V - THE NEW BIRTH (John iii: 3)

Summary

“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

—John iii: 3.

Christ began his ministry where John left off his. “Repent” said John, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Reformation is always the precursor of the higher state, spiritual life; and at that very point Christ took up his teaching, saying: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” But this was not the end, though it was the beginning. When he fell in with a man of a singularly upright and pure character, Nicodemus,—a true and honorable man, a courageous man in a quiet way, a ruler among the Jews, a man far above immorality or anything of that kind,—to him he said, “You must be born again.” Hardly any other character could have been selected where it would have been so little expected that Christ would say, “Even such a one as you must be born again.”

I propose to speak on the subject of “Regeneration,” and to show how perfectly it fits into that system of nature which the theory of Evolution is supposed to exhibit.

Christ called men from gross and animal life to the moral life; there can be no question about that; he followed thus the whole Old Testament example.