John 3:4-8 Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?… I. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. The expression was a Jewish one, and the Jew would understand by it society perfected. That domain on earth where God was visible and God ruled. The Jewish kingdom was a theocracy: a kingdom in which God's power was manifest by miracles, and in which His laws were promulgated. This was Nicodemus' conception. He saw that Christ fulfilled the two requisites of a Divine mission — asserting a living will ruling over the laws of nature. He had seen a society growing up in acknowledgment of the rule of a person. But Christ asserted the necessity that the subject should be prepared for the kingdom. He distinguished between the visible and the invisible kingdom — the presence that man can see, and the presence that man can feel. Nicodemus saw Christ first when he gazed on the miracles. Christ told him he could not see or enter the other save by being barn again. II. THE ENTRANCE TO THIS KINGDOM. As there is a twofold kingdom, so a twofold entrance. 1. By the baptism of water. We enter the kingdom by our senses and our spirit. God's witness to our senses is baptism. This is not the fact of our regeneration, but it substantiates the fact. The right of a man to his ancestor's property is the will or intention of the ancestor. But because that will is invisible it is necessary that it should be made manifest in a visible symbol, viz., a "Will." So baptism is the Will of God, i.e, the instrument that declares His will. The will itself is invisible; verbally it runs, "It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom"; the visible instrument equivalent to the parchment is baptism. And so baptism is regeneration only as the parchment is the will. 2. Entrance into the kingdom by a spiritual change. The ground on which our Lord states it is our twofold human nature — the nature of the animal and the nature of God. When these natures are exchanged is the moment of spiritual regeneration. Our Lord's phrase has been interpreted — (1) In a fanatical way. Men of enthusiastic temperament, whose lives have been irregular, and whose religion has come upon them suddenly, contend that if a man does not know the hour of his conversion he is no Christian. (2) Another class of persons, to whom enthusiasm is a crime, rationalize the change away, contending that it applies to Jews, and that to say that it is necessary to those brought up in the Church of England is to open the door to all fanaticism. (3) A third class confound it with baptism, which seems equally opposed to the text. (4) In our life there is a time when the Spirit has gained the mastery over the flesh. That time was the time of regeneration. There are those in whom this never takes place — grown men still having and indulging animal appetites. These may have been born of water but never of the Spirit. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? |
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