October 1929
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is loyalty to the Word of God. Again the Christian regimen is proven to be reasonable—a divine philosophy. VI. T h e M ystery of th e N ew B irth There is no need to stumble over the mystery of the spiritual process known as regeneration. Jesus wisely said to His interlocutor: “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” Then as an analogy He referred to “the wind which bloweth where it listeth,” but is understood by no one. There are people who do not want to accept what they cannot understand; but in view of all the mysteries with which we are surrounded, that is not a reasonable attitude to assume. No one knows what matter and mind are, nor how they are correlated in the human brain to produce self-conscious thought, emotion and volition. Who can get a clear conception of force, electricity, magnetism, time, space, eternity, infinity? These are all inexplicable mysteries. Yet we do not on that account deny their reality. So with regard to the operation of the Holy Spirit with in our psychology; we do not need to understand i t ; we need only to experience i t ; then we shall know it to be a reality. While this experience is an inner psychical one, it makes its impact upon the same center of self-con sciousness as do our sense impressions, and so it is just as clearly attested. VII. U n ity and D iversity in th e N ew B irth The truth of the above sub-head will be clarified in a Pauline statement: “There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all” (1 Cor. 12: 6 ) . In every case of true spiritual regeneration, it is wrought by the Holy Spirit through the medium oi the Word of God. Here is a sacred unity in all Christian ex perience. But the Spirit comes to different individuals in various ways. Herein lies a beautiful diversity. Diversity of condition, circumstance and temperament result in di versity in the manner in which the experience comes. At this place pur Lord’s imagery is most apropos. He illustrated his thesis by the wind blowing where it listeth. The wind does not always blow in the same way. Some times it blows a hurricane or a cyclone. Some people’s experience of conversion comes in that way: it is sudden and revolutionary, resulting in great clarity as to time, place, main content, and other details. Such was the ex perience of Paul, Augustine, John Newton, Rowland Hill, John Bunyan, Jerry McAuley, and many others. However, the wind does not always, nor even usually, blow with violence. Often it blows a gentle breeze or zephyr and softly fans your cheek. No doubt there are many conversions of the zephyr-like description. The Holy Spirit breathes upon some persons in a more gentle way. This is apt to be the case in children’s conversions. Some of the best Christians we have ever known have described their experience in practically this way : “We cannot recall the exact time and place when we were con verted, for we cannot remember the time when we did not trust and love the Lord Jesus Christ.” No doubt.such persons were converted in their child hood, perhaps at their mother’s knee, and have never lost their faith in their Lord. The experience of it came to them more gradually and gently than would the experi ence of an adult person who was somewhat suddenly con victed and converted after following a course of sin. Paul, although he himself had the more revolutionary experience, recognized the genuineness of Timothy’s more childlike experience, for he wrote thus to Timothy: “But
renunciation; the Son comes into the world, becomes in carnate, and takes the burdens of mankind upon Himself on the cross, thus making expiation for sin ; how the Holy Spirit’s office is to apply the objective redemption thus wrought by the Son to the individual soul, bringing to it a subjective experience of its truth and saving power. Not only so, but the Holy Spirit is the innermost psychical element or person in the Holy Trinity ; He is that person who unites Father and Son in a blessed union of self-consciousness and fellowship; therefore, it is in harmony with the nature of a psychical and spiritual ex perience that the Holy Spirit should perform the inner most work within the soul, that of regeneration. There is a remarkable Pauline statement which seems to indi cate this deep, searching work of the Holy Spirit. Speak ing of the things which “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,’" etc., Paul adds: “But God, hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God; for what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things o f God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:10,11). The most subjective Person of the Trinity logically performs the subjective office in us. V . T h e M eans E mployed The Holy Spirit employs means in accomplishing the work of grace within men’s souls. He does not come down in any kind of a way out of the blue. The chief divinely appointed instrumentality He uses is the Word of God. He does not work an evangelical experience ex cept through the Law and the Gospel as given in the Bible. If we did not have the Bible, we would not even know of Christ and the redemption He wrought for us. We would not know that God will pardon, justify and save us on the condition of our accepting Christ as our Lord and Saviour. But this valuable safeguarding truth is known, not through human wisdom, but through the special revela tion given in the Scriptures; for while they teach that we are “born o f God,” and “born o f the Spirit,” they also teach that we are “born by [through] the Word o f God, which liveth and abideth forever” (1 Pet. 1:23). Paul agrees with this: “How shall they believe in him of whom they have' not heard? And how shall they hear imthout a preacher? . . . So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:14-17). Here again let us reflect upon the rationale of this divinely appointed process. We have already discussed the rational basis of a special divine revelation and God’s normal action in putting the record of it in a book, namely, the Bible. Now, as the Holy Spirit always uses the Word as His means of conversion and sanctification, He ever keeps His people true to “the deposit of faith” ; in other words, to “the faith once for all delivered unto the saints.” Thus the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Word always agree, and the Christian always knows what the true doctrine is. The Holy Spirit’s employment of the Canonical Scrip tures as His instrument in conferring grace saves the evangelical church from two. sapping and serious errors or heresies: rationalism, on the one hand, and false mys ticism (illuminism), on the other. The first makes human reason, instead of the Holy Scriptures, the norm; the other places the “inner light” above the Scriptures. Re garded historically, both of these heresies have been de structive of the Christian faith, and have led to spiritual indeterminism and often landed their adherents in spirit ual darkness. The only effective safeguard against error
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