Is there a Change of Heart?
By Editor
A Correspondent makes the following request: "Please state in the REVIEW for the benefit of inquiring friends whether you deny what is called the change of heart, the passing from death unto life; and are we born again in this life? Explain what you think meant by the Spirit's witnessing with our spirit that we are his." We do not most certainly deny the moral change above referred to, but rather advocate and plead its necessity, as may be seen by the following quotation from our remarks on the New Birth in REVIEW No. 12, Vol. ix: But is there not a sense in which we are all the children of God now? Evidently there is: The Scriptures speak of a moral change which must take place here preparatory to the great and final change—the New Birth. The terms and expressions used to denote this change are various, but they all seem to center together upon one point; namely, faith in Christ. Thus by faith we are now the children of God. "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." Gal. iii, 26. By faith we receive him as our Saviour; by faith we look for his second coming; by faith we anticipate a part in the first resurrection, and "bodies like unto his glorious body." We are the children of God by adoption. "But ye have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Rom. viii, 15. "To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." Gal. iv, 5. "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will." Eph. i, 5. But the spirit of adoption is not the adoption itself; Paul tells us what that is as follows: "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now; and not only they, but ourselves also which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies." Rom. viii, 22, 23. "Now are we the sons of God; but it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." 1 John iii, 2.