Born from Above | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 30, 1913

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 38

Born from Above.

Sometimes the margin of our Bibles gives us better understanding than does the text,—not that it need be contrary to the text, but it gives us the more literal, stronger meaning. Take, for instance, John 3:3, the words of Jesus to the moralist Nicodemus. It rang with a strange power into the heart of the Jewish Pharisee. “Except a man be born again,” reads the text; but the margin reads, “Except a man be born from above.” It would be possible to understand “born again” to have reference to our own natural, mortal life, like the Eastern religions which tell us of the various incarnations through which we must pass, every one of them on the low, creature plain. Nicodemus had been born in the world as every other human had. He must, to have place in God’s kingdom, have a source of life and kinship that was above the earthly—he must be “born from above,” and so must every one, or he can not see the kingdom of God. The only life which the mortal man has in this world is the soul-life. He lost the spirit-life when he sinned against God in the beginning, and died spiritually. To be restored to the kingdom of God, or the heavenly family, he must have that life restored, the spirit-life, the eternal life in Jesus Christ, the power of Divinity which is able to change the heart, and make the spirit dominant over the flesh with all its tendencies. Let the soul who accepts of Jesus Christ feel that he is not born into an earthly family, but into a heavenly.