Lecture XIX

THE DIVINE BIRTH—THE FAMILY LIKENESS

THE first verses of the third chapter are to be viewed as inseparable from the last verse of the second. It is that verse which starts the new line of thought; our “knowing that God is righteous, and doing righteousness accordingly,” in virtue of our “being born of him.” Born of him! That is what awakens John’s grateful surprise, and occasions his exclamation, “Behold, what manner of love!” His discourse now is an expansion of that thought.

I. In every view that can be taken of it, our being called the sons of God is a wonderful instance of the Father’s love. That we—Who? The lost and guilty; who have forfeited by sin whatever claim we might have on God originally; who have become rebels against his authority and criminals under the sentence of his law; who, if left to ourselves, would rather continue estranged from him for ever than consent to return and be reconciled to him in peace:—That such as we should be called the sons of God! And then how? Through his own Son making common cause with us, that we may have a common standing with him; and by his own Spirit making us willing, almost against our wills, to acquiesce in that arrangement. And to what effect? That we may be to him what his own Son is to him; the objects of the same love; sharers of the same rank. Well may we exclaim, “Behold what manner of love!”

But it is chiefly one element or feature in this high calling that the apostle has before him when he breaks out into this rapturous exclamation; our being the sons of God as “born of him” (2:29); our undergoing a divine birth which, making us partakers of the divine nature, makes us thereby really and truly children of God; children, in a sense, by nature; and therefore fitly acknowledged as children.

Observe the peculiar turn of expression. As exactly rendered, it is not that we should be called “the sons,” but rather, that we should be called “children,” of God. It is not said merely that we are called his sons, as having him standing to us in the relation of a Father; but that we are called his children; his divinely-born children; deriving from a divine birth a divine nature; children of God, in respect of our being born of God.²

Of course this last view does not exclude the other; on the contrary, they virtually coincide. The thought of our being born of God immediately suggests the thought of the Father’s love. It is fatherly love that explains our being called children of God in virtue of our being born of God. It is the very glory and perfection of the love which the Father bestows on us, that we are thus called or constituted children of God.

For it is conceivable that in some other way, and on some other footing, we might be called children of God.

In point of fact, men dream of their being God’s children altogether irrespectively of any new divine birth,—anything like “being born of God.” Paul, at Athens, quoted a Greek poet as saying, “We are also his offspring.” From him we have our origin, and “in him we live, and move, and have our being.” Simply as his dependent offspring, we may think that we are entitled to be called his children, and to call him Father. We may speak of his love in creating us and caring for us as fatherly love. It is not however really so, in any valid scriptural sense. At any rate it is not the “manner of love” which John thinks it so amazing a wonder that the Father should have “bestowed upon us in our being called children of God.”

Again, our being “called children of God” may be considered simply as an act of adoption, very much analogous to what is practised among men. Viewed in that light, it is unquestionably an instance of fatherly love; and fatherly love of no ordinary kind. It is as if a judge were not only to procure a pardon for the criminal he has doomed to death, and hand it to him on the scaffold as he is awaiting execution; but were to take him home, and, by a legal deed, constitute him his son and heir; or as if the monarch were to admit into the royal household a vanquished and forgiven rebel, to be on the same filial terms with him, and enjoy the same filial privileges, as his own first-begotten.

Or take the better example of the reception of the prodigal son. The sympathising witnesses of that scene of reconciliation might well utter the ejaculation, Behold, what manner of love the father has bestowed on him! He himself could never cease to feel the wonder of it. And yet even this is not the manner of love that awakens John’s admiring rapture; or at least not the whole of it. The parable, for its purpose, is complete, although it takes no express notice of anything on the father’s part but his welcoming his son, “once dead but now alive,—once lost but now found;” or anything on the son’s part but his “coming to himself and going to his father.” But he who uttered the parable spoke of our being “born again;” “born of the Spirit;” as explicitly as his beloved disciple speaks here of our being “born of God.” And we cannot know what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us in our being called the children of God, unless we realise our being so in virtue of this new divine birth. Here the parable does not help; it may even, if taken alone, mislead. It teaches its own lesson; but it does not teach the whole truth of God on the subject of our being “called children of God.” The prodigal’s mind underwent a mighty revolution with reference to his father and his father’s house. It must have done so before he could be willing, either to accept the father’s terms of pardon and peace, or to accommodate himself afterwards to the father’s character and way of life; and without such willingness he could not have been really his son. That surely implied a great change of mind, which the parable, however, does not fully, or indeed at all explain.

But we know well, as spiritual men, how the corresponding change in our nature must be wrought. We must be born of God; so born of God that it shall be as truly our nature to do righteousness as it is his nature to be righteous. It is not merely that we need to be made willing to embrace his righteous overtures of mercy, in order to our personal acceptance in his sight. That doubtless requires that we should be born of God; for no man ever yet was found willing to know and submit to the righteousness of God, or unreservedly to consent to be “justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that is in Christ,” without so thorough a revolution in his whole inner man, so complete an abandonment of his own way of peace, and such entire acquiescence in that of God, as could only come from his being indeed born of God. To be born of God to this effect, to the effect of our coming to be of the same mind with him, in the great and vital matter of a sinner’s justification, and our justification as sinners;—that is much. It is the proof or manifestation of a fatherly love bestowed on us that is of a very wonderful sort indeed. But that is not all. Not only are we to be of one mind with the righteous Father as to the manner of our return and reconciliation to him; we are so born of God as to be ever after of the same mind with him, as to the whole of his righteous laws, and his righteous administration of them; “doing righteousness as we know that he is righteous.” That is what his heart is set upon; that is his fatherly love. It goes far beyond his simply consenting to regard us, in spite of all our estrangement, as still his children, if we consent to be so regarded. It is very different from his merely passing an act of indemnity, and by a summary and sovereign process of will, executing, as it were, a deed whereby we are declared to be in law his children. That is all the love which a father can bestow in adopting a child, according to the usages of earth. But it is not all that our Father in heaven bestows upon us, when we are called children of God. He contemplates a far more thorough filiation, a more intensely real sonship, than what can result from any such transaction outside of us;—any agreement between him and us, however generous and gracious. He “begets us” to himself (James 1:18); “we are born of God,” by an inward communication of his nature to us. He must have us to be, not titular, but real and actual children; children by participation of nature as well as by deed of adoption; by a new creation as well as a new covenant; of one mind and heart, of one character and moral frame with himself; “doing righteousness,” as we “know that he is righteous;”—so, and no otherwise, “born of him.”

“Behold what manner of love” is this that “the Father hath bestowed upon us!” That in such a sense, and to such an effect, the righteous God should be bent on our “being called his children;” his very children; his children in respect of our being made partakers of his righteous nature as God! Truly it is a love which it would never have entered into man’s heart to conceive, that in this marvellous way of such a new birth, “we should be called children of God.”

II. And we are his children; “Beloved, now are we children of God.” Our being called children of God is a reality; our being born of God makes it so. The world may not know us in that character, for “it knows not God,” and has never known him. We “know that God is righteous;” but the world does not so know him, has not so known him, will not and cannot so know him. How then should it know us, when, born of God, we do righteousness as he is righteous? On the contrary, for this very reason, because we are called children of God, and indeed are so,—therefore “the world knoweth us not.”

In this respect our position in the world is identical with that of Christ himself. He was called the Son of God, and was so; therefore the world did not own him any more than it owns us; because “it knew not him whose Son he was.”³ The world could not understand his thorough sympathy with God; his burning zeal for God; his holy anger kindled at the sight of whatever outraged the righteous character and claims of God; his lofty, uncompromising loyalty to God’s righteous government and law; his tender concern for the little ones given to him by God, that they might be shielded from man’s wrong and led in God’s righteous way. His being the Son of God, not in name only but in nature also;—his being so constantly and consistently true, in all his life, and in his death, to what his sonship involved;—was the very thing which made him incomprehensible to the world. Even his own chosen ones, when he was in the crisis and agony of doing righteousness, knew him not. The three who should have watched with him in the garden, slept. When he was on his way to trial and death, they all forsook him and fled. They knew him not as the Father’s “righteous servant, by his righteousness justifying many, through bearing their iniquities;” because they knew not the righteous Father himself, laying upon him their iniquities. He was left alone with the Father in that last scene of all (John 16:32). All throughout he was constrained painfully to realise the fact that his mission from the righteous Father, and the righteous meaning of it, were but dimly apprehended by his closest friends, and were wholly set at nought by a world “that by wisdom knew not God.”

That same world has not known God since, any more than it did before; his children have still to live in the midst of a world that knows not him, and therefore will not know them. This is their trial, as it was Christ’s. And in one respect it is to them, if not a sorer or more painful, yet a more perilous trial, than it was to him. If the world knew not him, he in a corresponding sense knew not it. If the world had no sympathy with him in what he knew of the righteous Father, he had no sympathy with the world in what it thought of the righteous Father. If men, not knowing God whose only begotten and well beloved Son he was, could not enter into his deep views of God’s righteous character and claims, he had no leaning toward their loose notion of all in God’s government being made to bend and give way to them, that they might not die. That never could be his infirmity. But it is ours; it is our temptation. Children of God as we are called, and really are; “born of God,” so as to be partakers of his nature, and to “do righteousness as he is righteous;” we are not so thoroughly rid of the old nature but that still we have too strong an inclination to think as the world thinks, and feel as the world feels, about the righteous God and his righteousness.

Especially when there comes to be a heavy strain upon us as God’s children; and a strong case is made out for some concession; and we begin to doubt if we have not been too stiff and strict in refusing this or that compliance, or condemning this or that liberty; and ask if we might not perhaps do more good, and better serve the cause of righteousness and a righteous God, by being a little less precise and more accommodating. Yes; we might in that way disarm somewhat the world’s hostility, and win a character for amiable courtesy and a liberal spirit. The world might come to know us, so as to like us better than it does now; better than it likes our more scrupulous brethren. But would not its knowing us in that way be just in proportion to our ceasing so far practically to be God’s children, “doing righteousness as he is righteous?” Let us be upon our guard against so great a danger. Let us lay our account with having to judge and act on principles which the world cannot understand. Let us be God’s children indeed; though on that very account the world that has not known God should not know us.

III. For, whatever the world may think or say, “we are the children of God,” his dear children; sharers of his divine nature; the objects of his fatherly love. It concerns us to bear this in mind; to apprehend and feel it to be true. It is our safety to do so. It is what is due to ourselves; it is what God expects, and has a right to expect, from us.

And it is especially on our community of nature with God, as being “born of him” and so “called his children,” that we are to dwell. It is not so much with a view to heighten our sense of privilege, as to deepen our sense of obligation, that John so emphatically repeats this assertion;—“Now are we the children of God.” It is our nature, as such, being born of God, to “do righteousness, as we know him to be righteous.” That is a new nature in us, and it is to be cultivated, exercised, developed, ripened. The field in which it is to grow and be matured is not at all congenial or favourable. It is the world, which not knowing him who begets, cannot be expected to know us who are begotten of him. It is the world, whose influences are all hostile to what is the great characteristic of the new nature in us which our being born of God creates, our “doing righteousness as we know that God is righteous.” Still that is our nature; our new nature: “Now are we the children of God.” And be the world ever so unpropitious in its atmosphere and soil, we are here in it as “trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord,” to grow as his children, “that he may be glorified.”

That is what is John’s chief design, in reminding us, in this connection, that we are the children of God. Other views are not to be excluded. The high rank in God’s kingdom; the intimate, familiar footing in his house; the warm place in his heart; which that wondrous manner of love bestowed upon us in our being called his children implies;—these all are animating and spirit-stirring motives to face the worst the world can do to us, through its not knowing us any more than it knows him whose children we are. It is a legitimate source of comfort and encouragement when, disallowed of men, we have to fall back upon “the witness of the Spirit, witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God; and if children then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” It is, moreover, a strong and telling appeal that is made to our sense of honour, to every noble and generous impulse of the new nature in us, when we are reminded that we are sent as God’s children into the very midst of a world that knows neither our Father nor ourselves; and sent for this very end, that we may approve ourselves to be his children indeed; and may “let our light so shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven.” In the face of the world’s ignorance of us and of our Father, and its ignorant opposition to us and to our Father; though the world may refuse to acknowledge us as God’s children, and give us credit for being what we profess to be; still let us not lose our own sense of the reality of what we are. Let us stay ourselves on the conviction that our being God’s children is not a matter of opinion, dependent on the world’s vote, but a matter of fact, flowing from the amazing manner of love which the Father hath bestowed upon us. And let us be put, as the saying is, upon our mettle, to make good our claim to be God’s children, by such a manifestation of our oneness of nature with him of whom we are born, as may, by God’s blessing, overcome some of the world’s ignorant unbelief, and lead some of the world’s children to try that manner of love for themselves, to taste and see how good the Lord is.

These are important and relevant practical considerations, to which we do well to give heed.

But they must not thrust aside the apostle’s main design, which is that our own personal holiness may be preserved and may grow. We are the children of God, as born of him; so born of him as to have the great fundamental principle of his righteous nature wrought and implanted in us. And our task, our trial, our probation, is, to give that principle fair play and full scope, in opposition to the world which disowns it; to act out all that is implied in our being God’s children, in the very heart of the world which knows neither him nor us; to grow in filial likeness and filial love to God amid all the adverse influences of the world’s ignorant ungodliness. “Now are we the children of God,” as being “born of him;” having his moral image stamped upon us; his moral nature formed in us. That is what we are ever more and more to realise ourselves to be, amid all the drawbacks and disadvantages of our present state.

IV. And we are to do so all the rather, because these drawbacks and disadvantages will not last long. We are only at the beginning of our life as God’s children. What we are, in that character, we grasp, or try to grasp, by faith; “what we shall be does not yet appear.” But it is to appear soon. And one thing we know about it is, that our participation in God’s nature, as his children, must then be perfect, for our knowledge of him will be perfect: “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” This suggests two thoughts.

In the first place, what is set before us, as matter of hope in the future life, is not something different from what is to be attained, enjoyed, and improved by us, as matter of faith, and of the experience of faith, in the present life. It is not that now we are the children of God, and that hereafter we are to be something else, or something more. No. The sole and simple contrast is between what we are now, as children of God, and what we shall be hereafter as such. “Now we are the children of God;” “born of him;” partakers of his nature; “doing righteousness, as he is righteous,” in the midst of a world that knows us not as doing righteousness, any more than it knows him, the righteous Father, whose righteousness we do. But “the world passes away, and the lust thereof;” and, lo! “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness!” What shall we then be as children of God, in a new world, that knows both him and us, all whose arrangements and ongoings are in sympathy with him and us? “It doth not yet appear.” There is a veil hiding that glory from our eyes; and John does not lift it.

But, secondly, one thing he tells us plainly enough. When it does appear what we are to be; when that is no more hidden but disclosed; we shall be like God whose children we are as being born of him; “for we shall see him as he is.”

We shall be like him; we shall be such as he is, not almost but altogether. We are like him now. We are of his mind and on his side in all that pertains to his righteous character and government; his righteous condemnation of all iniquity; his righteous way of saving sinners. But the likeness is broken and imperfect. It is a real family likeness so far as it goes, a real oneness of nature; it identifies us as his children. But the features of resemblance are faint at the best, and marred by traces ever reappearing of our old likeness to the world and its prince, whose children we once were. It will be otherwise when “what we shall be” is made manifest or appears. Then our likeness to God will be complete; for then “we shall see him as he is.”

“We shall see him as he is;” for “the pure in heart shall see God.” The full light of all his perfection as the righteous God will open upon our view; we shall know the righteous Father as the Son knows him.

The Son knows him;—“O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee; and these have known that thou hast sent me.” Here are the two extremes:—“The world hath not known thee; but I have known thee.” And here also is, as it were, the intermediate position occupied by us:—“these have known that thou hast sent me.” They do not know thee yet, as I, O righteous Father, know thee. But they are in the way of learning thus to know thee; for they know me as sent by thee. I am educating and training them in that knowledge of thee which I. would have them to possess as perfectly as I possess it myself;—“I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it.” Nor will I desist until they know thee, as I know thee, by experience of thy love; “the love wherewith thou hast loved me dwelling in them and I in them” (John 17:25, 26).

So Jesus, the first-begotten among many brethren, is teaching us now to know, as he knows, the righteous Father, through the love wherewith the Father loveth him dwelling in us, and himself dwelling in us. The school is ill-suited, in many respects, to the teaching; and the scholars are not so apt as might be wished. The school is but dimly lighted and badly aired; the atmosphere is too full of dust and smoke; the learners also are often drowsy; and the lesson-object is seen through a glass darkly. But lo! the hour comes when the benign master, the loving elder brother, leads us into the spacious, lofty, bright hall of his Father’s many-mansioned house, and presents us to the Father, face to face, saying, “Behold I and the little ones whom thou hast given me.” Then there is clear sight; unclouded vision; a full and perfect understanding of the righteous Father; a full and perfect understanding between him and us; as full and perfect an understanding as there is in the case of his own beloved Son himself. All that is dark or doubtful about his character and ways is cleared up. There is nothing anywhere to awaken a suspicion or suggest a question; nothing to give a partial or distorted view of what he is or what he does. We see him as he is; and so seeing him, we approve, and love, and are like him evermore!

Is not this a hope “full of glory”? And is it not a hope full of holiness too? Surely it must be true that “every man that hath this hope in God,” the righteous Father,—the hope of being like him through seeing him as he is,—“purifieth himself even as Jesus, the Son, is pure.”