ignorant expectants of a Christ--who thought that Jesus had given
sufficient signs of His right to the name, is not surprising. They
might be all the more willing to recognise Him, because He seemed to
be of their class. But these signs had affected some to whom the
thought of a Galilæan peasant must have been utterly scandalous.
'_There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the
Jews: the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we
know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these
signs which thou doest, except God were with him._' The words express
more than an individual opinion. Nicodemus must have been conversing
with other members of the Sanhedrim. A suspicion that a new
_Teacher_--perhaps a Prophet--with some unusual powers, had appeared,
might be diffusing itself through the body. _Whence_ the powers were
derived, whether the prophet was true or false, were still questions
to be asked. It was a further question whether the Prophet had any
claim to be considered the Christ. The people might easily arrive at
that conclusion; a ruler would be disposed to reject it. Yet it might
be the true one. Nicodemus would evidently like to know. He could not
take the rash step of putting himself under the banner of one who
might lead him to rebellion; but he would ascertain the fact
privately, if he could.
The reply meets the thought in the heart of the speaker, not the words
he had uttered. 'You wish to know whether I am about to set up a
kingdom. "_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God._"' The phrase 'kingdom of
God,' or 'kingdom of heaven,' is one which is continually recurring in
the first three Evangelists; it may be said to be nearly their most
characteristic phrase. It is not characteristic of St. John; he uses
it rarely. But if we want a commentary upon every passage in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, in which it is to be found; if we want to know why we
hear of it in connexion with the parables,--why the Gospel which the
Apostles were to preach is called the Gospel of this kingdom,--I
should point you to this verse and to the conversation which follows
it. Nicodemus was expecting, in some way or other, to _see_ the
kingdom of God. Signs were to show who the divine King was; He would
present Himself in such wise to His people, that they should have no
doubt of Him and His authority. All this he thought would be granted
by God, if He fulfilled His promises, and raised up the Son of David
to sit upon David's throne. Was the hope a wrong one? Could less than
a clear demonstration be a warrant for accepting any being clothed in
human flesh as the divine Prince and Deliverer? Verily, nothing less.
They must see the kingdom of God. It must reveal itself to them with
an evidence which they could not gainsay. It must lay hold upon them
as its subjects, _de facto_ and _de jure_, with a compulsion not
weaker but mightier than that with which the Roman empire had laid
hold of them. The arguments of the Christ must be as decisive in their
own kind as the arguments of the Cæsar.
But were they of the same kind? Our Lord says, '_Verily, verily, I
say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God_.' This language does not occur for the first time in our
Gospel. We heard before that the divine Word '_came to His own, and
His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He
power to become the sons of God; which were born not of flesh, nor of
blood, nor of the will of man, but of God._' Here is the announcement
of another kind of birth from that which we call the natural birth.
And yet it is not a portentous, _un_natural birth. If the doctrine
which is the foundation of this Gospel is true; if the Word that was
with God and was God is Creator of men; if His life is the light of
men; those who entertained His light, those who did not refuse to be
penetrated by His life, became what they were meant to be: they
fulfilled the purpose of Him who called them into existence. The power
which He gave them to become sons of God was a power to become _men_,
in the true sense of that word--to rise above the condition of
animals.
When, therefore, our Lord tells Nicodemus that only those who were
born again, or born from above (there is a justification for each
rendering--ἄνωθεν, perhaps, unites the force of both), can see the
kingdom of God, He tells him that the vision of the true state of
man,--of that order which is intended for men,--is only given to those
who receive the Light which lighteneth all men. Theirs is the nobler,
better birth--the divine birth; and theirs is the power of perceiving
that kingdom which surrounds all men, to which all are subject, but
which, being the kingdom of God, and not the kingdom of the Cæsar,
does not act upon men through material armies, and tax-gatherers at
the receipt of custom,--does not manifest its power and majesty to
the outward eye. This kingdom is over the man himself, not over his
accidents and circumstances; he must be a man, not a creature of these
accidents and circumstances, in order to see it; and that capacity of
being a man he must derive not from flesh and blood, but from the
Father of his spirit.
This conversation by night must have been remembered and recorded by
Nicodemus himself. As he repeated it to St. John,--probably long after
that day when he came with spices to anoint the body of Jesus in the
tomb,--the words which had been spoken to him, and the words which he
had spoken, must have come fresh to his memory; the meaning of the
one, the deep ignorance of the other, seen by the light that fell upon
them from the experiences and the revelations of after years. As he
was an honest man, he did not suppress or soften his own answer to the
'_Verily, verily_,' of Christ. '_How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?_' In
truth, he had no cause to be ashamed of himself for having stated his
difficulty in that rough way. To veil it under seemly phrases would
have been no evidence of enlightenment.
The Jewish doctors, it is said, not uncommonly described the Gentile
as one who became a little child, who began his life anew, when he was
received by baptism into the privileges of their outer court. If so,
Nicodemus must have been familiar with the expression; but it must
have been to him, and to most who availed themselves of it, a mere
figure of rhetoric--one of those counters which pass among religious
people, which have a certain value at first, but which become at
length so depreciated that they serve no purpose but to impose on
those who take and those who give them. However little Nicodemus might
know of Jesus, he did know that He was not resorting to figures of
rhetoric--that if He spoke of a birth, He meant a birth; and he must
have perceived that what He said did not apply to sinners of the
Gentiles, but to him, the religious ruler of the Jews. It was,
therefore, a good and healthy sign, a proof of the power of the new
Teacher, that he forgot the conventionalisms of the Sanhedrim, and
spoke out coarsely and naturally, as a peasant might have done. Our
Lord, surely, passed this judgment upon him; for, instead of rebuking
him for his question, He meets it in the most direct manner possible:
'_Jesus answered, 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._' The object of Nicodemus in coming to ask Him about His kingdom,
is still kept prominently forward; but there is a noticeable change in
our Lord's words. He had spoken of _seeing_ the kingdom of God; He now
speaks of _entering_ into it. Each expression may, unquestionably
does, involve the other; still they are distinct. To _see_ a kingdom,
is to have an apprehension of its reality and of its nature; to
_enter_ into a kingdom, is to become a subject of it. And then the
thought forces itself upon us, 'How can any one choose to become a
subject of God's kingdom? _Is_ he not a subject of it necessarily? If
God is the King of kings and Lord of lords, can he escape out of His
kingdom? Is he not bound by the laws of it, whether he likes them or
no?' We cannot state this difficulty to ourselves too frequently; we
cannot meditate upon it too earnestly. Our consciences tell us that we
_are_ the subjects of God's kingdom; that its laws do bind us; that
they avenge themselves upon us when we break them. But our consciences
tell us, also, that there is rebellion in us against that which holds
us so fast, which executes its decrees so certainly. This is the
contradiction, it exists--it is a fact, _the_ fact, of our lives. No
theories can get rid of it. But who shall tell us _how_ to get rid of
it? Before we can understand what could remove it, before we can even
ask with any seriousness to have it removed, we must know and feel how
deep the contradiction is. Suppose the government of God should be a
government over our wills, rebellion in those very wills must be the
most fearful we can conceive of. And the entering into the kingdom of
God must import the return of the spirit of man to its allegiance,--the
claim of a voluntary spiritual being to be under the will with which
it is its misery to be at strife. John had come preaching, '_the
kingdom of God is at hand_,' calling men to repentance, baptizing with
water, proclaiming One who would baptize with the Holy Ghost. When
Jesus says to Nicodemus, '_Except a man be born of water and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God_,' He takes up the
teaching of his forerunner, He expounds his act, He announces the
fulfilment of his promise. The being baptized with water, He declares
to be the act of submission to the Father of spirits,--the sign which
a man gives that he accepts His government, that he surrenders himself
to it. It is a surrender,--that is the only word we can find,--a
confession by the human will of its impotency. It must be guided,
governed, inspired, or it can do nothing, it can only struggle against
its blessedness. The acceptance, therefore, of this water-sign, by a
creature conscious of his own irregular strivings, of his separation
from God, is the expression of a desire that God would act upon his
will, would raise it to its proper condition, would quicken it to the
acts and impulses which belong to it,--in other words, would baptize
it with the Spirit.
We see, then, how water and the Spirit are connected with the entrance
into the kingdom of God,--the kingdom over the spirit of man. Our Lord
goes on to explain that He had used the word _birth_ in its relation
to both, not carelessly, but strictly. '_That which is born of the
flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit._' One
is as true and actual a birth as the other. The coming forth of the
fleshly creature into light, its beginning to breathe, the voice which
accompanies that breathing, are not more undoubted facts--very
mysterious facts _they_ must appear to all who reflect upon them--than
the coming forth of a spirit out of its darkness, than the sense of
light which startles it, than its breathings, than its cry.
I have introduced this thought concerning breath and the voice of the
new-born child, because it seems to me to connect itself with the
words which follow, and to remove a confusion which our translation of
them has introduced into our minds: '_Marvel not that I said unto
thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh, or
whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit._' The
philological objections to this rendering of the words are very
numerous. In the first place, ἄνεμος, not πνεῦμα, is the
proper word for _wind_. But suppose, by reducing the wind to a faint
low breathing, we escape from that objection, there is the second,
that πνεῦμα is used twice in the same sentence in different senses.
Yet this is a slight fault compared with the next. We actually
attribute _will_ to the wind; it blows where it listeth, ὅπου
θέλει. After this flagrant departure from all scriptural and
spiritual analogy, it is scarcely necessary to mention another, which
is, nevertheless, not unimportant, and is of the same kind. Φωνὴ is
the articulate voice of a living being; it is here changed into a
natural sound. Now, wherever violence is done to the truth of
language, I believe more or less of violence is done to some higher
truth. What need have we to introduce the sighing and soughing of the
wind, in order to make our Lord's explanation more clear and forcible,
if we understand Him to say,--'All the breathings of God's Spirit are
free, not fixed and fettered by material or mechanical conditions. You
hear His voice continually; but whence the Spirit comes, whither it is
going, you know not. And so it is with him that is born of the Spirit.
The process of birth cannot be perceived by you; you hear the voice
which indicates birth, you see the signs and tokens of life; but how
the spiritual being came to be what he is, you know not.' If we take
this to be what our Lord told Nicodemus, and what He is telling us,
are we not to learn that, at every moment of the day, the Spirit of
the eternal God is moving around us, speaking to us, acting upon us;
but that His mightiest operation, that which alone fulfils His purpose
towards us, is when He enables us to become the willing servants and
children of our Father in heaven?
'_How can these things be?_' asked the doctor of the Sanhedrim, in a
bewilderment which many of us can well understand. It was, indeed, a
strange new world into which he was transported; it seemed to him a
world of dreams, because he had been himself so much amidst dreams,
because he had known so little of realities. '_Art thou a master of
Israel_,' was the rejoinder, '_and knowest not these things?_' 'What
hast thou been learning all thy life? what hast thou been teaching thy
countrymen? Hast thou not been reading of an unseen God, who holds
converse with men,--of a God of the spirits of all flesh? Hast thou
not believed that this God is a living God, as He was when He appeared
to Moses in the bush? when He touched the lips of Isaiah with fire in
the Temple? Hast thou not understood that He is thy God, as much as He
was the God of any Israelite to whom the commandments were spoken on
the Mount? Hast thou not bidden the people of Israel of this day to
believe that He is _their_ God?' '_Verily, I say unto you, That which
we have known, we speak; that which we have seen, we testify._' 'This
is the characteristic of every true teacher, of every called prophet.
This has been the characteristic of John; this is mine. We do not
speak things that we have learnt by report--things that have been
transmitted to us; we speak the truths with which we have been brought
face to face.' '_And ye receive not our testimony._' 'These things we
tell you of, because they are about you, because you are created to
know them, and have fellowship with them. And you turn away from them
in search of things that are at a distance from you--of formalities
and trifles which you call by lofty names, which give rise to endless
disputings, but which do not concern you as human beings in the
least.' '_And if I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not,
how shall ye believe if I tell you of the heavenly things?_' 'If these
things which have to do with your daily lives, which bear upon your
ordinary business, which you can test by the experience of your
failures and your sins,--if _these_ seem to you incredible, how will
it be if I speak to you of God Himself, of His purposes, of His
nature?'
His words imply that He has a right to speak of these things also,
that He is _able_ to speak of them. On what ground could a power so
amazing rest? He goes on to declare the ground of it: '_For no man
hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even
the Son of Man which is in heaven_.' Of all paradoxes, this appears to
be the greatest. And yet if the heart of this ruler--if the heart of
any man--has been delivered from the oppressive fears and
superstitions that connect themselves with the thoughts of a distant
heaven in _space_, which looks coldly and drearily down upon earth--of
a distant heaven in _time_, which stands aloof from all human
sympathies; if ever the belief in heaven has been regarded as a spring
of hope and energy to the sons of men; if ever they have learnt not to
think of earth as a place in which they were to cozen and lie for
threescore years and ten, and heaven as a place to which some might
escape, if they made compensations to the Ruler of it for the evils
which they had done in the other region of His government; that
deliverance, those better and nobler thoughts have come from the
paradox which is uttered in this verse. Poor people--utterly
bewildered by all they have heard from divines and masters in Israel
about heaven, and the way in which they are to obtain heaven--have
taken this sentence home to their hearts,--that the Son of Man, He who
suffered for them and with them on earth, is He who has ascended into
heaven, and who is always in heaven. They have entered into the
kingdom of heaven with those spirits which were born of the divine
Spirit, as they entered into the kingdom of earth when they were born
of the flesh; they have seen the kingdom with the spiritual eye which
God has opened, as clearly as they have seen the trees and flowers of
earth with the fleshly eye which He has opened.
How He opens that eye, and what He reveals to it when it is opened,
the next words will tell us. '_And as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world;
but that the world through Him might be saved._'
How can I introduce such a passage as this at the close of a sermon?
Because I would not allow my sense of the immense worth and importance
of every clause, of every word, of which it consists, to hinder you
from tracing the method of our Lord's discourse. The question about
the kingdom of God lay at the threshold of the dialogue. Here He
declares how He is to claim His kingdom, to what throne He is to be
raised, that all men might confess Him as their King. Jesus might have
spoken of the exaltation of David or of Solomon as the pattern of His
own. He goes back to an older and sublimer event in Jewish history.
The brazen serpent to which the eyes of those were turned who had been
bitten by the serpents in the wilderness, the common life-giving,
life-restoring object,--this was the sign which He chose of that
dominion which should stretch from sea to sea, which should reach to
the lowest depths, and work the mightiest deliverance. 'You would know
if I am a King. You will see me lifted upon a cross: there you may
learn what I am. Whoso sees the Son of Man, his Lord and King
there,--whoso believes and trusts Him there,--will rise up indeed a
new man, will be saved from the plague which is destroying him, will
awaken to health and freedom. He will not perish in his wretched,
selfish isolation; he will have that life which is the common life of
all.'
And why? He will see there the love of God to him and to the world.
The only-begotten Son upon that cross will declare Him as He has
always declared Him; but the revelation will be immeasurably fuller
and clearer than it has ever been. He from whom men have turned as
their enemy, as plotting _their_ destruction, as pledged to destroy
the world, will be manifested as their Saviour and its Saviour. That
which has been the curse and misery and death of man, his separation
from God, his hatred of God, will cease for those who believe that in
this Son of Man He is making known what He wills, what He is. They
will have that eternal life of trust and love which is His own life.
And therefore He goes on: '_He that believeth on Him 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. And this is the
condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every
one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light,
lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to
the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought
in God._' The belief that Jesus does by His cross manifest the tender
love of God to mankind, that in Him God's whole will and mind and
purpose are revealed to men,--this takes away the condemnation from
their consciences; this restores them to trust and liberty and hope.
And therefore, conversely, _not_ to believe this, is to have a sense
of alienation and distance from God, to feel that there is an abyss
between us and Him which has never been closed--an abyss into which we
are casting our sacrifices and works of devotion, in the dream that it
may at last be filled up; while all our efforts, being efforts of
discontent and distrust, efforts to conciliate a foe, widen and deepen
it. Our Lord pronounces this unbelief to be its own all-sufficing
punishment. 'The light is there; you do not love it; you fly from it.
What worse state can there be than that? You hug the evil deeds from
which you might be delivered. You choose the evil which is contrary to
the being and nature of the blessed God in whose image you are made.
What torment can there be so great as that?'
I spoke of the new birth, or the birth from above, by which men are
made capable of seeing the kingdom of God, as one of which those may
become conscious who are conscious of a rebellious will, and who would
fain submit to their rightful Ruler. This latter part of the dialogue
confirms and enlarges that statement. He who is bitten with serpents
may turn to the brazen serpent; he who has been alienated from God may
become at peace with Him. But our Lord's words also discover to us
another truth, different from this, nowise inconsistent with it. They
show us that our consciousness is not in any sense the foundation of
God's kingdom, that His love is the foundation of it. They make us
understand that the revelation of that Love is in very deed the
reconciliation and regeneration of the world; that we may claim all as
included in that reconciliation and regeneration; that our baptism of
water and the Spirit, while it gives all warrant for conscious
repentance and faith, must comprehend the unconscious, must declare
upon what their consciousness is to stand. They _are_ sons of God.
God's Spirit is given them, that they may grow into the knowledge of
their sonship, that they may be able to live in conformity with it.
The conclusion of this memorable discourse also takes off all the edge
which has been given to those words, in the earlier part of it, in
which it is said, '_the Spirit breathes where He wills_.' I have
treated that language as expressing the entire freedom of His
operations, His independence on material agents as well as on the will
of the creature. But if any one concludes that the Spirit does not
will that all men should believe and come to the knowledge of the
truth, he must deny that He is the Spirit of that God who sent not His
Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be
saved.
DISCOURSE VIII.
THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE BRIDEGROOM'S FRIEND.
[Lincoln's Inn, Easter Sunday, March 23, 1856.]
ST. JOHN III. 30.
_He must increase; I must decrease._
We have seen, in the first chapter of this Gospel, how much the work
and office of John the Baptist are connected with all the deepest
thoughts and announcements of the Apostle. The more we study him, the
more probable, I think, the old tradition of the Church, that he was a
disciple of the Baptist, must appear to us,--the more we shall
understand the cause of his anxiety to point out the exact relation
between his two teachers.