The Pastor's Letter (May 1976)
Dear Friends,
There is very often a tendency in many professing Christians to confuse the effects of the work of salvation in a person's life with the source from which that salvation springs. Therefore, when we speak of a person “believing” in our Lord Jesus Christ to the salvation of their soul, we should clearly understand that such believing on the part of the person in question is not the source, but the effect of the work of salvation operating in that person's life. The failure to distinguish between these two things – cause and effect – very much stems from the practice of dividing asunder portions of the scripture that must, of necessity, stand together in order to teach us the whole breadth of the truth that it deals with.
One of the most notorious examples of this practice is the isolating of verse thirteen from verse twelve in the first chapter of John's gospel. That verse 12 of John chapter 1 says, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” “There you are,” people say, “it's as simple as that; you simply believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; you 'receive' him as your Lord and Saviour, and you are saved.” Now while that is true, gloriously true, it is not the whole of the truth. Salvation is made manifest and evident in a person's life by “receiving” the Lord Jesus Christ and “believing” on His name. It is simply believe and receive. It is not “easy believe-ism,” but it is most certainly “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”
But what we fail to see at our peril – and this has resulted in our man-centred evangelism of our day – is the fact that the believing and the receiving are the “outworkings” of some thing that has, first of all, had an “inworking” in the person under review. What the 12th verse of John chapter 1 displays is the marks of spiritual life present in a man or a woman. Receiving Christ and believing on His name – these are spiritual activities suddenly coming forth out of a sinner who before this time only showed that he was “dead” to all the spiritual things of God. But now, all of a sudden, he begins to show spiritual life; he begins to move spiritual limbs, as it were; this man is “alive” we might rightly say – he is believing, he is receiving, he is reaching out the hand of faith, he is looking unto Jesus, he is saying, “My Lord and my God.” All these are spiritual activities; they belong to the work of salvation in a man or a woman's heart and soul. But they are not the first cause of that work; they don't belong to the source of the work – they belong to the effects of the work.
Now then, if John chapter 1 verse 12 was not violently divorced from John chapter 1 verse 13 we would see that clearly. For having spoken of these effects of salvation which are made manifest as men and women put their trust in Christ, John then goes on to show the source from which that salvation springs in the first place.
Have these people actively displayed signs of spiritual life in believing and receiving Christ? Well, then, says the apostle John, come to the cause and the source of that life: - “But as many as received him, to them gave he power 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.” You see that term John uses? And how apt that term is: “Which were born,” he says. And here is the source of that spiritual life which has just been displayed in those who “received” and “believed” the things concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. They were “dead”, they were without spiritual existence, they were in darkness – take as many of the gospel descriptions of the sinner as you like. But suddenly they began to stir – they began to cry out and reach out – they began to show life – they looked, they believed, they received. How was that? Well, says John, there is only one explanation, they were born.
Here is a child scurrying across the floor on its hind-quarters; in another few months it is on its feet; it begins to grow and its appetite seems to increase with every passing day and night. Soon the sensibilities begin to develop, it knows what pleases it and what displeases. That's life! We say, That's life. Indeed it is. And so also with “spiritual” life. First the crawling and toddling stage, then, the walking and the running; the growing appetite from milk to strong meat, and so forth, and the development of good and pure Christian sensibilities to those things that belong to our eternal peace. But, here is the point, before there can be life there must be birth. That child on the floor didn't spring out of itself; it has a parentage, it was born. And so, says John, these people in verse 12 who show forth these signs of spiritual life in Jesus Christ our Lord, that life has a source, they were “born”. And so, John goes on to tell us how they were born and how they were not born.
There are three very definite ways in which they were not born, says John: they were not born of blood, they were not born of the will of the flesh, they were not born of the will of man. That is fairly comprehensive. “Not of blood.” If there was one thing the Jews loved to imagine it was the thought of automatic salvation on account of national standing. Our Lord clears up that question in the eighth chapter of this gospel: they were children of Abraham as far as natural birth is concerned, but the true child of Abraham is one by faith in Jesus Christ. “Not of blood.” The application of that for our own days is simply contained in the fact that we have children according to our natures and not according to our grace; grace doesn't run in the Adamic blood.
“Nor of the will of the flesh,” says John. This remark is absolutely vital. A person can never bring about spiritual life by a natural (fleshly) act. Again our Lord in this same gospel – in the famous interview with Nicodemus – makes this abundantly clear, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit, Marvel not that I say unto thee, Ye must be born again.” “The spirit warreth against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit.” You can't marry the two and produce a spiritual off-spring. Those who show signs of true spiritual life have never, never been born of the “will of the flesh”.
“Nor of the will of man,” he says in the third place. Not anything I have of myself by blood-birth, not anything I can do of myself by the deeds of the flesh, and not anything that any other man, woman, young person or child can do for me. This, of course, doesn't eliminate for one moment the preachers task, or the believer's task in witness, teaching, instructing, testifying by life and example, and so forth. But it does most assuredly lay down the guidelines for the way in which we undertake all of these things, lest we are found producing “man-made” converts and conversions psychological and not spiritual. We must never forget our Lord's words to the Pharisees, how they compassed sea and land to make one convert (one proselyte) and when they had doe so they only made him “twice the child of hell that he was before.” Those who truly believe, who truly show true signs and marks of spiritual life in their behaviour, are those who have been “born”, but not by “the will of man”.
Well then, how were they born? And says John, they were “born of God”. They “received”, they “believed”. How did they receive and believe? They “were born”. How were they born? Through blood? No. By the flesh? No. Through men? No. They were born of God. They displayed, and showed forth, and manifested those spiritual signs of life, because they underwent a spiritual birth: they were “born of God”.
It's the doctrine of regeneration, of the rebirth: the very thing that our Lord told Nicodemus in the third chapter those many years ago, “Ye must be born again”. We would mark that well. Our Lord isn't telling Nicodemus of something that he must do – that is how that passage is normally preached and understood in these days – but our Lord is telling him of something that must happen to him – he must be “born again”, he must be regenerated by the workings of the Holy Spirit of God, he must be born of God. And it's when a person is spiritually born of God that that same person exercises that new-found spiritual life. And the very first exercise in that new-born thing is the full cry of its spiritual lungs before the God who has begotten it. And with that first cry, and those first manifestations of a new-born spiritual life before God, comes the “power”, or the “right”, or the “authority” to become a child of God.
His is the process. We are dead by nature; God gives us birth, and we show our birth by receiving that One whom God sent into the world to die for sinners. When this happens, our “standing” before God is immediately changed, and we are “adopted” into the family of God with all the rights and privileges of that family. And here is the wonderful thing, before He gives us the “standing” of children, He first of all, gives us the “nature” of children through being born again, born of God. We are born, by nature, of our father the devil, and it's the works of our father that we do. But, as soon as we are “born of God”, then it is the works of God that we do. And what is the work of God? “This is the work of God”, said Jesus, “that ye believe on him whom He hath sent.”
And so, the whole picture of John chapter 1 verses 12 and 13, fall into perfect place and perfect harmony. Believing in Christ and receiving Him is not the first cause in the things of our salvation – not the source. It is the outworking – and the blessed outworking. But to halt there is to miss the most blessed fact of all, that if ever we show those signs of spiritual life at all, we show them on account of our spiritual birth at the hands of our very God Himself. What a thing if it should be said of us as was said of old Israel, “The ox knoweth her master .. but my people ...” Shall we be worse than the beasts of the field and not know the God who has begotten us? Children who cannot rightly trace who their father is? Brethren and sisters of an “elder brother” beyond compare and fail to know how we have become “joint heirs” with Him? Surely these things shouldn't be, brethren; but surely we should know that those who stand rightly in the same family with Jesus Christ their Saviour are those who have been “born” into that family – not “of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” “To God be the glory, great things He hath done.”
Let us rejoice at each and every time that we see the manifestations of newly created spiritual life showing itself forth in every sinner that repents and believes the gospel. But let us never forget to look back to the “source” as we behold the “effect”, and return all our thanks to the God who first breathed that spiritual life into that soul in this second creation and birth, as surely as He breathed into Adam the breath of life in the first creation, and Adam became a living soul before his God. “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.”