BORN OF GOD
[p. 83] BORN OF GOD
1 John 2: 29; 1 John 3: 9; 1 John 4: 7; 1 John 5:1; 1 John 5:4-15
It is a great thing to apprehend that there is on the earth the family, or the offspring, I might say, of God: that is, in a moral sense. There is a race here which has derived its moral being from God and the description of it is exceedingly simple: it occurs in the expression, “Which were ... born of God”. What marks them we shall see further on. I am going to take up the marks of this family or offspring of God; but first of all I want you to get the idea of their having derived, one and all of them, their moral being directly from God.
It is not as in the case of descendants of Adam. No one of us came directly from Adam. He begat a son in his own likeness, but there has been a good number of generations between Adam and ourselves, and therefore it is impossible for any one to claim descent directly from him.
In the offspring of God every member of that family has derived his moral being directly from God; and as I said the Scriptural description of them is, “Born of God”. I purpose to dwell a little upon that now and to show how it has come to pass, and to point out the characteristics of this family who are born of God; and another point comes out in the closing chapter, namely, the witness of God. The witness is that God has given to us eternal life in His Son; thus God has given distinct witness concerning His Son, and it lies in that we are brought into the reality of eternal life. We have believed the witness that God has given of His Son and He that hath the Son hath life; we have come to the point, “These things have I written to you that ye may know that ye have eternal life who believe on the name of the Son of God”.
[p. 84] My first point in regard of the race or family spoken of in Scripture as born of God, who partake morally of God’s nature, is this: that all is entirely dependent on the truth; that is, that it has pleased God to reveal Himself. Christianity is entirely based on the revelation of God. It has been said that really everything hangs on the Word having become flesh, so that God might be declared. All that you get here is necessarily consequent upon God being perfectly and fully revealed.
Now that you have the full light of God coming out in the death of Christ you have the expression, “born of God;” but there was not, nor could be, any such expression until God was revealed.
If we look at natural things for a moment, they furnish an illustration of divine things. When a child is born, it has derived its physical being from its parents, but as yet it has not derived any moral being from them. Where it derives its moral being from its parents is in growing up in the enjoyment of the affection of its parents. As it grows up it becomes acquainted with the tenderness and affection of its parents; it is brought consciously into the scene and system of natural affections, and by-and-by it becomes intelligent as to things, and the effect is, that it has become partaker of a moral being from its parents. Like parent like child, in a sense. If there were nothing to hinder, and the child brought up in that way in the light of love, I have no doubt but that the child would grow up responsive to the thought of love. It would grow up intelligent, entering into the thought of the parents, and into the affection which had been lavished upon it from its birth. I am speaking for the moment apart from the question of sin.
When we come to divine things it is very important that we should get away from material ideas. You must remember that many terms which are employed in Scripture are really used as figures. Born again, and [p. 85] so on, are figures which are employed by the Spirit of God to convey to our minds a moral idea. The moral idea connected with being born is, that you have derived a moral being directly from God; as a child when it has become intelligent, when its mind is expanded, understands that it has a moral being as well as a physical one.
If everything went right in natural things a child should be like its parents morally and not simply physically. There are often defects in dealing with a child; it takes a good deal of patience if the child is to answer to the affections of the parents, and to partake morally of the being of its parents. Of course we have to remember that man is fallen, and there is likely to be a great deal of difficulty and defect in dealing with children.
Animals derive instinct from their parents, but with man there is the great point of intelligent affection. There is the intelligence which can take in the mind and thought of another, there is the power of intellect and at the same time there is an answer to the affection of the parents. So it is with us. The moment you got your moral being from God was when you were brought into the light of God.
“Born again”, is an expression used to show that you cannot touch the kingdom of God without it. But never could a person be born of God unless that person had touched the reality of divine love. You must appreciate the testimony of the death of Christ, that it is on the part of God the setting forth of the greatness of His love to man. “God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. When that comes home to the heart of the Christian, then it is that the love of God is shed abroad in the heart.
Thus it is that our hearts are brought into the presence of divine love, and there we touch the divine nature and become responsive to it. We love God because He [p. 86] first loved us. That is the effect and result to us of God having been fully revealed. When man first comes to know about God, the great thing is His attitude. That is the first point apprehended as the fruit of receiving the gospel, and consequent on it the Holy Spirit is received. Then you begin to see what is behind the attitude of God; you get an insight into the heart of God; and being thus brought into the presence of God’s love you respond to it. If you say you love God, then I say you are born of God. One proof of being born of God, is that we love God.
It is a wonderful thing for a man to be brought into the light of the love of God. The death of Christ is to the Christian full of light. The veil of the temple was rent in twain at His death, and it is the death of Christ that makes known the love of God. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. I know no lesson, for the believer, like this, to be learned in the cross of Christ. Get your eye there, and learn there the lesson of the love of God. The moment you touch His love you are responsive to it, and can say that you are born of God. You have derived your moral being from the blessed God as revealed. Had He not revealed Himself, it could not have been the case; but He is now the source of your moral being, so that you are of the offspring, the family of God.
I want now to look at the marks of one who is born of God. The first is, “If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him”. And again, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God”. Now put these two verses together. On the one hand there is the practising of righteousness, and on the other, one does not commit sin. Read further chapter 4: 7, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of [p. 87] God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God”. The one born of God loves. In chapter 5: 1 we have, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him”. Here we have the heart going out and recognising those who are born of God. Still further in verse 4, “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world”.
The first two expressions are essentially moral. One who is born of God practises righteousness and does not practise sin. Sin is lawlessness. One born of God walks here in self-judgment. No only does the Christian carry out the practice of righteousness, but he refuses to admit, or sanction, in himself that which God has condemned in the death of Christ. The evidence of a Christian is that he carries out practical righteousness. If you find a professed Christian allowing the flesh and other things in his practice and ways down here, which God has condemned, you have very little practical proof that he is a Christian. It is difficult in these days to trust profession; you want practice to witness to such, and this comes out in the way of practical righteousness on the one hand and the disallowance of lawlessness on the other.
It is impossible for one born of God to practise lawlessness; he cannot sin because he is born of God. These verses do not speak of isolated acts, but of the practice which characterises the Christian. They indicate marks important for us to bear here in the midst of a world full of lawlessness and unrighteousness. It is the first principle of one born of God that he walks in righteousness.
There is obligation to God, and you begin to carry that out in the practice of righteousness. You find that things here are inconsistent with the love of God as He has revealed Himself. You discover by the light into which God has brought you many things which [p. 88] in the light have to be disallowed. We are enjoined to “Speak every man truth with his neighbour”. Do we love to speak every man truth with his neighbour? We should, “for we are members one of another”.
I come now to the next evidence of being born of God, and that is “love”. Every one can say that he partakes of the divine nature if he loves. You cannot know the love of God without being responsive to it. It is not simply by doctrine that love is revealed to us. God has sent His Son who has died, and that is the witness of the love of God; and the word to us is, “Let us not love in word ... but in deed and in truth”. God has proved His love in deed and truth towards us.
If I may use the expression, the Christian first touches the spring of love by the power of the Holy Spirit, and now he loves God and knows God. Then another point comes out, he discerns those who are born of God. Every one who believes Jesus to be the Christ is born of God. I think that love brings very great enlargement, and that is the point; it brings discernment and enlargement to comprehend all those who are God’s children, and there is the desire to take in all, and that is a great point for us.
There may be many in London, many in the world, who believe Jesus to be the Christ, who have a reverence for the word of God, and does your heart take them all in? You may not compass them in knowledge, but, at all events, your heart may take them in because the great principle is, “him that loveth every one that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him”. Practically things work as you get them put in this epistle. You come into the full light of divine love and you love God, then you love all those who are begotten of God. Then we come to another point; you overcome the world. If you love God love will not tolerate lust; they do not go together. In natural things you cannot mix oil with water, and lust does not tolerate love. All that is in the world is “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”, and that cannot mix with holy love. If you are acquainted with the holy love, and you are of it, you overcome the world. You overcome the world by the principle of the being which you have derived from God. Lust and love are mutually exclusive.
Do you mean to tell me that a man who loves his family can be a drunkard? It is poor love where a man, to gratify his own lust, brings his family to poverty. You would not commend that man to me for natural love. If that man loved his family as he should he would not bring them to poverty and ruin in order to satisfy his own lusts. Lust is intolerable to love, and a man does not overcome the world in any other way than by love. A man might retire from the world and become a monk or an ascetic, or something of the sort, but he would carry the world into his retreat, he could not be free from it.
Then the one who overcomes the world is born of God, one who loves God and in virtue of being partaker of the divine nature he follows in the path of Christ Himself. I do not believe it to be possible for the world to be overcome in any other way.
Now we come to the witness in chapter 5, “This is he that came by water and blood”.
There are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood.† Jesus Christ came by water and blood. That has reference to what took place when Christ died. A soldier pierced His side with a spear and there came out blood and water. I understand it to mean, that He came in full testimony to the holy love of God. In the death of Christ there was that which expiated and that which cleansed, but the blood and water were testimony to the love of God.
Christ came forth as it were from the holy love of
[p. 90] God, and the blood and water were the witness of this: the witness of God’s heart towards men, the witness of holy love. Sin was perfectly intolerable to love.
Everything will have to give way in the presence of holy love. God will be all in all, and in the presence of God’s love everything contrary will have to give way. The water and the blood was the expression of the holy love of God; I speak of them as witness.
The Son of God came here. He had known and had part in the holy love of God. He became Man that the love of God might be expressed in His death. The Spirit has now come on the same line, therefore there are three that bear witness. They all combine in one common witness, and that witness is the holy love of God expressed in the Son. All bear witness to the blessed Source from which the Son of God came. He came out from the Father and came into the world. That is from the source of holy love, and the blood and water are the witness and expression of that love. The object is that our hearts might be made acquainted by the three witnesses with the love in which the Son of God came.
There is another thing; they bore witness incidentally, not primarily, that Christ is apart from man after the flesh. That is very important. They bear witness to Him as, “the last Adam” and “second man”. He came in flesh in order to bring cleansing and expiation, but I believe the positive witness of the water and blood to be to the holy love of God.
Now what does that mean for us? “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself”. God has given you the witness in yourself. The love of God is shed abroad in the heart and you have come to this, that the love of God has been expressed in the Son of God. No created being could have done this. Prophets might have spoken of it, but they could not have expressed it; we have it in the Son.
He first declared God on earth in His ministry, and then He died to express God’s love, and the water and the blood are thus the expression of the holy love of God, and the Spirit has come down on the same line to be the witness in the Christian. The Spirit is the truth, so that the truth may be, not only objective, as in Christ, but subjective in the Christian. Christ is the truth as to the declaration and setting forth of it, but the Spirit is the truth in the Christian.
Christ now abides after the fashion and order we have illustrated in John. There are three points in that gospel: (1) Christ set forth in the company of His own; (2) as the risen Man in the company of His own; (3) as coming again to receive His own, that where He is they may be also. I want you to put these three points together. They bring before us the thought of Christ in different conditions or positions, but of One whose heart is still unchanged; that is a great point to take in.
I think there is nothing more blessed than to see the changelessness of the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. His disciples dwelt under His shadow with great delight. They contemplated His glory as of an only-begotten One with the Father. You never could understand the truth of the Church if you did not appreciate what Christ was here in the midst of His own upon earth. Then He comes into their midst in resurrection, and makes known to them that they were His brethren; then He marks their association with Him as after the Spirit not after the flesh; He breathes on them the Holy Spirit. In chapter 17 He had demanded for them “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory”. His disciples had beheld His glory here, and now He prays for them to be with Him above, that they might behold His glory. We see here a heart which knows no change, the changeless heart of Christ.
“God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son”. The Son now is entirely apart from man after the flesh. We know Christ no longer after the flesh. I want you to be apart morally from man in the flesh, to know more of Him with whom we are associated in the power of the Holy Spirit. His heart is unchanged and we are associated with Him after the Spirit, so that He could say, “Go tell my brethren that I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”.
The form in which it has pleased God to give us eternal life, is by bringing us into the full light of holy love and giving us grace to respond to it. Do you appreciate the love of God? Do you appreciate the witness of it?
Christ came from the Father alone, but He takes us back with Him. “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”. The Son of God came forth to express God and He came alone, but He returns to God with the Church, the trophy of His love. You have the Son of God, and in having the Son you have eternal life.
I want you to get the reality of these things; to know in the power of the Holy Spirit the great reality of the love of God. Many know grace, but have little apprehension of divine love. If we know and appreciate God’s nature then we can understand that we are made partakers of that nature. You have derived your moral being from the blessed God Himself, and love God because He loved you.
May He give us to know the blessedness of being born of Him. It is wonderful that the affections of divine Beings should rest upon man on earth.