August 1924
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
507
improvement but displaces his thought by the thoughts of God, Ps. 119:9; John 1 5 :3 ; Eph. 5:26. The entrance of God’s Word gives light and life. Man was lost by hearing the word of Satan. He is saved by hearing the Word of God. “ Faith cometh by hearing.’’ “Hear and your soul shall live.” Isa. 55:3. Bengel’s translation of “ The wind bloweth where it list- eth,” John 3:8 is “The Spirit breatheth where He wills.” This is to be preferred to the translation of the Authorized Version because the Greek word pneuma here translated “wind” is everywhere else in the New Testament properly rendered “ spirit.” The passage speaks of the sovereignty of God. Regeneration is distinctly and wholly a Divine act. Repentance and faith are tfie human factors. We therefore urge men to repent and believe the Gospel but it is God who regenerates, justifies and saves. The power of the Gospel is not in moral reform and social service but in the regen eration of the individual heart. Man is in bondage to sin and needs a Divine redemptive power for his emancipation. He who is dead in trespasses and sins needs not ethical culture but life from the grave. Moral reform and social uplift are the products of Christianity. They are the inevit able effects of a supernatural cause. Regeneration has been described as an instantaneous change wrought by the Spirit of God in the soul of man by which a supreme love of God takes the place of a supreme love of self. The Holy Spirit is the author or agent and the truth is the instrument. It is not the natural heart improved as eternal life is not natural life endlessly pro longed. It is rather the Divine life imparted to bring forth its proper fruit, 2 Pet. 1:4. , Christ was made partaker of human nature by incarnation that He might enter into truest fellowship with us. We are made partakers of the Divine nature by regeneration that we may enter into truest fellowship with God. belonged to the Pharisees, “ that party which with all its bigotry contained a salt of true patriotism, and could rear such cultured and high-toned men as COMMENTS Gamaliel,J’-^Pract. Com. The Sanhe- 1’ROM THE drin or Council, the chief governing COMMENTARIES body of the Jews, consisting of the high V. V. Morgan priest as president, and seventy other members.— Peloubet. V. 2. Rabbi. A title of honor and respect given by the Jews to their learned doctors.-—Sel. V. 3. We see how essential regeneration is because the natural man cannot “see” (apprehend), the Kingdom of God without it. Read Jer. 17:9; 1 Cor. 2 :1 4 ; Rom. 8:7, 8; Psa. 5 1 :5 ; Eph. 2:3. As to its nature or source it is a supernatural, creative act of the Holy Spirit, not reforming our old nature, but giving us a new one alongside of the the old (Jno. 1:12, 13; 2 Cor. 5 :1 7 ; Eph. 2 :1 0 ; 4 :24 ). There is but one condition for our receiving it, viz.,- faith in the crucified and risen Lord (Jno, 3:14, 15, 16; Gal. 3 :2 4 ).— Gray. The word translated “ again” means liter ally “ from above” or “ from the beginning;” that is “ all over again.”— Sel. V. 5. The words of our Lord have nothing whatever to do with baptism. The water cannot mean Christian bap tism. Christian baptism (an entirely different thing from the Jewish baptism of John) was not instituted till after His death and resurrection. If it meant Christian baptism, V. 1. We know nothing certain of this man beyond the statement concerning him in John 7 :5 0 ; 19:39. He
the Lord’s rebuke to Nicodemus would be unjust. How could he know something that was still undivulged? Water in this passage is the figure of the Word of God, which the Spirit uses for the quickening of souls. The following passages -will demonstrate this fact. (Eph. 5:25-26; 1 Cor. 4 :15 ; 1 Pet. 1 :23; James 1:181. Begotten again by the Word of God, and water is the figure of that Word. (Psa. 19:9; Jno. 1 5 :3 ).— Gaebelein. Those who object to this interpretation ask, “ If Jesus meant ‘the Word’ why did He not say so right out without using a figure, just as He said ‘the Spirit’ ? To which it is replied that the words “ the Spirit” are themselves a figure and the passage literally translated would be: “ Except any one be born of water and wind,” and as the “wind” by universal consent refers to the one factor in regeneration, “ the Spirit,” so the “water” manifestly refers to the other elements in regen eration, “ the Word.”— Torrey. V. 12. Jesus had told Nicodemus about the work of regeneration, which was accomplished on earth, and he did not receive His words with full faith. If He should speak to him of things pertaining to the divine govern ment and to the atonement, much less would his taith grasp it.— Pract. Com. V. 13. This does not mean that no one had gone to heaven yet, but that no one had gone there and had come back to earth to report.— Sel. “ Even the Son of Man” Christ’s favorite name for himself, a well-understood title of the Messiah, derived from the Messianic passage in Daniel, (Dan. 7:13, 14) and many passages in Ezekiel.-— Peloubet. V. 15. In both cases the remedy was divinely provided. In both the way of cure strikingly resembled that of the disease. Stung by serpents, by a serpent they are healed. By “ fiery serpents” bitten— (serpents, probably, with skin spotted fiery-red)— the instrument of cure is a serpent of brass or copper having at a distance the same appearance So in redemption, as by man came death, by Man also comes life; Man, too, “ in the likeness of sinful flesh,” differing in nothing outward and apparent from those who, pervaded by the poison of the serpent, were ready to perish. But as the uplifted serpent had none of the venom of which the serpent-bitten people were dying, so while the whole human family were perishing of the deadly wound inflicted on it by the old serpent,— “ the Second Man,” who arose over humanity with healing in His wings, was without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. In both cases the remedy is conspicuously displayed; in( the one case on a pole, in the other on the cross, to “ draw all men unto Him” (ch.~ 12:32), In both cases it is by directing the eye to the uplifted Remedy that the cure is effected; in the one case the bodily eye, in the other the gaze-of the soul by “ believ ing in Him,” as in that glorious ancient proclamation--' “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,” (Isa. 45 :22 ). Both methods are stumbling to human reason. As the serpent was God’s ordinance for the cure of every bitten Israelite, so is Chrjst for the salvation of every perishing sinner—--the one however a purely arbi trary ordinance, the other divinely adapted to man’s com plicated maladies. In both cases the efficacy is the same. — J. F. & B. V. 17.' The world is to be judged, and the judgment is an inevitable result of Christ’s coming (cf. John 9 :3 9 ); but the purpose of His coming was not justice, but love and mercy.— Sel. If we reject God’s purposes of love, then He who came to save but brings the greater condemnation, (cf. Heb. 10:28, 29) — Torrey.
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