(John 3:6)
�That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.�
Stasis, meaning unmoving or immobile, is the antithesis of change. We are tempted to use the term �mirror image� when speaking of such contradictory words. We would be wrong. The mirror image of a thing is an image of the same thing. True, right is left and left is right in the mirror image, but the image itself is of the same thing.
The dichotomy between stasis and change is that of a bottle of sand when one was expecting a bottle of water. It is not an image, although altered, of the same; it is the opposite of the same.
I�m reminded of a story told by old time Pentecostal evangelist W. V. Grant, Sr. He said that he was going to Springfield, Illinois, for a revival service. His wife tried to tell him that he was going the wrong way on old Route 66. He kept pointing out the signs that said he was going to Springfield. Many miles out of his way he came to the realization that there was a Springfield in Missouri as well as in Illinois. His wife was right; he was going in the wrong direction.
�Stasis,� in the case of Grant, was to continue on the wrong path. �Change,� would have been to turn around and go in the correct direction.
This is a real picture of Biblical repentance. This is essentially that about which Jesus was speaking. Not every person born into this earth is born on the road to Heaven. As a matter of fact, Jesus said that the opposite is true. No person born into this earth is born on the road to Heaven.
�That which is born of the flesh is flesh�� Humanity is born into a condition of sin. This is an inherited trait passed down from our human father Adam. This sin nature, with which we are all born, has us headed in the wrong direction. We are bound for Satan�s Hell.
This isn�t a pleasant thing to consider. This is why Jesus warned us all even as He spoke with Nicodemus. Jesus wanted us to move from the stasis of traveling the wrong direction. He offered us, still offers us, the means of change.
This change comes from the work of the Spirit of God upon our human hearts. The Spirit draws us to Jesus and the work He did on the Cross of Calvary. The Spirit shows us our inability to obtain true salvation through any work of piety or devotion - or anything else. The Spirit draws us to come to Jesus where true change, the conversion experience, may be effected.
First, let us look at the natural condition of all men as they are born into this world. The reception - �That which is born of the flesh��
I have often observed Christians who were very proud of being born again. Don�t misunderstand; this is something that we ought to highly treasure. After all, the Lord of the Universe has shed His love upon us so greatly that He has called us to repentance and faith in the Blood of Jesus Christ. We are, indeed, bought with a price; that Price is the passion and death of our Lord.
This salvation is a great, and wonderful, and precious thing to us. I can fully understand that we would feel a great emotional thrill at the very thought that Lord has given us this great salvation.
I do have a little problem understanding pride in this fact - at least a pride in ourselves. Thankfulness; yes! Honor; yes! Joy; yes! But, pride? The only glory that we can claim is praise and adoration for the great Glory of our Savior.
The fact is that we were all born into the world as sinners. This is the normal entry into the world. In fact, except for Jesus, no person has ever been born into this world except as a sinner. Adam was created perfect but he threw this all away in his pride and rebellion.
When we consider the world about us we should not count ourselves as superior to anyone. We are not! It is only the great grace of our Lord, spread into our hearts at the conversion experience, which sets us apart.
Rather than feeling pride, we should feel compassion and long to share this great gift of salvation with others. This is simply something of which our fellow man stands in need!
This past week there has been flooding along the Mississippi River. Water supplies have been tainted by the polluted water. To the people affected by this flood there have been rescue workers passing out water. The physical body stands in desperate need of pure drinking water. It is a physical necessity.
This water is being shared because it is needed.
We should understand the spiritual need of those about us. They stand in desperate need of the Living Water of Jesus Christ. We are the called rescue workers whose job it is to spread the truth of the availability of this Living Water.
We owe the story of this Living Water to our fellow man, born in sin as were we. We know the location of the Well; we must be willing, if we are to be true to our fellow man, to show the way to Spiritual Water to those spiritually dying of thirst.
We also owe to Jesus the obedience to spread the Truth of His great glory and love into a world that needs to feel the presence of His saving power and grace.
Being born of the flesh is the natural entry into the world. All who are born into the world are born with two parents. Even those whose parents have chosen to undergo an �artificial insemination� program are thus born.
This is just the natural birth. It is the birth process of all humanity.
Jesus told Nicodemus that this was not enough to enter into Heaven.
Some believe that all will be saved in the end. Such is not the truth. The Bible paints a different picture. �He that believeth on him [Jesus] is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.� (John 3:18)
Several times my wife and I took our children to some large amusement parks. There would be acres of parking. All the cars seemed to be perfectly capable of conveying us back to our home. But, only one car was able to actually do the job. There was only one car to which we had the key. The rest of the cars were fine automobiles, I would suppose. But, they were useless to us because we did not possess the proper key.
There are many ways which claim to offer us a �ride� to Heaven. Only One Way will actually be able to do the job. Only one has the Key to Salvation - Jesus Christ. If we enter any other we are still in our sins; we will never leave the �parking lot� of sin.
The natural entry into the world follows a path to death, destruction, and eternal damnation. We need to move beyond this to find real salvation. This is what Jesus was explaining to Nicodemus.
One of the first things that happened when I went into the army was a short march, in formation, to a clothing depot. We were all given a special uniform to wear. We were not allowed to wear the clothes we had arrived with at the induction center. Even our underwear was to be bagged and sent home.
We were to be completely clothed as military personnel.
We come into this world naked. It is a naked entry into our physical existence. We all come in this way.
One of the first things Adam realized after he had sinned and taken upon himself this sin nature, was that he was naked. �And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.� (Genesis 3:10)
We read further in Genesis that Adam and Eve made aprons of vegetable matter to cover their nakedness. God could not accept this. This was a work of their own hands.
We could argue that they had done as good a job as was humanly possible. That would not negate the fact that God did not accept this work. God knew they could not �work themselves out� of the pit of sin. They would need assistance
Part of this assistance was within the coat of skins that God prepared for them. We don�t need to look into all the theological significance of the sacrifice which produced these coats. What we do need to understand is that this is the covering which God prepared for them. This was God�s remedy for their problem.
It is the same in this day. God provides the �Robe of Righteousness� that will clothe us. The important part is �God Provides.� Our own works are not enough. It is the will and work of God that provides us salvation from sin.
This is the wonder of the New Birth.
God provides us all that is necessary to be born again. In the physical birth we are simply moved along into physical life, from the moment of conception until the moment of birth and beyond, by physical forces.
This is the simple reality of the facts of human birth. ��is flesh��
Confessing that �flesh is flesh� is not a bad thing in and of itself. It simply means that humans are biological creatures. We are created beings.
When we examine the full reality of our human existence we must consider the original creation. God is Spirit and resides in eternity. His creation, all of it - both the physical and the material, is in what we call the natural world. The natural world is simply that which He created. All this is also encased in an existence of time.
To understand this is simply to acknowledge the reality of our existence.
The problem with this is that all creation is slowly �running down.� The Biblical message is that the physical creation, infested with the disease of sin due to the fall of Adam, is headed for an end game. While the soul of man is eternal it is also headed for an eternal death.
In the 20th chapter of Revelation we see the ultimate doom of Satan. He is cast into the lake of fire. The duration of his punishment is eternal - without end. �And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.� (Revelation 20:10)
We also see that this is the fate, also, of those who have not accepted Christ as their Savior. �And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.� (Revelation 20:15)
This is the meaning of Romans 6:23. �For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.� This spiritual death is the antithesis of spiritual life. It is eternal.
This is a terrible thought to contemplate and should energize our witness to others that Jesus Christ died in time so that others could live in eternity!
This is, however, the state of man as a created being. Man was created to have an eternal fellowship with God. The sin of Adam broke the bonds of that fellowship. �Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.� (Romans 5:12)
Man, as a created being and as a result of the sin nature passed upon all through the fall of Adam in the Garden, is alienated from God. He who was created to have eternal fellowship with God now labors under an eternal separation from God.
Man does not naturally seek after God. �There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.� (Romans 3:11) Man may look for peace. He may look for a �higher power� since he was created to have this fellowship with the Eternal. But, he does not search out the God of Eternity because he is alienated from the true God.
This is also the state of a careless being. I mean careless in two manners. First of all, man doesn�t really care about the things of God. Man is headed on a path that leads to perdition. That is his direction in life. The simple word �repentance� means to turn around and walk in a different path.
Until man is ready to turn his back upon Satan, even as Adam turned his back on God in the Fall, and begins to walk in a newness of life with Jesus, he cannot find salvation.
Man, of course, is not capable of doing this because the sin nature within has blinded him to the things of God. This is why salvation is accomplished through the convicting work of the Spirit. We, as Christians, need to pray - by name whenever possible - for the salvation of specific persons. We need to witness, in word and deed, to them as well. But our witness needs the energizing power of the Spirit of God as we work in a spiritual theater when we consider to spread the message of the evangel.
Man also is careless in that he overlooks the simple calling of Scripture - �Ye must be born again.� He is more than willing to follow religious rite and rule. He is more than willing to follow moral actions in an attempt to �make himself better.� He is more than willing to follow mental performance in an effort to �understand the way to Heaven.� But, without the leading of the Spirit he is unable to follow the simple words of Jesus - �Ye must be born again!�
This is what we need as human beings. We need the rebirth. ��and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.�
We need this rebirth. But, we find that the rebirth is an action that is beyond our ability. We cannot do it! There are a couple limiting factors that cause this dilemma. The first of these is that we are creatures of time and physicality while the new birth is from eternity and of the spiritual.
I played a lot of basketball when I was younger. Many of the players I played against were better than was I. Well, that�s not entirely true; most of the players I played against were better than was I.
The point I�m trying to make, however, is that it is entirely possible that I could step out onto a professional basketball court. I would be severely embarrassed by the experience. But, being a human being, it is possible that I could do so. I would be a poor specimen there; but it is a physical possibility that I could do so.
But, I could not go deep sea diving without some sort of special gear. My physicality prohibits me from going into water over my head. I am not able to breathe under water. This is beyond my physical capabilities.
However, given that special diving gear it is possible that I could do so. For me to go deep sea diving requires an assistance beyond my physical abilities. The new birth is akin to this in that we have to have the Special Gear of the Savior�s sacrificial death to attain the new birth.
We need this help because it is an experience beyond our physical body�s capabilities.
Secondly, unlike the deep sea diving, we would not know where to enter the �water.� Our sin nature has made us diametrically opposed to the things of God.
Mother�s of young children will often claim that they have eyes in the back of their heads. The children often believe them because their mother�s seem always to know when they are misbehaving.
Folks, we would need spiritual eyes in the back of our spiritual heads to be able to see the new birth. We, as sinful human beings, do not see the things of God because we are in the position of having our backs turned to Him.
We may seek to appease a �deity.� We may seek peace and understanding of our place in the universe. We may even seek to �worship� with altruistic acts. But, we can not fathom the concept of a new birth that is a free gift from a loving God. It is a fact beyond our abilities to consider.
This is an action that betrays our weakness. We are a spiritually weak people.
I was just in the kitchen helping my four year old grandson look for a bottle of soda for his mother. It was on a top shelf of the refrigerator behind a bottle of milk. He couldn�t find it because he couldn�t see it. From my vantage point, a couple feet taller than him, it was easy to see.
We are so accustomed to doing things for ourselves that we have problems understanding that the new birth experience is something over which we have no control. We just accept what we may not understand. This is the dynamic of faith. Accepting the new birth is accepting a trust in God.
We are used to earning our own way. That, I am convinced, is one of the reasons why it is so hard for an adult to be born again. The child can easily understand that good gifts are given by his parents. The adult has a problem understanding that the greatest good gift, salvation from sin, is a free gift given by our Heavenly Father!
That is the point of the new birth. This is an action bought by the Lord through His sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary. At this event He did all the work that is necessary for our salvation. Our only part is to trust Him and accept His free gift of salvation.
Have you done this? Have you accepted Jesus as your own Savior?
Do it right now. There will never be a better time!