We have seen that the sonship which gives power of possessing the
inheritance and which comes by spiritual birth, rests upon the giving
of life, spiritual life, from God; and unfolds itself in certain holy
characters, and affections, and desires, the throbbing of the whole
soul in full accord and harmony with the divine character and will.
Well then, it looks very clear that a man cannot make that new life
for himself, cannot do it because of the habit of sin, and cannot do
it because of the guilt and punishment of sin. If for sonship there
must be a birth again, why, surely, the very symbol might convince
you that such a process does not lie within our own power. There must
come down a divine leaven into the mass of human nature, before this
new being can be evolved in any one. There must be a gift of God. A
divine energy must be the source and fountain of all holy and of all
Godlike life. Christ comes, comes to make you and me live again as we
never lived before; live possessors of God's love; live tenanted and
ruled by a divine Spirit; live with affections in our hearts which
_we_ never could kindle there; live with purposes in our souls which
_we_ never could put there.
And I want to urge this thought, that the centre point of the Gospel
is this regeneration; because if we understand, as we are too much
disposed to do, that the Gospel simply comes to make men live better,
to work out a moral reformation,--why, there is no need for a Gospel
at all. If the change were a simple change of habit and action on the
part of men, we could do without a Christ. If the change simply
involved a bracing ourselves up to behave better for the future, we
could manage somehow or other about as well as or better than we have
managed in the past. But if redemption be the giving of life from
God; and if redemption be the change of position in reference to
God's love and God's law as well, neither of these two changes can a
man effect for himself. You cannot gather up the spilt water; you
cannot any more gather up and re-issue the past life. The sin
remains, the guilt remains. The inevitable law of God will go
on its crashing way in spite of all penitence, in spite of all
reformation, in spite of all desires after newness of life. There is
but one Being who can make a change in our position in regard to God,
and there is but one Being who can make the change by which man shall
become a 'new creature.' The Creative Spirit that shaped the earth
must shape its new being in my soul; and the Father against whose law
I have offended, whose love I have slighted, from whom I have turned
away, must effect the alteration that I can never effect--the
alteration in my position to His judgments and justice, and to the
whole sweep of His government. No new birth without Christ; no escape
from the old standing-place, of being 'enemies to God by wicked
works,' by anything that we can do: no hope of the inheritance unless
the Lord and the Man, the 'second Adam from heaven,' have come! He
_has_ come, and He has 'dwelt with us,' and He has worn this
life of ours, and He has walked in the midst of this world, and He
knows all about our human condition, and He has effected an actual
change in the possible aspect of the divine justice and government to
us; and He has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit
and a new life which He has set down in the midst of the race; and
the urn was broken on the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out,
and whithersoever that water comes there is life, and whithersoever
it comes not there is death!