3486 — Necessity of the New Birth. John 3:3-5
By C. B. C.
I am quite sure that Nicodemus knew about right living better than we do, and as all Protestants teach; yet neither he nor the other disciples understood the resurrection birth as Christ taught it. Did not Christ teach the resurrection rather than the regeneration? 1. Nicodemus had the same opportunity and the same source of knowledge to learn the resurrection that he did regeneration. The same Holy Scriptures taught both; and one of the strong tenets of the Pharisees, of which sect Nicodemus was one, was that of the resurrection of the dead. (See Acts 23:6-8.) They are never reproved or corrected concerning their views of the resurrection. 2. But resurrection to life implies character, the one prerequisite to such a resurrection. Over that we need not to worry, nor can we understand it. We may leave it safely with God; for if character be right, as was that of Jesus our Saviour, the grave can not hold us. Acts 2:24. 3. Therefore the important thing is character, which not only involves right living, but more important, and precedent to that, right being. Nicodemus did doubtless understand more or less of the necessity of right living, but like other Pharisees he felt it must be worked out by the human. His righteousness was to count, not God's. They sought the righteousness not by faith, but by works, and it could never be acceptable to God. Rom. 3:19-22; 9:31, 32; 10:3. Man must be right in order to live right, and just as radical a change must take place in man's character as takes place in the physical man at the resurrection. "Ye must be born from above" will ultimately include the resurrection, but it touches primarily upon the moral man. 4. The agency which accomplishes this is the Holy Spirit by the Word. Compare John 3:3-5 with 1 Peter 1:23 and James 1:18. That Spirit is not subject to human disabilities or limitations. "The Spirit [not the wind] breatheth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." John 3:8, A.R.V., margin. Nicodemus and the Pharisees believed that their rigid system was the channel in which the Spirit of God worked. Jesus taught that it worked not in harmony with man's will but God's will. John 1:13; 3:8. It has its mighty effects seen of men, but man does not control the workings of that Spirit in the human or elsewhere. "Ye must be born again," not of your own will and way, but God's will and way; not of your own power, but by the Spirit.