"Being born again…by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." 1 Peter 1:28 "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Romans 8:14

"ADAM was the son of God; all men, therefore, must be sons of God." How eager men are to claim this relationship, while utterly indifferent to the responsibilities and duties which it involves! But it is a flagrant fallacy to argue that because unfallen Adam was the son of God, the descendants of fallen Adam are also sons. And Scripture knows no such sonship. Of the Lord Jesus Christ it is written:

"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He the right 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." (John 1:11-13.)

True it is that, when preaching to Athenian idolaters, the Apostle Paul adopted the words of a heathen poet "For we are also His offspring." (Acts 17:28.) But no doctrine of sonship can be founded upon this. The word here used is one of wide significance; and the argument he based on it would be equally valid if the lower creation were included in it. The language of Hebrews 2:14 also is perverted to support this figment. But, as the sequel shows, "the children" there spoken of are the "seed of Abraham." Most certain it is that all men are God’s creatures. But they only are children of God who have been begotten of God; and there is only one way in which sinners can be thus begotten.

This truth has always been resisted by the professing Church. The profane heresy of "the brotherhood of Jesus," so popular to-day, is but a phase of the old heresy of redemption by the Incarnation, which, under the influence of pagan philosophy, leavened the teaching of some of the greatest of the Fathers. Not that they were so heretical as their modern disciples and imitators. For while with them Calvary was indeed overshadowed by Bethlehem, it was not reduced to being merely a display of heroic self-sacrifice. They did not deny the Atonement.

And the Western Church, though refusing saintship to those who thus erred, took refuge in a heresy more evil still. The great Augustine of Hippo was its most distinguished exponent. While rejecting the Alexandrian conception of a God "immanent" in human nature, he and his school were no less corrupted by Greek philosophy. The Deity of their theology was an alienated and angry God, between Whom and men depraved and doomed, the Church was a mediator. For "the bosom of the Church" afforded the only refuge from Divine wrath; and to bring men within that shelter was their aim.

To this end, the simple baptism of the New Testament - a public confession of Christ by those whom the Gospel had won - was remodeled on pagan lines as a mystical regeneration and cleansing from sin, bringing the sinner into a sphere where a mystically-endowed priesthood could minister to him further grace.

But some one will exclaim’ "Why speak of these heresies? Positive truth is what is wanted." Yes, in these days people are intolerant of all denunciations of error. The seeming triumph of Satan, from the day of the Eden Fall to the present hour, has been largely due to his skill in using "positive truth." Men would be startled by a direct denial of Divine truth; so he adopts the very words in which it is revealed, and then corrupts them, or explains them away. Take, for example, the Lord’s explicit declaration "Ye must be born again." He does not challenge this it is the creed of Christendom. But what does it mean? Baptismal regeneration! And the other "sacrament" will satisfy the Master’s words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Thus the Word of God, while formally accepted, is made of none effect by the traditions of men.

It cannot be asserted too plainly that no one is a child of God who has not been born of God; and that no sacrament, no ordinance of religion, can procure the new birth in any sense, or in any degree. The salvation of a sinner is God’s work altogether. Baptismal regeneration was a doctrine of ancient paganism, but it has no place in Christianity. Scripture knows nothing of it. Never even once in the New Testament is water baptism mentioned in connection with the new birth, or with the Spirit’s work. This is not an expression of opinion, but a statement of fact which anyone can test with the aid of a concordance.

That baptism is referred to in "the Nicodemus sermon" is, no doubt, the traditional view of the third chapter of John. But the judgment of a weighty minority of theologians, from Calvin to the late Bishop Ryle of Liverpool, bars the assertion that this is the "orthodox" interpretation of the passage. Dr. Ryle’s "six reasons" for rejecting it seem to me indeed to make an end of controversy upon the subject. The traditional view is practically vetoed by the glaring anachronism it involves. For the Lord reproved Nicodemus for his ignorance of a birth by water and Spirit. But how could he have known anything of Christian baptism? It had not yet been instituted, and even the Apostles themselves knew nothing of it. To fall back upon John’s baptism only makes matters worse. For what relation had John’s baptism to the new birth? But, we are told, the Jewish baptism of proselytes was a baptism of regeneration. Are we then to hold that the Lord’s teaching about the Kingdom was based on a mere human ordinance, which had no Scriptural warrant, and which the Jews in days of apostasy derived from ancient paganism? The suggestion is positively profane.

We stand upon certainty when we aver, first, that the truth to which the Lord appealed was truth Divinely revealed, and that therefore it is in the Scriptures of the Old Testament that we must seek for the meaning of His words; and, secondly, that His words must imply redemption by blood, for on no other ground can anyone enter the Kingdom. In the sequel, recorded in verses 14-18, the Lord is not unfolding an alternative way of obtaining life; the birth by water and Spirit must, like the serpent lifted up, point to Calvary.

Lastly, the water of John 3:5 must have the same significance as the water of 1 John 5:6, 8" - This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood". And let us not forget the words which follow, "There are three who bear witness - the Spirit, and the water, and the blood." What then does the water signify? No one whose mind is not steeped in sacramentalism can imagine that in the three-fold "witness of God," baptism is here sandwiched between the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ. And the attempt to explain the words by the fact recorded in John 19:34 savours of a materialism that is wholly foreign to Christianity. Such an explanation, moreover, is utterly inadequate. The force of the language is that the mission and ministry of Christ were characterized by water and blood. It was not that at the death of Christ blood and water flowed from His pierced side; but that His coming, regarded as a whole, was "with the water and with the blood." This, which is plain even in our English version, is made very emphatic in the original by the change of the preposition in the sixth verse.

But what is the significance of this? The statement that the advent of Christ was characterized by blood is to be explained, not by the shambles, but by the types. It shuts out the "brotherhood of Jesus" lie, that He took flesh and blood in order to raise humanity by the splendid example of a perfect life and a martyr’s death. It tells us that redemption was the great purpose of His coming. And this implies a ruin that allowed of no other remedy. Hence the emphasis with which it is asserted; hence, also, the hostility which it provokes in the human heart. The answer of the Jews was to crucify Him, thus aiding unwittingly in the fulfillment of His mission. His rejection by the Christianized Sadducees of to-day is as definite though not as brutal.

The Christian understands "the blood" by reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, which spell out for him the great truth of redemption. His thoughts turn back to the Passover, and with humble joy his faith finds utterance in the words, "Redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." But so profound is the prevailing ignorance of the types that we fail to understand "the water." As we have seen in preceding chapters, a redeemed sinner needs cleansing as really as a lost sinner needs redemption. And the sin-offering and the water of purification were for a redeemed people. And they cannot be separated; for it was to the sin. offering that the water of purification owed its ceremonial efficacy. It was because it had flowed over the ashes of the sacrifice that it availed to cleanse.

The sin-offering of Numbers 19 was as necessary to the Israelite as was the Passover. And Christ is the fulfillment of all the types. To the contemporaries of the Apostle, moreover, who, unlike ourselves, were well versed in Scripture, the meaning of all this was both clear and profound. For them such a phrase as that He "came with the water" needed no explanation. And, as Ezekiel 36 tells us, when Christ returns in blessing to Israel His coming will be "with the water only." But this is because His first coming was "not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood." Redemption is already accomplished.

That rite and that prophecy filled a large and prominent place in Jewish theology and Jewish hopes and for a Rabbi to be ignorant of them was as extraordinary and as inexcusable as it would be for a Christian minister to be ignorant of "the Nicodemus sermon." Hence our Lord’s indignant remonstrance "Art thou the teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things?"

The wording of our A V, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit," lends support to the error of supposing the new birth to be twofold. But the birth "of water and Spirit" is so essentially one that in the next verse, and again in verse 8, the Lord omits the water, and in speaking of the same birth describes it simply as "of the Spirit." The time when the prophecy of Ezekiel 36 and 37 shall be fulfilled is called by the Lord Himself "the regeneration." (Matthew 19:28.) The only other passage where that word occurs is Titus 3:5 "He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." The word here rendered "washing" is loutron. It is a noun substantive, not a verb. To render it "laver" would suggest a false exegesis, for a different, though kindred, word is used for "laver" in the Greek Bible. But it is a significant fact that in the only passage in that version where it is used in relation to sacred things it refers to the "water of purification."

"The loutron of regeneration" therefore does not speak to us of the river or the font, but of the great sin-offering. And this gives us a clue to its meaning in the only other passage where, it occurs in the New Testament.

I refer to, Ephesians 5:26, where we read that Christ gave, Himself for the Church" that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the loutron of water by the word."

By the word, mark. As we have seen, "the water of purification" owes its efficacy to the sin-offering. It is not to sacraments or human ordinances of religion that the Christian owes his cleansing, but to Calvary. In the type the Israelite obtained the benefits of the sacrifice by means of the water, and it is by "the word" that the believing sinner obtains the blessings of Calvary. Hence the language of the Epistle, "the loutron of water in the word."

The water of purification was, as we have seen, the water of regeneration; and it is by "the word" that the sinner is born again to God. The new birth has nothing to do with mystic acts or shibboleths after the pattern of ancient paganism. As Scripture declares, "we are born again by the word of God" - "the living and eternally abiding word of God." And to bar all error or mistake, it is added "And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you" - preached, as the Apostle has already said, "with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." (1 Peter 1:12, 23, 25.) Not the Spirit without the word, nor the word without the Spirit, but the word preached in the power of the Spirit.

Men can fix time and place for ordinances:, for ordinances relate to earth; but the new birth is from above. As the Lord said to Nicodemus - referring to the Ezekiel prophecy - "The Spirit breathes where He wills." (John 3:8.) In Ezekiel 36 we have the promise "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean" - water, that is, which owes its cleansing efficacy to the sin-offering. And then, "I will put My Spirit within you."

The vision of the dry bones follows. You ask, how can sinners, helpless, hopeless, dead - as dead as dry bones scattered upon the earth - be born again to God. "Can these bones live?" is the question of Ezekiel 37: And the answer comes "Prophesy unto these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." Preach to dead, lost sinners call upon them to hear the word of the Lord. This is man’s part. Or if there be anything more, it is, "Prophesy unto the Breath. Pray that the Spirit may breathe upon these slain that they may live." The rest is God’s work altogether, for "the Spirit breathes where He wills." Not that there is anything arbitrary in His working. God is never arbitrary; but He is always Sovereign. Men preach; the Spirit breathes; and the dry bones live. Thus it is that sinners are born again to God.