The Necessity of Regeneration
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God. Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God.—John iii. 3,5
These words contain the foundation of all practical religion
here, and happiness hereafter. It is the principal doctrine
Christ, as a prophet, came to teach, and as a king to work in the
heart. It is an answer to Nicodemus his compliment, who came to
him with some veneration of him. His description is in ver. 1:
'There was a man of the pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the
Jews.' 1. By his profession or sect, a pharisee. 2. His name,
Nicodemus. 3. His quality, a ruler of the Jews;
"Argoon", a prince, one of the great Sanhedrin, who had
the supreme power in all affairs which concerned religion, even
under the Roman government. His coming to Christ is described,
ver. 2 'The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him,
Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man
can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.'
Where we have (1.) the time of his coming, by night; (2.) the
manner of coming and speaking to him with reverence, Rabbi, a
title of honour. He comes to Christ; therefore is to be
commended. He comes by night; has some failure in his respect to
Christ, afraid publicly to own him. Nicodemus was one of the
member which believed Christ for his miracles, John ii. 28. He
comes hereupon to discourse with him about divine things. He
acknowledges him a prophet sent by God. The reason of his
acknowledgement is the consideration of his miracles, which
manifested a divine power, both in the greatness and multitude of
them. For he knew that God would not set the seal of his power,
to one that had not his commission. Miracles are the credential
letters, to signify the divine authority of any person sent upon
any new dispensation by God.
Observe,
1. God doth not force any man's belief, but gives such
undeniable evidences of his will and mind, that not to believe is
flat contradiction to him. When he sent Moses to deliver and give
a new law to the Israelites, he attended him with a miraculous
power, to testify it to be his will, that what Moses delivered
should be entertained. So it was with our Saviour, and in the
primitive times, at the first promulgation of the gospel in
several places. But when a doctrine is settled and a church
established, God forbears those extraordinary works, as he did
the raining down manna after the Israelites' entrance into
Canaan, where they might have provision in an ordinary way of
providence; and they had miracles afterward in a more scanty
measure, now and then. We have now rational ways to introduce us
to a belief of the Christian doctrine; and though there are no
sensible miracles as before, yet there has been in all ages, and
is still, a miracle kept up in the world, greater than wrought by
Christ upon the bodies of men. And that is the conversion of many
obstinate sinners, and subduing them on a sudden, which in
Christ's account, was the chiefest miracle he wrought when he was
upon the earth: Luke vii. 22, 'Go your way, and tell John what
things you have seen and heard: how that the blind see, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are
raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.' Christ had cured
many in their sight; but he added in the end of the enumeration,
'To the poor the gospel is preached,' "Ptochoi
euangelidzontai". The poor are evangelised, brought into a
gospel frame, a renewed state for the kingdom of heaven, which is
greater than the raising a man from a natural death to a natural
life.
Nicodemus comes by night. He is fond of his own honour, loath
to impair it by a free and open confession. He was a master in
Israel. Had he come by day, his reputation had suffered in the
vulgar opinion, who might well wonder that he, a pharisee, of a
profound knowledge, should come to receive instruction from the
son of a carpenter, a man despised by his fellows of the
Sanhedrin. Yet he comes, though by night.
Observe,
1. It is a hard matter for us to perform a duty we are
convinced of, without a flaw in it. Nicodemus is convinced by the
miracles of Christ's divine authority; but he forbears an open
acknowledgement of him. He creeps to him in the night, unwilling
to be seen with him in the day. If Christ were not a prophet, why
should he be acknowledged at all? If a prophet, why not in the
day as well as in the night? Strange not to consult him in the
day, whom he confesses to have his commission from God! How weak
is the faith of the best at first! How staggering between Christ
and self.
2. Our own reputation will be apt to mix itself in our
religious services. It is his fear of the loss of this makes him
choose the darkness. This greatest piece of old Adam in us will
be rising in various forms, when we are in the most spiritual
exercises. What a contest is there between religion and
reputation! He was willing to gratify the one, but not displease
the other.
3. Ambition is the great hindrance of a thorough conversion.
Nicodemus had a mind to speak to Christ, but his reputation bears
too much sway in him against a thorough giving up himself to him.
He was ashamed to be taken notice of in this little address he
made: John v. 44, 'How can ye believe, that receive honour one of
another, and seek not the honour which comes from God only?'
4. Men may have a high esteem of Christ, yet not such an
esteem as amounts to a saving faith. Nicodemus acknowledges him a
teacher, and that sent from God; but not the teacher, the great
prophet Moses had spoken of, Deut. xviii. 15. He confesses him a
prophet, but not the Messiah. Look to your estimations of Christ;
see whether they be supreme, superlative, the Saviour, the
mediator, the Lord and King.
5. Convictions may be a long time before any appearance of
conversion. If we consider Nicodemus here, only as one convinced
of the divine authority of Christ, and not a thorough convert at
this time; for he seems by his questions, verse 4 and 9, to be
rather a malcontent, than a convert; yet the seed then sown by
our Saviour's discourse sprung up at last in fruit. He does upon
a signal occasion plead Christ's cause before a council of
pharisees, probably the great Sanhedrin, yet but faintly: John
vii. 50, 51, 'Doth our law judge any man before it hears him, and
knows what he does?' Before, he would have no witness of his
coming to Christ. Here he takes his part, as he might have done
any man's upon a common principle of justice and equity, that he
should not be condemned before he was heard. But there is more
generous fruit afterwards, where he joins with Joseph of
Arimathea in doing honour openly to our Saviours crucified body:
John xix. 39, 'And there came also Nicodemus (which at the first
came to Jesus by night), and brought a mixture of myrrh and
aloes, about an hundred pound weight.' What grace he had seems to
be in a long sleep, but is very vigorous upon its awaking.
6. True grace does one time or other discover itself most
contrary to that which was the natural crime before. In both
these places, fear had been his sin. It is now overmatched by
confidence. The Holy Ghost takes notice of it, 'which at the
first came to Jesus by night.' He came by night before, now he
comes by day. He and another never named before, Joseph of
Arimathea, who being possessed with the same passion of fear, was
a disciple in secret,—John xix. 38, 'Being a disciple of
Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews,'—own him publicly
at his death, when those that had been familiar with him in his
life forsook him. Christ will make timorous hares to own his
cause, when those that think themselves courageous lions turn
their backs upon him.
Paul had the most transcendent affection to the church, who
before was guilty of the smartest persecution. And Peter, after
the coming of the Spirit, was as courageous as before he was
cowardly in his Master's cause.
We have seen the pharisee. Let us consider our Saviour's
answer: ver. 3, 'Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God.'
Some think that Nicodemus asked a question which is not
expressed, but may be gathered out of Christ's answer, and seems
to be this, What was requisite to a man's entrance into the
kingdom of heaven? Whereupon Christ tells him, that there was a
necessity of being born again. Others think that Nicodemus asked
no question, and that these words are a very proper reply to
Nicodemus.
1. Christ answers not his compliment, but uses his authority,
acknowledged by Nicodemus, of a teacher to inform him. Since you
acknowledge my commission from God to be a teacher, I will teach
you what I have to declare. The great design of my coming is to
bring men to the kingdom of God; and the great means to this is a
new birth, which can only fit you for evangelical truths here,
and eternal happiness hereafter. He acknowledges Christ to be a
teacher, and Christ in his reply would teach him how to become a
Christian.
2. Christ frames his answer according to the pharisee's
corruption. Nicodemus came by night, out of love to his credit,
that might be impaired by his coming in the daytime. What would
the people think? Surely this man, and the rest of his tribe, are
not so knowing as they pretend to be, since he comes to Jesus to
be taught, and out of fear of the pharisees, who thereby might be
offended.
Christ's answer therefore very well suits him. You must become
a new man, if you would have acquaintance with evangelical
mysteries. Sway with your old notions, and pharisaic pride. Deny
your honour, credit, and whatsoever partakes of the name of self.
A legal frame, and a pharisaic righteousness, will not advance
you to the kingdom of God. The Jews were proud of being Abraham's
children, and thought the gates of heaven could not be shut
against any of that relation.
John had touched them before for this: Mat. iii. 9, 'And think
not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father.'
Christ does tacitly here do the same, and puts him in mind of
another birth, and the falseness and deceitfulness of his bottom
of legal righteousness.
3. Christ frames his answer according to his weakness and
ignorance. Nicodemus acknowledged him a teacher, not the Messiah.
Christ would bring him to the knowledge of himself as the
Messiah. Christ therefore by his answer would lift up his
thoughts higher, and puts him in mind of the kingdom of God,
which the Jews in their common discourse signified the kingdom of
the Messiah by, and have entitled it in ages since, the kingdom
of God, and the kingdom of heaven. So that Christ would bring him
to the knowledge of himself as the Messiah, not only as an
extraordinary prophet.
These three things evidence what relation this speech of
Christ has to that of Nicodemus.
Observe from the relation of this to Nicodemus his speech:
1. We shall gain nothing by our applaudings and praises of
Christ, without a renewed nature. Nicodemus comes with much
reverence, gives Christ the title of rabbi, confesses him to be
sent of God, owns the divinity of his miracles. Christ does not
compliment him again, takes no notice of his civility, but falls
roundly to his work, acquaints him with the necessity of
regeneration, without which he could not see the kingdom of God,
for all his fine praises of him. A glavering reverential religion
is insignificant with Christ. A new birth, a likeness to Christ
in nature, a conformity to him, is accounted by Christ an higher
estimation of him, than all external applauses given to him.
2. No natural privilege under heaven can entitle us to the
kingdom of grace or glory. It is not our carnal traduction from
the best man. It is no natural birth, with the choicest
privileges, gives us a right to either of them. Not the honour of
having the law from God's own mouth, the glory of an outward
covenant, the treasure of the oracles of God, the seal of
circumcision borne in the body, that can instate this Nicodemus
into this felicity. It is a birth of a higher strain, from an
higher principle, a change of nature, and a removal from the old
stock.
See how strangely Nicodemus replied upon this discourse of our
Saviour. How strangely astonished is this great ruler in Israel
at the doctrine which is absolutely necessary to an entrance into
the kingdom of heaven! ver. 4, 'Nicodemus says unto him, How can
a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his
mother's womb, and be born?' What a childish conception has he of
this most heavenly doctrine! Can such an ancient man as I return
to my first principles, dig a way into my mother's womb? It is
strange that Nicodemus, being a pharisee, and so well versed in
Scripture, should be so ignorant, or at least guilty of so much
inadvertence, as not to think of that place, Ezek. xxxvi., and
other places, which speak of 'a new heart,' and 'an heart of
flesh.' He might have considered the design of the legal
purifications, which were to represent the inward holiness which
ought to be in the persons so purified. Yet he hears him
discourse, but does not comprehend him. His carnal notion bears
sway against spiritual truths.
Observe,
1. A man may have great knowledge in the letter of the
Scripture, and yet not understand the necessary and saving
doctrines in it. The doctrine of regeneration was laid down in
the whole Old Testament, though not in that term. Let us take
heed how we read the Scriptures; not to trouble our heads with
needless and curious questions, but with the main mysteries of
religion. What could all Nicodemus his knowledge profit him, if
it had been ten thousand times more, without the knowledge of
this doctrine, and the experience of it!
2. Nothing is more an enemy to the saving knowledge of gospel
mysteries than a priding ourselves in head knowledge. Nicodemus
his coming by night was not only from fear, but pride, that he
might not be thought ignorant by the people. Humble men have the
soundest knowledge: 'The meek will he teach his way,' Ps. xxv. 9.
3. How low was the interest of God in the world at that time!
How had ignorance and error thrust the knowledge of God out of
other parts of the world, when it languished so much in the
church! How simple must the poor people be when the students in
Scripture were no wiser! It is a thing to be bewailed amongst us,
that wrangling knowledge has almost thrust out spiritual. And
when Christians meet, their discourses are more about unnecessary
disputes than these saving mysteries of Christianity, which might
produce elevations of heart to heaven.
To this exception of Nicodemus Christ makes his reply; where
observe,
1. A fresh assertion of it, with an explanation: ver. 5,
'Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be
born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God.' In the third verse, Christ lays down the
necessity of the new birth; in ver. 6, the necessity of the
cause, 'Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit.' In the
first speech, he lays down the doctrine; in this, he explains the
principle and manner of it, to remove his false apprehensions,
wherein he might mean the transmigration of souls, which seems to
be an opinion amongst the Jews.
2. A reason to back it: ver. 6, 'That which is born of the
flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and can be no more by
that principle, for the effect cannot be better than the cause;
but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, i.e. has a
spiritual nature.
Flesh is taken for man corrupted: Gen. vi. 3, 'For he also is
flesh,' degenerate into flesh, grown a mere sensual creature by
the loss of original righteousness. For upon the parting of
original righteousness, the soul of man was as a body without
life; a spiritual carcass, as the body is without a soul.
Flesh signifies the whole nature, as in that place, Mat. xvi.
17, 'Flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee,' &c. The
incarnation of the Son of God, which is the foundation of all
evangelical administrations, is above the sphere of nature to
discover. Man in his natural generation is but mere nature, and
cannot apprehend, cannot enjoy that which is only apprehensible
and enjoyable by a spiritual nature; but man regenerated by the
Spirit is spiritual, and is advanced above mere flesh, for he is
made partaker of the divine nature. So that Christ's argument
runs thus: No flesh can enter into the kingdom of God; but every
man naturally is flesh, unless born again of the Spirit;
therefore no man, unless born again of the Spirit, can enter into
the kingdom of God. If you could enter into your mother's womb,
and be born again, the matter would not be mended with you; you
would still be but flesh, and rather worse than better; therefore
that is not the birth that I mean, for the impediment would be as
strong in you as before.
These two verses are an answer to Nicodemus his objection.
Nicodemus understands it of a carnal birth. No, no, says Christ,
it is a spiritual birth I intend; one that is wholly divine and
heavenly. That which you mean brings a man into the light of the
world; that which I mean, brings a man out of the world, into the
light of grace. That forms the flesh to an earthly life; this
forms the soul to an heavenly. That makes you the son of man;
this the son of God.
All the difficulty lies in ver. 6, in that expression of
water, &c. Some, as the papists, understand it of the
elementary water of baptism, and from this place exclude all
children dying without baptism from salvation. Others understand
it of a metaphorical water, whereof Christ speaks, John iv. 14,
'The water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of
water, springing up into everlasting life.'
Let us first see why by water cannot be meant the baptismal
water.
Regeneration is the mystery and sense of that sacred ceremony.
It is indeed signified, represented, and sealed in baptism; how,
and in what sense, is not my present work.
1. It is strange, that when all agree that the birth here
spoken of is spiritual and metaphorical, that the water here
should be natural.
2. None could be saved, unless baptised, if this were meant of
baptism. As if these words, John vi. 53, 'Except you eat the
flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in
you,' were meant of the supper, none could be saved unless they
did partake of it. Whereas Christ lays not the stress upon
baptism, but upon faith: Mark xvi. 16, 'He that believes, and is
baptised, shall be saved; but he that believes not, shall be
damned.' He does not say, He that is not baptised shall be
damned, but he lays damnation wholly upon the want of faith. Many
have been saved without baptism, none without faith. It is true
to say, He that does not believe shall be damned; but it is not
true to say, He that is not baptised shall be damned. Christ says
the first, but not the second, though his discourse had obliged
him to say so, had it been true, or had he meant this speech to
Nicodemus of baptismal water. The Spirit is not tied to baptism,
but he may act out of the sacraments as well as in them.
Understand this of the bare want of baptism, not of the contempt
or wilful neglect of it. If it were meant of baptism, it was true
then, that none could be saved without it. How did the thief upon
the cross enter into paradise, which Christ promised him? So that
one may enter into heaven without baptism by water, though not
without the baptism of the Spirit.
3. Baptism was not then instituted as a standing sacrament in
the Christian church. The institution of it we find not till
after Christ's resurrection: Mat. xxviii. 19, 'Go ye, therefore,
and teach all nations, baptising them.' And it is not likely
Christ would discourse to Nicodemus of the necessity of an
institution that was not yet expressly appointed by him, and
which he did not appoint till after his resurrection; for he
discourses of that which was of present necessity. And if this
were meant of baptism, and of that absolute necessity the papists
would lay upon it from these words, then all that died before the
institution of baptism by our Saviour, unbaptised, could not
enter into the kingdom of heaven, though believing. Can anything
be necessary before the precept for it be given? It could not be
necessary before, as a means, because it is not a natural, but an
instituted means. It must be therefore necessary by virtue of a
command; therefore not absolutely necessary before the command,
and at the time Christ spoke these words. Some say that Christ
meant it, not of an absolute necessity at that time, but that it
should be so after his death. That is to give our Saviour the
lie, for he spoke it of the present time, some years before his
death. Besides, it wrongs the goodness of our Saviour (if he had
meant it of baptism), to defer the institution of it so long
after, when it was at present necessary for Nicodemus his
salvation. It wrongs his wisdom, too, to speak of that to be at
present necessary, which was not in being, nor could be till
alter his death.
4. It is strange that our Saviour should speak to Nicodemus of
the necessity of baptism before he had informed him of the
mysteries of the gospel, whereof it is a seal. To speak of the
seal before he speaks of that which is to be sealed by it, is not
congruous. For the sacraments being founded upon the doctrine on
which they depend, to begin by a sacrament the instruction of a
man, is to begin a building by the tiles and rafters, before you
lay a foundation; and against the order expressed by our Saviour
to the apostles, which puts teaching before baptising, and was
always practised in the primitive times, and is to this day in
all Christian churches, to the adult and grown up. As
circumcision was, amongst the Jews, not administered to any
proselyte before his turning proselyte, and instruction in those
laws he was to observe, and then, and not till then, his children
had a right to circumcision.
5. Those that understand it of the baptismal water, and so
make that of absolute necessity, do by another assertion accuse
their own exposition of a falsity; for they say that the baptism
of blood supplies the want of that of water, and that if either
infants or adult persons be hurried away to a stake or gibbet, or
killed for the Christian cause, they are certainly saved; which
cannot be, if the baptism of water were to be understood in this
place, and so absolutely necessary. It is water that is expressed
and blood is not water. One of these assertions must be false. A
martyr dying unbaptised must be damned, and cannot enter into the
kingdom of heaven, if this place be meant of the water of
baptism.
6. It may also be observed that Christ, in the progress of his
discourse, makes no more mention of water, but of the Spirit:
'That which is born of the Spirit is spirit;' not born of water
and the Spirit, which had been very necessary, if water had been
of an equal necessity with the Spirit to the new birth. And since
Christ mentions it positively, that he that is born of the Spirit
is spirit, will it be said, that if any be born of the Spirit,
without water, he is still but flesh?
Water then here is to be taken mystically. Some by water
understand the whole doctrine of the gospel; as the waters
mentioned through the whole 47th of Ezekiel signify the doctrine
of the gospel. To drop, in Scripture, signifies to teach, Amos
vii. 16; Ezek. xx. 46, 'Drop thy word toward the south.' Others,
by water, understand the grace of regeneration as the principle,
the Spirit as the cause, as Titus iii. 5, 6, 'He has saved us by
the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.'
What washing he means is expressed in the renewing of the Holy
Ghost; that is, that renewing which is wholly spiritual, as
proceeding from the Spirit of God, whence this grace does flow.
By water and the Spirit are signified one and the same thing,
the similitude of water showing the cleansing and generating
virtue of the Spirit, as fire and the Spirit are put together,
Mat. iii. 11, to signify the refining quality the Spirit has (as
fire has to separate the dross from the good metal). Fire and the
Spirit, i. e. a spirit of fire, of the force and efficacy of
fire.
This water is the same which God had promised: Isa. xliv. 8,
'I will pour water upon him that is thirsty;' and Ezek. xxxvi.
25, 'Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you;' and ver. 27, 'I
will put my Spirit within you.' He there explains water to be the
Spirit: 'I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed.' And in Ezekiel he
joins water and the Spirit; i. e. the water of my Spirit, or my
spiritual water, my gospel grace. And Isa. xii. 18, 19, God
speaks of the admirable fruitfulness of this water. This shall
renew you, and make you fructify in the kingdom of my Son, where
none shall be received who is not born of this divine principle.
Now our Saviour having to do with a pharisee, who was
acquainted with those oracles, to make him understand this truth,
uses those words which the prophets had used, and ranks them in
the same order; first water, then the Spirit, that the latter
might clear the sense and nature of the former, to hinder
Nicodemus from imagining that to be a natural water which was
spiritual and mystical. Water and the Spirit signifies the water
of the Spirit, or a spiritual water, as 1 Thes. i. 5, 'Our gospel
came not unto you in word only, but in power, and in the Hold
Ghost;' that is, in the power of the Holy Ghost.
The Spirit is compared to water in respect of its generative
virtue. No fruitful plant but is produced by moisture. Water
contains in it the seeds of all things. It was from water and the
earth that all things in the lower world were in the first
creation produced. Water is put here as exegetical of the effect
of the Spirit; water being the cause of generation by its
moisture, uniting the parts together.
Our Saviour in both places uses an asseveration, Verily,
verily, which is spoken,
1. To show the infallible necessity of it, the certainty of
the proposition.
2. To urge a special attention. Men press those things in
discourse which they would have retained.
It is to be believed because of its necessity; it is to be
considered because of its excellency.
Born again. "'Anothen" signifies properly from
above; but sometimes it is taken for again. Nicodemus understands
it so by his reply, of entering again into his mother's womb, and
not of a heavenly birth.
Man was born in nature, he must be born in grace. He was born
of the first Adam; he must be born of the second Adam. It is
expressed in Scripture by various terms: a resurrection to life,
a quickening, a new creation, the new man, the inward man, a
dying to the world. It is indeed a putting off the old man, the
principles and passions, the corrupt notions and affections which
we derive from Adam, to devote ourselves to God, to live to
Christ, to walk in newness of life.
The kingdom of God, which is sometimes taken, (1) for the
kingdom of glory, (2) it is sometimes taken for the gospel state.
And the same thing is signified by the kingdom of God, and the
kingdom of heaven. What is called by Matthew 'the kingdom of
heaven,' Mat. iv. 17, is called by Mark, relating the same story,
'the kingdom of God,' Mark i. 16. And the gospel is called 'the
gospel of the kingdom of God,' Mark i. 14. It is called the
kingdom of God;—
1. Because it sets up the rule and government of God in the
world above the devil's. The devil had been so long the God of
the world, that the interest of God seemed to be overmatched by a
multitude of unclean spirits, and abominable idols; and the true
God was not known to be the governor of it. The gospel discovers
the true governor of the world, and sets up his rule and
authority.
2. It sets up the righteousness of God, above a legal and
fleshly righteousness, much in vogue among Jews and Gentiles; but
they were wholly ignorant of the righteousness of God, Rom. x. 3.
3. This kingdom is framed and set up by the Son of God; the
other kingdom, under the law, was settled by God, but by the hand
of Moses, a man. This is administered by him through his Spirit,
his vicegerent. His royalty did not so eminently appear as in the
times of the gospel.
The Father appoints the gospel state in his wisdom, the Son
lays the foundation of it in his blood, the Spirit carries it on
in the world by his power.
4. In respect of the service, it is high and heavenly; a
serving God in spirit. The service under the legal administration
was carnal; the service under the gospel administration is more
spiritual, and so more suitable to the perfections of God.
5. In the end and issue of it. It is a translating us into the
kingdom of Christ, Col. i. 13. The legal ceremonies could not fit
men of themselves for glory; they could not make the comers
thereunto perfect. But this kingdom of grace prepares us for the
kingdom of glory.
Cannot see the kingdom of God. In verse 5. he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God. He cannot,
1. By reason of God's appointment.
2. In the nature of the thing itself; he has no fitness for
heaven or heavenly mysteries.
See. Seeing is taken sometimes for enjoying; not a bare sight,
but fruition: John iii. 36, 'He that believes not the Son shall
not see life;' that is, shall not enjoy life. And Heb. xii. 14,
'Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord;' they may see him
in his pronouncing the sentence, but shall not see him in a way
of glorious enjoyment of him.
To have a communion with Christ in a gospel state, to have an
enjoyment of Christ in eternal glory, it is necessary we be
stripped of the corruption of our first nature, and be clothed
with another by the Spirit of God.
Observe in the verse,
1. The infallibility of the proposition: Verily, verily.
2. The necessity of regeneration: except.
3. The extension of it in regard of the subject.
(1.) Subjectum quod recipit: man, i. e. every man.
(2.) Subjectum in quo recipitur: man, i. e. the whole man,
every faculty.
4. The excellency of it implied: they cannot see the kingdom
of God. If he be born again, he shall enjoy the kingdom of God.
Doct. Regeneration of the soul is of absolute necessity to a
gospel and glorious state.
By regeneration, I mean not a relative, but a real change of
the subject, wrought in the complexion and inclinations of the
soul, as in the restoring of health there is a change made in the
temper and humours of the body.
As mankind was changed in Adam from what they were by a state
of creation, so men must be changed in Christ from what they were
in a state of corruption. As that change was not only relative
but real, and the relative first introduced by the real, so must
this. The relation of a child of wrath was founded upon the sin
committed Without a real change there can be no relative. Being
in Christ, as freed from condemnation, is always attended with a
walking in the Spirit; and walking is not before living. For the
better understanding this point, I shall lay down,
I. Propositions concerning the necessity of it.
II. I shall show that it is necessary,
1. To a gospel state.
(1.) To the performance of gospel duties.
(2.) To the enjoyment of gospel privileges.
2. To a state of glory.
I. Propositions concerning the necessity of it.
Prop. 1. There are but two states, one saving, the other
damning; a state of sin and a state of righteousness; and all men
are included in one of them. All men are divided into two ranks.
In regard of their principle, some are in the fiery, some in the
Spirit, Rom. viii. 8, 9; in regard of their obedience, some walk
after the flesh, some after the Spirit, Rom. viii. 1; some are
slaves to the flesh, others are led by the Spirit; some live only
to self, some live to God. In regard of the exercise of their
minds, their nobler faculty, some mind the things of the flesh,
others the things of the Spirit, Rom. viii. 5; some swinishly
wallow in sin, others place the delights of their spirits upon
better and higher objects.
The Scripture mentions no other. A state of enmity, wherein
men have their inclinations contrary to God; a state of
friendship and fellowship, wherein men walk before God unto all
well-pleasing, and would not willingly have an inward motion
swerve from his will. One is called light, the other darkness:
Eph. v. 8, 'You were sometimes darkness, but now are you light;'
one the children of wrath, the other the children of God. There
is no medium between them, every man is in one of these states.
All believers, from the bruised reed to the tallest cedar, from
the smoking flax on earth to the flaming lamp in heaven, from
Thomas, that would not believe without seeing, to Abraham, who
would believe without staggering, all are in a state of life; and
all, from the most beautiful moralist to the most venomous toad
in nature's field, from the young man in the gospel, who was not
far from the kingdom of heaven, to Judas, who was in the very
bottom of hell, all are in a state of death. Mere nature, though
never so curiously garnished, can place a man no higher; faith,
though with many infirmities, puts us in a state of amity;
unbelief, though with many moralities, continues us in a state of
enmity. All men are either the object of God's delight or of his
abomination. The highest endowments of men remaining in corrupted
nature cannot please him. The delight of God then supposes some
real change in the object which is the ground of that delight,
for God is wise in his delight, and could not be pleased with
anything which were not fit for his complacency. Since original
nature in a man cannot displease God unless it be changed by some
fault, because it was his own work, so our present nature cannot
please God unless it be changed by some grace, though it be
otherwise never so highly dignified. Whatsoever grows up from the
old Adam is the fruit of the flesh, whatsoever grows up by the
new Adam in us is the offspring of the Spirit; and upon one of
these two stocks all men in the world are set. Since, therefore,
one is utterly destructive, and cannot please God (Rom viii. 8,
So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God), though
never so well garnished (for being utterly contrary to him it
cannot be approved by him), the other is absolutely necessary to
salvation.
Prop. 2. It is necessary upon the account of the fall of man
and the consequents of it. In Adam we died: 1 Cor. xv. 22, 'As in
Adam all died,' therefore in Adam he sinned: Rom. v. 19, 'By one
man's disobedience many were made sinners.' Man cannot be
supposed to sin in Adam unless some covenant had intervened
between God and Adam, whence there did arise in the whole human
nature a debt of having righteousness transfused from the first
parent to all his posterity. The want of this grace wherein his
posterity are conceived is a privation, and a crime which was
voluntary in the root and head. This privation of righteousness
must be removed. The institution of God stands firm, that Adam
and his posterity should have a pure righteousness. It is not for
the honour of God to enjoin it so strictly at first, and to have
no regard to it afterwards. Now this privation of righteousness,
and the unrighteousness which has taken place in the sons of
Adam, cannot be removed without the infusion of grace; for
without this grace he would always want righteousness, and yet he
always under an obligation to have it; he would be under desires
of happiness, but without it under an impossibility of attaining
it.
Were there an indifference in the soul of man, were it an abrasa
tabula, the writing of moral precepts upon it by good
education would sway it to walk in the paths of virtue, as an ill
education does cast it into the ways of [vice]. This is not so;
for take two, let them have the same ways of education, the same
precepts instilled into them, as Esau and Jacob had by their
father, who were equally taught, yet how different were their
lives! Esau's bad, Jacob's not without flaws. Education had not
the power to root corruption out of both, no, nor out of any man
in the world without a higher principle. There is some powerful
principle in the soul, which leads it into by-paths contrary to
those wholesome rules instilled into it. Hence arises a necessity
of some other principle to be put into the heart to over-sway
this corrupt bias. Man goes astray from the womb, as it is in Ps.
lviii. 3, 'The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray
as soon as they be born.' There must be something to rectify him,
and expel this wandering humour.
By the fall of man there was contracted,
(1.) An unfitness to any thing that is good. Man is so
immersed in wrong notions of things, that he cannot judge fully
of what is good: Titus i. 16, 'To every good work reprobate.' The
state of nature, or the old man, is described, Eph. iv. 22, to be
'corrupt, according to deceitful lusts;' deceitful, seducing us
from God, drawing us into perdition, by representing evil under
the notion of good, which evidences our understandings to be
unfit to judge without a new illumination; inward and spiritual
lusts, which are most deceitful, being accounted brave and
generous motions; lusts or desires, which show the corruption of
the will by ill habits. Lust and sin is the mere composition of
corrupted nature; the whole man is stuffed with polluting
principles and filthy appetites.
What was preternatural to man in a state of innocence became
natural to him after his depraved state. He is 'carnal, sold
under sin,' Rom. vii. 14. The spring being already out of order,
cannot make the motion otherwise than depraved, as when a clock
is out of order, it is natural to that present condition of it to
give false intelligence of the hour of the day, and it cannot do
otherwise till the wheels and weights be rectified. Our end was
actively to glorify God in the service of him and obedience to
him; but since man is fallen into this universal decay of his
faculties, and made unfit to answer this end, there is a
necessity he should be made over again, and created upon a better
foundation, that some principle should be in him to oppose this
universal depravation, enlighten his understanding, mollify his
heart, and reduce his affections to their due order and object.
(2.) Not only an unfitness, but unwillingness to that which is
good. We have not those affections to virtue as we have to vice.
Are not our lives for the most part voluntarily ridiculous? Had
we a full use of reason, we should judge them so. We think little
of God; and when we do think of him, it is with reluctance. This
cannot be our original state, for surely, God being infinitely
good, never let man come out of his hands with this actual
unwillingness to acknowledge and serve him; as the apostle says,
in the case of the Galatians' errors, Gal. v. 8, 'This persuasion
comes not of him which calls you,' this unwillingness comes not
from him that created you. How much, therefore, do we need a
restoring principle in us! We naturally fulfil the desires, or
"thelemata" 'of the flesh,' Eph. ii. 3. There is then a
necessity of some other principle in us to make us fulfil the
will of God, since we were created for God, not for the flesh. We
can no more be voluntarily serviceable to God while that
serpentine nature and devilish habit remains in us, than we can
suppose the devil can be willing to glorify God, while the nature
he contracted by his fall abides powerful in him. It is as much
as to say that a man can be willing against his will. Nature and
will must be changed, or we for ever remain in this state.
Man is born a wild ass' colt, Job xi. 12. No beast more wild
and brutish than man in his natural birth, and like to remain in
his wild and wilful nature without grace, a new birth can only
put off the wildness of the first.
(3.) Not only unfitness and unwillingness, but inability to
good. A strange force there is in a natural man, which hurries
him, even against some touches of his will, to evil.
How early do men discover an affection to vice! How greedily
do they embrace it, notwithstanding rebukes from superiors, good
exhortations from friends, with the concurrence of the vote of
conscience, giving its amen to those dissuasions! and yet
carried against those arguments, deceived by sin, slain by sin,
sold under it, Rom. vii. 11, 14. This is the miserable state of
every son of nature.
Do we not find that men sometime wrapped up in retirement, in
consideration of the excellency of virtue, are so wrought upon by
their solitary meditations, that they think themselves able to
withstand the strongest invasion of any temptation! Yet we see
oftentimes that when a pleasing temptation offers itself, though
there be a conflict between reason and appetite, at length all
the considerations and dictates of reason are laid aside, the
former ideas laid asleep, and that committed which their own
reason told them was base and sordid; so that there is something
necessary, beside consideration and resolution, to the full cure
of man.
No privation can be removed but by the introduction of another
form; as when a man is blind, that blindness, which is a
privation of sight, cannot be removed without bringing in a power
of seeing again. Original sin is a privation of original
righteousness, and an introduction of corrupt principles, which
cannot be removed but by some powerful principle contrary to it.
Since the inability upon the earth, by reason of the curse, to
bring forth its fruits in such a manner as it did when man was in
a state of innocence, the nature of it must be changed to reduce
it to its original fruitfulness; so must man, since a general
defilement from Adam has seized upon him, be altered before he
can 'bring forth fruit to God,' Rom. vii. 4. We must be united to
Christ, engrafted upon another stock, and partake of the power of
his resurrection; without this we may bring forth fruit, but not
fruit to God. There is as utter an impossibility in a man to
answer the end of his creation, without righteousness, as for a
man to act without life, or act strongly without health and
strength. It is a contradiction to think a man can act
righteously without righteousness, for without it he has not the
being of a man; that is, man in such a capacity, for those ends
for which his creation intended him.
Well, then, since there is an unfitness, unwillingness,
inability in a man to answer his end, there is a necessity of a
new life, a new nature, a new righteousness. There is a necessity
for his happiness that he should be brought back to God, live to
God, be a son of God, and this cannot be without regeneration;
for how can he be brought back to God without a principle of
spiritual motion? How can he live to God that has no spiritual
life? How can he be fit to be a son of God who is of a brutish
and diabolical nature?
Prop. 3. Hence it follows, that it is universally necessary.
Necessary for all men. Our Saviour knows none without this mark.
There must be a change in the soul: 2 Cor. v. 17, 'Therefore if
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.' There must be the
habitation of the Spirit: Rom. viii. 9, 'If any man has not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.' There must be a
crucifixion, not only of the corrupt affections of the flesh, but
of the flesh itself: Gal. v. 24, 'They that are Christ's have
crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts.'
The old nature must be killed, with all its attendants. There
is no sonship to God without likeness, no relation of a child of
God without a childlike nature. Let a man be of whatsoever
quality in the world, never so high, never so low, of whatsoever
age, of whatsoever moral endowments, 'except a man,' every man,
&c.
And simply necessary. Our Saviour does not say he is in danger
not to see the kingdom of God, or he may come short of it; but he
shall not, he cannot. There is no possible way but this for any
man, no other door to creep in at but by that of a new birth;
salvation cannot be attained without it, and damnation will
certainly be the issue of the want of it. As there is no other
name under heaven by which we can be saved but by the name of
Jesus Christ, so there is no other way under hearten wherein we
can be saved but by the birth of the Spirit.
It is necessary, therefore, in all places, in all professions.
It is not necessary only in Europe, and not in Africa. Let a man
be what he will, in any place under heaven, he must have a Jesus
to save him, and an Holy Ghost to change him; it is one and the
same Spirit acts in all, and produces the same qualities in all.
Let men's religion and professions be what they will (men are apt
to please themselves with this and that profession and opinion,
but), there is no salvation in any profession, or any kind of
opinion, but by regeneration. It is not necessary our
understandings should be all of one size, that our opinions
should all meet in uniformity, but it is necessary we should all
have one spiritual nature. It is as necessary to the being of a
good man that he should be spiritual as to the being of a man
that he should be rational, though there is a great latitude and
variety in the degrees of men in grace, as well as their reasons.
Some are of little faith, some of great faith; some babes in
Christ, some strong men. It is not necessary all should be as
strong as Abraham, but it is simply necessary all should be new
born, as Abraham; no age, no time excludes it.
(1.) Righteousness was necessary before the fall. The new
birth is but the beginning of our restoration to that state we
had before the fall. Adam could not have been happy without being
innocent. The holiness of God could not create an impure
creature. Without it God could take no pleasure in his work.
(2.) After the fall it was necessary, continually necessary
from the first moment of the fall. This work of regeneration is
included in the first promise: Gen. iii. 15, 'I will put enmity
between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed.'
Naturally we have a mighty friendship to Satan, a friendship to
his works, though not to his person. But if any man had interest
in that promise, he must exchange that friendship for an enmity.
If Jesus Christ, who is principally meant by the seed of the
woman, had an enmity to Satan, then all Christ's seed must be
possessed with the same spirit. For when the seed of the woman
was to break the serpent's head it was necessary that those that
would enjoy the fruit of that conquest should be enemies to the
nature of the devil, and the works of the devil, otherwise they
could not join with that interest which overthrows him. It is
unreasonable to think the head should have an enmity, and the
members an amity; and we cannot have an enmity to that which is
the same with our nature, without a change of disposition. It is
not a verbal enmity that is here meant. While we pretend to hate
him we may do his pleasure, and Satan is never troubled to be
pretendedly hated and really obeyed. As wicked men do the will of
God's purpose, while they oppose the will of his precept, so they
do the devil's will many times while they think they cross it;
there must be a contrary nature to Satan before there can be an
enmity. That foolish appetite, affected sensuality, indulgence to
the flesh, the cause of our first friendship with Satan, must be
changed into divine desires, affection to heavenly things, a
mortification of the flesh, before a man can part with this
friendship. There must be a change in the conformity of the soul
to the nature of the devil before an enmity against him can be
raised. We are never enemies to those that encourage us in what
we affect. His nature can never be altered, by reason of the
curse of God upon him; therefore ours must, if ever the league be
broken. In Isa. lxv. 25 it is said, 'The wolf and the lamb shall
feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like an ox: and dust
shall be the serpent's meat.' The nature of men may be changed by
the gospel, but dust shall always be the serpent's meat. The
saving some by water in the deluge was a figure of this inward
baptism, which is the 'answer of a good conscience towards God,'
1 Peter iii. 20, 21. As the old world was so corrupt that all
must be washed away before it could be restored, so is the little
world of man. The cloud and sea through which the Israelites
passed signified this, as the apostle informs us: 1 Cor. x. 2,
'And were all baptised unto Moses in the cloud and the sea.'
Whereupon some think there were some sprinklings of the water
upon them, as they stood like two walls, to favour their passage.
(3.) Necessary in the time of the law. By the moral law this
renewing was implied in the first command, of not having any
other gods before him, Exod. xx. 3. We cannot suppose that
command only limited to a not serving an outward image. Is not
the setting up self, our own reasons, our own wills, and bowing
down to them, and serving them, as much a wrong to God as the
bowing down to a senseless image? nay, worse than the adoring of
an image, since that is senseless; but our wills corrupt, and are
no more fit to be our God than an image is fit to be a
representation of him. So that in the spiritual part of the
command this must be included, to acknowledge nothing as the rule
of perfection, but God; to set ourselves no other patterns of
conformity but God, which the apostle phrases a being new created
after God, Eph. iv. 24.
If all idolatry were forbidden, then that which is inward as
well as that which is outward. If we were to have no other gods
before him, then we were to prefer nothing inwardly before him;
we were to make him our pattern, and be conformed to him; which
we cannot, without another nature than that we had by corruption.
Upon this are those scriptures founded which speak of
covetousness to be idolatry, Col. iii. 5, that 'if any man love
the world, the love of the Father is not in him,' 1 John ii. 15;
he does not love God.
Now the preferring self before God is the essential part of
the corrupt nature. Therefore all men, by the law of nature
(which is the same with the moral law), and the Jews, to whom
this law was given, were bound to have another nature than that
which was derived from Adam, which essentially consisted in the
making ourselves our god. Self-esteem, self-dependence,
self-willedness, is denying affection and subjection to God.
By the ceremonial law more plainly. Their duty was not
terminated in an external observance of the types and shadows
under the law, but a heart-work God intended to signify to them
in all those legal ceremonies. As sacrifices signified a
necessity of expiation of sin, so their legal washings
represented to them a necessity of regeneration.
Therefore God is said not to require the sacrifices of beasts:
Ps. xl. 6, 'Sacrifice and offering thou did not desire' (that is,
sacrifices of beasts), 'burnt-offerings and sin-offerings hast
thou not required;' viz. as the ultimate object of his pleasure,
but as representations of Christ, the great sacrifice. So neither
did he command circumcision, and other legal purifications, for
anything in themselves, or anything they could work, further than
upon the body, but to signify unto them an inward work upon the
heart. Hence they are said not to be commanded by God: Jer. vii.
22, 23, 'For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in
the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning
burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them,
saying, Obey my voice.' That is, God did not principally require
these as the things which did terminate his will and pleasure,
but an obedience to him, and walking with him, which cannot be
without an agreement of nature: 'For how can two walk together,
unless they be agreed?' Amos iii. 3. Hence God speaks so often to
them of the circumcision of the heart, Deut. x. 16, and promises
this circumcision of the heart: Deut. xxxvi. 6, 'And the Lord thy
God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed,'
&c. And Paul expressly says, Rom. ii. 28, 29, that 'he was
not a Jew;' that is, a spiritual Jew, one of the spiritual seed
of Abraham, who had the 'circumcision that was outward in the
flesh,' but he that had 'that of the heart.'
So among us many confide in baptism, which signifies nothing
to men grown up, without an inward renewal and baptism of the
heart, no more than outward circumcision did to them.
(4.) The obligation upon us is still the same. The covenant
made with Adam was made perpetually with him for all his
posterity, therefore all his posterity, by that covenant, were
perpetually obliged to a perfect righteousness. If God had made
this covenant with Adam, that he should transfuse this original
righteousness to his posterity only for such a time, then indeed,
after the expiration of the term, the obligation had ceased, and
none had been bound to have it as a debt required by God. The
fault of wanting it had been removed without any infusion of
grace, because the time being expired, and so the obligation
ceasing, it had not been a fault to want it; neither could Adam's
posterity have been charged with sin, because the want of
righteousness, after the expiration of the time fixed, had not
been a sin. But because there was no time fixed, but that it was
perpetually of force as to righteousness, which was the main
intent of it, we still remain under the obligation of having a
righteous nature.
Now God, seeing the impossibility of answering this obligation
in our own persons, by our own strength, appoints a way whereby
we may answer it in a second head, not pulling the former
covenant as to the essential part of it, which was a righteous
nature, but mitigating it, as the Chancery nulls not the common
law, but sweetens the severity of it.
This latter covenant is called 'an everlasting covenant.' Not
that the obligation of the other to righteousness is ceased, but
transmitted to another head; which head cannot possibly fail, as
our former did, who has both a perfect righteousness in himself,
and has undertook for a perfect righteousness in his people,
which he is able to accomplish, and to that purpose begins it
here, and perfects it hereafter. To this purpose the Scripture
speaks of the everlastingness of the covenant: Ps. lxxxix. 28,
'My covenant shall stand fast with him;' that is, with Christ.
And if his people sin, as he expresses it afterwards, yet 'my
loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him.' In this
respect Christ is called the covenant of the people: Isa. xiii.
6, 'I will give thee for a covenant of the people.' And the end
of placing David his servant over his people, is not to give way
to licentiousness and unrighteousness, and maintain men in an
hostile nature against God, but that they might 'walk in his
judgments, and observe his statutes,' Jer. xxvii. 24; and that
everlasting covenant of peace he would make with them is in order
to sanctify them, Jer. xxxvii. 26, 28, compared together. When
God would make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting
covenant, it was to set his sanctuary among them, and to let the
heathen know that the Lord did sanctify Israel. And the end of
the covenant is to 'put his law into the inward parts,' Jer.
xxxi. 33.
Christ undertook to keep up the honour of God, which was
violated by the breach of that covenant, to 'make reconciliation
for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness,' Dan.
ix. 24. This obligation our second head entered into for us, and
in him we are complete, even as our head, and as the 'head of all
principality and power,' Col. ii. 10, who has undertaken for our
perfect righteousness; of our persons, by his own righteousness;
of our nature, by inherent righteousness, as it follows, ver 11,
&c., 'in whom you are circumcised with the circumcision made
without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh,'
&c. This obligation still remains upon our head, and upon us
in him, and to him we are to have recourse for a full answering
of it. And this cannot be answered without a new birth here,
which ends in a perfection hereafter. And Christ, by a plain
precept, has made it absolutely necessary now to all under the
gospel administration.
So that no age, no time, no administration excludes it. It was
as necessary to Adam, the first man, as to the last that shall be
born. For being by nature spiritually dead, there must be a
restoration to a spiritual life, if ever any be happy. 'God is
not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.' What was
always necessary is absolutely necessary, and admits of no
exception; and therefore the removal of the diabolical nature is
indispensable to him and to us, since we are all the posterity of
Adam, and the inheritors of his corruption. How can any, in any
age, enjoy an infinite holy God, without being changed from their
impurity?
Prop. 4. Hence it follows, that it is so necessary, that it is
not conceivable by any man in his right wits how God can make any
man happy without it. It is not for us, poor shallow creatures,
to dispute what God can, and what God cannot do; what God may do
by his absolute power. But yet it seems a contradiction, and it
is not intelligible by us how God can make a man happy without
regeneration.
What semblance of reason can be given that any one who is a
slave of Satan, a child of wrath by nature, can be made the son
and friend of God, without an expulsion of that nature which
rendered him criminal, and restoring that in some degree which
renders him innocent?
Without habitual grace, sin is not taken away; and as long as
a man remains under sin, how he can be capable of and communion
with God I understand not; for he cannot be at one and the same
time under God's greatest wrath and his highest love. How is it
possible that one can have an enjoyment of eternal life, who has
nothing in him but a relation to eternal death?
God made man's nature fit for his communion; man made himself
unfit by guilt and filth. This unfitness must be removed by
regeneration before this privilege man had by creation can be
restored. Not that this restored righteousness is the cause of
our communion with God in happiness, but a necessary requisite to
it. No doubt but God might have restored this righteousness
without admitting man to a converse with him, if there had been
no covenant made to that purpose. That God may give grace without
glory, is intelligible; but to admit a man to communion with him
in glory, without grace, is not intelligible.
(1.) It is not agreeable to God's holiness to make any an
inhabitant of heaven, and converse freely with him in a way of
intimate love, without such a qualification of grace: Ps. xi. 7,
'The righteous Lord loves righteousness; his countenance does
behold the upright.' He must, therefore, hate iniquity, and
cannot love an unrighteous nature because of his love to
righteousness; 'his countenance beholds the upright,' he looks
upon him with a smiling eye, and therefore he cannot favourably
look upon an unrighteous person, so that this necessity is not
founded only in the command of God that we should be renewed, but
in the very nature of the thing, because God, in regard of his
holiness, cannot converse with an impure creature. God must
change his nature, or the sinner's nature must be changed. There
can be no friendly communion between two of different natures
without the change of one of them into the likeness of the other.
Wolves and sheep, darkness and light, can never agree. God cannot
love a sinner as a sinner, because he hates impurity by a
necessity of nature as well as a choice of will. It is as
impossible for him to love it as to cease to be holy.
This change cannot be then on God's part; it must therefore be
on man's part. It must therefore be by grace, whereby the sinner
may be made fit for converse with God, since God cannot embrace a
sinner in his dearest affections without a quality in the sinner
suitable to himself. All converse is founded upon a likeness in
nature and disposition; it is by grace only that the sinner is
made capable of converse with God.
(2.) It is not agreeable to God's wisdom. Is it congruous to
the wisdom of God to let a man be his child and the child of the
devil at the same time? Is it fit to admit him to the relation of
a son of God, who retains the enmity of his nature against God,
to make any man happy with the dishonour of his laws, since he is
not subject to the law of God, neither will be: one that cannot
bear him, but abhors his honour and the apprehensions of his
holiness?
Man naturally has risings of heart against God, looks upon him
under some dreadful notion, has an utter aversion from him;
alienation and enmity are inseparable: Col. i. 21, 'You who were
sometimes alienated, and enemies in your minds.' It does not
consist with the wisdom of God to make any man happy against his
will; God therefore first changes the temper of the will by his
powerful grace, thereby making him willing, and by degrees
fitting him for happiness with him.
It is not fit corruption should inherit incorruption, or
impurity be admitted to an undefiled inheritance, and therefore
God brings none thither which are not first begotten by him to a
lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: 1
Peter i. 3, 4, 'Which according to his mercy has begotten us
again to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that
fades not away, reserved in heaven for you.' It cannot be
honourable for the wisdom of God to give a right to eternal life
to one that continues a child of the devil, and bestow his love
upon one that resolves to give his own heart to sin and Satan.
This which I have now discoursed is founded upon men's natural
notions in their right reason. But if we look into the Scripture
it is certain there is no other way but this: a man without a new
birth can have no right to happiness by any covenant of God, by
any truth of God, by any purchase of Christ. God never promised
happiness without it. Christ never purchased it for any one
without a new nature. No example is there extant of any person
God has made happy without this alteration, nor in the strictest
inquiries can we conceive any other way possible; therefore if
there be any one present that has hopes to enjoy everlasting
happiness without regeneration, he expects that which God never
yet bestowed upon any, and which, according to our understanding,
God cannot, without wrong to his holiness and wisdom, confer upon
any person. I beseech you, therefore, let none of you build your
hopes upon such vain foundations; you must be holy, or you shall
never see God to your comfort.
Prop. 5. It is so necessary, that the coming and sufferings of
our Lord and Saviour would seem insignificant without it. That
this regeneration was a main end of his coming, is evident by his
making this one of the main doctrines he was, as a prophet and
teacher, sent from God to make known to the world, it being the
first he taught Nicodemus. Jesus Christ came to glorify God, and
to glorify himself in redeeming a people. And what glory can we
conceive God has, what glory can Christ have, if there be no
characteristical difference between his people and the world? And
what difference can there be but in a change of nature and
temper, as the foundation whence all other differences do result?
Sheep and goats differ in nature.
The righteousness which is given through our Mediator is the
same, in the essentials and respects it bears to God, as we had
at first. And his threefold office of king, priest, and prophet,
is in order to it: his priestly, to reconcile and bring us to
God; his prophetical, to teach us the way; and his kingly, to
work in us those qualifications, and bestow that comely garb upon
us that was necessary to fit us for our former converse. Our
second Adam would not be like the first, if he failed in this
great work of conveying his righteous nature to us, as Adam was
to convey his original righteousness to his posterity. As that
was to be conveyed by carnal generation, so the righteous nature
of the second Adam in to be transmitted to us by spiritual
regeneration. In this respect renewed men are called his seed,
and counted to him for a generation, as Ps. xxii. 30, 'A seed
shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord
("la'adonai") for a generation,' to Christ, it shall be
accounted as much the generation of Christ as the rest are the
generation of Adam, as if they had proceeded out of his loins, as
mankind did out of Adam's. As God looks upon believers as
righteous through the righteousness of Christ as if it were their
own, so he accounts them as if they were the generation of Jesus
Christ himself.
(1.) Christ came to save from sin. Salvation from sin was more
his work than barely salvation from hell: Mat. i. 21, 'He shall
save his people from their sins.' From sin as the cause, from
hell as the consequent. If from sin, was it only from the guilt
of sin, and to leave the sinful nature unchanged? Was it only to
take off punishment, and not to prepare for glory? It would have
been then but the moiety of redemption, and not honourable for so
great a Saviour. Can you imagine that the death of Jesus Christ,
being necessary for the recovery of a sinner, was appointed for
an incomplete work, to remit man's sin and continue the insolence
of his nature against God? It was not his end only to save us
from wrath to come, but to save us from the procuring cause of
that wrath; not forcibly and violently to save us, but in methods
congruous to the honour of God's wisdom and holiness, and
therefore to purify us: Tit. ii. 14, 'To redeem us from all
iniquity,' all parts of it, 'by purifying unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works,' that we might have a holy nature,
whereby we might perform holy actions, and be as zealous of good
works and the honour of God, as we had been of bad works and to
bring dishonour to him.
It was also the end of his resurrection to 'quicken us to a
newness of life,' Col. ii. 12, 18, Eph. ii. 5, 6. If any man
without a new nature could set foot into heaven, a great
intendment of the death and resurrection of Christ would be
insignificant.
Christ came to take away sin, the guilt by his death, the
filth by his Spirit, given us as the purchase of that death. In
taking away sin he takes away also the sinful nature.
(2.) Christ came to destroy the works of the devil: 1 John
iii. 8, 'For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he
might destroy the works of the devil.' These works are two, sin,
and the misery consequent upon it. Upon the destruction of sin
necessarily follows the dissolution of the other which was knit
with it. If the sinful nature were not taken away, the devil's
works would not wholly be destroyed; or if the sinful nature were
taken away, and a righteous nature not planted in the stead of
it, he would still have his ends against God in depriving God of
the glory he ought to have from the creature. And the creature
could not give God the glory he was designed by his creation to
return, unless some nature were implanted in him whereby he might
be enabled to do it.
Would it, then, be for the honour of this great Redeemer to
come short of his end against Satan, to let all the trophies of
Satan remain, in the errors of the understanding, perversity of
the will, disorder of the affections, and confusion of the whole
soul? Or if our Saviour had only removed these, how had the works
of the devil been destroyed if we had lain open to his assaults,
and been liable the next moment to be brought into the same
condition, which surely would have been, were not a righteous and
divine nature bestowed upon the creature.
(3.) Christ came to bring us to God: 1 Peter iii. 18, 'For
Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust,
that he might bring us to God.' Was it to bring us to God with
all our pollutions, which were the cause God cast us off? No; but
to bring us in such a garb as that we might be fit to converse
with him. Can we be so without a new nature and a spiritual
likeness to God? Would that man who would bring another to a
prince to introduce him into favour, bring him into his presence
in a slovenly and sordid habit, such a garb which he knew was
hateful to the prince? Neither will our Saviour, nor can he bring
sinners in such a plight to God, because it is more contrary to
the nature of God's holiness to have communion with such, than it
is contrary to the nature of light to have communion with
darkness, 1 John i. 5-7. Can it be thought that Christ should
come to set human nature right with God, without a change of that
principle which caused the first revolt from God? Besides, since
the coming of Christ was to please God, and to glorify him in all
his attributes, as well as to save us, how can God be pleased
with the effects of Christ's death, if he brought the creature to
him without any change of nature, but with its former enmity and
pollution? Will you say his mercy would be glorified? How can
that be without a wrong to his purity, and a provocation to his
justice? Suppose such a dispute were in God, would not holiness,
wisdom, justice, joined together, over-vote mercy?
But since there can be no such dispute, how can we conceive
that mercy, an infinite perfection in God, can desire anything to
the prejudice of the honour of his holiness, justice, and wisdom?
Well, then, if we expect happiness without a renewed nature,
we would make Christ a minister of sin as well as of
righteousness, Gal. ii. 17, &c. As there is a justification
by him, so his intent was to plant a living principle in us,
whereby we might be enabled to live to him. It is in vain, then,
to think to find any benefit by the death of Christ without a new
nature, any more than from God without it.
Prop. 6. The end of the Spirit's coming manifests it to be
necessary. We are said therefore to be 'saved by the washing of
regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost,' Titus iii. 5, 2
Thess. ii. 13. As God by his Spirit, moving upon the face of the
waters, created the world, so God by his Spirit, moving upon the
face of the soul, new creates all the faculties of it. Can the
coming of Christ, and the coming of the Spirit, the most signal
favours of God to mankind, be intended for no other end than to
convey to us the mercy of God, with the dishonour of his
holiness, to change our misery without changing our nature, and
putting us in a capacity both to glorify God and enjoy him? To
what purpose does the Spirit come, if not to renew? Whatsoever
was the office of the Spirit, cannot be supposed to be exercised
without this foundation. Can there be any seal of the Spirit
without some impression made upon the soul like to the Spirit,
which is the seal whereby we are sealed? Can he witness to us
that we are the children of God, if there be no principle in us
suitable to God as a father, no childlike frame? Is the Spirit
only to bring things to remembrance for a bare speculation,
without any operative effect? Is he to help us in prayer? How can
that be, without giving us first a sense of what we need, and a
praying heart? And how can we have a praying heart till our
natures, so averse from God and his worship, be changed? He is a
'quickening Spirit,' 2 Cor. iii. 6, 'the Spirit gives life.' How
can that be while we lie rotting in our former death? It is a
'Spirit of holiness.' Can he dwell in a soul that has an unholy
nature? Though he find men so at his first coming, would he not
quickly be weary of his house if it continued so? He comes to
change our old nature, not to encourage it. What fruits of the
Spirit could appear without the change of the nature of the soil?
Prop. 7. From all this it follows that this new birth is
necessary in every part of the soul. There is not a faculty but
is corrupted, and therefore not a faculty but must be restored.
Not a wheel, not a pin in all this clock of the heart but is out
of frame, not one part wherein sin and Satan have not left the
marks of their feet: Titus i. 15, 'Their mind and conscience is
defiled.' It is clearer to a regenerate soul that it is so, since
by the light of grace he discerns a filth in every faculty. The
more knowledge of God he has, the more he discovers his
ignorance; the more love to God, the more he finds and is ashamed
of his enmity. And though in our imperfect regeneration here,
grace and sin are in every part of the soul, as wine and water
mingled together are in every part of the vessel, yet every
faculty is in part renewed; and grace and sin lie not so huddled
together but that the soul can distinguish them, and be able to
say, this is grace, this is part of the new Adam, and this is
sin, and part of the old Adam in me.
Because there was an universal depravation by the fall,
regeneration must answer it in its extensiveness in every
faculty. Otherwise it is not the birth of the man, but of one
part only. It is but a new piece, not a new creature. This or
that faculty may be said to be new, not the soul, not the man. We
are all over bemired by the puddle of sin, and we must be all
over washed by the water of grace. A whole sanctification is the
proper fruit of reconciliation: 2 Thess. v. 23, 'The God of peace
sanctify you wholly.' Reconciliation was of the whole man, so
must regeneration. Sin has rooted itself in every part; ignorance
and error in our understandings; pride, and self-love, and enmity
in our wills; all must be uprooted by a new grace, and the
triumphs of sin spoiled by a new birth.
Prop. 8. It is so necessary, that even the dim eye of natural
reason has been apprehensive of some need of it. And, therefore,
it is a wonder that there should be a need of pressing it upon
men under the light of the gospel. Those doctrines that are
purely intellectual and supernatural, are not so easily
apprehended by men, as having no footing in reason, whereby
reason is rendered unpliable to consent to them. But those
doctrines that tend to the reformation of man carry a greater
conviction, as having some notion of a depravation, which gives
them some countenance in the minds of men, though not in their
affection. Men cannot conceive any notion of God's greatness,
majesty, and holiness, but they must also conceive something
necessary to an enjoyment of him (wherein their felicity
consists), besides those natural principles which they find in
themselves. Natural reason must needs assent to this, that there
must be some other complexion of the soul to fit us for a
converse with so pure a majesty. The wiser sort of heathens did
see themselves out of frame; the tumult and disorder in their
faculties could not but be sensible to them. They found the
flights of their souls too weak for their vast desires. They
acknowledged the wings of it to be clipped, and that they never
came so out of the hands of God. That therefore there was a
necessity of some restorative above the art of man to complete
the work. And I think I have read of one of them that should say,
That there could not be a reformation unless God would take
flesh. They had 'the work of the law written in their hearts,'
Rom. ii. 15. They knew such works were to be done; they found
themselves unable to do them. Whence would follow that there must
be some other principle to enable them than what they had by
nature. To this purpose they invented their purgative virtues;
and by those and other means hoped to arrive to an
"homoiosis toi theoi", which they much talked of as
necessary to a converse with God. As they were sensible of their
guilt, and therefore had sacrifices for the expiation of that, so
they were sensible of their filth, and had their purifications
and washings for the cleansing of that. Hence it was that they
admired those men that acted in a higher sphere of moral virtue
and moderation than others. Some of them have acknowledged the
malady, but despaired of a remedy, judging it above the power of
nature to cure. Certainly that which the wisest heathens, in the
darkness of nature, without knowledge either of law or gospel,
have counted necessary; and since it is seconded by so plain a
declaration of our Saviour, must be indisputably necessary. Plato
in several places says, That there was a certain divine principle
in our minds at first, but that it was abolished, and God would
again renew and form the soul with a kind of divinity.
How vain then are men, how inexcusably foolish, to neglect
both the light of the gospel and that of reason too; that spend
not one hour, one minute, in a serious consideration of it and
enquiry after it; in slighting their own reason as well as the
express declaration of Jesus Christ. Oh that men were sensible of
this, which is of so great concernment to them.
II. I come to show that regeneration is necessary.
1. It is necessary to a gospel state.
(1.) Nothing can exist in any state of being without a proper
form. That which has not the form of a thing is not a thing of
the same species. He cannot be a man that wants a rational form
of a man, a soul. And how can any man be a Christian without that
which does essentially constitute a Christian? We can no more be
Christians without a Christian nature, than a man can be a man
without human nature. Grace only gives being to a Christian, and
constitutes him so: 1 Cor. xv. 10, 'By the grace of God I am what
I am: and his grace which was bestowed on me was not in vain, but
I laboured more abundantly than they all.' Grace there is meant
of habitual grace, because he speaks of his labour as the fruit
of it. In bodily life brutes go beyond us, in the vigour of
senses, greatness of strength, temperance, natural affection. In
reason and moral virtues many heathens have excelled us. There is
something else, then, necessary for the constitution of a
Christian, and that is, Christ's living in him by a new forming
of his soul by his Spirit. As the body lives by the soul, which
distributes natural, vital, and animal spirits to every part of
the body, for the performance of its several functions; so the
soul lives by grace, which diffuses its vigour to every part, the
understanding, will, and affections.
(2.) There is no suitableness to a gospel state and government
without it. In all changes of government in the world there is a
change in the whole state of affairs, in those that are the
instruments of government, in the principles of those that submit
to the government. After the fall of man God set up a new mode of
government. All judgment was committed to the Son: John v. 22,
'For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to
the Son.' Ver. 27, 'And has given him authority to execute
judgment.' The whole administration of affairs is put into his
hand; not excluding the Father, who still gave out his orders in
the government, wherefore he says, ver. 30, 'I can of myself do
nothing; as I hear, I judge.' There must be, therefore, some
agreement between the frame of this government and the subjects
of it. As there is a new Adam, a new covenant, a new priesthood,
a new spirit; so there must be a new heart, new compacts, new
offerings, new resolutions. New administrations and old services
can no more be pieced together than new does and old garments.
The gospel state of the church is called a new heaven and a new
earth. Man is by the inclinations of his corrupt nature obedient
to the law of sin. There must be a cure and change of those
inclinations, to make them tend to an observance of the orders of
this new government, and an hearty observation of it, 2 Cor. v.
17, 'Old things are passed away, behold all things are become
new, and all things are of God' (so they were before), but now in
a new manner and frame; and this is the reason rendered why every
man in Christ must be a new creature.
(3.) All the subjects of this government have been brought in
this way, not one excepted. Though God has chosen some that he
would bless for ever under this evangelical government, yet
notwithstanding the purpose of God they are in as great unfitness
for this state as the worst of men, till God exerting his power
fashions them to be vessels of honour to himself. It is not God's
choice of any man which puts any man into a gospel state, without
the operation of the Spirit, renewing the mind and fitting him
for it. All that were designed by God's eternal purpose were to
be brought in by this way of the new birth, as 2 Thess. ii. 13,
'God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation, through
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.' And by
this they were fortified against all those workings of the
mystery of iniquity, against the government of Christ and the
state of the gospel, which would be damnable and destructive to
many; for he had spoken of that before, upon which occasion he
brings this in. 'A chosen generation, a holy nation, a peculiar
people,' are joined together, l Peter ii. 9. Peculiar they could
not be, unless they had something of an intrinsic value in them
above others, and a peculiar fitness for special service, and to
offer spiritual sacrifices, therefore called also a royal
priesthood.
(4.) The end of the particular institutions, of initiation or
admission, under the two different administrations of this
government, was to signify this—of circumcision under the
law, and baptism under the gospel. Both signified the corruption
and filthiness of nature, and the necessity of the circumcision
of the heart and the purification of nature. Hence baptism is
called 'the laver of regeneration,' Titus iii. 5, many
understanding it of baptism. Not that these did confer this new
nature in a physical way, or that it was always conferred in the
administration of them, but the necessity of having this was
always signified by them. Therefore one of the Jews, against the
opinion of his countrymen, says absolutely, it is a madness to
think that those ceremonies, under their administration, were
appointed only for the purification of the body without that of
the soul. And Rom. ii. 29, says the apostle, 'He is a Jew which
is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the
spirit.' So that partaking of baptism, and being entrusted with
the oracles of God, make a man no more a Christian than
circumcision, &c., did make a man a Jew. He is only a
Christian that has a Christian nature. The necessity of this
nature was evidenced and signified both by the one and by the
other.
In every state there are duties to be performed and privileges
to be enjoyed. So likewise in the gospel state. Without a new
birth we cannot perform the one or be capable of the other.
2. It is necessary to the performance of gospel duties.
(1.) There can be no preparation to any service without it.
Man's soul at first could make a spiritual music to God, till the
flesh disordered the strings, and no music can be made till the
Spirit puts the instrument in tune again. In Jesus Christ we are
'created to good works,' Eph. ii. 10. Therefore no preparation
can be before the new creation, no more than there was a
preparation in the matter without form and void to become a
world. What evangelical duties can be performed without an
evangelical impression, without the forming of Christ and the
doctrine of Christ in the heart, not only in the notion, but the
operative and penetrating power of it? The heart must be first
moulded, and cast into the frame of the doctrine of the gospel,
before it can obey it, as Rom. vi. 17, 'But ye have obeyed from
the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered unto you,'
or, 'unto which you were delivered.' The mould wherein a thing is
cast makes it fit for the operation for which it is intended. The
ship that wants any material thing in its make cannot sail well,
will not obey the directions of the pilot; and he that wants
grace will be carried away with the breath of every sin and
temptation. All the motions and railings naturally in ways of
duty by other principles, cannot make an aptitude to divine
services, no more than a thousand times flinging up a stone into
the air can produce any natural fitness in it for such an
elevation any more than it had at first, which was none at all.
Where should we have any preparation? It cannot be from Adam; he
died a spiritual death by his sin, and had no natural fitness for
any spiritual service, and therefore cannot convey by nature more
to his posterity than what he had by nature; what grace he had
afterwards was bestowed upon his person, not upon the nature
which was to be transmitted to his posterity.
(2.) Therefore we cannot act any evangelical service without a
new nature. If we have no natural preparation, we can have no
natural action. The law must be written in our hearts before it
be formed into the life, Jer. xxxi. 33, 34, 'I will put my law in
their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.' It is then,
and then only, that we have a practical and affectionate
knowledge of God, 'And they shall know me from the least unto the
greatest.' Restoration to a supernatural life must be before
there can be supernatural actions, a just nature before a just
walk, as Hosea xiv. 9, 'The just shall walk in them,' that is, in
the ways of God. The motion of the creature is not the cause but
the effect of life. The evangelical service is not the cause of
righteousness but the effect. We cannot walk in one commandment
of God till the law be written in our inward parts, Ezek. xxxvi.
14. Those that have not a new heart cannot walk in God's
statutes. We can never answer the terms of the covenant without a
new nature. For,
[1.] No act can transcend the principle of it. There is a
certainty in this rule; that the elevation of an inferior nature
to the acts of a superior nature cannot be without some inward
participation of that superior nature. The operation of
everything follows the nature of the thing. A beast cannot act
like a man without partaking of the nature of a man, nor a man
act like an angel without partaking of the angelical nature. How
then can a man act divinely without a participation of the divine
nature? Duties of a supernatural strain, as evangelic duties are,
require a supernatural frame of spirit. Nothing can exceed the
bounds of its nature, for then it should exceed itself in acting.
Whatsoever service, therefore, does proceed from mere nature,
cannot amount to a gospel-service, because it comes not from a
gospel-principle. We cannot believe without a habit of faith, nor
love without a habit of love; for this only renders us able to
perform such acts. Justification is necessary to our state as
well as regeneration; but regeneration seems to be more necessary
to our duties than the former; this principally to the
performance of them, the other to the acceptance of them.
[2.] The nature does always tincture the fruit of it. Our
Saviour, by his interrogation, implies an impossibility that
those that are evil should speak good things: Mat. xii. 84, 'O
generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things?
for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.' The very
hissings of a viper proceed from the malice of its nature. As the
root is, so is all the fruit. From one seed many grains arise,
yet all partake of the nature of that seed. Streams partake of
the quality of the fountain. If the seed, root, and fountain be
good, so is what-soever springs from them. There is not one
righteous man by nature, neither Jew nor Gentile, all are
concluded under sin: Rom. iii. 10, 'There is none righteous, no,
not one;' none that 'understands and seeks God,' &c. He adds not
one twice; he exempts none, not one righteous by nature, not
one righteous action by nature: 'none that does good, no, not
one.' He applies it to all mankind. A poisonous nature can
produce nothing but poisonous fruit. Our actions smell as rank as
nature itself. Whatsoever rises from thence, though never so
spacious and well-coloured, is evil and unprofitable. If,
therefore, we would produce good fruit, we must have a new root,
seed, and spring. Our sour nature must be changed into a
sweetness and purity. If the vine be empty, the fruit will be so
too: Hosea x. 1, 'Ephraim is an empty vine, he brings forth fruit
to himself,' or, 'equal to himself,' "yeshaweh". Unless
the tree be good, the fruit can never be generous: Mat. vii. 17,
18, 'Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.' We must
have the Spirit before we can bring forth the fruits of the
Spirit. All good services are related to this, as effects to
their cause; so that what a man does by an act of reason, and
natural conscience, and good education, if his understanding and
conscience remain wholly under their natural pollution, the
service is not good, because the soul is corrupt; much less are
those services good which are the fruit only of humour. How the
soul can be habitually sinful, and yet the acts flowing from it
be good, is not easily conceivable; it is against the stream of
natural observation. It is true, indeed, that a man that is
habituated to one kind of sin may do an action that receives no
tincture from that particular habit, because it does not proceed
from it; as a drunkard gives an alms, his giving alms has no
infection inherent from that particular habit of drunkenness, but
from the nature, which is wholly corrupt, it has. 'Who can bring
a clean thing out of an unclean? not one,' Job xiv. 4. Who can
bring a clean service out of a miry heart? Not one man in the
world. We cannot, therefore, perform any evangelical service if
those foundations be considered.
Not spiritually, because we are flesh. God must be 'worshipped
in spirit,' John iv. 44; in a spiritual manner, with spiritual
frames. The apostle speaks of 'walking in the spirit,' Phil. iii.
3, and 'praying in the Holy Ghost,' Jude 20. None can act
spiritually but those that are 'born of the Spirit;' and no
action is spiritual but what proceeds from a renewed principle.
The most glittering and refined flesh is but flesh in a higher
sphere of flesh, therefore whatsoever springs up from that
principle is fleshly, upon the former foundation, that nothing
can rise higher than its nature. You may as well expect to gather
grapes of thorns as spiritual duties from carnal hearts: Mat.
vii. 16, 'Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?'
If a natural man 'cannot receive,' and 'cannot know the things of
God, because they are spiritually discerned,' 1 Cor. ii. 14, how
should he perform the duties belonging to God, since they are
spiritually to be performed? We are naturally more averse to
motions upon our wills than to the illuminations of our minds. An
appetite for knowledge, and a flight from God being both the
fruits of Adam's fall, who was both curious to know, as God, and
fearing to approach to God after his fall. There may be some
services in natural men which may look like spiritual, but in the
principle they are not so. Many acts are done by irrational
creatures which look like rational acts. As the order among bees,
like the acts of statesmen regulating a commonwealth; their
carrying gravel in their fangs to poise them in a storm, and
hinder them from being carried away by the violence of the wind;
yet these are not rational acts, because they proceed not from
reason, but from a natural instinct put into them by Gods the
supreme governor. So that as no action of an ape, though like the
action of a man, can be said to be a human act, so no action of
an unregenerate man, though like a spiritual action, can be
called spiritual, because it proceeds not from a spiritual
principle, but from a contrary one paramount in him. And all
actions have their true denomination from the principle whence
they flow. They may be fruits of morality, and fruits of
conscience, but not spiritual fruits, which God requires.
Well, then, we must be first built up 'a spiritual house,' we
must be a 'priesthood' before we can 'offer spiritual sacrifice,'
1 Peter ii. 5. We must have the powerful operation of the Holy
Ghost in us before we can have a tincture of the Holy Ghost upon
our services. In all human acts, we should act as rational
creatures; in all religious acts, as spiritual creatures. Now, as
a man cannot act rationally without reason, so neither can we act
spiritually without a divine spirit in us. We are indeed to serve
God, and worship him as men: therefore rational acts are due to
God in worship, and we are constituted in the rank of rational
beings to that purpose. But since our minds are defiled, they
must be purified; since our understandings are darkened, they
must be enlightened. There must be a grace infused, a lamp set
up, a spiritual awakening, and invigorating our reasons and
wills, before we can worship God as God in a spiritual manner.
We cannot perform any evangelical service, vitally, because we
are dead. Our services must be living services, if in any wise
they be suitable to a living God. The apostle wishes us, Rom.
xii. 1, to 'present our bodies a living sacrifice.' He does not
mean only our bodies, consisting of flesh and bones, or a natural
life; but he names the body as being the instrument of motion and
service, or it may be synecdoche partis pro toto, a part
for the whole. Present yourselves as a sacrifice consecrated to
God, and living to him, and as living by him.
Upon the loss of original righteousness, another form or
principle was introduced, called in Scripture flesh, and a body
of death. Hence by nature we are said to be dead, Eph. ii. 1, and
all our works before repentance are dead works, Heb. vi. 1. And
these works have no true beauty in them, with whatsoever gloss
they may appear to a natural eye. A dead body may have something
of the features and beauty of a living, but it is but the beauty
of a carcass, not of a man. A statue, by the stonecutter's art,
and the painter's skill, may be made very comely, yet it is but a
statue still; where is the life? Such services are but the works
of art, as flowers painted on the wall with curious colours, but
where is the vegetative principle? Since man, therefore, is
spiritually dead, he cannot perform a living service. As a
natural death does incapacitate for natural actions, so a
spiritual death must incapacitate for spiritual actions.
Otherwise, in what sense can it be called a death, if a man in a
state of nature were as capable of performing spiritual actions
as one in a state of grace? No vital act can be exercised without
a vital principle. As Adam could not stir to perform any action,
though his body was framed and perfected, till God breathed into
him a living soul, so neither can we stir spiritually till God
breathe into us a living grace. Spiritual motions can no more be
without a spiritual life than bodily motions can be without an
enlivening soul. 'The living, the living, they shall praise
thee,' and Ps. lxxx. 18, 'Quicken us, and we will call upon thy
name.' There can be no living praise, nor no living prayer,
without a renewed heart. If it be one effect of the blood of
Christ to 'purge our consciences from dead works, to serve the
living God,' as Heb. ix. 14, then it is clear that till our
consciences are purged from dead works we cannot serve the living
God, for what suitableness can there be between a living God and
dead services? Is a putrefied rank carcass a fit present for a
king? or a man full of running sores and boils over his whole
body fit to serve in a prince's chamber? Our best services,
without a new nature, though they may appear varnished and
glittering to man, yet in the sight of God they have no life, no
substance, but stinking rotten dust, because coming from a dead
and rotten heart.
Well, then, we must be born again; it is not a dead nature,
nor a dead faith, can produce living fruit for God. We may as
well read without eyes, walk without legs, act without life, as
perform any service to God without a new nature; no, we cannot
perform the least: a dead man can no more move his finger than
his whole body.
Not graciously, because we are corrupt. By the same reason
that we are to speak with grace, Col. iv. 6, and to sing with
grace in our hearts to the Lord, Col. iii. 16, we are to do every
other duty with an exercise of grace to God: and without grace,
our praises are but hollowings, our prayers but howlings, as the
Scripture terms them: Hosea vii. 14, 'They have not cried to me
with their hearts, when they howled upon their beds.' How can
there be an exercise of that which is not? The skill of the
musician cannot discover itself till the instrument be made
tuneable. The heart must be strung with grace by the Spirit,
before that Spirit can touch the strings to make harmony to God
in a gospel service. Our tempers must be changed, our hearts
fitted, before he can make melody to God. The principal beauty
and glory of a duty lies in the internal workings of the heart;
and how can that heart work graciously, that has nothing of God
and his grace in it? It is said, 'Folly is bound up in the heart
of a child,' Prov. xxii. 15. So is corruption in the heart of a
man, like poison in a bundle of stuff; it is entered into the
very composition of us. A law of sin is predominant in a natural
man, Rom. vii. 93, which does influence all his actions. Strong
habits will interest themselves in all we go about, and all a
man's services are regulated by it, for he has no other law in
his mind to check the motions of it, and to scent his duties,
whereby they may carry a pleasing savour to God. The gift of
prophecy, the understanding of mysteries, the depth of knowledge,
the removing mountains, bestowing alms, dying for religion, are
brave and noble acts, but without charity, love to God, without
which, no other grace can work, all these profit nothing, 1 Cor.
xiii. 2, 3. There is a moral goodness in feeding the poor, but no
gracious goodness without charity. A little of this would make
those, as a diamond does gold wherein it is set, more valuable.
If all those profit nothing without this grace of charity, they
would profit much with it. How does grace alter the very nature
of services? Those acts which are sensitive in a brute, were he
transformed into a man, and endued with reason, would become
rational. Those actions which are but moral in a mere man, when
changed into Christian, become evangelical; they would be of
another nature and another value.
Well, then, look after the new birth, since it is so
necessary. There cannot be gracious practices without gracious
principles. Can anything fly to heaven without wings? We are to
walk as Christ walked; how can we do it without a principle of
kin to that which Christ had? We are bound to act from a
principle of righteousness; Adam was, and his posterity are; and
should we not look after that which is so necessary a perfection,
requisite for our services? No doubt but the devil could find
matter enough for prayer, and from the excellency of his
knowledge, frame some rare strains, as some word it; but would it
be a service which came from such a nature? As long as we are
allied to him in our nature, our services will be of as little
value. He transforms himself into an angel of light, but is still
a devil; and many men do so in their religious acts, yet still
remain unregenerate.
Not freely and voluntarily, because we are at enmity. A
natural man's services are forced, not free. The aversion of our
natures from God is as strong as their inclination to evil. We
have no fervent desires to love God, and therefore no desires to
do anything out of affection to him. When sensual habits are
planted in the soul, there is an enmity to God in the mind: it
will not be 'subject to the law of God,' Rom. viii., and whilst
that habit sways, it cannot. This inclination to sin, and
consequently aversion to good, is incorporated in nature, like
blackness in a black person, or spots in a leopard; they are
accustomed to sin, and cannot do good, Jer. xiii. 23. There is no
agreeableness between God and man's soul, whilst there is a
friendship between the heart and sin; he affects the one, and is
disgusted with the other: one is his pleasure, the other his
trouble; he has no will, no heart to come to God in any service,
and when he does, he is rather dragged, than sweetly drawn. The
things of God are against the bent of a natural heart; there is
nothing so irksome as the most spiritual service; when men engage
in them, they row against the stream of nature itself. There
must, therefore, be something of a contrary efficacy to overpower
this violent tide, a law of grace to renew the mind and turn the
motions of the will, to another channel. Restraining grace may
for a while stop the current, but not turn and change the natural
course. A carnal mind conceits the things of God and his
spiritual service to be foolishness, and therefore contemns them,
1 Cor. i. 23, 24. The eye of the mind must be opened to discern
the wisdom of God in them, before he can affect them. The heart
should be lifted up in the evangelical ways of God. Can mere
flesh be thus? Force can never change nature. You may hurl lead
up into the air, but it will never ascend of itself while it is
lead, unless it be ratified into air or fire. Keep up iron many
years in the air by the force of a loadstone, it will retain its
tendency to fall to the earth if the obstacle be removed; the
natural gravity is suspended, not altered. Till the nature of the
will be altered, it can never move freely to any duty; there must
be a power to will, before there is a will to do, as Philip. ii.
13, 'It is God which works in you both to will and to do.' A
supernatural renewing grace must expel corrupt habits from the
will, and reduce it to its true object. When faith is planted, it
brings love to work by; when the soul is renewed, there is an
harmony between God and the heart, between the mind and the word,
between the will and the duty; when the appetite and true taste
of the soul is restored in regeneration, then spring up strong
desires to apply itself to every holy service: 1 Peter ii. 2, 3,
'The sincere milk of the word' is fervently desired, after it is
spiritually tasted.
Well, then, there must be a change in us, or in the law. The
law is spiritual, man is carnal, Rom. vii. 14. The law can have
no friendship for man, nor man no friendship for the law in this
state, since their natures are so contrary. What the law commands
is disgustful to the flesh, what the flesh desires is displeasing
to the law. There must then be a change; the law must become
carnal, or man become spiritual, before any agreement can be
between them. Where do you think this change must light? It can
never be in the law, therefore it must be in man. The wound, in
our wills must be cured; the tide of nature, that never carries
us to God, must be turned, and altered by a stream of grace, to
move us to him and his service. Man has been a slave to his lust
by the loss of grace, and is never like to be restored to his
liberty in the service of God, till he be repossessed of that
grace, the loss of which brought him into slavery. The gospel is
a 'law of liberty,' James i. 25; a servile spirit does not suit a
free law, neither is it a fit frame for an evangelical service.
Nor delightfully. We can never perform spiritual services with
delight, because we are alienated. This we are to do. Paul
'delighted in the law of God,' Rom. vii. 22; and the law was the
'delights' of David, Ps. cxix. 92; his whole pleasure run in this
channel. Now, because of that aversion to God, there is no will
and freedom in his service, much less can there be a delight. A
corrupt nature can have no divine strains; a diseased man has no
delight in his own acts, his distemper makes his very motion
unpleasant to him. Things that are not natural can never be
delightful. There is a mighty distance between spiritual duties
and a carnal heart. Things out of their place can never be at
rest. Sin is as much a natural man's element as water to a fish
or air to a bird; if he be stopped in the ways of the flesh, he
is restless till he return. He may indeed have some delight
sometimes in a service—not as it respects God as the object,
or God as the end, there is no such friendship in a natural man's
heart to him—but there is an agreement between a service and
some carnal end he performs it for. His delight is not terminated
in the service, but in self-love, self-interest, or some external
reward, anchored in it by some hopes of carnal advantage, not
springing from a living love or a gracious affection to God. He
has no knowledge of God, and therefore can have no delight in God
or in his service. It is impossible we can come before him
without pleasure and delight, if we know how amiable he is in his
person, and how gracious in his nature; but we naturally think
God a hard master, and man having no delight in God, he can have
none in those means which lead him to God, and as they are
appointed to bring God and his soul together. He has wrong
notions of duties, looks upon them as drudgeries, not as
advantages: Mal. i. 13, 'Ye said, Behold, what a weariness it
is,' &c. Without a change of nature, we cannot desire
communion with God, and therefore cannot delight in the means of
it. We can no more do any service cheerfully than the saints
without it could 'receive joyfully the spoiling of their goods,'
Heb. x. 34. We can never be in a holy ecstasy without this inward
principle, to make the gospel services connatural to us. This
only makes high impressions upon the soul. It is the law within
our hearts, which only makes us delight to do his will: Ps. xl.
8, 'Thy law is within my heart,' in my bowels. He had a natural
affection to it, and then a high delight in it. It made our
Saviour delight to do his work; and it was the inward man of the
heart, wherein the apostle's delight in the law was placed.
Unless we have a divine impression of God upon us, we cannot hear
his word with any joy in it; as our Saviour says, John viii. 47,
'Ye therefore hear them not,' that is, the words of God, '
because you are not of God.' Unless we have God's light and his
truth sent forth into us, we can never make God our exceeding
joy, or go to his altar with such a frame, Ps. xliii. 3, 4.
Well, then, there is a necessity of the new nature, to have a
warm frame of heart in evangelical duties. What is connatural to
us is only delightful. So much of weariness and bondage we have
in any holy service, so much of a legal frame; so much of love
and delight, so much we have of a new covenant grace. A spirit of
adoption and regeneration only can make us delight to come to our
father, and to cry Abba to him.
Without regeneration we cannot perform evangelical duties
sincerely, because we are a lie, and in our best estate vanity.
We must worship God 'in truth' as well as 'spirit,' John iv. 24.
God is a Spirit, and therefore must be worshipped in spirit. God
is truth, and therefore must be worshipped in truth. Without a
new nature we cannot worship God in truth. The old nature is in
itself a lie, a mere falsity, something contrary to that nature
God created. It was first introduced by a lie of the devil 'ye
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,' Gen. iii. 5), and
thereupon a fancy that God lied in his command. How can we serve
God with this nature, which had nothing but a lie for its
foundation,—a lie of the devil, a lie in our fancy?
Therefore our old nature is no better than a lie. How can we
serve God with that nature which is quite another thing to that
of his framing? Man in his fall is a liar: Rom. iii. 4, 'Let God
be true, and every man a liar,' a covenant-breaker, that kept not
his faith with God. God, in respect of truth, and man, in respect
of lying, are set in opposition by the apostle there. No man but
would slight and scorn that service from another, which he knew
to be a lying service in the very frame of it. There is no truth
can be in any service which is founded only upon an old nature,
and performed by one that is acted by the father of lies; and so
is every unregenerate man, every 'child of disobedience,' Eph.
ii. 2.
Now, sincerity cannot be without a new nature,
(1.) Because there are no divine motives which should sway the
soul. Most services of natural men have such dirty springs, so
unsuitable to that raised temper men should have in dealing with
God, that they produce sacrifices not fit to be offered to an
earthly governor: Mal. i. 8, 'If you offer the blind for
sacrifice, is it not evil?' &c., 'offer it now unto thy
governor will he be pleased with thee?' Had they had divine
motives, they had never brought such sickly services. What was
not fit for themselves, they thought fit for God. Did but princes
know what motives many had in their services they would with as
much scorn reject them as they do ignorantly receive them with
affection. But it is otherwise with God, who knows all the
springs and wards in that lock of the heart of his own framing.
Do not most services take their rise from custom, or from an
outward religious education barely, or at best from natural
conscience, which though it be all in a man, which takes God's
part, yet it is flesh, and defiled? And what pure vapours can be
expected from a lake of Sodom? Titus i. 15, 'To them that are
defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and
conscience is defiled.' The mind, which is the repository of
natural light, and the conscience, which is the advocate of
natural light, and applies it upon particular occasion, are
defiled, and that in every unbelieving person. Can the motives
which conscience takes from a dark and defiled principle, as the
mind is, be divine? It is fear of death, wrath, and judgment
which it mostly applies. These are the motives of defilement.
Fear is the natural consequence of pollution; without sin and
corruption we never had had any fear of hell. That cannot be
gracious which springs naturally from the commission of sin, and
can this be divine? Were there no punishment feared, there should
be no duty performed. Conscience has naturally no basis to stand
upon but this. What is the principle of his fear? Self. It is not
therefore obedience to God, but self-preservation, says a man.
Fear is but a servile disposition, and therefore cannot make a
service good. All such extrinsic motives which arise not from a
new life, are no more divine than the weights of a clock may be
said to have life because they set the wheels on running. The
same action may be done by several persons upon different
principles and motives, for which one may be rewarded, the other
not, as Mat. x. 41, 42, 'He that receives a righteous man, in the
name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward.
And whosoever shall give unto one of these little ones a cup of
cold water only in the name of a disciple, he shall in no wise
lose his reward.' One may receive a member of Christ out of
respect to Christ and the relation the person has to him, another
man receive the same person out of a common principle of
humanity, the action is the same, the good redounding to the
object is the same; nay, it may be greater in him that acts from
a commiseration of him, as a man, than a cup of cold water from
the other, because his ability is greater; but the inward respect
to the object is different. One respects him as a man of the same
nature with himself in misery, the other respects him as a member
of Christ in misery; one respects him as a man, the other as a
righteous man. The principle is different: one relieves him out
of a natural compassion, common to a heathen with him, the other
out of a Christian affection to his Head. The actions are
therefore different, because of their motives: one is rewardable,
and promised to be rewarded, the other not; one may be from
grace— I do not say it always is, unless there be a constant
tenor of such motives in our actions, for a natural man, under
the preaching of the gospel, may do such a thing out of a present
and transient respect to Christ, whom he hears so often of, and
has some presumption to be saved by, but it is not his constant
frame—I say, one may be from grace, the other from nature.
Therefore from hence results a necessity of the alteration of
the frame of our souls, to furnish us with divine and heavenly
motives for our actions. A man may do a thing by nature from a
good principle, a principle of common honesty, good in its kind
(brass is good in its kind, but not so good as silver), but not
evangelically good, without a renewed affection to God: John xiv.
15, 'If you love me, keep my commandments;' keep what I command
you, out of affection to me. Where 'the imagination of the heart
is evil, and only evil, and that continually,' Gen. vi. 5, all
the service a man in that state performs rises from this spring,
and has some infectious imagination in it, highly abominable to
God; either wrong notions of God in it, or wrong notions of the
duty, or corrupt motives, something or other of the evil
imagination of the heart, mixes itself with it.
(2.) Without a renewed nature, as there are no divine motives,
so there can be no divine ends. We are bound to refer our natural
actions, much more our religious services, to the glory of God.
The end is the moral principle of every action. It is that which
confers a goodness or badness upon the service: Luke xi. 34, 'If
the eye be evil, the whole body is full of darkness' (this is
commonly understood of a man's aim). It the intention be evil,
there is nothing but darkness in the whole service. The
perfection of everything consists in answering the end for which
it was framed. That which Jonas the first end of our framing,
ought to be the end of our acting, viz. the glory of God. But man
has taken himself oil from this end, and has been fond of making
himself his chief good and ultimate end. Men naturally have
corrupt ends in good duties. Pride is the cause of some men's
virtue. And they are spiritually vicious in avoiding crimes,
because they intrench too much upon their reputation. The
pharisees made their devotion contribute to their ambition: Mat.
vi. 5, 'They pray to be seen of men,' and Mat. xxiii. 5, 'But all
their works they do to be seen of men.' Not one work wherein they
had not respect to this. Their works might well be called the
works of the devil, whose main business it was to set up pride
and self. All their pretences of devotion to God, were but the
adoration of some golden image. Have not many in their more
splendid actions, the same end with brutes: the satisfaction of
the sensitive part, covetousness, pride, emulation, sense of
honour, qualities perceivable in the very brutes, as the end of
some of their actions? The acting for a sensitive end is not
suitable to a rational, much less can it be the end of a gracious
creature. Have not men sinful ends in their religious services?
in their prayers to God, , in their acknowledgements of God? The
devil could entreat our Saviour's leave to go into the herd of
swine. Was this a prayer, though directed to Christ, when his end
was to destroy and satisfy his malice in it? At best, a man
without grace is like a picture in a room which eyes all, and has
no more respect to a prince than his attendants. A natural man's
respect to God is but equal to a respect to all his other worldly
concerns. Indeed it were well if it were so. He parcels out one
part for God, one part for himself, and one part for the world,
but God has the least share, or at best, no more than the rest.
And truly, as a picture cannot give a greater respect, to fix its
eyes more upon a prince than a peasant, because it has no life;
so neither can a natural man pay a supreme respect to God in his
service, without a spiritual life. There is a necessity then of
removing those depraved ends, that man may answer the true end of
his creation. The principles then upon which such ends do grow,
contrary to the will of God, must be rooted out, that the soul
may move purely to God in every service. We are come short of the
glory of God: Rom. iii. 23, 'All have sinned and come short of
the glory of God;' short of aiming at it, short of his
approbation of our acts. Being thus come short, our ends cannot
rise higher than the frame of our soul. Grace, grace only can
advance our wills to those supernatural ends for which they were
first framed. We can never aim at the glory of God till we have
an affection to him. We can never honour him supremely, whom we
do not supremely love. An affection to God can never be had, till
the nature, wherein the aversion is placed, be changed into
another frame. We are to glorify God, as God. How can we do this
without the knowledge of him? How can we know him but by the
gospel, wherein he discovers himself? How can we have right
conceptions of the gospel, till gospel impressions be made upon
us? How can we act for the glory of God, to whom naturally we are
enemies? There is none of us born with a spiritual love to God.
There must be an alteration of the end and aim in us; our actions
cannot else be good, though ordered by God himself. God employs
Satan in some things, as in afflicting Job; but is his
performance good? No, because his end is not the same with God's.
He acts out of malice what God commands out of sovereignty, and
for gracious designs. Our end without it, is not the same with
the end of the action; for moral acts tend to God's glory, though
the agent has no such intention. So the action may be good in
itself, but not good in the actor, because he wants a due end.
Well then, those actions only can be said to be evangelical,
when the great end of God's glory, which was his end both in
creation and redemption, has a moral influence upon every
service; when we have the same end in our redeemed services, as
God had in his redeeming love.
Not humbly. We cannot without regeneration perform gospel
duties humbly, because of natural stoutness and hardness.
Evangelical duties must be performed with humility. Self-denial
is the chief gospel lesson, and is to run through the veins of
every service. Therefore God speaks of giving 'a heart of flesh,'
in gospel times: Ezek. xi. 19, 'I will take the stony heart out
of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may
walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them.' Gospel
duties require a pliableness and tenderness of heart. Adam's
overvaluing himself, and swelling with designs of being like God,
brought an incapacity upon himself of serving his creator. And
man ever since, is too much aspiring and too well opinioned of
himself, to perform duties in an evangelical strain, with that
meltingness, that nothingness in himself, which the gospel
requires. Our swelling and admiring thoughts of our own natural
righteousness, hinders Christ from saving us, and ourselves from
serving him. There must then be an humble, and melting, and self
denying frame. The angels are said to cover their faces before
God, Isa. vi. 2, as having nothing to glory in of their own. And
the chief design of the gospel is to beat down all glorying in
ourselves: 1 Cor. i. 29, 31, 'That no flesh should glory in his
presence; let him that glories, glory in the Lord.' And indeed it
humbles us no more than what, upon due consideration, will appear
very necessary. Nature then must be changed before this pride be
rooted out. Old things must pass away, that God may be all in all
in the creature. We cannot without a new nature make a true
estimate of ourselves, and lie as vile and base in the presence
of God. A stone, with all the hammering, cannot be made soft.
Beat it into several pieces, you may sever the continuity of its
parts, but not master its hardness; every little piece of it will
retain the hardness of its nature. So it is with a heart of
stone. The nature must be changed before it be fit for those
services which require melting, humble, and admiring frames.
There is a necessity of a residing grace, like fire, to keep the
soul in a melting temper.
Not constantly. Without a new nature, we cannot perform gospel
services constantly, because of our natural levity. Where the
nature is flesh, the heart 'minds the things of the flesh,' Rom.
viii. 5. The mind thus habituated, will not be long employed
about the things of the Spirit. There is a natural levity in
man's nature. Do not many seem to begin in the Spirit and end in
the flesh? seem to arise to heaven, and quickly fall down to
earth? Do not our very promises vanish with the next wind of
temptation, and like sparks, expire as soon as they be born,
unless grace be in the heart to keep them alive. The Israelites
are accused of not having a heart steadfast with God: Ps.
lxxviii. 37, 'Their heart was not right with him, neither were
they steadfast in his covenant.' Are our natures better than
theirs? Do we not all lie under the same charge; so uncertain
naturally, about divine things, as if there were nothing but wind
in our composition? Nothing can be kept up in motion against its
nature, but by force. A top has no inward principle of motion,
but is moved by some outward force. When that is removed, the
motion languishes. Any motion that depends only upon outward
wires, expires upon the breaking of them. When external motives,
which spurred men on to this or that service, cease, the service
dies of course, because the spring of the motion falls. If fear
of hell, terrors of death, some pressing calamity, be the spring
of any duty; when these are removed, there will be no more regard
to the duty they engendered. But what is natural, is constant,
because the spring always remains. Interest changes, conscience
is various; and therefore the operations arising from thence,
will partake of the uncertainty of thorn. Stony ground may bring
forth blades; but for want of root, they will quickly wither:
Mat. xiii. 5, 20. A man may mount high in religion, by the
mixture of some religious passion, as meteors in the air; but by
reason of the gross and earthy parts in them, will not continue
their station. There is no being without, stable, but God; and no
principle stable within, but grace: Heb. xiii. 9, 'It is a good
thing that the heart be established with grace.' Whatsoever
service is undertaken upon changeable motives, is as changeable
as the bottom upon which it stands. If credit, slavish fear of
God, worldly interest, inspire us with some seeming holy
resolutions, they will all fly away upon the first removal of
those props. There is therefore a necessity of a change of nature
and disposition. Where there is no approbation of things that are
excellent, there can be no constant operation about them. All
action about an object, continues according to the affection to
it, and delight in it. We shall then be filled with the fruits of
righteousness, to the glory of God, when we have a sincere
approbation of the excellency of them: Philip i. 10, 11, first,
'approve things that are excellent;' and then follows, 'without
offence, till the day of Christ.' A stately profession can no
more hold out against the floods of temptation, than a beautiful
building can stand against the winds without a good foundation
under ground. It is the Spirit of the Lord within, as well as
without, can only maintain the standard against temptation, Isa.
lix. 19.
Well then, upon the whole, there is a necessity of
regeneration for the performance of gospel duties. We cannot else
perform them spiritually, because we are flesh; nor vitally,
because we are dead; nor graciously, because we are corrupt; nor
voluntarily, because we are enmity; nor delightfully, because we
are alienated; nor sincerely, because we are falsity; nor humbly,
because of our stoutness; nor constantly, because of our levity.
Our natures must be changed in all these respects, before we can
be fit for any gospel service.
(2 ) Regeneration is necessary for the enjoyment of gospel
privileges.
[1.] For the favour of God, and his complacency with us. We
are not fit for God's delight, without it. That person who has
his love, must have his image. If ever God could love an old
nature, which he once hated, and delight in that which he once
loathed, he must divest himself of his immutability. He never
hated the person of any of his creatures, but for
unrighteousness. And upon the removal of this cloud of separation
between him and them, the beams of his love break out in their
former vigour. God's love is not straitened, nor his kindness
exhausted, no more than his hand is shortened, or his ear grown
heavy, that he cannot hear: Isa. lix. 1, 2, 'But your iniquities
have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid
his face from you, that he will not hear.'
For, first, what did make the first separation, was it not
sin? God told Adam before, what the issue would be, upon his
eating the forbidden fruit: Gen. ii. 17, 'In the day that thou
eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.' It is not a temporal
death there only meant; for he should then have died that day
wherein he fell, the word surely importing so much. And the
punishment of a temporal death was pronounced afterwards: Gen.
iii. 19, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' Thou
shalt surely die; thy integrity and righteousness will expire
that very moment, and thou shalt die in my just displeasure. It
is a spiritual death that is most properly meant. The punishment
of sin is death; the chief part of this death is an 'alienation
from the life of God,' Eph. iv. 18; that is, not to have God, and
the righteousness of God's image living in him; but to be impure,
corrupt, a hater of God, and servant of sin. Now from this
punishment no man can be freed, but by a contrary regeneration,
the proper effect whereof is to love God, to know his name, to
partake of his holiness, to imitate his
virtues. Man forfeited all God's favour upon his fall, and can
challenge nothing of it.
Secondly, What then can restore man to God's favour? Can that
which first deprived us of it? The cause of our destruction can
never be the means of our restoration. Did the loss of Adam's
integrity make him unfit for paradise, the garden of God, from
whence he was expelled, as a token of God's disfavour? And can
the continuance of that loss be a means to regain that love which
cashiered us? It was a spiritual death; and is the carcass of a
soul fit for God's complacency? There must be not only a
satisfaction to his justice for the reinstating man into his
favour (this is done by Jesus Christ); but a restoring of his
image, this is done by the Holy Ghost. It is as impossible the
soul can be beautiful without life, and without holiness, as for
a body to be beautiful without a good colour and proportion of
parts. Take away this, beauty must cease, and deformity succeed
in the place. It is impossible, therefore, that where sin remains
in its full vigour, where there is nothing of an original
integrity residing, but that the soul must be monstrous, vile,
and deformed in the eyes of God. To make it therefore a fit
object for God's favour, it is necessary it be beautified with a
holy nature, and adorned with its due proportions and vigour. The
righteousness of Israel must go forth as brightness; he must be
called by a new name, that is, a new nature, for what is a name
without a nature? And then it should be Hephzibah, 'the Lord
delights in thee.' Isa. lxii. 14, 'The righteousness thereof
shall go forth as brightness, and the glory thereof as a lamp
that burns.' Righteousness is the glory of a soul, as well as of
a church: 'Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings
thy glory: thou shalt be called by a new name,' a new nature
wrought by the word of God; 'which the mouth of the Lord shall
name.' Then she should be in favour with God, 'a crown of glory
in the hand of the Lord, and a total diadem in the hand of her
God.' Righteousness is the glory of a soul, and God's delight and
complacency is the consequent of a righteous nature.
Thirdly, The elect themselves have no interest in God's favour
of delight without it. This follows upon the former, God cannot
love the very top of mankind, his own choice, with a love of
complacency, without regeneration, without a righteous nature.
There is a favour of intention and purpose before it; there is
also an executive love in the very infusing the habits of grace,
which is a supernatural favour, because there is both a purpose
and then an actual conferring a supernatural good. God is free,
and may will to give his gifts how, and to whom he pleases. But
an elect person, whilst he continues in a state of nature, is not
simply beloved, though there be a purpose of love, because there
is no gracious quality in him, which is the object of God's
special favour. It is regeneration only which is the object of
God's delight in us.
Fourthly, Hence will follow, that no privilege under heaven,
without it, can bring us into God's favour; no, not if any man
were related to Christ according to the flesh. The apostle Paul
would not think the better of himself for a fleshly relation to
Christ, for being of the same country, descended of the Jewish
nation: 2 Cor. v. 16, 'Though we have known Christ after the
flesh, yet henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature.' Though it be an honour to be
of the same descent with Christ, according to the flesh, to be of
the same nation and country, yet this does not make a man any
more beloved of God. Nothing avails in Christ, but a new
creature; and our Saviour himself pronounces it so. It was the
highest privilege to he the mother of our Saviour, according to
the flesh; yet this had been nothing, without her being born
again of the Spirit: 'Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
Behold my mother and my brethren,' pointing to his disciples,
Mat. xii. 48, 49. 'My mother and my brethren are those which hear
the word of God, and do it,' Luke viii. 21. Those that hear the
word, that have the gracious effect of the word wrought in them
by the Spirit, are equal to my mother, and my brethren, and
superior to any of my fleshly relations, if they be without it.
There is a necessity of regeneration upon this account.
[2.] As there is no favour, so there is no union with God and
Christ without it. Man has some kind of natural union with all
things in the world; he has being with all creatures, rational
faculties with angels, sense with animals, vegetation with
plants; be wants only that with God which could beautify all the
rest. And this can only be by partaking of the image of God's
holiness by a new birth. There must be a capability for this
union on man's part. A superior and inferior nature man be united
together, but never contrary natures. There must be some
proportion between the subjects to be united, which proportion
consists in a commensuration of one thing to another. What
proportion is there between God and our souls? There can be none
without a supernatural grace infusing a pure nature. As we come
out of the quarry of nature, rough and unpolished, we are not fit
to be cemented with the cornerstone in the heavenly building; we
must be first smoothed and altered by grace.
First, How can things be united to one another which are
already united to their contraries? Separation from one body must
make way for union to another. Naturally we are united to the
devil as the head of the wicked world. We are by nature his
members. Our understandings and wills were united with his in
Adam, when Adam gave up his understanding and will to him; and
ever since he 'works in the children of disobedience', Eph. ii.
2, 'Who now works in the children of disobedience,'
"enegountos en huiois". Working and working in, as a
united nature to him, and principle in him. It is necessary this
union should be broken before we can partake of the influence of
another head. The diabolical nature and principle, therefore,
which we have got by sin must be removed, and another nature,
which is divine, put in the place first (in order of nature),
before we can be united to Christ, and enjoy the benefits of
union with him.
Secondly, How can things of a contrary nature be united
together? Can fire and water be united, a good angel, and an
impure devil? can heaven and hell ever meet friendly and compose
one body? We are united to the first Adam by a likeness of
nature; how can we be united to the second, without a likeness to
him from a new principle? We were united to the first by a living
soul; we must be united to the other by a quickening Spirit. We
have nothing to do with the heavenly Adam, without bearing an
heavenly image, 1 Cor. xv. 48, 49. We are earthly as in the first
Adam; we must be heavenly to be in the second, because his nature
is so. If we are his members, we must have the same nature which
was communicated to him by the Spirit of God, which is holiness.
This nature must flow from the same principle, otherwise it is
not the same nature; an old nature cannot be joined to a new
Adam. There must be one spirit in both; as 1 Cor. vi. 17, 'He
that is joined to the Lord is one spirit;' and if it were an
union barely of affections, as some would only make it, it is not
conceivable how it can be without a change of disposition. But
since it is an union by indwelling of the same Spirit in both
(Rom. viii. 9, 'If any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of his'), it is less intelligible, how it can be without an
assimilation of our nature to the nature of Christ. It can never
be supposed the Spirit should unite a pure head, and impure
members. Such an union would make our blessed Saviour like
Nebuchadnezzar's image; an head of gold, arms of silver, and feet
of clay. Shall we loathe to have nasty things about us, and will
the holy Jesus endure a loathsome putrefying soul to be joined to
him?
Thirdly, How can anything be vitally united to another without
life? It is a vital union, by virtue of which believers are
called Christ (1 Cor. xi. 12, 'As all the members of that one
body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ'); and it is
compared to the union of the members of a natural body, Rom. xii.
4, 5. Members have not only life in their head, but in
themselves, because the soul, which is the life of the body, is
not only in the head, but in all the parts of the body, and
exercises in every part its vital operations. The Spirit
therefore, which is the band of this union, communicates life to
every member wherein he resides, as well as in the head. What man
would endure a dead body to be joined to him, though it were the
carcass of one he never so dearly loved? It a man were united to
Christ, without regeneration, Christ's body would be partly
alive, partly dead, if any one member of it had not a spiritual
life. A dead body and a living head, a member of Christ with a
nature contrary to him, is an inconceivable paradox. Did God ever
design such a monstrous union for his Son?
Upon these accounts does result the necessity of regeneration;
without it, no union with Christ.
(3.) There can be no justification without it. We are not
justified by an inherent righteousness; yet we are not justified
without it. We cannot be justified by it, because it is not
commensurate to the law by reason of its imperfection; we cannot
be justified without it, for it is not congruous to the wisdom
and holiness of God, to count a person righteous, who has nothing
of righteousness in him, and whose nature is as corrupt as the
worst of men. With what respect to God's honour, can it be
expected that God should pardon that man's sins, whose will is
not changed who still has the same habitualness in his will to
commit sin, though he does not at present act it. It is very
congruous in a moral way, that the person offending should
retract his sin, and return to his former affection. There is a
distinction between justification and regeneration, though they
never are asunder. Justification is relative; regeneration
internally real. Union with Christ is the ground of both; Christ
is the meritorious cause of both. The Father pronounces the one,
the Spirit works the other; it is the Father's sentence, and the
Spirit's work. The relative and the real change are both at the
same time: 1 Cor. vi. 7, 'But you are sanctified, but you are
justified;' both go together. We are not justified before faith,
because we are justified by it, Rom. v. 1; and faith is the vital
principle whereby we live: Gal. ii. 20, 'The life which I now
live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.' It is the
root-grace, and contains the seeds of all other graces in it; it
is habitually and seminally all other grace; so that unless we be
new born, no justification can be expected; no justification can
be evidenced. God never pardons sin, but he subdues iniquity:
Micah vii. 18, 19, 'Who is a God like unto thee, that pardons
iniquity?' He will subdue our iniquities. The conquest cannot be
made, while the nature, the root of the rebellion, remains. When
he turns his compassion to us, he will turn away our hearts from
iniquity. If a man were justified before he were regenerate, then
he was righteous before he was alive; being 'in Christ,' as free
from condemnation, is always attended with a 'walking after the
Spirit;' and walking is not before living, Rom. viii. 1. Pardon
would be unprofitable, unless he that were pardoned were made
righteous inchoately here, and had a right to, and hope of, a
perfect righteousness hereafter. If righteousness hereafter were
not imparted in this manner, it would be an argument a man were
still under the law, which says, 'he that does them shall live in
them' (which is impossible in a man that has once sinned, (though
his sins are remitted). But it is clear that righteousness is
imparted, since there is no man in the world whose sins are
pardoned, but finds some principle in him whereby he is enabled
to contest with sin more than before he was. Therefore do not
deceive yourselves; there is no pardon without a righteous
nature, though pardon be not given for it.
(4.) There is no adoption without regeneration. We can no more
be God's sons, without spiritual regeneration, than we can be the
sons and daughters of men, without natural generation. Adoption
is not a mere relation without an inward form. The privilege, and
the image of the sons of God, go both together. A state of
adoption is never without a separation from defilement: 2 Cor.
vi. 17, 18, 'Come you out from among them, be you separate, and I
will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and
daughters.' The new name in adoption is never given till the new
creature be framed. 'As many as are led by the Spirit, they are
the sons of God,' Rom. viii. 14, "houtoi", those very
persons; that is the signal mark, that they are led by the
Spirit; therefore first enlivened by the Spirit. A childlike
relation is never without a childlike nature. The same method God
observes in declaring the members his sons, as he did in
declaring the head his Son, which was 'according to the Spirit of
holiness, by the resurrection from the dead,' Rom. i. 4. So he
declares believers to be his sons, by giving them a spirit of
holiness, and by a resurrection from sin, and spiritual death.
The devils may as well be adopted sons of God, as we, without a
change of nature. To be the sons of the living God, was the great
promise of the gospel prophesied of: Hos. i. to, 'Ye are the sons
of the living God.' How well will it suit, a living God and a
dead son? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Our
Saviour's argument from the immortality of the soul will evidence
not only a resurrection, but a necessity of spiritual life. What
advantage is there in being sons of the living God, if we had no
more life in us than his greatest enemies? Regeneration, as a
physical act, gives us a likeness to God in our nature. Adoption,
as a legal act, gives us a right to an inheritance; both the
great intendments of the gospel, both accompanying one another.
No sonship without a new nature.
(5). There is no acceptation of our services without it. We
are not fit to perform any duty without it, and God will never
accept any duty from us without it. In the first of Ephesians, 1.
election, 2. regeneration, expressed by being holy, 3. adoption,
4. acceptation, are linked together: ver. 4-6, 'He has chosen us
that we should be holy, and without blame before him in love,
having predestinated us to the adoption of children;' after
follows grace 'wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved.'
Our acceptation is only upon the account of Christ; but the
acceptability is upon the account of grace. Faith makes our
persons and our duties acceptable, and Christ makes them both
accepted. Acceptability arises from grace, as damnability arises
from sin. God damns none, unless they be damnable; neither does
God accept any in Christ, unless they be acceptable. The papists
that plead for merit, acknowledge nothing of it before grace, but
after grace, because then the services have a greater proportion
to God, from the dignity of the person, they being acts of God's
children, and wrought by his Spirit. God can love nothing but
himself, and what he finds of himself in the creature. All
services, without something of God's image and Spirit in them,
are nothing. As the product of a million of ciphers, though you
still add to them, signifies nothing; but add one figure, an
unit, the Spirit, grace, it will make the product to be many
millions, of high account with God. All the significance depends
upon the figure, which, if absent, the rest would be nothing All
moral perfections, without a new nature, are but ciphers in God's
account: Heb. xi. 6, 'Without faith it is impossible to please
God.' Grace is only a good work: Philip. i. 6, 'He which has
begun a good work in you, will perform it till the day of
Christ;' intimating that their morality and their natural wisdom,
before their regeneration, were not good works in the sight of
God. They were good in their kind; as a crab may be said to be a
good crab, but not a good pippin. It is not good, unless it be
fruit brought forth in Christ; neither is it ordained as good to
the day of Christ, to appear glorious at the time of his triumph.
God looks into our services, whether he Spirit frames them, and
Christ presents them; all that we do must go through their hands
before they can reach God's heart. Acceptation can never be
without a renewed nature. The services of the flesh cannot please
God: Rom. viii. 8. 'They that are in the flesh cannot please
God.' Their persons cannot, therefore their actions cannot,
because they are the products of a nature at variance with him, a
nature that is not, nor cannot be subject to his law; so that God
must be displeased with his own spiritual law; yea with his own
holy nature, and change his judgment, and change his nature,
before he can be pleased with fleshly services, for at the best,
they are but refined brutishness. The image of the devil can
never be grateful to God. Services flowing from nature, may seem
in the outward form of them, to be as acceptable as the duties of
a good man; but considering what a dunghill of filthiness the
heart is, from whence they proceed, they cannot be so. Good water
is sweetest, and bad water most corrupt, nearest the spring or
fountain, the streams may lose some of their corruption in their
passage. A gracious man's duties are most pleasant to God nearest
the heart, a natural man's services are most distasteful nearest
the spring. When the heart is a good treasure, what comes from it
is regarded as a rich gift, because it comes from a valuable
treasure, Luke vi. 40; hence it is that a less work, coming from
a pure and holy principle in a renewed man, is more acceptable to
God, than a greater work (in respect of the external
glorification of him in the good of mankind), coming from an
impure principle in a natural man, as a cup of cold water given
to a disciple is more valuable than the gift of a prince from
another principle. In the one, God sees a conformity of affection
with his holiness; in the other, only a conformity with his
providence. One intends God's glory, and the other only acts it,
proposing some other end to himself; and we use to value gifts,
rather by the affection of the friend, than the quantity of the
gift. Well then, consider it; without a new nature, all our
services, though they should amount to many millions in number,
have no intrinsic value in them with God. For where the nature is
displeasing, the actions flowing from that nature can never
please him: 'He that turns away his ear from hearing the law,'
that is, from a spiritual obedience to the law, 'even his prayer
is an abomination,' Prov. xxviii. 9; it is formed by a noisome
soul.
(6.) There is no communion with God without a renewed soul.
God is incapable on his part, with the honour of his law and
holiness, to have communion with such a creature. Man is
incapable on his part, because of the aversion rooted in his
nature. What way can there be to bring God and man together
without this change of nature? what communion can there be
between a rising God and a dead heart? God loathes sin, man loves
it; God loves holiness, man loathes it. How can these contrary
affections meet together in an amicable friendship? what
communion with so much disagreement in affections? In all
friendship there must be similitude of disposition. Justification
cannot bring us into communion with God without regeneration; it
may free us from punishment, discharge our sins, but not prepare
us for a converse, wherein our chief happiness lies. There must
be some agreement before there can be a communion. Beasts and men
agree not in a life of reason, and therefore cannot converse
together. God and man agree not in a life of holiness, and
therefore can have no communion together. We are by sin alienated
from the life of God, and therefore from his fellowship, Eph. iv.
18; we must have his life restored to us before we can be
instated in communion with him.
[1.] God can have no pleasure in it. God took a delight in the
creation, and did rejoice in his work. Sin despoiled God of his
rest. It can give God no content, no satisfaction; for to be in
the flesh, is to be in that nature which was derived from Adam,
which brought the displeasure of God upon all mankind.
Regeneration by the Spirit restores the creature to such a state
wherein God may take pleasure in him, and strips him by decrees
of that sin which spoiled his delight in the work of his hands;
as it grows, communion is enlarged. God made man at first after
his own image, that he might have communion with him. Since the
loss of that, what fitness can there be for communion, till the
restoration of that which God thought fit for his delight?
Suppose that some one work of a natural man may be good and
pleasing to God, it will not argue a communion of God with the
person: he may be pleased with the work, but not with the man,
for all the goodness he has being in the act, and the act being
transient, when that is past his goodness is as the morning dew,
vanished. He cannot be the object of God's delight, because he
has no habitual goodness in him. If a man be abominable and
filthy naturally, he cannot have a converse with God without a
nature suitable to God, and a nature so animated, as that God may
put some trust in it, and not be at uncertainty: Job xv. 14-16,
'What is man, that he should be clean, he which is born of a
woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he puts no trust in
his saints,' &c. No man is clean, but those that delight in
sin are much more abominable, that 'drink up iniquity like
water.' Now God being infinitely holy, can have no communion with
that which he does abominate, and he cannot have a fixed and a
delightful communion with that which he cannot confide in. It
must be therefore such a nature as is produced and preserved by
his own Spirit. If the heavens are not clean in his sight, we
must have a nature purer and cleaner than the heavens, before God
can delightfully behold us, and pleasingly converse with us.
[2.] As God can have no pleasure in it, so man is contrary to
it. Man, as he is by corruption, is at variance with God, and
cannot but be at variance with him. An uncircumcised heart will
not love God, or at least, will not pay him such a proportion of
love, and love of such a quality, as is due to him; for if the
end of the circumcision of the heart be to love the Lord with all
our hearts, as Deut. xxx. 6, 'And the Lord thy God will
circumcise thy heart, to love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart,' then it will necessarily infer, that he whose heart is
not circumcised, does not love God with all his heart. Holiness
and iniquity are so contrary, that no agreement can be made
between them. God must deny his nature before he can deny his
hatred of sin, and man must be stripped of his nature before he
can leave his affection to sin. It is equally impossible for
wickedness to love holiness, and for purity to love pollution.
There can be no fellowship with God, whilst we walk in darkness,
and he is light, 1 John i. 6, 7.
[3.] Nay, thirdly, man naturally resists all means for it. It
is the Spirit only which is the bond of union, and consequently
the cause of communion. The Spirit can only bring God and us
together. Walking in the Spirit hinders us from fulfilling the
lusts of the flesh, which make us incapable of communion: Gal. v.
16, 'Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lusts of
the flesh.' But every man by nature (as well as the Jews)
'resists the Holy Ghost,' Acts vii. 61. And while this resistance
of the great medium of it remains, this communion can never be.
This resistance, therefore, must be removed, and there must be a
divine stamp and impression upon our very nature, to make it
pliable. You see more and more the necessity of regeneration.
(7.) As there is no communion with God without it, so no
communications of Christ to our souls can be relished and
improved without it. All the communications of Christ relish of
that fullness of grace which was in his person, and therefore
cannot be relished by any principle but that of the same nature.
Whenever Jesus Christ comes to bless us with the great blessings
of his purchase, he turns away our hearts from iniquity, Acts
iii. 26.
[1.] Ordinances cannot be improved. The word has no place in
them, John viii. 37. There is no footing naturally for any divine
and spiritual truth. The nature of the soil must be changed
before this heavenly plant will thrive. Plants grow not upon
stones, nor this heavenly plant in a stony heart. The vine and
the weed draw the same moisture of the earth, which in the vine
is transmuted, by the nature of the plant, into a nobler
substance than that in the weed. The new nature of a good man
turns the juice of the word into a nobler spirit in him; and
according as the nature of a good man is enriched with grace, the
more does he concoct the word, and improve it, to the bringing
forth fruit, and fruit of a diviner nature than another. The
juice it affords to all is the same, but the nature of the
creature turns it in the concoction. Nature must be changed then,
to make any profitable improvement of the word and other
institutions. A stone receives the water upon it, not into it; it
falls off, or dries up as soon as ever it falls: but a new heart,
a heart of flesh, sucks in the dew of the word, and grows
thereby. The new birth and nature makes us suck in the milk, and
grow thereby, 1 Peter ii. 2.
[2.] There can be no communication of comfort. The Spirit
comforts by exciting grace, and by discovering grace, not by
dashes and enthusiasms. What comfort can there be when grace, the
foundation, is wanting? Can the Holy Ghost ever speak a lie, and
give any man comfort, and tell him he is a child of God, when he
has the nature of the devil, so contrary to him? This were to
witness not with our spirits, but against the frame and habit of
them, which is not the Spirit's work, Rom. viii. 16. Jesus Christ
will not trifle away his comforts upon such as have no conformity
to him. This were to put a jewel in a swine's snout, a crown upon
a beast's head. Those that are not heirs by a new nature to
heaven, cannot claim any title to the first fruits and clusters
of it, the comforts of the gospel. As there is a necessity of a
likeness to Christ, to make us capable of communications from him
in a state of glory, so it is as certainly necessary to the lower
degrees of it in this world. Vessels of wrath must be changed
into vessels of honour before they are capable of being filled
with spiritual comforts. Our blessed Saviour keeps his choicest
flowers and richest beams for his dressed garden, not for the
wild desert.
(8.) We cannot be in covenant without it. This should have
been first, as the foundation of all. Had not Adam had an
habitual righteousness in his nature, he had not been a fit
person for God to have entered into covenant with. There must
therefore be a restored righteousness, that we may come into the
bond of the new covenant for eternal life. The very terms of it
are, a new heart, a heart of flesh, a new spirit, the law written
in the heart. Without this new nature, we cannot depend on him by
faith, which is the condition of the covenant. For we cannot
confide in him to whom we have an enmity, and of whom we have a
jealousy. We cannot have God to be our God unless we be his
people, have the nature and disposition of his people, turn to
him, act towards him as our God; whereas in our first defection
we made the devil our God. God requires righteousness still to
our being in covenant, but dispenses with the strictness of the
first covenant, and gives our Saviour a power to that end, in
committing all judgment to the Son. As the covenant is spiritual,
so there must be a spiritual life to answer the terms of it.
Without it, we cannot walk in the way wherein we engage by
covenant to walk, neither can we have any right to the promises
and benefits of the covenant. Does God promise to be our God? It
is upon the condition we be his people. Does he promise never to
leave us nor forsake us? It is upon condition we continue not in
our original apostasy. Does he promise to be present with us? It
is more than his holiness will endure, while we continue in our
filthy nature.
2. The second general. As regeneration is necessary to a
gospel state, so it is necessary to a state of glory. It seems to
be typified by the strength and freshness of the Israelites when
they entered into Canaan. Not a decrepit and infirm person set
foot in the promised land: none of those that came out of Egypt
with an Egyptian nature, and desires for the garlic and onions
thereof, with a suffering their old bondage, but dropped their
carcasses in the wilderness; only the two spies, who had
encouraged them against the seeming difficulties. None that
retain only the old man, born in the house of bondage, but only a
new regenerate creature, shall enter into the heavenly Canaan.
Heaven is the inheritance of the sanctified, not of the filthy:
Acts xxvi. 18, 'That they may receive an inheritance among them
which are sanctified, through faith that is in me.' So our
Saviour himself phrases it in his discourse to Paul upon his
conversion by faith, the great renewing principle. Upon Adam's
expulsion from paradise, a flaming sword was set to stop his
re-entry into that place of happiness. As Adam, in his forlorn
state, could not possess it, we also, by what we have received
front Adam, cannot expect a greater privilege than our root. Had
Adam retained the righteousness of his nature, he had been fit
for that place, and that place for him; but poor decrepit Adam
could have no leave to enter. The priest under the law could not
enter into the sanctuary till he were purified, nor the people
into the congregation; neither can any man have access into the
holy of holies till that be consecrated for him by the blood of
Jesus, and he sprinkled by the same blood for it, Heb. x. 19, 22.
It is by the blood of Jesus sprinkled upon our hearts that we
enter into the holiest by a way which he has consecrated; 'for
there shall in nowise enter into it anything that defiles,
neither whatsoever works abomination or a lie,' Rev. xxi. 17, as
every unclean thing was prohibited entrance into the temple.
Whosoever shall enter into the rest of God, must cease from his
own works of darkness and corruption, as God did from his works
of creation, Heb. iv. 10. If man fell the sixth day, the day of
his creation, the rest of God in his lower works was disturbed by
the entrance of sin upon them, as well as it had been disturbed
by the sin of the angels in heaven. God rested from his works of
creation, but not in them, but in Christ, the covenant of
redemption, and restoration by him. We must therefore cease from
our own works, to enter into his rest. This entrance we cannot
have in an unbelieving, unregenerate state, because by unbelief
we approve not of that for our rest, wherein God settled his own
repose; and by unregeneracy we oppose the great intendment of it,
the restoration of the creature to be a fit object for God's rest
and complacency. It is necessary to a state of glory.
(1.) Not that there is a natural connection between a
regenerate state and glory, that in its own nature gives a right
to heaven, but a gracious connection by the will of God. Though
it be morally impossible in nature that a man can have communion
with God without a renewed state, yet when he has a new nature,
it is not absolutely necessary that God should love him so
intensely as to give him an eternal reward, but conditionally
necessary, upon the account of the covenant wherein God has so
promised. Though it be absolutely unavoidable to God to love
goodness (for, because he is perfectly good, he cannot hate it),
yet it is not absolutely necessary he should instate it in so
inconceivable a glory. A new nature, indeed, makes a man capable
of eternal glory, without which it is not possible for him to
have it; but it gives him not a right to it, nor instates him in
it in its own nature, but by the gracious indulgence of God. For,
as I have said before, in the general foundation of this
doctrine, that God may give grace without glory, is intelligible;
but how he can admit a man to glory without grace is
inconceivable. The very having of grace is a reward in itself. It
is an ennobling of our nature, a setting us in our right station
(the purity of the body is a pleasure, though a man has no hopes
upon it to be preferred to a better condition), which may appear
to us upon the banishment of Adam from paradise. Had there been
any natural connection, he had not been dispossessed, supposing
him to have faith infused into him at the time of the
promulgation of the promise; or if afterwards, he would have had
a re-entry, had there been a natural connection between a new
nature and a state of glory.
(2.) Nor is there any meritorious connection between a
regenerate state and glory, because there is no exact proportion
between a new nature and eternal glory. The papists say, that
before habitual grace a man cannot merit, but after it is infused
by the Spirit of God into the soul, a merit does result from the
dignity of the person brought into a state of grace. No such
thing. Glory indeed is merited, but the merit results, not from
the new nature, but from the new head, our Lord Jesus Christ.
That righteousness whereby God is engaged to give us a crown of
glory for a garland of grace, is not a commutative justice; as if
grace were of equal value to glory, and heaven no more than a due
compensation: 2 Tim. iv. 8, 'There is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me
at that day.' But it is the veracity and faithfulness of God
which is meant by righteousness there, and other-where in
Scripture. It is a justice due to the promise, not to the nature
of the grace, and due to the covenant made with Christ, which
was, that he should have a seed to serve him
upon which compact our Saviour so peremptorily demands his
people's being with him in glory: John xvii. 24, 'Father, I will
that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am.' As
much as to say, Father, I will not remit a tittle of that
article, which is part of the covenant between thee and me; I
will have that performed to the full. And it is observable,
though he mentions their faith, and their keeping his word, in
other parts of the chapter, as arguments for God to take notice
of them, and preserve them, yet his desire of the state of glory
he founds upon his will, which must be grounded upon some
antecedent agreement, whereby he had a right to plead for it. So
that it is from the faithfulness of God to his promise, and the
full merit of Christ, and thereupon his fined resolution to have
it performed, not from any meritorious dignity in the new nature
itself. Grace only fits for glory, but does not merit it.
(3.) It is necessary by a fixed determination of God.
Supposing that God could in his own nature, congruously admit of
an unregenerate dead creature to a fruition of him in heaven, yet
since he has decreed otherwise, and appointed other methods, God
is now by his own free resolution under an immutable necessity
not to admit him. As God having by a determinate counsel ordained
the death of Christ as the medium to redemption, could not in our
apprehensions afterwards appoint another way, because his counsel
had pitched, not only upon the redemption of man, as the end, but
the death of Christ as the means; and had there been a change, it
must either be in the end or in the means. If in the end, and he
would not have man redeemed, there had been an alteration in his
love and kindness; if in the means, it must be either a worse or
a better means; if a worse, and not so fit to effect redemption,
it had still implied a change in his kindness; if a better means,
it would argue a defect of wisdom in his first choice, that he
did not foresee the best. By the like counsel and wisdom he has
settled this of regeneration as the way to glory: 'Without
holiness no man shall see the Lord,' Heb. xii. 14. Without a
fixed and permanent holiness, which must be an holiness of
nature, not only of action. Supposing any holiness in an action,
without a new nature, it is yet but a transient holiness, and
though it may make the action acceptable to God, yet it can never
make the person that did it acceptable to him.
(4.) Regeneration is necessary in a way of aptitude and
fitness for this state. A fitness in both subjects is necessary
to the enjoyment of one another. Since therefore our happiness
consists in an eternal fruition of God, and that naturally we are
a mass and dunghill of putrefied corruption, there must be such a
change as to make an agreement with that God whom to enjoy is our
happiness; for all aptitude is a certain connection of the two
terms whereby they may touch and receive each other. We cannot
enjoy God in his ordinances without an holy nature, much less in
heaven. As we are under the condemnation of the law by reason of
our guilt, so we are under an unfitness for heaven by reason of
our filth. We have a remote natural capacity for it, as we are
creatures endued with rational faculties. But we have a moral
unfitness, while we want a divine impression to make us suitable
to it. Justification and adoption give us a right to the
inheritance, but regeneration gives us a 'meetness to be
partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light,' Col. i. 12.
We are not meet for it while we are unholy, and while we are
darkness, because it is an inheritance of saints, and an
inheritance in light. As the body cannot be made glorious without
a resurrection from a natural death, so neither can the soul,
which is immortal, be made glorious without a resurrection from a
spiritual death. Our corruptible bodies? 1 Cor. xv. 50, cannot
possess an incorruptible kingdom unless made like to the glorious
body of Christ, much less our souls, which are the chief subjects
of communion with him in heaven. A depraved soul is as much unfit
for a purified heaven as a corruptible body is for an
incorruptible glory. Our Saviour ascended not into heaven to take
possession of his glory till after his resurrection from death,
neither can we enter into heaven till a resurrection from sin. As
Jesus Christ became like unto us, that he might be a merciful and
faithful high priest for us, Heb. ii. 17, 'It behoved him to be
made like unto his brethren;' so it behoves us to be made like
unto him, that we may be fit offerings in the hand of our high
priest, to present to God, for him to take pleasure in. The
father of the prodigal forgave him at the first meeting after his
return, but before he admitted him into the pleasure of his house
he took away his garments that smelt of draff, and put other
robes upon him. God is said therefore 'to work us to this thing,'
"katechradzesthai", polish, that we may be fit to be
clothed upon with our heavenly house, 2 Cor. v. 5. If God be
happy in his nature, man cannot be happy in a nature contrary to
him; for we can never expect to enjoy a felicity in such a
nature, which if God himself had, he could never be happy in
himself. It is holiness in God which fits him to fill heaven and
earth with the beams of his glory, and it is an holy nature in
us, which makes us fit to receive him. As without holiness God
could not be glorious in himself: Isa. vi. 8, 'Holy, holy, is the
Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory;' so without
holiness in our natures we could not be glorious with God. We are
no more fit for heaven in a state of nature than a piece of
putrefied flesh is fit to become a star. In heaven there are
duties to be done, and privileges to be enjoyed. The work cannot
be done, the reward cannot be received, without a new nature. The
glorifying God, and enjoying him, is the glory of heaven. How can
we do the one or receive the other without the change of our
affections? Can God have a voluntary glory from his enemy, or can
his enemy delight in the enjoyment of him?
[1.] Regeneration and the new nature is necessary to the duty
of heaven. Eternity cannot free us from duty. Some duties are
essential to the relation of a creature, some result only from
this or that state of the creature. The alteration in the state
changes the duty proper to that state; but no place, no state,
can exempt a creature from those duties which are essential to
him as a creature. It is impossible to conceive any relation,
without some new debt or service. From every change in relations
in the world there does arise some new duty which was not
incumbent upon a man before. The relation which a regenerate man
has to God here is the same which it is in heaven, but it is
manifest there in an higher degree, and a choicer fruition.
Thence therefore will arise, though not any new duty that we can
conceive, yet fresher obligations to those services which are
proper for that place. Without a change of nature it is not
possible for any man (were he admitted thither) to perform the
duties of heaven. Holy work is troublesome to a natural man here,
and the more heavenly it was in itself, the more disgustful to
corrupt nature. What was in a little measure holy was a drudgery
upon earth; and what is in a greater measure holy cannot be a
satisfaction in heaven to an old frame. There are some natural
motives to some duties here, and our indigence takes part with
them (as in that of prayer); but those of a more elevated strain,
as love, and praise, and admirations of God, our natures are more
averse to. What duty can be performed without a will? It is
concluded by most, that the happiness of heaven consists as much,
if not more, in the frame of the will, than in that of the
understanding. If the will be not new framed, what capacity is
there to perform the service requisite to that happy state? We
must first be made just here before we can he made perfect above:
Heb. xii. 23, 'Spirits of just men made perfect.' Just by an
imputed righteousness, holy by an inherent righteousness, before
they were transplanted to a state of perfection. Without a
perfect frame none can perform the choice duties of heaven, and
without righteousness here, we cannot be made perfect there.
Quest. What are the duties of heaven, that cannot be performed
without a new nature?
Ans. First. Attendance on God. Some kind of service which we
cannot understand in the state here below. The angels stand
before God, and wait his commands; there is a pleasure of God
which they do: Ps. ciii. 21, 'Ye ministers of his that do his
pleasure.' There is a will of God done in heaven, as well as upon
earth. There are acts of adoration performed by them; they cover
their faces, Isa. vi.; they are commanded to worship the Lord
Christ, Heb. i. 6. Their holiness fits them for their attendance,
therefore called 'the holy angels.' It is against the nature of
devils to perform such acts as those which the holiness of angels
fits them for. Glorified souls shall be as the angels of God in
heaven: Mat. xxii. 30, 'But are as the angels of God in heaven.'
Equal to angels in their state, as they are angels in heaven;
equal to angels in their work, as they are angels of God,
attending on God, and ministering unto him, Dan. vii. 10; though
what that ministry shall be is not easily known in the extent of
it. Is it usual in this world to take up a person from under an
hedge, and bring him to an immediate attendance on a prince,
without cleansing him, and begetting other dispositions and
behaviour in him by some choice education? God picks some out for
an immediate attendance on him in heaven; but he sends his Spirit
to be their tutor, to breed them up, and grace their deformed
souls with beautiful features, and their ulcerous and cancerous
spirits, with a sound complexion, that they may be meet to stand
before him. When God calls any to do him service in a particular
station in the word, he gives them another heart; so he did to
Saul for the kingdom, 1 Sam. x. 9. Is there not much more
necessity of it for an immediate service of God in heaven? A
malefactor, by pardon, is in a capacity to come into the presence
of a prince, and serve him at his table; but he is not in a
fitness till his noisome garments, full of his prison vermin, be
taken off. Can one that is neither pardoned nor purified, one
with the guilt of rebellion upon him, and a nature of rebellion
in him, be fit to stand before God?
Secondly, Contemplation of God is a work in heaven. There
shall be a perfect knowledge; therefore a delightful speculation.
The angels behold his face, Mat. xviii. 10, and that always. The
saints shall see him as he is, 1 John iii. 2. It is not a stupid
sight, but a gazing upon the face of this sun, with a refined and
ravishing delight. For this work there must be,
First, A change of judgment. The eye must be restored. It is
as possible for a blind eye to behold the sun, or a blear eye to
stare in the face of it, without watering, as for a blind
understanding to behold God; for it is not a being in the place
of heaven, but having a faculty disposed, which does elevate us
to the knowledge of him. Things that are corporal cannot know
things that are spiritual. We cannot in this sensitive body view
the face of an angel, and understand his nature; much less with a
body of a total death, see the face of God, which is above all
created beings, more than any spiritual creature is above sense.
'In heaven the saints shall know him, as they are known of him,'
1 Cor. xiii. 12, perfectly, as far as the capacity of a creature
can extend. Has God any scales upon his eyes? Does he not know
perfectly what he knows? So shall the glorified saints. But if a
natural man were admitted into heaven, what prospect could he
have with a blind understanding? As men under the gospel
administrations cannot see the kingdom of God, even in the midst
of it, without a new birth, so neither could they see the kingdom
of God in the midst of heaven itself without a new frame, if not
see it, much less enjoy it.
Secondly, There must be a change of will. Men like not to
retain God in their knowledge, when he is represented to them in
the dark, yet pleasant glass of nature, Rom. i. 28. The apostle
there speaks it of the heathens, and the wisest of them, their
philosophers, who, though pleased with the contemplation of
nature, yet were not pleased with the contemplation of God in
nature; much less will they like him, when he discovers himself
clothed with the light of holiness as a garment. That vicious
eye, which is too weak to behold with any delight the image of
the sun in a glass, or a pail of water, will be much more too
weak to gaze upon it in its brightness in the firmament. If there
be no delight to know God here, what pleasure, what fitness can
there be in the same frame to contemplate him above? Let me ask
you, Have you any pleasure in the study of God? What is the
reason, then, that in your retirements, when you have nothing to
do, your thoughts are no more upon him? What is the reason that
if any motion does offer to advise you to fix your thoughts upon
him, you so soon shift it off as a troublesome companion, and
some slight jolly thought is admitted with gladness into those
embraces which the other courted? Can such a temper be fit for
heaven, where nothing but thoughts of God run through the veins
of glorified souls? If the discovery of God's glory in the gospel
is accounted no better than folly by natural men, and therefore
not received, l Cor. ii. 14, the manifestation of it above would
meet with no better valuation of it, unless the temper both of
judgment and will were changed. They are spiritually to be
discerned here, and no less spiritually to be discerned above.
The weak and waterish eye must be cured by some powerful medicine
before it can stare upon the light of the sun, or delight itself
in its glory.
Thirdly, Love is a duty in heaven. Love is a grace that shoots
the gulf with us, and attends us not only to the suburbs, but
into the very heart of heaven, when other graces conduct us only
to the gates, and then take their leave of us, as having no
business there. 'Charity never fails,' 1 Cor. xiii. 8. And,
indeed, it is so essentially our duty in every place, that it is
concluded that God cannot free us from the obligation of it,
whilst we remain his creatures; because God being infinitely
good, and therefore infinitely amiable and infinitely gracious to
them, it would seem unrighteous, and inconsistent with supreme
goodness, to forbid the creature an affection to that which is
infinitely excellent, and a gratitude to its benefactor which can
be paid only in love. Now, though we are bound to love God in the
highest degree, yet every new mercy adds a fresh obligation to
return our affection to him. So when we shall have the clearest
beams of God's love darting upon us from heaven, we shall also
have higher obligations to love him, both for his excellency,
which shall be more visible, and his love, which shall be more
sensible. Now, can the heart of a natural man cling about God?
Can it forget its father's house, and be wholly taken up with the
Creator's excellency? Can he that loved pleasures more than God
in the world, 2 Tim. iii. 4, love God more than pleasures in
heaven, without an alteration of his soul? No. The heart must be
first circumcised by God, before we can love God with all our
heart, Dent. xxx. 6. If we will not be subject to the law of God
here, how can we be subject to the love of God, which is the law
of heaven? How can we cleave to God without love, or relish him
without delight? No man in a natural estate could stay in heaven,
because he does not love the person whose presence only makes it
heaven. How can there be a conformity to God in affection,
without a conformity to his holiness? A choiceness of love, with
a perverseness of will; a supremacy of delight, without a
rectitude of heart; a love of God, without a loathing of sin; a
fervency of love, with a violence of lust: all these are
contradictions. He that has a hatred of God, cannot perform the
main duty of heaven; and therefore what should he do there?
Fourthly, Praise is a service in heaven. If a pure angel be
not sufficient for so elevated a duty, how unfit then is a drossy
soul? What is the angels' note, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God,' Isa.
vi. 3, can never be a natural man's; for how can he possibly
praise that which he hates? What is the note of glorified saints?
It is Hallelujah, Rev. xix. 1, 'Salvation, and glory, and honour,
and power unto the Lord our God.' And again they said,
Hallelujah, ver. 3. 'Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigns,' ver. 6. Nothing but hallelujah four times, ver.
1, 3, 4, 6. How can that heart frame an hallelujah, that
is stuffed with jealousies of him? How can he exalt the honour of
God, who was always pleased with the violations of it? How can he
rejoice at the Lord's reigning, that would not have one lust
subdued by his power? How can a natural man, as natural, ever be
wound up to a height fit for such strains, since 'out of the
abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks'? The tongue can never
be framed to praise while the heart is evil. Our blessed Saviour
must be glorified in us, before he can be glorified by us, 2
Thes. i. 10, 12. If a man in a mere natural state be unfit for
this heavenly work, how unfit are then their tongues to sound his
praise, which are always filled with reproaches of God? And how
can their ears endure to hear it from others, which were never
offended with the blasphemies of him? They could never rejoice in
this heavenly concert were they admitted. Nay, their enmity to
the work would not permit their stay. The smoke of pure incense
is fitter rather to drive a swine out of the room than to invite
his continuance.
[2.] The new birth is necessary, as to the duty, so to the
reward of heaven. As the reward is exceeding glorious, the
preparation thereto must be exceeding gracious. The rewards of
heaven are something incorporated with us, inlaid in the very
frame of our souls, and cannot be conceived enjoyable without a
change in the nature of the subject. Man was first formed before
he was brought into the garden of Eden, or pleasure: Gen. ii. 8,
There he 'put the man whom he had formed.' Man must be new-formed
before he be brought into that place, which is the anti-type of
Eden, the place of eternal and spiritual pleasure. A natural man
can no more relish the rewards of heaven, than a dead carcass can
esteem a crown and a purple robe, or be delighted with the true
pleasure of heaven, than a swine, that loves to wallow in the
mire, can be delighted with a bed of roses. A disorder in nature
is a prohibition to all happiness belonging to that nature; a
distempered body, under the fury of a disease, can find no
delight in the pleasures of the healthful; a wicked man, with a
troubled and foaming sea of sin and lust in his mind, Isa. lvii.
20, would find no more rest in heaven than a man with his
disjointed members upon a rack can in the beauty of a picture. We
must be spiritually minded before we can have either life or
peace, Rom. viii. 6. Righteousness in the soul is the necessary
qualification for the peace and joy in the kingdom of God: Rom.
xiv. 17, 'The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' While
malice remains in the devil's nature, were he admitted into
heaven he would receive a torment instead of a content. A wicked
man would meet with hell in the midst of heaven as long as he
carries his own rack within him, boiling and raging lusts in his
heart, which can receive no contentment without objects suitable
to them, let the place be what it will. Heaven, indeed, is not
only a place, but a nature; and it is a contradiction to think
that any can be happy with a nature contrary to the very essence
of happiness.
The pleasure and reward of heaven is,
First, A perfect likeness to God and Christ. This is the great
privilege of heaven, which the apostle, in the midst of his
ignorance of other particulars, resolves upon as certain as that
which results from regeneration, and being the sons of God, and
is the full preparation for the beatific vision: 1 John iii. 2,
'Now we are the sons of God; and it does 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.' He seems to intimate
this, that we can never be like him when he does appear, unless
we be now, while we are here, the sons of God, nor ever be
admitted to a sight of him. As Christ presented himself without
spot to God, when he laid the foundation of our redemption, so he
presents his people 'without blemish to God' when he lays the
top-stone of it in our glorification, Eph. v. 27. Now as we
cannot be like to Christ in our walk here without a new birth,
neither can we without it be like to Christ in glory hereafter.
It is not the place makes us like to God, but there must be a
likeness to God to make the place pleasant to us. When once the
angels had corrupted their nature, the short stay they made in
heaven did neither please them nor reform them. And when Satan
appeared before God, among the angels, Job i. 6, neither God's
presence nor his speaking to him did anywise better him; he came
a devil, and he went away so, without any pleasure in the place
or presence, but by the permission of God, to wreak his malice on
holy Job. An unlikeness to God is the misery of the creature. It
is therefore impossible, whilst the soul remains in that state,
that it can arrive at blessedness, because it is a contradiction
to think a felicity can be enjoyed in a contrariety to and
separation from the fountain of it: Ps. lxxiii. 27, 'Lo, they
that are far from thee shall perish.' It is by faith, beholding
the glory of the Lord in the glass of the gospel here, that we
must be 'transformed into his image,' before we can be 'changed
into his glory,' 2 Cor. iv. 18. And we cannot be like God by holy
actions only, though we had performed as many of them as all the
holy men in the world ever did as to the matter of them,
abstracted from the principle and end; and the reason is, because
God is not only holy in his actions, but holy in his nature; and,
therefore, we must not only have actions materially good, but a
holy nature suitable to the holiness of God, otherwise we neither
are, nor never can, be like him.
Secondly, The fruition of God is a privilege of heaven, which
necessarily follows this likeness. God is the eternal portion of
glorified souls, upon which they live. He is the strength of
their hearts, Ps. lxxiii. 25, 26. There is none but God in heaven
is the chief object of their love and delight. The presence of
God makes 'the fullness of joy,' Ps. xvi. 11. His favour and the
light of his glorious countenance constitutes heaven and
happiness; not the place, but the countenance. God's frown
kindles hell, and his smile renders any place an heaven. Now an
old nature cannot have a good look from God; for since he is
infinitely holy, he must hate unholiness; infinitely true, he
must hate falsity. As it is impossible a man can love truth and
falsity, righteousness and unrighteousness, as such, at one and
the same time, in an intense degree, therefore an impure nature
cannot be happy unless God be mutable. God cannot smile on the
old Adam unless he hate himself. What satisfaction can such an
one possibly have in God's presence? How can he savour the
society of God that never loved it? Do we naturally love any warm
mention of God? Have we not a stony deadness to any heavenly
motion that falls upon us? A mighty quickness to receive sinful
motions in that which we love? Do not our countenances fall, and
our delight take wings to itself and fly away at any lively
appearance of God? If we have such an enmity to his law, which is
but a transcript of his holiness, much greater must our enmity be
to the original copy. Hence in Scripture men are said to 'refuse
his law,' Ps. lxxviii. 10; to 'forsake his law,' Ps. cxix. 53; to
be 'far from his law,' Ps. cxix. 150. Darkness does not more
naturally vanish at the appearance of the sun, than an old nature
will fly away from the glory and brightness of God. A mass of
black darkness and an immense sphere of light may as soon be
espoused together, as a friendly amity be struck up between God
and an unrenewed man. God is light without darkness, 1 John i. 5;
man is darkness itself, as if nothing else entered into the
composition of his corrupt nature, Eph. v. 8. If there be
therefore a disagreement, contrariety, and unwillingness on both
sides, how can any pleasing correspondence be effected? If God
should bring a man with his corrupt nature into local heaven, God
could not please himself in it, nor such an one delight himself
in God, no more than a swine can be pleased with the presence of
an angel, or a mole sport itself with the beauty of flowers, or a
vitiated eye rejoice at the brightness of light. We must really
make God such an one as we shape him in our natural fancy, and
like to us, before we can take any pleasure in converse with him.
Our nature, therefore, must be changed before we can please him,
or be satisfied in him. His presence else will cause fear, while
our sinful state remains, an affection inconsistent with
happiness.
Thirdly, The company of the saints is an adjunct of that
happiness in heaven. A sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, Mat. viii. 11, in a festival
converse, is a part of that felicity. The coming to be with an
'innumerable company of angels, with the general assembly, and
church of the firstborn,' is not the least thing in the
composition of this happiness, Heb. xii. 22, 23. What joy is that
man capable of which should be surrounded with company he has the
greatest disaffection to, where he could not meet with any one
person without the holy quality he has an antipathy against? A
natural man never loved holiness, as holiness, here. The more
beautiful the image of God was in any, the more burdensome was
their company; the more degrees any good man wanted of perfection
in righteousness, the more tolerable was a familiarity with him.
If holiness in others, in a lower degree, were disaffected by
you, how can you bear the perfection of it? If the mixed and dark
goodness in renewed men, which was but a weak flash of the glory
of heaven, were unwelcome, how will you be able to endure the
lustre of it? Again, glorified saints could not have the least
converse with such an one? If carnal nature were a trouble to
them here, when they had many relics of corruption, much more
must it be above, if they were admitted into that place of glory,
because the more holy any creature is, the more it hates that
which is contrary to that holiness; the more settled we are in
anything, the more we loathe that which is opposite to it; all
the folly in their hearts here done away, and the disagreeing
principle perfected in the blessed. There must, therefore, be a
change in them, to take pleasure in you, or a change in you, to
take pleasure in them. They must return to the frame of old Adam,
and put off the renewed image of God, before they can delight in
you; or you must come up to the frame of the new Adam, and be new
created after the same image, before you can delight in them. The
truth is, supposing a man admitted into the heavenly place with
an old nature, he could not continue there; for the saints must
either leave heaven, or he must. Light and darkness cannot agree;
what makes the one happy, cannot beatify the other. Saints shall
not leave it, because it is their inheritance, it was prepared
for them, and they for it; a natural man must, because it was
never prepared for him, nor he fitted for it.
Fourthly, Spiritual delights inconceivable are in that state,
which, without a new and heavenly nature, it is impossible to
relish. 'In the light of God they see light,' and they 'drink of
the rivers of God's pleasures,' and are 'satisfied with the
fatness of his house,' Ps. xxxvi. 8, 9. Now, is it a fleshly
fatness? Are the pleasures of God carnal or spiritual? What is
God's pleasure shall be the pleasure of glorified souls. How can
the sordid old temper be fit for spiritual delights? Flesh can
never savour but the things of the flesh; another palate is
necessary to relish the things of the spirit: Rom. viii. 5, 'They
that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but
they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit;'
"fronousin" signifies to savour or relish. There must
be a transformation by the renewing of the mind, Rom. xii. 2,
which is the palate of the soul, before we can know what the will
of God is, or taste what the pleasures of God are; without it we
can no more relish the pleasures of God than we can know his
will. All satisfaction does not result from the intrinsic
excellency of the object, or the beauty of a place, or a power in
anything to affect us, but from a faculty rightly disposed to the
object, and a congruity and agreement between that and the
understanding, and between that and the will. Brutes cannot be
delighted with intellectual pleasures, because they want a
faculty, nor fools, because they want a right disposition of that
faculty. Purity of heart only gives us a relish of the purity of
pleasure: Tit. i. 15, 'To the pure all things are pure; but unto
them that are defiled and unbelieving, is nothing pure.' An ill
humour on the palate tinctures the meat, and embitters that which
was sweet in itself. It must be freed from that vicious juice
before it can relish the sweetness of food. Natural men, because
of the impurity of their natures, savour not those spiritual
delights which the word, and prayer, and other holy duties afford
in themselves. What fitness, then, is there in this state for the
delights of heaven, which are as much superior to those delights
in duties as the sun does surmount a star in brightness? The best
unregenerate man is sunk in sense, swallowed up in sense; and
what suitableness can there be between a spiritual delight and a
sensual frame? True pleasures and contrary desires can never
abide together. A carnal man has no apprehensions of spiritual
delights but by the measures of animal pleasures. And if there be
no conception of them in the understanding, what motion to them
can there be in the will, or what fitness for them in the
affection? Without a new nature, a new frame, we are no more able
to understand or enjoy the pleasures of heaven, than a bat is to
take pleasure in a mathematician's lines or a philosopher's
books. It is not conceivable how God can make any man happy
against his will, because all pleasure consists in the
agreeableness of the will to the object. The whole scheme of
heaven must be changed to make such men happy that have not
tempers suited to its present state. The bright hangings of
heaven must be taken down and others put in their place to please
a vicious nature.
Use. If regeneration be absolutely necessary to a gospel
state, and the enjoyment of eternal glory in heaven, then it
informs us,
1. How much the nature of man is depraved; for otherwise there
were no need of his being born again, and no reason could be
imagined why our blessed Saviour should so pressingly urge the
necessity of it, If man's nature were according to his original
frame, it would please God, because it was of his own creation.
But we are flesh by our natural birth, and therefore to be happy
we must be spiritual by a second birth. It is not a new mending,
a new repairing and patching, but a new birth. We are by sin as
distant from God and grace, as death from life, as nothing from
being. It is not a death in appearance, but a certain death. God
foretold it to Adam: Gen. ii. 17, 'But of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the
day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,' "mot
tamut". I suppose there is nothing here of a corporal death
meant (as I have said before), but a death of his integrity and
righteous nature, upon this act of disobedience; and the reason
is because a temporal death did not ensue presently. And God uses
to be punctual when he fixed a time to any threatening, as here
he did, in the day, at that very time thou shalt die. Had it been
meant of a temporal death, he had died at that instant. When God
threatened Pharaoh, tomorrow such and such a plague shall
come, it was certainly so. The destruction of Nineveh in forty
days had been too, had they not repented. When he promised and
mercy or deliverance at such a time, it was certainly performed:
the very day, at the end of the time appointed, the
Israelites came out of Egypt, Exod. xii. 41. And though God
threatened Hezekiah with death, and bids him set his house in
order, yet he fixed no time, Isa. xxxviii. 1. Besides, a temporal
death was not necessary to his punishment; God might have flung
both body and soul away together into hell. Besides, a temporal
death, or death of the body, was fixed after the promise of the
seed, Gen. iii. 12, as a punishment superadded upon his sin, as
well as the rest, of his eating his bread in the sweat of his
brows, and the pain of women's conception and travail, which were
to put him in mind of his sin in his redeemed state; therefore I
question whether a temporal death, or an obnoxiousness to it,
were at all meant there, but a spiritual death, the death of his
righteous nature. It is a certain death, a mighty deprivation, a
loss of a noble frame, a beautiful rectitude. How may we cry, as
the prophet in another case: Isa. xiv. 12, 'How art thou fallen
from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down
to the ground!' How is our beauty not only defaced, but changed
into deformity? How dreadfully are we fallen, not only to lame
ourselves, but dead ourselves, that we cannot rise again, as a
man fallen may! We are so inconceivably changed from what we
were, that we cannot be recovered without a new make, without a
new birth. Oh that we had a true and sensible prospect of this!
Give me leave to say that though the fell be the cause of all our
misery, yet the true consideration and sense of it is the first
step to all our happiness. And we cannot take so full a view of
it in the extent of the nature of it, as in the consideration of
this doctrine, viz. The necessity of regeneration.
2. If regeneration be so necessary, then how much to be
lamented is the ignorance of this doctrine in the world? And
strange and sad it is that it should be so little considered. The
common talk is observing God and reforming the life, but who of a
thousand speaks of the necessity of a new nature? It is a sad
case that, when a doctrine is so clear, men should be so stupid
and deludingly damn themselves; that they should be so sottishly
ignorant of this who have Bibles in their hands and houses, yet
not understand this, which is the great purpose for which God
even sent the Scripture among the sons of men. It is a shame not
to have the knowledge of this great and necessary truth. As the
apostle in another case: 1 Cor. xv. 24, 'Some have not the
knowledge of God, I speak it to your shame.' How strange and
uncouth does this doctrine sound in the ears of the carnal world,
which wonder at it, as Nicodemus did at our Saviour's proposal,
and think all our discourses of it an heap of enthusiastic
nonsense! It is as if we should speak parables, as if you should
talk of astronomy to the natural fool, or read divinity in Arabic
to a man who understands only his native language. How little
sensible is the world of the necessity of this work! They expect
Christ should change their misery into glory, without changing
their hearts and fitting their spirits for it, which will never
be. They think it enough for them that Christ was conceived in
the womb of the virgin, without being formed again in their
souls, as the poor Jews at this day expect a Messiah, not to
alter the frame of their souls, but the frame of the world; not
to subdue their spirits, but to conquer the nations to be their
vassals. How should this stupidity of men be a matter of
lamentation to us!
3. If regeneration be so absolutely necessary, how should
Christian parents endeavour all they can to have their children
regenerate? There is no necessity they should have great estates,
and live bravely in the world; but there is a necessity, a great
necessity, they should be new creatures, and live spiritually. In
leaving the one to your children, you leave them but earth; in
leaving the other, you convey heaven to them. There is an
obligation upon you, their old polluted nature was derived from
you by carnal generation; make them amends by endeavouring to
derive grace to them by spiritual instruction; you made them
children of wrath, why will you not endeavour to make them
children of God and heirs of heaven? Education of itself will not
produce this noble work, nor the bare hearing of the word, or any
outward means whatsoever, by their own strength; yet the Spirit
does often bless them, and very much, and I doubt not but a great
number that are regenerate had the first seeds sown in them by a
religions education. And I have made this observation in many.
Timothy had a religious education both by his mother and
grandmother, though this did not renew him, for Paul, by the
preaching of the gospel, was the instrument of that he calls him
'his own son in the faith,' 1 Tim. i. 2, yet no question his
religious instructions from his parents did much facilitate this
work. Use all endeavour therefore, to convince them of the
necessity of a new birth, be earnest with them till you see it
produced, that they may not curse you for being the instruments
of their beings, but bless you for being the instruments of their
spiritual life.
4. This doctrine acquaints us with the insufficiency of
everything else without this to enable us to enter into the
kingdom of God.
(1.) Great knowledge is not sufficient. Natural knowledge is
not. All the wisdom of Solomon in a man, though it may enable him
to take an exact measure of nature from the highest star to the
meanest insect, does no more fit him for heaven than the stone in
the head of a toad expels his venomous nature. We have more
relics of Adam's nature in knowledge than we have in
righteousness. To be a philosopher, physician, or statesman, is
not essential to happiness in this world, much less can it
prepare a man for the happiness of another. But grace is as
essential to it as natural heat and radical moisture are to the
life of a man. Jesus Christ came not to make us scholars in
naturals, but to endue us with such a knowledge as is in order to
eternal happiness, and with such a renewing principle as might
make us capable of heaven. Knowledge and wisdom are some of the
choicest flowers in nature's garden; but it will be a small
advantage to descend to hell with our brains full of wit and
sophistry. One saving cry, from a new born infant soul is of more
value than the knowledge of all philosophers. Spiritual knowledge
is not, that is, the knowledge of spiritual doctrines, the
knowledge of Scripture itself. Nicodemus had a good stock of
this; he understood the letter of the Scripture, was well read in
all the parts of the law; he was thought fit to be one of the
great Sanhedrin. Something else was requisite besides this; a new
birth was still wasting. What if we understood the mind of the
Spirit of God in every verse in the Bible; were able to discourse
profoundly of the great mysteries of the gospel; had the gift of
prophecy, and knowledge of things to come, had the interpretation
of the whole book of the Revelation writ in our minds; what will
all this avail us? An evangelical head will be but drier fuel for
eternal burning, without an evangelical impression upon the heart
and the badge of a new nature. Men may prophesy in Christ's name,
in his name cast devils out of bodies, and devils of errors out
of men's brains, yet not be regarded by Christ; but he says to
them, 'I never knew you, depart from me ye that work iniquity,'
Mat. vii. 22, 23. If they had had this mark and gospel
impression, our Lord would have known them. Christ in heaven
would have owned himself formed in the heart; he could not have
been ignorant of his own nature and offspring.
Well then, a man may have all the learning of Christians and
heathens stored up in his head, and not the least stamp of it in
his heart; he may be wise in knowledge, and a fool in
improvement. A heap and pack of knowledge is not wisdom among
men, without an application of that knowledge to particular
exigencies and usefulness.
(2.) Outward reformation is not sufficient. Regeneration is
never without reformation of life; but this may be without that.
We may be outward Christians without an inward principle, though
we can never be inward Christians without an outward holiness.
The new birth is properly an internal work, and shows itself
externally; as the heat of the heart and vital parts will
evidence itself in outward motions. 'The king's daughter is all
glorious within' as well as without, Ps. xlv. 13. What a vanity
would it be to boast of freedom from other diseases, if you have
the plague upon thee? What a poor comfort is it to brag of thy
being without gross immoralities, whilst the plague of thy nature
remains uncured? Outward reformation only (though of excellent
use) is but a new appearance, not a new creature, a change of
life, not of the heart; whereas this work we discourse of is a
new birth in the understanding and will; it begins at the spirit
and descends from thence to the body, 1 Thess. v. 23; it is a
sanctification in spirit, soul, and then body. Can that which can
be no evidence to us in self-examination, be of itself sufficient
to waft us to heaven? If you retire to take a view of yourselves
whether you belong to God, will you judge by your outward actions
or inward frame? There is no characteristical difference in any
external action between a true Christian and an hypocrite. That,
therefore, which is not a sufficient evidence to us of a right to
happiness, cannot be a sufficient preparation of ourselves for
it.
This reformation may proceed either,
[1.] From force and fear. Such a reformation is from
impediments, not from inclination. The cutting a bird's wings
takes not away its propensity to fly, but its ability; the
cutting the claws of a lion, or pulling out his teeth, changes
not his lionish nature. Fear restrained Herod from putting John
to death, when his will was inclined to the act, Matt. xiv. 5.
Fear may pare the nails of sin, grace only can hinder the growth
and take away its life. This does but only stop the streams, not
choke the fountain.
Or, [2.] from sense of outward interest. It may be a rational
abstinence from those sordid pleasures which debase a man's
esteem and prey upon his reputation; and in the mean time his
inward lusts may triumph, while outward appearances are stopped.
Such a splendid life may consist with those inward vermin, more
contrary to the pure nature of God, and as inconsistent with a
man's happiness. The river which ran in open view, may sink and
run as fiercely through subterranean caverns. Men may cast out
one gross devil to make way for seven more spiritual ones. The
interest which restrains outward acts will not restrain inward
lusts.
Well then, an outward reformation without an inward grace, can
no more rectify nature, than an abstinence from luxury can cure a
disease a man has contracted through intemperance, without some
other physic to pluck up the root of the distemper. Outward
applications of salves and ointments will do little good in a
fever, unless the spring of the disease be altered, and a new crasis
wrought in the blood. All outward acts are but 'bodily exercise,
which profit little,' 1 Tim. it. 3. Outward reformation does but
sweeten the conversation, but does not purge the man. He only is
a vessel unto honour who has purged himself from these things: 2
Tim. ii. 21, 'If a man therefore purge himself from those, he
shall be a vessel unto honour.' Outward reformation only, it is a
cleansing of our life, but not ourselves. Self-nature must be
purged.
(3.) Morality is not sufficient. By morality, I mean not only
an outward reformation, but some love to moral virtue, as the
heathens had, raised upon the thoughts of the excellency of it.
Nicodemus was a moral man; he had some affection to Christ upon
the consideration of his miracles; he had never else ventured to
come to him so much as by night. He had no blot upon his
conversation, he had desires to be instructed. This was more than
a bare abstinence from sin, yet notwithstanding, besides those
moral qualifications, he must have a new birth before he can see
the kingdom of God. Men may do much good, be very useful to
others in their generation, yet be in the very bottom of
unregeneracy. A healing witch, as well as a hurting one, is the
devil's client, and in covenant with him. There is not so great a
difference between the highest degree of glory in heaven and the
lowest degree of grace on earth, as there is between the lowest
degree of saving grace and the highest degree of natural
excellency, because the difference between these is specific, as
between a rational and irrational creature; the difference
between the other is only in degree, as between an infant and a
man. It is one thing to have a love to moral virtue, another
thing to have a love to God in it, one thing to move for self,
and another thing to move for the glory of the Creator; one thing
to be animated by reason, and another thing to be inspired by the
Holy Ghost. What can a moral honesty profit that man who values
the world's dung above the Creator's glory? What though he be
honest and useful to his neighbours, must his affection to God be
measured by his honesty among men? The great business is from
what principle it flows. What if he does good to others whilst he
does his Creator wrong by fostering any one thing in his heart
above him? Can his goodness to others make a compensation for his
disesteem of God? The bravest man in the whole world, who has no
other descent than from Adam, must have a new quality put into
his heart before he can be happy; for if a new birth be
necessary, all endowments below it are to no purpose for the
attainment of that state for which it is intended. Whatsoever is
of the old Adam in us, though it be a beautiful flower, must
wither and die: 1 Peter i. 28, 24, 'For all flesh is as grass,
and the glory of man as the flower of grass, the grass withers,
and the flower thereof fades away.' The apostle sets in
opposition the incorruptible seed whereby they were born, and the
fairer flowers in nature's garden. The best thing which a man
glories in is a flower, but withering; it is a glory, but the
glory of the flesh; it has no lustre in the sight of God; it is
not a flower to be set in heaven. It is only the word of God, and
the impressions made on us by that word, which endure for ever.
As herbs can not grow without partaking of the natural influence
and beams of the sun, so nothing stands and flourishes but what
partakes of the nature and spirit of Christ. Nay, it is so far
from being sufficient, that it is a great hindrance of
regeneration, without the overpowering grace of God, because it
is the glory of a man; that is, that wherein a man glories. Men
are apt to rest upon their morals without reflecting upon their
naturals. They see no spots in their lives, and therefore will
not believe there are any in their hearts. They are so taken up,
with the pharisee, their proud thoughts of their being above
others, that they never think how much they have inwardly of the
publican in coming short of the glory of God. Unregenerate
morality, therefore, is not sufficient. The heart must be changed
before moral virtues can commence graces. When this is once done,
what were moral before become divine, as having a new principle
to quicken them, and a new end to direct them.
(4.) Religious professions are not sufficient. Can you, upon a
serious consideration, conclude that this only is the import of
all those scriptures which speak of being born of God, raised
from a death in sin, quickened and led by the Spirit, created in
righteousness and true holiness? Are not these things, in the
very manner of speaking them, elevated above any mere profession,
which may be declared to the world without any such work, which
is the evident intendment of those scriptures? It is not the
naming the name of Christ, but the departing from iniquity; a
departing from it in our nature as well as in our actions, that
is the badge whereby the Lord knows who are his: 2 Tim. ii. 19,
'The Lord knows who are his: and let every one that names the
name of Christ depart from iniquity.' Religious profession only
is but a form, a figure, a shape of godliness: a picture made by
art, without life and power, and an enlivened faculty, and a
divine principle whence it should proceed; it is but a name of
life at best under a state of death: Rev. iii. 1, 'Thou hast a
name that thou livest, and art dead.' Professions without a new
nature, are no more the things God requires of us, than
sacrifices under the law without a broken heart. It is not a
following our Saviour in profession, but in regeneration, which
gives the apostles a title to that promise of sitting upon his
throne in glory: Mat. xix. 28, 'Ye that have followed me in
regeneration, ye shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel.' Judas had followed Christ till that
time, and after, in a profession, but not in the regeneration,
not from a regenerated principle.
(5.) Multitudes of external religious duties and privileges
are not sufficient. Men are very apt to place their security
here. It was the great labour of the prophet Isaiah to bring the
Jews, in his time, off from them. God does not require attendance
on ordinances as the ultimate end, but as means to the beginning
and promoting a new birth: Isa. xi. 16, 'To what purpose is the
multitude of your sacrifices to me? Wash ye, make ye clean.' The
resting in these is the manifest destruction of men's souls, when
thousands of sacrifices to God cannot be acceptable without a new
nature. We naturally affect an easy religion; and outward acts of
worship, especially under the gospel, have no great difficulty in
them. Men would rather be at great expense of sacrificing, than
crucify one beloved sin, and cringe a thousand times before the
cross of Christ, than nail one corruption to it. How easy a work
were it to get to heaven, if nothing else were required but to be
a member of the Christian visible church? Circumcision was a
privilege, but it availed nothing without a new creature, Gal. v.
6. There was another circumcision made without hands, the work of
God, that was required, Col. ii. 11; a new creature, without
which outward circumcision signified nothing. The practice of
some duties may stand with an inward hatred of them, as the
abstinence from some sins may stand with an inward love to them.
Outward worship is but a carcass, when the soul is not conformed
to God, the object of worship, and does not attain an union to,
and communion with God, which is the end of worship. What are all
acts of worship without a nature suitable to the God we approach
unto in them? Judge not, therefore, of your state by any external
actions; no outward act, but unregenerated persons may do, yea,
they may express much zeal in them. They may have their bodies as
martyrs consumed by flames, without having their corruption
consumed by grace; a stinking breath may make as good music to
the ear in a pipe as a sound one. There is something more
necessary than a bare performance of duties.
(6.) Nay, more, convictions are not sufficient. Nicodemus was
startled by our Saviour's miracles, believes him to be a prophet
sent by God, acknowledges that God was with him, John iii. 2, yet
still the necessary qualification of a new birth was wanting.
Your spirits may be torn in pieces by terror, the heart of stone
may be rent asunder, and yet no heart of flesh appear; the ground
may be ploughed, yet not sown. Sensuality and lust may be kept
under by a spirit of bondage, when it is not cast out by a spirit
of adoption; the sun may scorch you, and not enliven you; the
knowledge of the foulness of sin, and the fierceness of wrath, is
the work of the Spirit in the law; the new birth is the work of
the Spirit in the gospel, the stone may be cut and hewed by the
law, and yet never polished by the gospel, never brought into
covenant: Hosea vi. 5, 7, 'I have hewed them by my prophets, but
they like men have transgressed the covenant.' It is not then
great knowledge, fair-coloured fruit, oil in the lamp of life,
loud professions, glittering services, or tearing convictions,
which are this badge whereby Christ knows his own from all the
world besides: all these will be answered, 'I know you not.' Is
it not, then, a worthy stork, and high time to get that new
nature, whereby God will know thee to belong to him? Professions
may be false, outward reformation may be but as a painted
sepulchre: knowledge only elevates the understanding, but as our
communion lies in the acts of the will, there must be some work
upon that to fit us for our great happiness. If these things are
not sufficient, then profane men cannot expect heaven by the way
of hell.
Use 2. If regeneration be so absolutely necessary to
salvation, how miserable is the condition of every unregenerate
man! What a miserable case is it, that sinners should dream on in
their delusions till everlasting burnings confute their fancies,
and turn their hopes into dreadful despair. Oh, how do most men
live as if this doctrine were a mere falsity, and act as if they
would take heaven by the violence of their lusts, not by the
industry of grace? Know you not that an unrighteous nature shall
not inherit the kingdom of God? 1 Cor. vi. 9, 'Know you not that
the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? be not
deceived,' &c. Is it possible you should be ignorant of that
which stares you in the face in every page in the Bible? If you
know not this you know nothing. Be not deceived. Nothing is no
natural as heart-deceit and presumptuous confidence. The apostle
else would not have spoken of it with such an emphasis, but that
he knew how apt men are to delude themselves with hopes of mercy
in a state of sin. Self-flattery is one of the strongest branches
which grows upon the pride of nature. How vain is it to fancy to
yourselves a fitness for heaven, while there are only
preparations for hell? Whence should such imaginations arise? Not
from God; it is contrary to all his professed declarations. Is it
from yourselves? What reason have you to believe your fancies in
spiritual things, who are so often mistaken in temporal? Is it
from the devil? What reason have you to believe your greatest
enemy? If this work be brought, he has for ever lost you. It is
he that cherishes such notions, for he has no pleasure to undo
his kingdom, and lose his subjects. Never did any man use so much
diligence to get a new nature as the devil does to hinder him.
Will you seriously consider,
1. It is highly irrational to expect security and glory in an
unregenerate state. Is it for us to separate those things which
God has joined, flesh and destruction, a new birth and a kingdom?
That which does naturally tend to hell can never conduct us to
heaven. Can the old nature, which frames a fit subject for
eternal vengeance, ever fashion it to be a vessel of eternal
glory? There is as great a tendency in the old nature to hell as
there is of a stone or lead to the earth. If men may be saved in
their unregeneracy,
(1.) God must be false to himself. False he must be to his
truth, false to holiness, false to his Son, false to the whole
tenor of the gospel. God must change the covenant of grace, blot
out all his threatenings in Scripture, give the lie to all his
declarations in the word, proclaim himself unwise in all his
administrations, if ever such a man be happy; and is it not a
damnable conceit, and a provoking wish, to desire that God should
belie himself to befriend us? There must be a new gospel before
any can be saved without a new nature. This cannot be. Must God
change his law, or we our lusts? God has settled and declared a
decree, that none that are not born again shall enter into the
kingdom of God. His decree stands irreversible, the change must
necessarily therefore be on our side.
(2.) As far as I can understand, God must put himself out of
heaven before that such a man can come thither. There can be no
pleasure on either side with unsuitableness. If God be absent
from heaven, as to his glorious presence, how can there be
happiness? He loves his own righteousness better than to endure
such men's presence, and they love their unrighteousness so much
as not to bear his. No man cares for coming into a place which is
possessed by one that he hates; they can have no pleasure to be
in a heaven with God, who were delighted to be in a world without
him, Eph. ii. 12.
(3.) Jesus Christ must be a liar, and the gospel false, if
ever there be a heaven enjoyed by an old nature. He has asserted
it, that is truth itself; and is it not a madness to imagine a
possibility of coming thither in spite of him? You may upon
better grounds hope to be crowned monarch of the whole world
tomorrow, than to enter into heaven without being born again.
Christ values his truth, though he did not his life, above our
souls, and his word will stand firm against all presumptuous
confidence whatsoever.
(4.) Suppose God should reverse his gospel (which cannot be),
and declare another, I cannot see how the ease would be mended,
for what gospel can God frame, with a salvo to his own honour,
without the creatures being righteous to enjoy the benefit of it?
Must God conform himself to the will of our lusts? Must he cast
his holiness into the depths of the sea? Must he paint himself
black to agree with our hue? as the Negroes picture him of their
own colour. In a word, must God cease to be God that you may
cease to be miserable? To desire happiness without a new nature
shows a contempt of God, since it is to desire it on terms on
which it is dishonourable for God to give it.
Well then, this doctrine is so certainly true, that if an
angel from heaven should declare the contrary he ought not to be
believed: Gal. i. 8, 'Let him be accursed;' that is, he would be
more a devil than an angel, and it could be an accursed doctrine.
He must found his doctrine upon another gospel, and a gospel
printed in hell, but impossible to hare an imprimatur from
heaven. Is it possible, then, for any man, after such an
assertion of our Saviour, to live under the hearing of the
Christian doctrine, and fancy a heavenly glory belonging to him
without a heavenly nature?
2. As it is highly irrational, so it is highly sinful to lie
in an unrenewed state. To continue in it after the declaration of
God's holiness, in so eminent a manner, in the death of his Son,
is a high approbation of unrighteousness, and a contempt of his
infinite purity; for since he has shown himself a hater of sin,
and the old nature of Adam in the death of the Redeemer, more
than be could any other; the fostering the old nature in us is a
valuing that which God has manifested his hatred of, and a
slighting all the expressions of his love. It draws a greater
guilt upon our persons than Adam did by his fall upon our
natures: John xv. 22, 'If I had not come and spoken to them, then
had not had sin.' If I had not told them those things, and preach
heavenly doctrine to them, their sin had been as it were a petty
larceny, in comparison of what it is now, a treason against my
Father's crown and dignity; 'but now they have hated me and my
Father'.
3. Hence it follows that such a man's condition must he
exceeding miserable. Those that 'have a part in the first
resurrection,' on them it is said 'the second death shall have no
power,' Rev. xx. 6; whether he means the resurrection of Christ,
or the spiritual resurrection of the soul. The second death then
shall have power over them that have no part in the first
resurrection.
(1.) Such are peculiarly miserable. Such a man had better have
been any other creature,—a toad, a serpent, a beetle, liable
to be trod to death by the next comer,—than have been a man,
and live and die with a serpentine nature, and without renewing
grace, would be glad one day to chance states with them; and it
had been better to have been born in the darkest part of America
than in England, and better to have lived in the blindest corner
in England than in London, where he has heard so much and so
often of the necessity of the new birth, and yet cherished an old
nature. It is an astonishing madness this. Better never to have
been born a man than not be a real Christian, which he cannot be
without this new birth, this necessary regeneration; better never
to have entered by the door of baptism into the Christian
society, than not have a nature answerable to the baptismal
intendment. There is not the meanest beggar that creeps in the
street, the most ulcerous Lazarus that lies at the door, but if
renewed is infinitely happier than any one unrenewed can be with
all worldly felicity.
(2.) Such are unavoidably miserable. The mercy of God can
never make you happy against his truth, the righteousness of God
can never do it without the necessary qualification. Is it just
with God to give his worst enemies the same reward of glory with
his choicest friends; to those that never endeavoured to reform
their lives according to the methods of the gospel, as to those
who have had the holy image of his Son drawn and wrought in their
hearts? In 2 Tim. iv. 8 he is said to be a 'righteous judge,'
which could not be if he gave the same rewards to both the
contrary qualifications. The devil may as soon be eased, as any
man without a new birth. Though there be enough written against
the salvation of devils, yet there is more written in the book of
God against the salvation of men living and dying in an
unregenerate state than against the salvation of devils. Do any
expect to see the kingdom of God without it? Why, that form on
which you sit, that dust under your feet, far cleaner than
ourselves by nature, are fitter to be brought into that place of
glory. The holiness of God can better endure them than an
unrenewed man. He pronounced their kind good at the creation, but
never was an unrenewed nature pronounced good by God. You can no
more shun an eternal misery without it, than you can a temporal
death with it, you can no more fly from hell than from
yourselves. Our blessed Saviour, the redeemer of the world, will
know none for admission into happiness without his badge upon
them: Mat. vii. 23, 'I never knew you:' you had nothing in you
worthy my knowledge and affection. Where is the evangelical
impression upon your soul? will be the only question then asked.
Well, then, I wish every unregenerate man would put the
question to his soul, Can I dwell with everlasting burnings? Can
I, with a cheerful security, meet the wrath of God in its march
against me? Is eternal darkness a delightful state? Is an eternal
separation from the blessed God to be desired? Is a present
sensual life to be preferred before a joyful eternity? Is there
any one Scripture in the whole book of God can give me comfort in
this state? What, then, dost thou, O my soul, spend thy thoughts
about, since there is nothing to procure thy felicity, but this
new birth?
Use 8. Is of comfort. Is it so, that without regeneration
there is no salvation? Then how great is the comfort of that
person, who has attained this necessary thing! What a foundation
is here for the composition of never songs for spiritual
exultings! What a diffusion may there be of pleasure through the
whole soul! That little regenerating principle within you is more
necessary than the wisdom of Solomon, the power of
Nebuchadnezzar, the glory of Ahasuerus, the reaching heads of the
most knowing men in the world, and shall make you happy, when
others in their unrenewed wisdom and unsanctified wealth shall
descend to destruction.
1. The least true grace has comfort from hence. 'Except a man
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;' therefore if he
be born again, he shall see it. Our Saviour does not say, except
a man has been born so long, arrived to such a stature, but
simply born again; it lies upon the essence, not upon the degree.
A child that cries the first minute it is born, is in a state of
life, as well as the man in the prime of his strength. A child
has the nature of a man, though attended with some strong disease
and great infirmities; though every true Christian has not the
same growth yet he has the same birth, the same renewing Spirit.
'If a man be in Christ he is a new creature;' the apostle does
not say, he is a strong creature, or a tall creature. St John
reckons three different states of Christians, 1 John ii. 13, 14,
children, young men, and fathers, and all in a state of the
knowledge of God.
2. Here is comfort in the ignorance of the time of the new
birth. 'Except a man be born again,' not except he know the time
of his being born again; the want of the knowledge of the time
has troubled some, but it is no matter for the time, if we find
the essential properties; our happiness is secured by the
essence, not by the circumstance. It is the glory of those that
were born in Sion, that they 'were born there,' Ps. lxxxvii. 5,
though the time of their birth were not exactly known by them.
Many may tell the first preparations to it, the first strong
conviction, the first time they found their hearts affected; this
is more easy than to tell the very time when spiritual life was
infused, any more than to tell the punctual time when the child
was quickened in the womb; this is no more known, than that
particular minute when this or that addition was made to our
stature and growth, though the growth itself be discernible.
3. Such are new born to the enjoyment of God in glory. If none
shall see God without it, then those shall certainly see God who
have it; it is for the undefiled inheritance that God did first
beget you: 1 Peter i. 3, 'He has begotten us to a lively hope, to
an inheritance undefiled, incorruptible that fades not away,
reserved in heaven for you.' Had not God intended you for an
everlasting converse with himself, he would not have taken such
pains, but have let you lie in your blood, and run down the
stream of nature into the ocean of a miserable eternity with the
common mass of the world. What comfort will this be, when you see
the old house of your bodies full of gaps, ready to fall, that
your reborn souls are ready to take possession of their eternal
inheritance! Paul was one of the highest rank in Christianity,
both in grace and office, yet the 'crown of righteousness' was
not only laid up for him, and to be given to him, but to 'all
that love the appearing of Christ, 2 Tim. iv. 8, that is, to all
those that, from the principles of the new nature, aspire to that
perfection, which shall be at the appearance of Christ. There is
as certain a tendency, by the ordination of God, of a renewed
soul to heaven, as of flame into the air. Grace and glory are in
nature the same thing as a seed and a plant.
4. It is comfort upon this account, If new-born to heaven,
then to all things which may further your passage thither and
assist you in it. To God, as your God and king to protect you, as
your Father to cherish you; to the promises as your promises, as
assurances and deeds for heaven; to a sanctification of all
states for a furtherance of you in your travel to and fitness for
this kingdom; to a sight of God in his ordinances, and in his
providences; he will not deny a beam here in his institutions to
those for whom he reserves his full face hereafter; to a
fellowship with God in duties of worship, as a foretaste of a
perpetual communion with him; to an improvement of all graces, to
the most perfect dress at last of all beautiful grace, which may
completely fit you for an everlasting sight of God in heaven.
Use. 4. If without the new birth there is no entering into
heaven, then it stands upon you to clear up your evidences for
the new birth. If the existence of it be necessary for our
felicity, the knowledge of it is necessary for our comfort. This
is the great distinguishing evangelical sign; without an inward
principle of life, we have not reached the intendment of the
gospel: John vi. 63, 'The words of Christ are spirit and life.'
John x. 10, 'I am come that you might have life.' He has no
interest in the gospel that has not this in his heart. Every man
in Christ must be a new creature.
To encourage you in this work, consider,
1. It is by this you must know your justification.
Justification is our blessedness: Rom. iv. 8, 'Blessed is the man
to whom the Lord will not impute sin.' And this is the way to
know our blessedness: forgiveness of sin precedes the
inheritance, and both this and that are received only by the
sanctified through faith in Christ: Acts xxvi. 18, 'That they may
receive forgiveness of sin, and inheritance among them which are
sanctified by faith which is in me.' The alteration of our frame
is motifs, more discernible to us, than that of our relative
states; the new dispositions discover what relation we stand in
to God. This is a certain truth, he that does not find the
draught of God's image in him, has no reason to conclude he has
any saving interest in the propitiatory sacrifice of the
Redeemer. As the blood and water were not separated in the
effusion upon the cross, neither are they in their application to
the soul; water to renew us, and blood to justify us. The
'washing of regeneration' evidences our being justified by grace,
Titus iii. 57; the apostle infers the one from the other.
2. Therefore, by the knowledge of this only you can gain
comfort. The great desire is, Oh that I were assured! Let it be
your great business to clear up the new birth. It is the office
of the Spirit not only to comfort but renew, and to comfort by
renewing. The hope of eternal life is founded upon the renewing
of the Holy Ghost, as well as on justification by grace, Titus i.
5-7; the Spirit as a comforter is to guide into all truth, John
xvi. 13, into that truth which is sanctifying, John xvii. 17. The
property of the Spirit is to guide us into sanctifying truth, and
sanctify us by that truth; the Spirit does witness with our
spirits that we are the children of God; its witness is by
something within us, not without us. There must be something in
our hearts as a foundation of this testimony; what witness can
there be in an old nature? Look after, therefore, those essential
properties of the new nature. Christ preached duty and comfort
together; his first sermon, Mat. v., is made up of both. The
clear evidence of a new life seated in the centre of the soul,
will be a surer testimony of our right to, and fitness for glory,
than if an angel from heaven should assure us in the name of God,
that we are some of his heirs, the testimony of an angel is but
that of a creature, lower then the verbal testimony of the Son of
God. The evidences of the beginnings of glory, by the operations
of grace and a Godlike nature, are more uncontrollable than the
highest assurances all the angels in heaven can give us. Clear up
this, therefore. There are many counterfeits; men may take
morality, outward reformation, heaps of religious duties, to be
this work, but these are all insufficient, and men without good
examination may cheat themselves, and take copper for gold, and
tin for silver. There is a natural or moral integrity, and an
evangelical integrity; the natural integrity God owns in
Abimelech: Gen. xx. 6, 'Yea, I know that thou did this in the
integrity of thy heart.' He was king of the place where Abraham
thought there was no fear of God, ver. 12. And it is likely there
was not. God puts none of them upon prayer for themselves, but
Abraham upon praying for them.
Then ask yourselves these two or three questions.
1. How stand your hearts to God and sin? Is there a bias in
the will, which does naturally carry it to God? What light is
there in your minds? what flexibleness and tenderness in the will
and conscience? what sprightliness in your affections to the
things of God? what readiness to meet him in his motions to you?
what closing with Christ? Are there strong cries, struggling,
wrestling, Jacob-like prayers? A new-born babe not to cry; a
child not to call to his father, and follow him, and press to
him: it is inconsistent with such a nature, since it is the first
fruit of the 'spirit of adoption' received by us, to cause us to
cry, Abba, Father, Rom. viii. 15. How stand your hearts to sin?
Are there deep humiliations for it, utter detestation of it? Are
your affections dead to the flesh and the world, and alive and
quick to the things of God? Rom. viii. 10, 'The body is dead
because of sin, and the spirit is life because of righteousness.'
What humbling of inward pride, what striving against inward sins,
what loathing of inward corruptions?
2. What delight have you in spiritual duties? Do your souls
spring up in a service? Are your hearts in heaven before the
words are out of your mouth? What is agreeable to nature is not
burdensome. Spiritual services are as pleasant to a new nature,
as sin is to an old, as sweet wines and delicious food is to a
gluttonous disposition: Ps. cxix. 103, 'How sweet are thy words
unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!' Honey, one
of the staple excellencies of Canaan, which is described to be a
land flowing with milk and honey. Does your delight in the law of
God spring up from the inner man? There is a delight in doing
some things of the law (the Gentiles did by nature the things
contained in the law, Rom. ii. 14), by a moral nature, not a new
nature; if by nature, they had then a delight in them, and it was
as all delight is, inward in the soul and heart, no doubt but
many of them had pleasure in their morality. That is not the
meaning of the apostle; but he does distinguish his delights from
theirs by the object of it, and by the subject or spring of it.
It was the law of God, as it was the law of God, that he did
delight in; and it was not only an inward delight, but a delight
arising from an inner nature, a man distinct from that man
composed of soul and body; it did arise from a spirit possessed
with nobler principles and higher ends.
Well, then, is it your meat and drink to do his will? Has the
glory of God been dearer to you than the dearest worldly concerns
you have? Are your converses with him very delightful to you? Do
the thoughts of God, and delights in him, frequently return upon
you? What bears the most grateful relish in your souls? holy
thoughts and duties, or sinful and foolish vanities?
3. How do you live? Have you another life 'by the faith of the
Son of God?' Gal. ii. 20; another faith beside the common faith,
not resting in assent, but 'working by love,' Gal. v. 6. Do you
live to yourselves? That is proper to a state of nature. Or do
you live to God? 2 Cor. v. 18. That is proper to a state of
grace: Gal. ii. 19, 'I am dead to the law, that I might live unto
God.' Is there a closing with Christ, not only as your Saviour,
but as the principle and end of your lives? Is there a living the
life of God, the life of Christ? Can Christ be formed in the
heart, and there be nothing of the qualities of Christ, nothing
of the spirit of Christ? Is Christ formed in the heart, a hard,
low, dead, cold, dark, lifeless Christ? This frame is a quite
contrary thing to Christ. If we are born of the will of God, we
are born to answer the will of God. Is it the will of God that we
should be loose in our hearts, and vain in our lives? That is the
will of the flesh, not the will of God. According as our hearts
are, so is our birth; sin or grace must have dominion in the
soul; they cannot live amicably together; a man cannot be a
sinner and a saint with the same will, cannot equally love
holiness and iniquity. We may as well say that a man may be in
heaven and hell at the same time; not but that a renewed man may
in a sudden fit do a thing against his nature, as Moses, one of a
mild disposition, was transported with a strain of passion
against his nature. If sin reigns in the heart, though it does
not in outward acts; if we yield ourselves servants, to obey it
in the lusts thereof, though not in the outward fruit of those
lusts, this new-creature principle was never settled in the
heart: Rom. vi. 12, 'Let not sin reign therefore in your mortal
body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof: neither yield
ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.' He
makes a manifest difference between the inward lust obeyed, and
the outward commission of it in the members, and places the reign
of sin in one as well as the other; and, ver. 16, concludes them
in a state of nature or a state of grace, according as they yield
themselves servants to this or that. A regenerate practical
atheist is just as true as to say a regenerate devil.
(1.) Be diligent observers, therefore, of what solid
alterations you find in your spirits; what motions, starts,
principles, ends you can perceive there; and if you find you have
this excellent and necessary new birth, admire God's grace in
you, that he should pass by so many thousands in the world and
renew you; that he should leave many soaking in their sins, and
swimming to destruction in their old nature, and bestow this
heavenly plant upon your souls. And prize it too. Aquinas has an
excellent saying, The good of one grace is greater than the good
of all nature; which words Cajetan commends as fit to be writ
upon our minds, and constantly reviewed by us, to raise our
admirations of God and his grace.
I speak now but little of these things, because the next
discourse will lead me to speak more of them.
(2.) Seek it. If it be necessary to be had, it is necessary to
be sought. We are all at this present before God in an old or new
nature; and if we die in the nature we have received from old
Adam, without another from the new, it is as certain that every
one of us shall be excluded out of the kingdom of God, as it is
certain we live and breathe in the places where we stand or sit.
We are born of the earth, we must be born from heaven; we must
have a spiritual as well as an animal life. Oh that every man and
woman had the same thoughts of the necessity of it as they have
who are past hope in hell of ever attaining it! Riches are not
necessary, honours are not necessary; this is of absolute
necessity. Were you like Solomon in all his glory, you could not
have the privilege of entering into God's kingdom without a new
nature; but a new nature without the glory of Solomon, nay,
without a rag to your backs, will admit you. If those that are
already renewed must be every day putting off the old and putting
on the new man, Eph. iv. 22, 24, how much more need have you who
have not dropped one scale, or sweat out one spirit of the old
man, nor have a grain of the new man in you? As original
corruption stood up in the place of original righteousness, so a
gracious regenerate frame must rise up in the place of original
corruption, for God will never befriend corrupt nature so much as
to give a happiness to that which he hates. Men do not choose
weeds but flowers to plant in their delightful gardens. God
indeed does choose weeds, but they are turned into the nature of
flowers before he transplants them to glory. We must have a
wedding garment to fit us for his feast, and oil in our vessels
to prepare us for his nuptials.
Seek it, for,
(1.) It is an indispensable duty. God has resolved that only
'the pure in heart shall see God,' Mat. v. 8. It is a duty
incumbent on us to love God. Since we are bound to love God, we
are bound to love whatsoever has any relation to him. Therefore
we must love ourselves, not with a sordid, carnal love, but as we
are the image of God. Hence we are bound to do what we can to
brighten and clear this image, and restore it to its primitive
perfection in our souls. We are answerable to God for the
presenting this image of God in the same state wherein it was
when he conferred it upon Adam, and upon us in his loins. Since
the Redeemer has undertaken to restore it, it is our duty to seek
to this Redeemer for the restoration of it, for he came 'that we
might have life,' John x. 16; a vital principle in us to fit us
for eternal life, and to 'have it more abundantly,' in a more
glorious and fixed manner than Adam had.
(2.) Seek it, for something of this nature, or equivalent to
it, seems necessary to all rational and intellectual creatures.
The first nature of man was sown in mutability, and there was a
necessity of something equivalent to this regeneration to fix and
establish his nature; as the confirmation of angels under the
head Christ is in some sort a regeneration of them, for it is an
alteration of their state, from mutable to immutable, not by
nature, for so God only is immutable, but by grace: Eph. i. 10,
'He has gathered together in one all things in Christ.' There is
need now of it to change our nature, and afterwards to fix us in
it. Most think that Adam, had he stood some time, had been
confirmed in the state of innocence, and advanced to a more
excellent state than that of paradise, which would have been an
alteration of his state. If, then, an alteration of state was
necessary for the fixing his happiness, an alteration of state is
much more necessary for us for regaining the happiness we fell
from.
(3.) Seek it, because in not seeking it you act against your
own reason and natural experience. You have by the fight of
nature, improved by the light of the gospel, so much knowledge as
to perceive that you are not as God first made you. You cannot
but acknowledge it impossible that so filthy and disorderly a
piece can come out of his hands; that there is something wanting
to you. And are those relics of nature left only to show us our
indigence, and not also to spur us on to seek a remedy?
Melanchthon says, I have seen many epicures who, being in some
grief for their sins, have argued, How can I expect to be
received by God, when I find not a new light and new virtues
infused into me? When you are stilled after the rage of carnal
affections or glut of pleasures, and you do in silence turn in
upon yourselves, and make inquiry after your future state, if
your conscience do not lie and flatter, will they not tell you to
your faces that you are men of death, prepared against the day of
slaughter? Besides, will not every man confess in his most raised
retirements that he cannot find any real satisfaction in things
below? And are there not sometimes some natural aspirings to
something above these? Do not all men one time or other inquire,
Ps. iv. 6, 'Who will show us any good?' Have you ever a more
delightful pleasure than when you find yourselves inflamed with
some desires for it? But, alas! do you not feel yourselves in a
depraved state, and that these motions are but weak flutterings,
and that the soul is quickly wearied in them? Is not this an
evidence that there must be a more vigorous nature infused both
to attain and enjoy them? Is it not then an acting against your
own sentiments not to seek it? Do you not offer violence to that
little reason in you to cut the wings of such motions? Let me add
this too, you act in a way contrary to the nature of every thing,
not to seek that state which was designed for the perfection of
human nature. Is it not natural for everything to endeavour its
recovery to its primitive purity, and struggle under that which
is preternatural to it? A fountain will not rest till it has
wrought out the filth which has been cast into it; so neither
should man be quiet till he recover himself from the dominion of
sin in his nature, and his pollution by it. Are you contented
with a nasty, impure, and diseased body? are you not restless
till it be cleansed and cured? and is it no trouble to you to
have your souls in a dirty and foul condition? Do you not hereby
act against your own nature in other things?
(4.) Not to seek it is to despise the general mercy of God,
and the general kindness of the Mediator to human nature. There
are in man desires for and inclinations to happiness, and some
knowledge that this happiness lies in God. These desires were
left in man by the mercy of God upon the interposition of the
Mediator; therefore some call them not relics of nature, but
restored principles, as a foundation to work upon; for upon the
fall man did forfeit all, and sin despoiled himself of all de
jure, but by the mediation of Christ, those were left (Col.
i. 17, 'By him all things consist'), otherwise there had been no
stock to work upon. These are left as foundations upon which God
grafts this grace of regeneration, as they that spin do not spin
out the whole thread, but leave some end) that they may add to it
another thread; so God, having a purpose to do good on man in
renewing him, did not suffer the stock of nature to be wholly
rooted out, but left that as a root to graft upon, to make him
the better capable of happiness. Had not man had a natural desire
to happiness, there were no ground to work upon him to induce him
to such a thing; therefore in not seeking it you reproach God for
leaving this stump in you, and seem to be so well pleased with
corrupt nature as if you would not have any remainder of the
former. It is a striving against the relic of original nature
left in us.
(5.) Seek it, for it is as necessary as justification. You
should therefore seek it with as high an esteem of it as you have
of pardon, none but would desire pardon of sin. You must be as
desirous of the regeneration of your nature; they are equally
necessary. Those who will not have an inherent righteousness can
never expect an imputed righteousness from Christ; he never came
to that end. Two things happened to us by the fall: another state
and another nature; the regaining of the former must be equally
sought with the latter, a being in another covenant by
justification (for naturally we are in the covenant with Adam),
and a being beautified with another image, because naturally we
are deformed by the image of Adam. As long as we are only in a
state of descent from, and union with, the first Adam, we are
under the strictness of his covenant and the deformity of his
image; when we are united to the second Adam, and spiritually
descend from him, we are in his covenant of grace, and are
adorned with his image. Both, therefore, must be looked after as
equally necessary: Rom. v. 21, 'That as sin has reigned unto
death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord.' Let us, then, look after this
reign of grace; let not that be the last which should be first in
our thoughts. Since our natural descent from Adam, we are born
God's enemies: we must be spiritually new-born before our enmity
can expire.
(6.) The advantages that accrue by regeneration are high. When
we are received, we part with impurity for purity, with dross for
gold, with corruption for holiness, with flesh for spirit, with
nature for grace, with sin for God, and the enjoyment of him for
ever. Our present nature is a nature of death and bondage; a new
nature is like the new law, a law of life and liberty, James i.
25. It will put our souls in order, and set the Israelite free
from the Egyptian taskmaster; it will quell the rage of sin, and
diffuse a serenity in our souls. Grace and peace are not unfitly
joined together by the apostle, in respect of peace in ourselves,
which cannot be without habitual grace, as well as peace with
God, which cannot be without his favour. It will enable us to
perform spiritual services. As all natural actions flow from a
natural form in the creature, so all spiritual actions flow from
a spiritual nature in the soul, and without it a carnal heart can
no more do any spiritual work than a rock can perform the work of
a balsam-tree. It is but highly reasonable and just we should
endeavour to regain that state wherein we were created, as the
best for us, since the estate wherein God created us was
certainly the best. It is inconceivably better to be a righteous
man than to be a man.
(7.) Seek it; you will never repent your labour, because it is
necessary. Necessity makes us contend with the greatest
difficulties; men will do more at a pinch than they can do at
other times, when no necessity is upon them. Never did any repent
of it, never any will; it has been a comfort upon a deathbed to
all that had it: it never was any man's sorrow. The universal
consent of all who have found it wrought should quicken our
desires and endeavours for it. Ask a renewed man whether ever it
troubled him that he was regenerate? whether he would be without
that state rather than undergo the same pains again? Would not
his answer be, No, not for all the world? When the blessed
apostle Paul considered his late regeneration, he expresses it
with some regret, 1 Cor. xv. 8, 'as one born out of due time.' It
implies a sorrow that he was not born sooner; and Austin cries
out, Sero te amavi, Domine, I have loved thee too late,
Lord. So does every renewed man repent that he was not regenerate
sooner. A regenerate man come under the yoke of Christ finds such
a pleasure in it, such a suitableness, such an advantage to his
interest, that he would not be free from those delightful
engagements, and the sweetness of that yoke, for all the delights
and commodities of the world.
Exhortation. 3. Seek it presently; let not a minute pass
without some ejaculation to God for the new birth; and when you
come home, fall upon your knees, end rise not till you find a
change of resolutions and dispositions. If you did well
understand the necessity of it, you would not be one hour without
begging it. You have heard the necessity of it now, are you sure
you shall ever hear the doctrine preached on again? Are you sure
you may not be past the hope as well as the happiness of the new
birth before mans days be run, if the present opportunity be
neglected? When God commanded Abraham to circumcise himself and
his family, it is said he did it that very day wherein God
commanded him, Gen. xvii. 23. Why should you not imitate Abraham
in the ready and speedy circumcision of the heart? Though God
does wait long, it cannot be thought he should always be courting
dead souls. It must be now; there is no hope of such a change
after death: 'The redemption of their soul ceases for ever,' Ps.
xlix. 8; no more under the offers of a redeeming Saviour, no more
under the motions of a renewing Spirit. Christ breaks the nations
like a potter's vessel, Ps. ii. 9. A vessel before it be burned
may be macerated in water, and formed anew; but when it has been
burned in the furnace, it cannot be changed. Well, if thou wilt
be new born this day, God will bless the memory of this day, for
he will gain a son; Jesus Christ will by his blood put this day
in red letters in his calendar, for he will gain a brother; the
Spirit will rejoice, for he will gain a temple; angels will
rejoice, for they will gain a fellow-servant; you will gain a
fitness for an everlasting inheritance. Let me, therefore, press
young men and women to this necessary and important concern; I
know not when I may have so fit an opportunity or subject for it.
It is not said, except an old man be born again, but except a man;
therefore be not careless, as if you were not concerned in it,
nor put it off to a longer day from the probability of the length
of your life in a course of nature. Consider,
1. An early regeneration makes for God's honour.
(1.) In preventing much sin. How ripe are young ones, yea,
even children when they are scarce green in age, as though
iniquity had been their tutor in the womb! Youthful blood is the
devil's tinder. Job knew it; therefore when his sons feasted he
sacrificed, chap. i. 5. He was jealous of their inbred
corruption, from the sense of the sins of his own youth, which we
find him complaining of, Job xiii. 26; therefore he feared his
children, having the same temptations, might fall into the same
transgressions. Sow, by an early regeneration, many diseases of
the soul are prevented, as well as the great crack of nature
cured, as the distempers of the body are prevented by altering
the habit of it in the spring. Though by a late regeneration,
that of an old man, the soul is fitted for heaven, yet it will be
grievous to him to think that his former dishonouring of God in
his natural state was not prevented. It is otherwise with the
early regenerate; they cannot complain, as Paul did, Oh, how have
I persecuted the church of God! how have I breathed out
threatenings against Christ and his people! how have I wallowed
in all kind of sin! They have indeed as much reason to complain
of the stock of the old nature within them, but not of so many
bitter fruits of the flesh as others. How does the devil hang the
wing when he is deprived of an active servant! As nothing makes
heaven so glad, so nothing makes hell so sad, as to be frustrated
of the full crop of sin it expected from such an instrument.
(2.) In doing much service for God. Young men are usually of
active spirits and vigorous affections, whereas age does freeze
all youthful warmth. Such, like Peter, can 'gird themselves, and
go whither they please,' John xxi. 18, and travel about for God;
but age damps the spirits. We are not so fit for service when the
vigour of our youth is spent. And would you be saved, and God
have no more glory from you? Now what parts, or strength, or
mettle, a young man have, grace will bias, put into a right
channel, and direct to an useful end. The early regenerate will
be eminent in piety; for in a course of nature, they have a
longer time to grow in. Their faith and love, by a larger
exercise, will be the stronger; and the stronger the grace the
more glory will be brought to God, Rom. iv. 20. Abraham, it is
said, was 'strong in faith, giving glory to God.' He that rises
betimes in the morning, will do more work than he that lies in
bed till noon, or loiters till the sun declines.
(3.) In manifesting the power of the grace of God. An early
regeneration is the great ornament of the gospel. It evidences
the dignity and strength of habitual grace, in quenching youthful
heats and powerful temptations, in making such to deny
themselves, and prefer God's precepts before their own pleasures.
It magnifies grace, when the devil is beat upon his own dunghill,
where he had so great an interest, by reason of the corruptions
such are subject to. What an eulogy is it to the beauty and power
of grace, to see a young flourishing plant in God's garden! It
shows the power of his grace upon such to salvation, that they
are strong in the power of the might of God, to wrestle against
principalities and powers, as well as against flesh and blood. It
manifests the power of God's grace in the work of faith, and that
there is a spirit of power residing in them.
2. As an early regeneration makes for God's honour, so it
makes for your own interest.
(1.) Your new birth will be the gentler. The work of
conscience will be more kindly, without the horrors they have,
who have lain many years soaking in the old nature. More of hell
must be flashed in an old sinner's face, to awaken him from his
dead sleep. Paul, who had sinned some years with an high hand,
was struck to the earth. Christ, as it were, took him by the
throat, and shook him: Acts ix. 6, 'He trembling, and astonished,
said,' &c. There will be more amazing aggravations of sin to
rack the conscience, and consequently more anguish. Putrefied
wounds require more lancing; and therefore are more painful in
the cure than those which are but newly made. The more we are
alienated from the life of God, the harder it will be to return
to live that life again. The further a man is gone out of his
road, the longer he must travel to come in again, and the more
pains he must take in running or riding, than he that wandered
but a little from it.
(2.) Your new birth will be the more grateful to God. God
loves the first fruits. He would not have the gleanings, but the
first crop of everything under the law, which was laid upon the
altar as God's portion. The kindness of the youth is most
respected by God. He cherished Israel because they were 'the
first fruits of his increase,' Jer. ii. 2, 3. 'I remember the
kindness of thy youth, the love of thy espousals, when thou went
after me in the wilderness,' under many discouragements. God
writes down the time of the new birth, and it runs in his mind a
long time after. 'Epenetus, the first fruits of Achaia,' is
saluted by Paul, just after the salutation of the whole church,
with the title of well-beloved: Rom. xvi. 5, 'Greet the
church that is in their house, salute my well-beloved Epenetus,
who is the [first] fruits of Achaia unto Christ.' And surely more
beloved by the Lord than by the servant. God has most affection
for such as come in at the first sound of the gospel. Daniel was
a young man, yet the holiest man of his age; and God has so great
an affection to him that he joins him with Noah, that famous
preacher of righteousness, and Job, that mirror of
patience,—Ezek. xiv. 14, 'Though these three men, Noah,
Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should but deliver their own
souls by their righteousness,'—as those that had the
greatest power with him, to keep off judgments from the place
where they were.
(3.) Comfort will be the greater by an early new birth. What a
long time will such an one have to enjoy the comforts of the
Spirit! whereas those that are renewed later, have fewer
comforts, because their grieving the Spirit has been the longer.
You will be always ready, and fit for the kingdom of God, let God
call when he will. Your foretastes of heaven greater, and much
acquaintance with the life of it, before you arrive at the place
of full enjoyment. John, the youngest disciple, lay in Christ's
bosom; he had afterwards the most spiritual illuminations, and
the discoveries of the state of the church in after days revealed
to him. When our sluggishness makes God wait for our return, his
justice will make us wait long for his comforts. The earlier your
new birth, the sweeter will be your death, as being more stored
with experiences of God's grace, and goodness, and truth,
wherewith to answer all the devil's affrighting charges in your
departing hence. No doubt can arise, but there will be a treasure
of experience whence to draw an answer. The longer acquaintance
you have with God, and the longer likeness to him in your
natures, the more joyful will be your passage to him, and the
more confidence against the fear of death.
(4.) The earlier your new birth, the sincerer and stronger
will be your grace. To row against the strong stream and tide of
nature, temptations of a youthful age, the inconstancy and
lightness of your humour, and the inconsiderateness of your
temper, are arguments of sincerity. To seek God, when a man has
fair and frequent invitations to sin, is not so liable to
suspicion, as when a man can live no longer. The latter proceeds
rather from a fear of wrath than love to their Creator, or
affection to his glory. Grace will be the stronger, the more full
of juice. He that is new-born betimes, when he is young, will
grow to a greater stature and a mighty strength in his age; for
it is not with grace as it is with our bodies, the older the
weaker; but as the outward man decays, the inward man grows, and
is renewed day by day, 2 Cor. iv. 16. A young plant in the house
of God will be fat and flourishing, and full of fruit in old age,
Ps. xcii. 18, 14. The weakness of the body in such is the
youthfulness of grace.
(5.) The earlier the new birth, the weightier will be your
glory in the kingdom of God. God rewards according to our works:
Rev. ii. 23, 'I will give to every one of you according to your
works.' Not only to the wicked, the children of the woman
Jezebel, according to their works, but to them whose charity,
service, faith, patience, he knew, ver. 19. The longer you are
without a new life, a vital principle, the fewer will your works
be, and the shorter your wages. Though God in regeneration works
as a sovereign, and has mercy on whom he will have mercy, yet, in
rewarding, he acts as a righteous judge, according to the rules
of justice: 2 Tim. iv. 8, 'The crown which the Lord, the
righteous Judge, shall give me;' and so does proportion the glory
to every man's service. Young ones regenerate, that bear head
against the temptations of their violent nature, shall have
crowns get with more jewels. They shall not only have an
entrance, but 'an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,' 2 Peter i. 11. They shall
enter into the port with a full gale. The more violent storms
they bear up against, the brighter will be their glory. For if he
that endures temptation, but one temptation, shall have a crown,
by proportion, he that endures many shall have a greater: James
i. 12, 'Blessed is the man that endures temptation; for when he
is tried, he shall have a crown of life.' How comfortable will it
be to feel the weight of your crown and the richness of your
robes, according to your years of service. If there be any sorrow
in heaven, it is because they were not sooner new-born, that they
might more have glorified God on earth, who bestows so much
honour upon them in heaven. If any of you were sure to be
regenerate after you had spent so many years after the course of
the world and fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, yet how great
would your loss be, both of the comforts of the Spirit in this
life, and of degrees of glory in the other!
3. Deferring the seeking after this new birth till more years
grow upon you is a mighty folly. It is a matter of the highest
concern, the greatest necessity, in comparison of which all other
things are but toys and superfluities. Is it not folly to prefer
superfluous things before necessary? Is it not a madness for a
man to be mending the mud-wall about his garden, and neglect to
quench the fire which has got hold of his house? You are poisoned
in your nature, you have plague-spots upon your hearts. Would it
not be ridiculous for a man that has drunk poison, and spilt some
upon his clothes, to be more careful to have the stains fetched
out of his garments than the poison out of his stomach? You are
careful about the concerns of the body and flesh, oh be not such
fools as to let the poison within get the greater head, and the
plague continue in the heart.
Folly it is,
(1.) Because of the uncertainty of life. You are not lords and
keepers of your own times, they are in God's hands: Ps. xxxi. 15
'My times are in thy hands.' What if he should fling that time
out of his hand tomorrow, what would your condition be? Those
that are in a dead state now, as they are here, if judgment find
them so, are irrecoverable. Because thou art a child of wrath, if
he take thee thus away with his stroke, as Job speaks, chap.
xxxvi. 18, then a 'great ransom cannot deliver thee.' Hell
followed death close at the back, Rev. vi. 8. Shall sin reign in
a body? That is base. But in a mortal body, a body
that may drop into the grave every hour? That is folly in the
highest degree. It is the apostle's exhortation: Rom. vi. 12,
'Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies.' Many a
candle has been put out before half burnt, how often has a clear
sun in the morning been overcast before noon! Were none of you
the last week at the funeral of some strong and vigorous person?
Perhaps there is no more time left you than just what will serve
for to seek this new birth. God seizes upon some suddenly, that
they have not time so much as to cry out what ails them: Job
xxxvi. 13,14, 'They cry not when he binds them. They die in
youth, and their life is among the unclean.' It is better to be
new-born many years too soon (if it can be supposed to be too
soon), than to defer it one minute too late. He that defers the
new birth today, may not have a morrow to be new born in. And to
be surprised by death before you are new born, better for you,
you had never been born at all.
(2.) It is folly, because if you neglect the present time,
though you may live, yet your return to God by a new birth may be
very uncertain. There is such a thing as a day of grace, shorter
than the days of a man's life: Luke xix. 42, 'The things of their
peace' were then 'hid from their eyes,' though their destruction
was deferred forty years. There is such a resolve in heaven
sometimes, that 'the Spirit shall strive no longer' with this or
that man: Gen. vi. 3, 'My Spirit shall not always strive with
man,' or 'in man,' with this or that man; 'for that he also is
flesh.' It is a threatening to those in the church, in opposition
to the profane world, ver. 2. The church began then to be
corrupted. My Spirit shall not strive with them; though they make
a profession of me, and attend upon me in worship, yet they are
flesh, degenerated into mere flesh, and flesh they shall be. And
sometimes it is confirmed by a solemn oath. Rev. x. 5, 6, The
angel swears in a most solemn manner, 'by him that lives for
ever, who created heaven and earth' &c., 'that there should
be time no longer;' that is, no time of repentance, as appears if
you refer it to Rev. ix. 20, 21. It is not therefore without
great reason that the apostle does double both the notes of
attention, behold, and the time too, now, now, when
he exhorts them not to receive the grace of God in vain; that is,
sit under the gospel administration to no purpose, without having
a gospel impression and signature upon their hearts: 'Behold,
now is the accepted time; behold, now is the
day of salvation,' 2 Cor. vi. 2.
4. As it is a folly to neglect it; so if it be not presently
sought, and endeavoured for, the more difficult it will be every
day to attain it.
(1.) In regard of the increase of moral indisposition and
unfitness. It is true indeed there is in every man a moral
indisposition to a spiritual renovation, but the indisposition is
greater when the habits of sin are more than ordinarily
strengthened. The more the soul is frozen, the harder it will be
to melt. A body dead some few hours is a subject more capable of
having life breathed into it than when it is putrefied and partly
mouldered to dust. A young tree may more easily be taken up and
transplanted than a strong old oak, which has spread its roots
deep into the earth. The more rooted the habit of sin, the harder
the alteration of the soul. Every sin in an unregenerate man is
an adding a new stone to the former heap upon the grave to hinder
his resurrection. It is a fetter and bond—Acts viii. 23,
'bond of iniquity'—and the more new chains are put upon
thee, the more unable wilt thou be to stir. The habits of sin
will become more connatural to the soul, and fortify themselves
with new recruits.
(2.) In regard of the industry of the devil. If you remain in
a state of nature till you are old, that devil which blinds you
now will have increased your blindness by that time; he will
bestir himself in your age, that he may not lose that which he
has possessed so long. It is a shame for Satan, as well as for a
man, deficere in ultimo actu. He that struck the first
fatal blow to us, and occasioned this degenerate nature, will not
want watchfulness and care to strengthen it in you. He will be
diligent to keep up his own work; the longer his possession, the
more difficult his departure. Judas was a devil in our Saviour's
judgment all his time—John vi. 70, 'One of you is a devil,'
—but when he had withstood the force of our Saviour's
discourses, and nourished his covetousness against his Master's
frequent conviction, the devil 'entered into his heart,' John
xiii. 27. Perhaps there had been before some strugglings of
natural conscience in Judas, as there may be in some of you; but
when he had, against the sight of our Saviour's miracles, the
hearing of his sermons, the checks of his own conscience,
continued in a natural state, Satan enters into him in a more
peculiar manner, in a way of more special efficacy; and, by an
uncontrollable power, breaks the bridle of conscience, which had
held him in so long, and runs furiously with him to what
wickedness he pleased. Satan reigned in him before; but as the
regenerate, being by degrees filled with spiritual gifts, and
having additions of grace, are said to be 'filled with the
Spirit,' so natural men, as they increase in sin by degrees, are
said to have a new entrance of Satan into them, because there is
an increase of his efficacy in them, and power over them, binding
them in stronger chains and fetters of iron.
(3.) In regard of spiritual judgments, which will make it
impossible. Such judgments upon men that sit under the gospel,
and admit not the influence of it, are more frequent than is
usually imagined, though they are not so visible. Open sins God
punishes many times by visible judgments, but wilful unregeneracy
by spiritual. Though a man may sit under the same means of grace
which God does bless to regenerate others, they may be an
accidental means to harden him: 'The miry places shall not he
healed, but be given to salt,' as it is Ezek. xlvii. 47, when
others shall grow like trees on both sides the river, and bear a
never-fading leaf. If once your neglects and provocations put God
to his oath, and make him swear, as he once did, that you shall
not enter into his rest, Heb. iii. 11, his oath will be
irreversible, he will blow up heaven and earth before he will
break it. And that it may not be evaded that this was an oath
against the Israelites, it is intimated by the apostle that even
in the times of the gospel this oath is of force, ver. 12. He
from thence exhorts them at that time to take heed of 'an evil
heart of unbelief.' What need of this exhortation to them, if
this oath did only concern the Israelites murmuring in the
wilderness, and were not valid against unbelievers and
unregenerate men in the time of the gospel? It is a terrible
place that in Isa. vi. 9, 'Make the heart of this people fat, and
make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with
their eyes, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be
healed;' which dreadful place is no less than six times quoted in
the New Testament, as though it belonged only to them that sit
under evangelical light with a wilful unregeneracy. Certainly as
the mercies of the gospel are most spiritual, so the judgments
inflicted upon the neglecters of it are the most spiritual
judgments. Then a man is made the centre of divine fury, and his
heart sealed up from any seizure by sanctifying grace: Ezek.
xxiv. 13, 'Because I have purged thee,' that is, offered thee
purging grace, 'and thou was not purged, thou shalt not be purged
from thy filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury to rest
upon thee.' When God passes such a secret sentence, if all the
men in the world, and all the angels in heaven, should, with
their most affectionate strains of reason, attempt the persuading
of you, they were not able to open an heart which God has
judicially locked up and sealed. It is observed by some, that the
work of the gospel, for conversion, is usually dose in those
places where it comes, in the space of seven years, as to those
who have sat under it so long; and they ground it upon Dan. ix.
27, 'And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week,'
that is, one week of years. And that our Saviour preached three
years and an half among the Jews, and the apostles three years
and an half or thereabouts before the Jews were discovenanted. I
will not affirm it positively, but offer it as worthy
consideration to those that have sat under the gospel more than
seven years without any renewing work on their souls.
Well then, let me beseech you, resolve upon this work
presently. We are not to bid a poor man 'go away, and come again
tomorrow,' Prov. iii. 27, 28; and shall we bid the Spirit,
knocking at our hearts in the gospel, go away, and come again
another time? Our blessed Saviour did not defer his death for us
till he was old, and shall not we live to him till we are old? As
his death is an argument used by the apostle, to move us to live
to him, 2 Cor. v. 14, 15, so the time of his death should be an
argument to us to live to him betimes. How many has this foolish tomorrow
deceived! and many have perished today before the dawning
of tomorrow. Defer it not therefore a night longer; reflect upon
yourselves, and say, Have I lived so long, pleased with my old
nature? O Lord, what had become of me without thy wonderful
patience? Let your motion be as the lightning, as the prophet
Ezekiel speaks of the motion of four beasts, chap. i. 14. God may
make up the match between himself and you before midnight: there
was less time in God's working upon the jailer.
Quest. What shall we do to get this new birth?
Answer 1. Begin with prayer; seek it from that Saviour that
first made so plain a declaration of it. 'A man cannot receive
anything, unless it be given him from heaven,' John iii. 27. Then
from heaven beg it; let God hear of you as soon as ever you come
home. God usually lets in renewing grace at the same gate at
which honest prayer goes out. Prayer is a compliance with God's
grace; he never refuses it to them that heartily desire it. Go
therefore to God, give him no rest; if you do so, it may not be
long before you will hear that joyful word drop from his gracious
lips: 'My grace will be sufficient for you,' sufficient to renew
you, sufficient to cure you. Let the fervency of your prayers be
proportioned according to the necessity of the thing, and the
greatness of your misery without it. Plead, therefore, with God
for it; Lord, is it not better to make me thy friend than to let
me continue thy enemy? Is it not more thy glory to raise a soul
from sin than a Lazarus from the grave? Thy power and mercy are
more illustrious in turning a dry stock into a fruitful and
flourishing tree. Overcome, therefore, my base nature by thy
merciful power; change me from a venomous to a dove-like nature.
Oh how fain would I glorify thee, by answering the end of my
creation! Glorify thyself by new creating my heart, that I may
glorify thee in a newness of life. I cannot get a new heart by my
own strength; but it is a work not too hard for thy power, and
suitable to thy promise. Plead the promise: Ezek. xi. 19, 'I will
take the stony heart out of their flesh, and I will give them an
heart of flesh;' and Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 'a new heart will I give
you, and a new spirit will I put within you;' but he 'will be
inquired of, to do it for them,' ver. 37. Breathe and aspire
after it; beg for it as earnestly as you would in extreme hunger
for food for the satisfaction of your natural appetite; God will
not deny it for such as breathe after it, Mat. v. 6, Hunger and
thirst after righteousness, and you shall be filled; beg the
operation of the Spirit. Our Saviour provided the plaster, but
left the Spirit to apply it; he provided the colours, his blood,
to draw his image, but none but the Spirit can lay them on. Ask
therefore the Spirit of the Father in the name of Christ; the
Father sends him into the world, and sends him into the heart,
but in the name of Christ. It is called a holy Spirit, because
without it there can be no holy nature.
2. Be deeply sensible of the corruption of nature. The more we
are sensible of our inherent depravation, the more we shall
breathe after a real change. Can he ever imagine the necessity of
a cure, who understands not the greatness of his disease? Be
fully convinced, as Paul was, that in you, that is, 'in your
flesh, dwells no good thing,' Rom. vii. 18. I know; I am
experimentally sensible of it. Did we but truly see the
defilement of our nature, and the monstrous alteration of it from
that of our creation, as we can the deformity of some monster in
the world, we should loathe ourselves, we should fly, if we
could, from our own nature, and send forth nothing but groans for
a deliverance from the body of death, and have no rest till we
were stripped of so abominable a frame. Let us, therefore, turn
in upon ourselves, take a view of our condition, see if there be
any suitableness between our depraved natures, and the glory of
another world. There is not, unless we conceit heaven a place
filled only with carnal pleasures. But reason will tell us the
contrary, and a carnal soul can never, in that state, be fit for
a spiritual glory.
3. View often the perfection of the law of God. This will make
us sensible of the contrariety of our nature to God's holiness,
and consequently make us look about for a remedy. See whether
your nature answers the exactness of the law; for although you
were alive without the law, yet, when the commandment and your
hearts come to look upon one another, you will see sin in its
life and power, and all the conceits of your own excellency will
die: Rom. vii. 9, 'For I was alive without the law once, but when
the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.' Paul thought
himself a righteous person, till he came to measure himself by
the exact and spiritual image of the law. He had been instructed
in the literal knowledge of the law, for he was brought up a
Pharisee; his head and the law were acquainted, and then he
thought himself a living person; but when his heart and the law
came to be acquainted, then he found himself dead, and his high
opinion of himself fell to the ground. Consider, then, how the
law requires a perfect righteousness, an inward principle. All
duties it commands are not only to be done materially, but
formally; for they are so commanded in such a manner, from such a
principle, to such an end. Then reflect, have I such a
righteousness? can I answer the law? do I come up to the measures
of it in any one action? Surely I do not. Then consider further,
Does not this law stand? will God lay it in the dust? has he
thrown it out of doors? Surely it is holy, just, and good, and
therefore a standing rule. I must have a principle suitable to
that which Jesus Christ came not to destroy, but establish. How
shall I do it with this corrupt nature, wherein I do not one
action that does sincerely respect it, as the law of God, that
is, accompanied with a delight in it? Certainly this temper, so
contrary to the law, must be changed. I must have an inner man to
delight in this law, a principle that must in some measure,
though imperfectly, suit it. This orderly consideration would put
you upon the seeking out for such a righteousness as may in part
answer it.
4. Observe the motions of the Spirit. There is an assisting
work of the Spirit, and an informing work. There is not a man but
has, or once had, the strivings of this Spirit with him. There
are the knockings of Christ by his Spirit at the door; there are
calls, 'Zacchaeus, come down; this day is salvation come to thy
house.' Did you never hear a voice from heaven, saying, 'Come to
me that you may have life'? Did you never hear a groan from
heaven, 'When shall it once be?' Did you never see a tear
trickling down the cheek of Christ, as when he wept over
Jerusalem? Did you never hear a sigh of a grieved Spirit waiting
upon you? Can you see, and hear, and hear again, yet no
compliance, when that is of absolute necessity you are exhorted
to? Smother not these motions; answer them with suitable
affections. If Christ looks upon you, as he did upon Peter, think
of what you are, and weep, Mark xiv. 72. If the Spirit calls,
answer presently, 'Thy face, Lord, will I seek.' The neglect of
the time of the Spirit's breathing is the cause of a continuance
in unregeneracy Repel not those sweet motions that strike upon
your hearts.
5. Attend diligently upon all means of grace. They are the
pipes through which the Spirit breathes, the lungs of the Spirit,
the instruments whereby our natures are altered: 'Faith comes by
hearing.' It is by the hearing of faith that the Spirit is
ministered: Gal. iii. 5, 'He therefore that ministers to you the
Spirit, does he it by the works of the law, or the hearing of
faith?' None can expect it who will not use the means to have it,
no more than men can expect to live without eating and drinking.
Would we be warm? we must approach to the fire. Would we be
clean? we must wash in the water. Would we be renewed? we must
attend upon the breathings of the Spirit in the institutions of
God. This we may do, though we cannot renew ourselves; we may
read the word as well as a piece of news; we may hear the word,
and attend to it, as well as to any worldly concern; we may
meditate upon it, and consider it, as well as a story. This we
have power to do, and it is by the word that this great work is
done. By a powerful word Christ called Lazarus out of the grace,
and by his word spoken by his Spirit, his great deputy he sent
after him, he calls us out of our state of death. Beg of the
Spirit to breathe upon you before you come to attend upon his
institutions. We profit little by the Word, and our old nature
attends us, because we take no notice of the Spirit of God, who
is appointed the principal officer in this business. It is he
that is to guide us into truth, John xvi. 13. Though men may
speak truth to us, yet the Spirit can only guide the truth into
our hearts, and guide us into the heart, and bowels, and inwards
of truth, to taste the marrow of it.
6. I might add, Study the gospel. Look upon Jesus Christ in
that glass; this transforms us into his image; as the beholding
the light of the sun in a glass, paints an image of that light in
our faces; so does the beholding Christ in the gospel: 2 Cor.
iii. 18, 'But ye all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the
glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.' The gospel
is the cause of our first change, and of our growth in it, 'from
glory to glory,' but by the Spirit of God in the gospel, 'as by
the Spirit of the Lord.' Study the promises of the gospel, and
the end of the blood of Christ, which was to purge our conscience
from dead works. It is by believing the promises of pardon in the
blood of Christ that 'the conscience is purged from dead works,'
Heb. ix. 14.