The Ministry of the Spirit by A. J. Gordon (my reading book .txt) 📖

Others make these words of our Lord signify "born from the beginning." There must be a resumption of life de novo, a return to the original {102} source and fountain of being. To find this it is not enough that we go back to the creation-beginning revealed in Genesis; we must return to the precreation-beginning revealed in John, the book of re-genesis. In the opening of Genesis we find Adam, created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face averted from God and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death. In the opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship with the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God", pros ton theon—not merely proceeding from God, but tending toward God by eternal communion. Conversion restores man to this lost attitude: "Ye turned to God, pros ton theon, from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thess. 1: 9). Regeneration restores man to his forfeited life, the unfallen life of the Son of God, the life which has never wavered from steadfast fellowship with the Father. "I give unto them eternal life," says Jesus. Is eternal life without end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is uncreated being in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of God in contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth we acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a human heredity.

In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of his {103} doctrine: "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 you, Ye must be born anew" (John 3: 7, R. V.). By no process of evolution, however prolonged, can the natural man be developed into the spiritual man; by no process of degeneration can the spiritual man deteriorate into the natural man. These two are from a totally different stock and origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from above. There is but one way through which the relation of sonship can be established, and that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not constitute them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests either upon a daring denial or a daring assumption—the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In either case the teaching belongs to "another gospel," the recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude but an anathema.[1]

The contrast between the two lives and the way {104} in which the partnership—the choinônia—with the new is effected, is told in that deep saying of Peter: "Whereby he hath granted us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers—choinônia—of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption which is in the world by lust" (2 Pet. 1: 4, R. V.). Here are the two streams of life contrasted:

1. The corruption in the world through lust.

2. The Divine nature which is in the world through the incarnation.

Here is the Adam-life into which we are brought by natural birth; and over against it the Christ-life into which we are brought by spiritual birth. From the one we escape, of the other we partake. The source and issue of the one are briefly summarized: "Lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." The Jordan is a fitting symbol of our natural life, rising in a lofty elevation and from pure springs, but plunging steadily down till it pours itself into that Dead Sea from which there is no outlet: To be taken out of this stream and to be brought into the life which flows from the heart of God is man's only hope of salvation. And the method of effecting this transition is plainly stated, "through these," or by means of the precious and exceeding great promises. As in grafting, the old and degenerate stock must first be cut off and then the new inserted, so {105} in regeneration we are separated from the flesh and incorporated by the Spirit. And what the scion is in grafting, the word or promise of God is in regeneration. It is the medium through which the Holy Spirit is conveyed, the germ cell in which the Divine life is enfolded. Hence the emphasis which is put in Scripture upon the appropriation of divine truth. We are told that "of his own will begat he us with the word of truth" (James 1: 18). "Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1: 23, R. V.).

Very deep and significant, therefore, is the saying of Jesus in respect to the regenerating power of his words, in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John; He emphasizes the contrariety between the two natures, the human and the divine, saying: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." And then he adds: "The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life." As God in creation breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul, so the Lord Jesus by the word of his mouth, which is the breath of life, recreates man and makes him alive unto God. And not life only, but likeness as well, is thus imparted. "So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him," is the simple story of the origin of an innocent race. Then follows the temptation and the fall, and then the story of the {106} descent of a ruined humanity: "And Adam begot a son in his own likeness, after his image."

And yet how wide the gulf between these two origins. The notion is persistent and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation there may have been from the original type, education and training can reshape the likeness of Adam to the likeness of God. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," says the popular proverb. True; but though a crooked sapling may be developed into the upright oak, no bending or manipulation can ever so change the species of the tree as to enable men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again the dualism of Jesus Christ's teaching is distinctly recognized. "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." And what is the remedy for a corrupt tree? The cutting off of the old and the bringing in of a new scion and stock. The life of God can alone beget the likeness of God; the divine type is wrapped up in the same germ which holds the Divine nature. Therefore in regeneration we are said to have "put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. 3: 10), and "which after God hath been created in . . . true holiness" (Eph. 4: 24).

In a word, the lost image of God is not restamped upon us, but renewed within us. Christ our life was "begotten of the Holy Ghost," and he became {107} the fount and origin of life henceforth for all his church. This communication of the divine life from Christ to the soul through the Holy Spirit is a hidden transaction, but so great in its significance and issues that one has well called it "the greatest of all miracles." As in the origin of our natural life we are made in secret and curiously wrought, much more in our spiritual. But the issue has to do with the farthest eternity. "As when the Lord was born the world still went on its old way, little conscious that one had come who should one day change and rule all things, so when the new man is framed within, the old life for a while goes on much as before; the daily calling, and the earthly cares, and too often old lusts and habits also, still engross us; a worldly eye sees little new, while yet the life which shall live forever has been quickened within and a new man been formed who shall inherit all."[2]

2. The Spirit of Holiness: Our Sanctification. "According to the Spirit of holiness" Christ "was declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1: 4). How striking the antithesis between our Lord's two natures, as revealed in this passage, Son of David as to the flesh, Son of God as to the Spirit. And "as he is so are we in this world." We who are regenerate have two natures, the one derived from Adam, the other {108} derived from Christ, and our sanctification consists in the double process of mortification and vivification, the deadening and subduing of the old and the quickening and developing of the new. In other words, what was wrought in Christ who was "put to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit" is rewrought in us through the constant operation of the Holy Ghost, and thus the cross and the resurrection extend their sway over the entire life of the Christian. Consider these two experiences.

Mortification is not asceticism. It is not a self-inflicted compunction, but a Christ-inflicted crucifixion. Our Lord was done with the cross when on Calvary he cried: "It is finished." But where he ended each disciple must begin: "If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 16: 24, 25). These words, so constantly repeated in one form or another by our Lord, make it clear that the death-principle must be realized within us in order that the life-principle may have final and triumphant sway. It is to this truth which every disciple is solemnly committed in his baptism: "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by {109} the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6: 3, 4). Baptism is the monogram of the Christian; by it every believer is sealed and certified as a participant in the death and life of Christ; and the Holy Spirit has been given to be the Executor of the contract thus made at the symbolic grave of Christ.

In considering the great fact of the believer's death in Christ to sin and the law, we must not confound what the Scriptures clearly distinguish. There are three deaths in which we have part:

1. Death in sin, our natural condition.

2. Death for sin, our judicial condition.

3. Death to sin, our sanctified condition.

1. Death in sin. "And you . . . who were dead in trespasses and sins," "And you being dead in your sins" (Eph. 2: 1; Col. 2: 13). This is the condition in which we are by nature, as participants in the fall and ruin into which the transgression of our first parents has plunged the race. It is a condition in which we are under moral insensibility to the claims of God's holiness and love; and under the sentence of eternal punishment from the law which we have broken. In this state of death in sin Christ found the whole world when he came to be our Saviour.

2. Death for sin. "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ" (Rom. 7: 4). This is the condition into {110} which Christ brought us