186 The Fundamentals There is an immense amount of truth of the highest im portance contained in this passage; but the statement which especially concerns us is that the seed of the new birth is from the living Word ( “the Word which LIVETH” ). This state ment plainly teaches that the Word of God possesses the highest endowment of a living being, namely, that of imparting life. And with this agrees the teaching of the Lord Jesus in the parable of the sower, in the explanation of which He said, “The seed is the Word of God” (Luke 8:11). In consequence of the transgression and fall of the first man, who was the original depository of the life of humanity (Gen. 2:7), the life in him, being “corruptible,” became vitiated. Hence, by inexorable law, the seed of his generations also became corrupted. It follows that all men in their natural generation are begotten of corruptible (and corrupted) seed; and have received (and hence must impart to their succeeding generations) a corrupted life. What, therefore, was needed, in order to bring into existence a human family answering to God’s purpose in the creation of man (Gen. 1 :26), was a new and incorruptible seed. This has been supplied in the Word of God. All who believe that Word are begotten again (or from above) ; not this time of corruptible seed, “but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth.” It is a living Word. It is to be noted that this Scripture testifies that the seed of the living Word is not merely uncorrupted, but is “incor ruptible.” I t partakes, therefore, of the nature of the “uncor ruptible God” (Rom. 1:23). This is the guaranty to us that the Word of God is not subject to the corrupting influences of the corrupted and de caying world into which it is come. It' is the only thing which has not succumbed to the forces of- decay and death which reign universally in the earth. Indeed, it has not been affected in the slightest degree by those forces. This has been pointed out at length in the foregoing pages; but the grand truth comes to us with peculiar force in connection with the passage in 1
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