Why New Birth Is Necessary
And then the Lord presses that further. He does not only show that there is an impasse, and that He cannot get anywhere with Nicodemus, and Nicodemus cannot get anywhere with Him, except on the ground of this birth from above, He proceeds to show why, and He heaps upon poor Nicodemus the ignorminy of this situation by following with the serpent in the wilderness. We know that serpent in the wilderness represents God's thought about man. It is elevated, erected upon a pole, lifted up: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness ..." Remember the serpent is the cursed thing because it is symbolically the embodiment of sin, it is sin personified. Cursed and lifted up. And oh, the terrible nature of the interpretation of that: "...so must the Son of man be lifted up." And you need Paul to explain: "Christ made a curse for us": "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin"; and He therefore was made a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." If you want to know more about the awful comprehensiveness of the curse, read Deuteronomy, chapters 27 and 28. It s all gathered up in one thing, not doing the will of God, not obeying the commandments of the Lord. And He Who came in delight to do the will of God, came to do His Father's will, and Who did it perfectly, at a point in His life took the place voluntarily of man who had wholly failed to do the will of God, and received the curse of God in exclusion from the presence of God in judgment, and thus represented man, in man's state, and under that curse and judgment represented God's thought about man by nature. Put that over on to a Nicodemus, and you will find there is an awful shock for a man such as he. And the Lord brings that home to Nicodemus. That is bringing things down to a great and terrible depth. A death has taken place; a low place of death has been reached under condemnation and judgment. We may say zero has been reached.
The Truth of Eternal Life
Now then, the way is prepared for the matter of eternal life to be considered, and that is your transition from Nicodemus to the woman of Sychar. Listen: John 3:36, which is the last verse in the chapter, the link between the two chapters: "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." That is the serpent in the wilderness. Now that is the link between the two chapters, but of course there ought to be no chapters. Pass on to what is our chapter 4:14: "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." When the death place has been reached, and the zero point has been touched, then eternal life can come into view, but not before, and Sychar represents that. Sychar brings in that teaching of eternal life. It is the second great truth, eternal life. There is no need for me to take you back to Cana of Galilee. We can see it so patiently, life out of death; but life springing from zero point. The Lord Jesus marked a very definite pause in things there. His mother said: "They have no wine." He did not just carry the thing on and not allow a sense of an end to be felt, He paused. Yes, that is the end, that is one realm, one history. We are not going to perpetuate that. That pause is related to "Mine hour," and "Mine hour" is always related to the Cross, and the Cross is always a great pause in the history of the universe - Silence in heaven. One history has closed. There is a gap, not a continuity; and then a new history begins. The Lord Jesus said to His mother: "Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come." There is a pause, and then the taking up after a pause, the bringing in of something new. Not making the old to be eked out to the end of the feast, but the doing of something new altogether: His own principle of: "And no man putteth new wine into old bottles ... but new wine must be put into new bottles." Something altogether new coming in. New wine, something different from what was.
So we find that with chapter four we are brought into the doctrine of eternal life, a doctrine which, if we were exhaustively to consider it, would occupy us for many pages, but, for our present, purpose has to be brought within the very small compass of a few lines, so that we must put it into one or two comprehensive statements.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 16 - "The Meaning of Eternal Life")
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