For just a few moments let us look at the necessity of the New Birth.
This is set forth in one of our texts and in the verses following, 1
John 3:5, 6: +"Verily, Verily, I say unto you, except a man be born
of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the
Spirit is Spirit."+ We see here that the New Birth is a universal
necessity, and we see why it is a necessity. The words translated,
"Except a man be born," etc. more literally translated would be, "_If
any man_ be not born out of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God." And why he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God the
following verse says, and that is because all that one gets by natural
generation is "Flesh" and _the Kingdom of God is spiritual_, and,
therefore, to enter it one must be born of the Spirit. No matter how
refined and intelligent our ancestry, no matter how godly our fathers
and mothers may have been, we do not get the Holy Spirit from them. All
we get is "flesh." It may be refined flesh, moral flesh, upright and
very attractive flesh, but it is flesh; and "they that are in the flesh
cannot please God," nor "inherit the kingdom of God." The flesh is
incapable of improvement. No more "can the Ethiopian change his skin,
or the leopard his spots" than can a man who is unregenerate attain to
a life pleasing to God. (See Jer. 13:23.) He must be born again. _The
necessity is also absolute and imperative_, so absolute and imperative
that Jesus said to Nicodemus, though he was a man of most exemplary
morality, a man of high moral and spiritual education, a teacher of
Israel, a leader in the religious life of Israel, +"You must be born
again."+ (John 3:7.) Nothing else will take the place of the New
Birth. Men are trying to substitute education, morality, religion,
orthodoxy, baptism, outward reform, "new thought," "theosophy" or the
knowledge of God, and other such things, for the New Birth; but none
of these, or all of them together, are sufficient, you _must_ be born
again. There is absolutely no exception to this rule. As Jesus says in
John 3:3, +"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except any man be born
from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God."+