit or not, the principle holds good that to be born from above, as set over against a Nicodemus position, means that one history is entirely closed, and another - an entirely different history - comes in at its commencement; therefore the principle is the same, that if it is baptism, baptism is A TYPE of death to the old creation, death and burial, in which one entire system, order, and creation is put aside and out of God's sight; crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, then of course, raised in Christ. It is our acceptance of the end of the possibilities of the old birth. We do not bring an end to those possibilities, that has been reached long ago, and God sees it and declares it, and birth from above presupposes and postulates the fact that this old birth at its best can never see or enter into the Kingdom of God, therefore it is futile and useless. You and I will never come into the Kingdom of God on any other ground than that God comes into us in a new birth; in that sense we are born from above; an act of God by the Holy Spirit; "... so is every one that is born of the Spirit." "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." The new birth means that we, by an act of God in the Holy Spirit, become spiritual, in this sense - that we totally correspond to the Kingdom of God in its spiritual nature. It is a suitability to God. "God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth."
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 13)
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