Miles J. Stanford
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Miles J. Stanford
The term "new birth" has become quite common in recent years. What does it mean?
The new birth is a Biblical imperative found in the words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself: "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again [new birth]" (John 3.7). Why is this so?
Our primary purpose is to explain this all-important spiritual birth according to the Scriptures. The Bible is God's Word, an actual love letter He has written to tell you how you may become a Christian.
However, if you have already received the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, we trust this booklet will give you a fuller understanding concerning your spiritual birth and subsequent spiritual growth.
Miles J. Stanford
Colorado Springs, Colorado
© English 1977, Spanish 2001, Russian 2003, Polish 2005, Portuguese 2006, Chinese 2006, German 2007
CONTENTS
The Issue
My desire is that you will find this information written to you, personally, and that it will prove to be a helpful explanation of the new birth. Throughout this web page, supporting quotations from the Bible (New Scofield/King James Version) are shown in purple text.
Come along then, and within the next few screens you should know whether or not this is for you. Let's first consider some real-life examples so that you may determine just where you stand in this regard.
TYPICAL EXAMPLES -- My wife, Cornelia, grew up in a denominational church and school system, reaching adulthood without knowing how to become a Christian. As a young woman she began a serious search for the truth, and that by means of studying theological books.
After several years of this futile attempt she was invited to attend a weekly Bible class. It was in her study of the Book, the very Word of God, that Cornelia not only learned how to become Christian, but she accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior and was born again. "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Learn of me... and ye shall find rest unto your souls" (Matthew 11:28,29).
My experience was at the opposite end of the spectrum. Raised apart from the church or religious education, I attempted to be completely self-sufficient and independent of God. On the basis of that attitude I was brought down to the sad existence of a poor drunkard. It was then, at the age of twenty-seven, that I finally saw myself as sinful and lost, with the grim prospect of facing a holy God in judgment.
All I could do was reach out to God for mercy, and trust Him to accept me as a lost sinner in need of salvation. With that realization I soon received the Lord Jesus as my Savior and was born spiritually, into the family of God. "I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who hath enabled me, in that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious; but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief" (1 Timothy 1:12,13).
TYPICAL EXPERIENCES -- Your experience may be somewhat different from either of the above. Possibly you were raised in a Christian family, and your dear mother or a faithful Sunday School teacher led you to "ask Jesus in your heart" at a very tender age -- but nothing ever came of it.
Or, something did come of it, and you grew up enjoying Sunday School, church, and youth activities, until college or early marriage -- and then it all faded away. The remains are but a bit of cold gray ash within, although there may still be a heart-yearning for God.
Or, at some time you may have been talked into making a "commitment" to Christ by a passing "soul winner", or at a revival meeting in some church or crusade -- but there haven't been any results worth mentioning.
Or, like so many others, you may have been turned off concerning Christianity because of the errant examples of some Christians.
Or -- the most common case of all -- you may have been a good church member for years, and felt that this constituted being a Christian.
On the other hand, in all honesty you may have felt unworthy in yourself ever to be accepted by God, and that has kept you from becoming a Christian.
THE ONE THING -- Dear friend, regardless of your past experience or your present condition, there is but one thing that matters now! If you realize that you are not a born-again Christian, and if you acknowledge that you are a sinner and need the Savior, then God says to you in His Word: "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him" (Isaiah 55:6,7).
If you sincerely want to be born again, then this material is written for you.
However, if you feel that you are not yet ready to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, the truths set forth here may prepare you to put your trust in the One who is the Truth, the Savior who lovingly says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 14:6; 8:32).
The First Adam
Out of idle curiosity, or a genuine attempt to find out how to become a Christian, or from some other motivation, you may have picked up the Bible at one time or another and commenced reading at the first chapter of Genesis.
Very likely you managed to cover a few pages, or even chapters, and that was it. All that you read failed to make any sense, and you were quite certain that it didn't relate to your situation anyhow.
You don't mind being totally wrong if it leads to becoming totally right, do you? Let's open the Bible to the first chapter, and consider the 26th verse. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26).
This bit of Scripture embodies the truth that has to do with you personally, the key that will explain the new birth.
LOUD AND CLEAR -- Before we settle down to the business of the Bible, let it be said that we are not going into great detail -- you will have the rest of your life for that. You only have time now for the basic essentials.
You may already have been victimized by the wrong practice of many evangelists and preachers. In their well-meaning zeal they often berate and exhort their hearers for an hour or so, and almost as an afterthought tack on a brief summary of the Gospel. Then the bewildered and uninformed sinner is pressured into "going forward" to make the eternal decision to be saved... before he is even aware that he is lost!
To help rectify the above deficiency, our purpose here is to make the truths of salvation crystal clear to you. One has the right to be given sufficient truth whereby to make a clear decision.
GOD'S PURPOSE -- With that ever in mind, let us lock in on this Scripture: "God said, Let us make man in our image." That is precisely what God did. "The first man, Adam, was made a living soul" (1 Corinthians 15:45). God is love, and love must have an object upon which to lavish itself. Hence God made the first man in His image that He might give His love, and in turn receive man's love.
GOD'S IMAGE -- Adams's likeness to God was not a physical image, but one of personhood. God is a Person, man is a person. Man was endowed with the faculties of intellect, emotion, and volition so that God could share with him His life, love, and purpose. Thus they would enjoy fellowship.
God is infinite, uncreated, heavenly, the source of all life; God's first man was finite, created, earthly. God exists on the divine plane; Adam was made on the human plane -- hence they were immeasurably separate in being, but alike in the faculties of personhood.
This "image" verse has to do with you personally, so keep your eye on Adam and you will be halfway to your goal!
God made Adam to be the source, the prototype, the head, the representative man of the entire race. All the human family was to spring from Adam and Eve. In that way the personhood and the human characteristics of Adam would be instilled in the race through the inherited oneness of nature.
The initial phase of God's eternal purpose for mankind was that this representative man would grow in His moral image, and thereby become increasingly like God. By that means the race that came from Adam would continue in fellowship with God, and God with man.
GOD's CONDITION -- God was Creator, and Adam created; therefore, God was sovereign, and Adam subject. While Adam had complete liberty to develop in every way in line with God's eternal purpose and for his own eternal benefit, he must remain within the circle of God's beneficent will.
To establish the sphere of His will for Adam, God set forth a single condition. He said to Adam, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:16,17).
In order for Adam to develop into a responsible and loving companion to God, not a mere automaton or slave, it was necessary that God give him a choice: to accept God's will -- the way of eternal life; or to reject God's will -- the way of eternal death.
Any deviation from the will of God is lawlessness; it is sin. And, of necessity, "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). God is so utterly holy and pure that the result of sin must be eternal banishment from his presence.
At first thought one might be tempted to think that God was extremely harsh and unreasonable with Adam. Death for just one disobedience, and the first one at that? Why, God didn't even say, "That's once!"
But when one realizes something of the only possible relationship between Creator and creature, the unbelievable consequences of creature rebellion allow, there was no choice on God's part but that He to lay down the ultimate penalty for sin. "Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, mine Holy One? Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity" (Habakkuk 1"12,13).
Satan
THE TEMPTER -- Enter Satan: enter death! This brilliant celestial being, the highest in God's angelic hierarchy, was cast down from his exalted estate because of the sin of pride. He aspired and conspired to take over the very Throne of God, and to become as God. For this God had to condemn him and his followers to ultimate eternal death in the lake of fire. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer.... How art thou cut down to the ground.... For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.... I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to sheol." "And the devil...was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone..." (Isaiah 14:12-15; Revelation 20:10).
In saying "I will," Satan rebelled against God's will. Satan's failure to conquer God's throne in heaven didn't deter him from attempting to gain control of this world and the human race at its inception. He realized that if he could cause Adam to disobey God, he would thereby win the entire human race at its inception. He realized that if he could cause Adam to disobey God, he would thereby win the entire human race and thus become the god of this world.
Again the reminder to keep your eye on your representative man, because what happened to him happened to you. As you observe Adam, you will learn why you must be born again.
THE TEMPTED - In the face of God's protective command, and His gracious warning of death as the consequence of disobedience, Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And that is exactly what they did.
They chose Satan's way over against the will of God! That was sin. It resulted in spiritual death which cut them off from God, who is the source of life. Years later they died physically--physical death being the ultimate result of spiritual death.
After he died spiritually, and before he died physically, "Adam begot a son in his own likeness, after his image" (Genesis 5:3). Hence he brought forth the condemned, Satan-bound human race in his own sinful image. Man fell from innocence to enmity toward God!
To see Adam the sinner is to see yourself. You were born into this world possessed of a sinful nature inherited from your fallen source. You were born a sinner, and are therefore spiritually dead. Spiritual death results in separation from God forever--that is hell.
Don't take my word for it, but hear God in His Word. "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). And sin of necessity brought its wages. "Therefore, as by the offense of one judgement came upon all men to condemnation" (Romans 5:18).
CONDEMNATION COMPOUNDED - Actually, you lie under a dual condemnation: for Adam's sin, and for your own. In Ephesians chapter 2, God speaks of sinners as being "dead in trespasses and sins," and "by nature the children of wrath; having no hope, and without God in the world" (vv. 1,3). "He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" (John 3:18).
A pretty tight spot to be in! Here you are, not only condemned and headed for the judgement of the Great White Throne because you have sinned against God by not trusting Him, but you are equally condemned because you have a sinful nature inherited from Adam.
Since you have been born wrong, and have done wrong, you are spiritually bankrupt. Wrong family (root), and wrong conduct (fruit). "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).