SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service Theologian
REDEMPTION TRUTHS
CHAPTER 10
SONSHIP AND THE NEW BIRTH
"Being
born again
by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." 1 Peter
1:28 "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
Romans 8:14
"ADAM was the son of God; all men,
therefore, must be sons of God." How eager men are to claim this relationship,
while utterly indifferent to the responsibilities and duties which it involves!
But it is a flagrant fallacy to argue that because unfallen Adam was the son of
God, the descendants of fallen Adam are also sons. And Scripture knows no such
sonship. Of the Lord Jesus Christ it is written:
"He came unto His own, and
His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He the
right to become the sons 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 1:11-13.)
True it is that, when preaching to Athenian
idolaters, the Apostle Paul adopted the words of a heathen poet "For we are
also His offspring." (Acts 17:28.) But no doctrine of sonship can be founded
upon this. The word here used is one of wide significance; and the argument he
based on it would be equally valid if the lower creation were included in it.
The language of Hebrews 2:14 also is perverted to support this figment. But, as
the sequel shows, "the children" there spoken of are the "seed of Abraham."
Most certain it is that all men are Gods creatures. But they only are
children of God who have been begotten of God; and there is only one way in
which sinners can be thus begotten.
This truth has always been resisted
by the professing Church. The profane heresy of "the brotherhood of Jesus," so
popular to-day, is but a phase of the old heresy of redemption by the
Incarnation, which, under the influence of pagan philosophy, leavened the
teaching of some of the greatest of the Fathers. Not that they were so
heretical as their modern disciples and imitators. For while with them Calvary
was indeed overshadowed by Bethlehem, it was not reduced to being merely a
display of heroic self-sacrifice. They did not deny the Atonement.
And
the Western Church, though refusing saintship to those who thus erred, took
refuge in a heresy more evil still. The great Augustine of Hippo was its most
distinguished exponent. While rejecting the Alexandrian conception of a God
"immanent" in human nature, he and his school were no less corrupted by Greek
philosophy. The Deity of their theology was an alienated and angry God, between
Whom and men depraved and doomed, the Church was a mediator. For "the bosom of
the Church" afforded the only refuge from Divine wrath; and to bring men within
that shelter was their aim.
To this end, the simple baptism of the New
Testament - a public confession of Christ by those whom the Gospel had won -
was remodeled on pagan lines as a mystical regeneration and cleansing from sin,
bringing the sinner into a sphere where a mystically-endowed priesthood could
minister to him further grace.
But some one will exclaim "Why
speak of these heresies? Positive truth is what is wanted." Yes, in these days
people are intolerant of all denunciations of error. The seeming triumph of
Satan, from the day of the Eden Fall to the present hour, has been largely due
to his skill in using "positive truth." Men would be startled by a direct
denial of Divine truth; so he adopts the very words in which it is revealed,
and then corrupts them, or explains them away. Take, for example, the
Lords explicit declaration "Ye must be born again." He does not challenge
this it is the creed of Christendom. But what does it mean? Baptismal
regeneration! And the other "sacrament" will satisfy the Masters words
about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Thus the Word of God, while
formally accepted, is made of none effect by the traditions of men.
It
cannot be asserted too plainly that no one is a child of God who has not been
born of God; and that no sacrament, no ordinance of religion, can procure the
new birth in any sense, or in any degree. The salvation of a sinner is
Gods work altogether. Baptismal regeneration was a doctrine of ancient
paganism, but it has no place in Christianity. Scripture knows nothing of it.
Never even once in the New Testament is water baptism mentioned in connection
with the new birth, or with the Spirits work. This is not an expression
of opinion, but a statement of fact which anyone can test with the aid of a
concordance.
That baptism is referred to in "the Nicodemus sermon" is,
no doubt, the traditional view of the third chapter of John. But the judgment
of a weighty minority of theologians, from Calvin to the late Bishop Ryle of
Liverpool, bars the assertion that this is the "orthodox" interpretation of the
passage. Dr. Ryles "six reasons" for rejecting it seem to me indeed to
make an end of controversy upon the subject. The traditional view is
practically vetoed by the glaring anachronism it involves. For the Lord
reproved Nicodemus for his ignorance of a birth by water and Spirit. But how
could he have known anything of Christian baptism? It had not yet been
instituted, and even the Apostles themselves knew nothing of it. To fall back
upon Johns baptism only makes matters worse. For what relation had
Johns baptism to the new birth? But, we are told, the Jewish baptism of
proselytes was a baptism of regeneration. Are we then to hold that the
Lords teaching about the Kingdom was based on a mere human ordinance,
which had no Scriptural warrant, and which the Jews in days of apostasy derived
from ancient paganism? The suggestion is positively profane.
We stand
upon certainty when we aver, first, that the truth to which the Lord appealed
was truth Divinely revealed, and that therefore it is in the Scriptures of the
Old Testament that we must seek for the meaning of His words; and, secondly,
that His words must imply redemption by blood, for on no other ground can
anyone enter the Kingdom. In the sequel, recorded in verses 14-18, the Lord is
not unfolding an alternative way of obtaining life; the birth by water and
Spirit must, like the serpent lifted up, point to Calvary.
Lastly, the
water of John 3:5 must have the same significance as the water of 1 John 5:6,
8" - This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the
water only, but with the water and with the blood". And let us not forget the
words which follow, "There are three who bear witness - the Spirit, and the
water, and the blood." What then does the water signify? No one whose mind is
not steeped in sacramentalism can imagine that in the three-fold "witness of
God," baptism is here sandwiched between the Holy Spirit and the blood of
Christ. And the attempt to explain the words by the fact recorded in John 19:34
savours of a materialism that is wholly foreign to Christianity. Such an
explanation, moreover, is utterly inadequate. The force of the language is that
the mission and ministry of Christ were characterized by water and blood. It
was not that at the death of Christ blood and water flowed from His pierced
side; but that His coming, regarded as a whole, was "with the water and with
the blood." This, which is plain even in our English version, is made very
emphatic in the original by the change of the preposition in the sixth
verse.
But what is the significance of this? The statement that the
advent of Christ was characterized by blood is to be explained, not by the
shambles, but by the types. It shuts out the "brotherhood of Jesus" lie, that
He took flesh and blood in order to raise humanity by the splendid example of a
perfect life and a martyrs death. It tells us that redemption was the
great purpose of His coming. And this implies a ruin that allowed of no other
remedy. Hence the emphasis with which it is asserted; hence, also, the
hostility which it provokes in the human heart. The answer of the Jews was to
crucify Him, thus aiding unwittingly in the fulfillment of His mission. His
rejection by the Christianized Sadducees of to-day is as definite though not as
brutal.
The Christian understands "the blood" by reference to the Hebrew
Scriptures, which spell out for him the great truth of redemption. His thoughts
turn back to the Passover, and with humble joy his faith finds utterance in the
words, "Redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot." But so profound is the prevailing ignorance of the types
that we fail to understand "the water." As we have seen in preceding chapters,
a redeemed sinner needs cleansing as really as a lost sinner needs redemption.
And the sin-offering and the water of purification were for a redeemed people.
And they cannot be separated; for it was to the sin. offering that the water of
purification owed its ceremonial efficacy. It was because it had flowed over
the ashes of the sacrifice that it availed to cleanse.
The sin-offering
of Numbers 19 was as necessary to the Israelite as was the Passover. And Christ
is the fulfillment of all the types. To the contemporaries of the Apostle,
moreover, who, unlike ourselves, were well versed in Scripture, the meaning of
all this was both clear and profound. For them such a phrase as that He "came
with the water" needed no explanation. And, as Ezekiel 36 tells us, when Christ
returns in blessing to Israel His coming will be "with the water only." But
this is because His first coming was "not with the water only, but with the
water and with the blood." Redemption is already accomplished.
That rite
and that prophecy filled a large and prominent place in Jewish theology and
Jewish hopes and for a Rabbi to be ignorant of them was as extraordinary and as
inexcusable as it would be for a Christian minister to be ignorant of "the
Nicodemus sermon." Hence our Lords indignant remonstrance "Art thou the
teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things?"
The wording of our A
V, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit," lends support to the
error of supposing the new birth to be twofold. But the birth "of water and
Spirit" is so essentially one that in the next verse, and again in verse 8, the
Lord omits the water, and in speaking of the same birth describes it simply as
"of the Spirit." The time when the prophecy of Ezekiel 36 and 37 shall be
fulfilled is called by the Lord Himself "the regeneration." (Matthew 19:28.)
The only other passage where that word occurs is Titus 3:5 "He saved us, by the
washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." The word here
rendered "washing" is loutron. It is a noun substantive, not a verb. To
render it "laver" would suggest a false exegesis, for a different, though
kindred, word is used for "laver" in the Greek Bible. But it is a significant
fact that in the only passage in that version where it is used in relation to
sacred things it refers to the "water of purification."
"The loutron
of regeneration" therefore does not speak to us of the river or the font, but
of the great sin-offering. And this gives us a clue to its meaning in the only
other passage where, it occurs in the New Testament.
I refer to, Ephesians
5:26, where we read that Christ gave, Himself for the Church" that He might
sanctify and cleanse it with the loutron of water by the word."
By the
word, mark. As we have seen, "the water of purification" owes its efficacy to
the sin-offering. It is not to sacraments or human ordinances of religion that
the Christian owes his cleansing, but to Calvary. In the type the Israelite
obtained the benefits of the sacrifice by means of the water, and it is by "the
word" that the believing sinner obtains the blessings of Calvary. Hence the
language of the Epistle, "the loutron of water in the word."
The water
of purification was, as we have seen, the water of regeneration; and it is by
"the word" that the sinner is born again to God. The new birth has nothing to
do with mystic acts or shibboleths after the pattern of ancient paganism. As
Scripture declares, "we are born again by the word of God" - "the living and
eternally abiding word of God." And to bar all error or mistake, it is added
"And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you" - preached, as
the Apostle has already said, "with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." (1
Peter 1:12, 23, 25.) Not the Spirit without the word, nor the word without the
Spirit, but the word preached in the power of the Spirit.
Men can fix
time and place for ordinances:, for ordinances relate to earth; but the new
birth is from above. As the Lord said to Nicodemus - referring to the Ezekiel
prophecy - "The Spirit breathes where He wills." (John 3:8.) In Ezekiel 36 we
have the promise "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean"
- water, that is, which owes its cleansing efficacy to the sin-offering. And
then, "I will put My Spirit within you."
The vision of the dry bones
follows. You ask, how can sinners, helpless, hopeless, dead - as dead as dry
bones scattered upon the earth - be born again to God. "Can these bones live?"
is the question of Ezekiel 37: And the answer comes "Prophesy unto these bones,
and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." Preach to dead,
lost sinners call upon them to hear the word of the Lord. This is mans
part. Or if there be anything more, it is, "Prophesy unto the Breath. Pray that
the Spirit may breathe upon these slain that they may live." The rest is
Gods work altogether, for "the Spirit breathes where He wills." Not that
there is anything arbitrary in His working. God is never arbitrary; but He is
always Sovereign. Men preach; the Spirit breathes; and the dry bones live. Thus
it is that sinners are born again to God.
Go To
Chapter Eleven
Literature | Photos | Links | Home