From the advent of Adam into the world until the time of the coming of the Son of God the first man was under trial, and every test clearly demonstrated that he would not do for God. Failure came with man in innocency, and in all the varied conditions and circumstances in which man after the flesh has been found, he has clearly shown himself to be in alienation from God, an incorrigible sinner, who has no desire to do God’s will, and no power to resist evil. If God would have man before Him for His pleasure, it would have to be a different kind of man, one with desires after Himself, with a nature answering to what was of God, and who delighted in the will of God.
The Presence of the Son on Earth
The final test of the first man was by the presence of the Son of God on earth. Jesus was the eternal Word, the One in whom there was the full and perfect expression of all that God is, and of all His thoughts, and He had come as the true Light with the revelation of God for man, but when the creator of all was found in the world He had created, the men of this world “knew Him not” (John 1:10). Under the influence of the god of this world, men were in gross darkness, and so great was their ignorance of God that when God was among them they did not recognise Him. This was the state of man after all the centuries in which he had lived in this world, with every opportunity to respond to the goodness and kindness of God.
Israel had been specially favoured, for they had the oracles of God, and God had made them a peculiar people, and separated them from the nations, giving them many tokens of His favour. They had grievously failed, and God had sold them into captivity, but in His mercy had brought back a remnant to receive the Messiah He had promised to send them. When Jesus came as their Messiah, with all the signs belonging to Messiah, Israel did not receive Him (John 1:11). They did not want God’s Christ, they wanted a man after their own heart, one who would carry out their will, not God’s will.
Man having fully manifested what he was, God intervened to show what was in His heart and mind. If Israel refused His Son, He had prepared a remnant that would receive Him, and gave to this company a very special place of favour, even the privilege of taking their place as children of God. This remnant was marked by faith in the Name of the Son of God, by receiving Him when He came, and by being the children of God.
Abraham, Moses, David and the saints of old were all children of God as born of Him, but they did not know the privileged place that was theirs in God’s family. This had to await the final test of man of the first order, and the revelation of the Father’s Name by the Son in Manhood. As born of God the saints of Old Testament times had the capacity for entering into the knowledge that God gave of Himself in the different revelations, were able to delight in the Lord and in all that belonged to Him, and with thankful hearts could praise and worship God for all that He was, and in all that He had done for them; but they could not yet know the favoured place that belonged to God’s children in His family with the knowledge of the Name of Father.
What Nicodemus Learned
Nicodemus was not an ignorant man so far as human and religious learning are concerned, for he is presented to us as “a man of the Pharisees…a ruler of the Jews…a Master of Israel” (John 3:1, 10). Thoroughly versed in the religion of the Jews, he was different from the most of his fellows, for he recognised that Jesus was “a teacher come from God,” His miracles witnessing that God was with Him. Answering to this sincere desire to be instructed, the Lord at once touches the very root of the matter in saying, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (verse 3).
A man may be very religious, and endeavouring to carry out all the religious services imposed by the Jewish economy, but this would never open his eyes to the divine realities existing in the kingdom of God. New birth is absolutely necessary if any one is to perceive the things of God’s kingdom. Natural perception, human reasoning, religious teaching, and all else that belongs to man after the flesh avails nothing in the things of God. If a man is not born again he is blind to the things of God, and has not the slightest capacity for entering into what is divine. The natural mind may search into natural things, and make wonderful discoveries, but it has not the ability to apprehend the most elementary of spiritual things.
What Jesus said to Nicodemus was something he could not understand, so very patiently the Lord proceeded, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (verse 5). The water of God’s word entering the soul cleanses from the old state in which we are by nature, but is also the divine seed, used by the Spirit of God, to produce the new nature by which we have the capacity for apprehending the things of God.
The natural realm is altogether different from the spiritual realm, just as “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (verse 6). The new birth is of the Spirit, and therefore can enter into the things of the Spirit, which the flesh, the nature of man derived from Adam cannot do. Being different in origin and nature, the two orders have different spheres in which they exist, with different relationships, affections, occupations and destinies.
Features of the New Nature
From John 1 we have learned that those born of God are marked by receiving the Son and believing in His Name; and in 1 John 5:1 it is written, “Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” Faith in the Son of God comes from the nature that has been divinely implanted in us by the work of the Holy Spirit, and does not find its origin in anything of the first man. True believers accept in faith the testimony that God has given of His Son, and believe that He is the Christ of God. We believe that He is the promised Messiah of Israel, and the anointed of God where He lives in the Father’s presence now.
Another feature of the divine nature is found in this same verse of John’s first Epistle, “and everyone that loves Him that begat loves him also that is begotten of Him.” Love finds its spring in Him of whom it is written, “God is love,” and if we love Him it is “because He first loved us” (1 John 4:8, 19). As born of God we cannot but love those who are born of Him, for their features, as born of Him, are His own features, and we are in the same relationship in His family as His children.
In 1 John 3:9 it is written, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” Here the child of God is viewed as in the divine nature, apart from the flesh which is in him. We know that the flesh within us sins, and is incapable of anything else, but the divine nature, that which is born of God, the fruit of the divine seed, is holy, pure and incapable of sin. Soon we shall have left behind all belonging to the flesh, and only the divine nature will remain, dwelling in its own sphere, even in the Father’s house for evermore.
Obedience is another trait of the divine nature, as is found in 1 Peter 1:22-23, “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit…being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever.” Obedience of the truth is the effect of God’s work, of the new birth, and the seed that produced this new nature is the incorruptible word of God. The nature takes character from the seed that produced it, and expresses itself in obedience to the truth that is found in God’s word.
The world, and the things of the world, appeal to the flesh, but have no influence on the divine nature, indeed it is written, “For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4), and as the eye is fixed on the Son of God the divine nature will be allowed to manifest itself, and so shall we overcome the world, for “Who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (verse 5). Just before going to the cross, the Son of God said, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and it is faith in Him that secures the victory for His own.
God’s Work in Abel
Another trait of the divine nature is presented to us in relation to Abel, one whose works were righteous in the sight of God (1 John 3:10–12). Abel is the first man in whom there is seen the clear evidence of God’s workmanship for the introduction of a new order of things, that which the Lord spoke of in John 5:17, “My Father works hitherto, and I work.” It was faith in God that caused Abel to bring to God “the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof” (Gen. 4:4), and, as we have already seen, faith is one of the evidences of the new birth. This is confirmed in Hebrews 11:4, “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” Cain hated Abel because the works of his brother were righteous; and the Spirit of God has further taken account of Abel as being righteous in Matthew 23:35, where he is spoken of as “righteous Abel.”
God’s Word and God’s Will
In John 2 the Lord showed Nicodemus that it is by the word of God that the new birth takes place, His incorruptible seed of which Peter writes. The Apostle James joins John and Peter in telling us this, for he writes, “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth” (James 1:18). God’s word of truth produces a nature in consonance with the truth, and makes those who are born of God “a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.” The divine family on earth now will soon be with the many families named of the Father in the coming day, and already manifests the nature of every family of men that will be in heaven, and the families that will be on earth in the eternal day.
We have not come by any act of our own will into this blessed family of God, for, as James has written, it is God’s will that has brought us there. This is also seen in John 1:13, where it is written concerning those who receive the Son of God, “Which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” We are not in God’s family by natural generation, as being descended from Abraham of from David. Had it been by blood sinners of the Gentiles would never have been blessed.
Nor is it by the will of the flesh that we are in God’s family, for the flesh has no desires after God and His things; and man’s will is to do what he pleases, not what God pleases, so that the will of man never could have made us God’s children. “Not of blood” sets Israel as a nation aside; “nor of the will of the flesh” sets the whole human race aside; “nor of the will of man” sets every individual aside; “but of God” brings in the sovereign grace of God that brings into His family whom He chooses. It could not be of blood, for this order comes to an end with death; nor could it be by the will of the flesh or of man, for these are at enmity with God and in alienation from Him. If there was to be a family on earth, or in heaven, pleasing to God, He must work, as He has done, in His own sovereign love and power, from His own resources of infinite wisdom and skill.
R. 7.5.68