The Irreducible Minimum

LOVE IS the dominant characteristic of God, and love is outgoing. God's love reaches out to bestow its warmth upon the whole of His creation.

But love desires response, and God yearns for a willing return of His love from all His creatures. Sadly, He has not received that response from much of mankind due to the fact that our race has been in rebellion against its Creator.

God has been trying to bring humanity back into the warm circle of His love. But He has been able to do so for only a very few, relatively. Many have not been interested. And some who have been interested have never entered into the circle, because they were not willing to meet the conditions God requires.

He has made His requirements as few and easy as possible. But requirements there must be. Otherwise sin, which must be excluded at all costs (Christ gave His all that sin might be excluded, and yet mankind be saved), would be preserved and contaminate heaven. That cannot be!

So God says to you and me, "I want above anything else to have you in My kingdom. I gave My Son that you might be there. But the very stability, the preservation, of My kingdom demands that I make certain minimum requirements. This is the way it has to be. Please meet those requirements! I want you to be with Me!"

The irreducible minimum that God must require is expressed in the words of Jesus to the Pharisee, Nicodemus: "Jesus . . . said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).

These words are as unequivocal, as straightforward, as it is possible for words to be. Uttered as they were in love, nevertheless they made it plain that there is no possibility of receiving eternal life, of having a part in the heavenly kingdom to come, except as one experiences what is termed the new birth.

There is but one major question one needs to ask in order that he may fully understand what these words of Jesus mean: What is this experience of the new birth without which no man shall see heaven?

The Bible makes it vividly clear, that the new birth means a radical change in the life: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17). "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh" (Eze. 36:26).

The fact that the newborn person is described as "a new creature," or creation, for which "all things have be come new," who has "set . . . [his] feet upon the new path of life" (Rom. 6:4, N.E.B.),* clearly indicates a fundamental, basic change. It is not a grafting of new shoots into the old tree. It is a new and different kind of tree.

Not a Modified or Rearranged Life

It is not a modified life in which the sinner stops drinking and smoking, in which he tries a bit harder to control his temper, appetite, and entertainment habits. It is not merely an altered life in which one day in seven is now spent differently from before, in which newly adopted beliefs cause him to change friends and the use of time.

It is not merely a rearranged life in which he shifts priorities; in which, for example, he moves sports or money, jobs or dress, entertainment or eating, and so on, from a high place of priority to a lower place.

"The Christian's life is not a modification or improvement of the old, but a transformation of nature. There is a death to self and sin, and a new life altogether. This change can be brought about only by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit."—The Desire of Ages, p. 172.

It is an experience that all, without exception, must have who are to be recognized as members of the family of God.

What are the signs by which we may know whether we are born again? The Bible supplies many. For example, the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-12) relate to men and women who have had the experience. Galatians 5 contrasts the evil works and attitudes of the unregenerate (verses 19-21) with the fruit of the Spirit as seen in the regenerate (verses 22, 23).

Nine Signs of Regeneration

I suggest nine manifestations of the new-birth experience:

A sense of freedom: peace in the soul. The individual, especially the professed Christian who is not truly born again, who is still wrestling with unwanted sins and is haunted by guilt, cannot have peace. Beset by doubts, uncertain as to his status with God, he is often sad.

But with the new-birth experience, all that is changed. "Therefore being justified by faith [and thus pardoned], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1).

An experience of love for others. "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death" (1 John 3:14, N.A.S.B.).^t This Christian love is not sentimental feeling or even necessarily that emotion found among members of a family. It is an attitude of regard, a reasoned concern for the interests of others, a deliberate decision to further others' welfare as needed.

This attitude is maintained for the unintelligent, the eccentric, the unlovable, the down-and-outer, for an enemy, as well as for a friend. It is a principle that prompts one, in attitude and action, to put the welfare of others before his own.

A turning of mind and heart from the world. The unregenerate person is naturally of the world. His main interests are normally centered there, and cannot be expected to be otherwise. He is job-centered, or money-centered, entertainment-centered, position-centered, or clothes-centered, maybe even work for the Lord-centered.

The born-again person will not be enthusiastic in talking about sports or clothes, cars or travel but embarrassed and silent when the subject of Jesus and His love comes up.

Those who give themselves to Christ "are not of the world" (John 17:14).

Victory where before was defeat. The person seeking to overcome in his own strength, or mainly in his own strength, cannot be victorious. The reason is that it is a case of self trying to cast out self, which is impossible.

The person who does not have Jesus dwelling within cannot be victorious. Thus, only the born-again person can have sustained victories over his sins. Only the person who can apply to him self Paul's words, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," can overcome sin. He can then say, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Gal. 2:20; Phil. 4:13).

This does not by any means suggest that there will not be terrible struggles in the Christian's life sometimes. The mortification of self is a daily, even momentary, work. But because the mind is now changed, and the desires, inclinations, motives, and will of the born-again person are Christ directed, he can gain the victory.

A frequent, instinctive inclination to pray. This desire comes as a deepdown yearning to commune with the Saviour, as the lover has a strong desire to be with the person who is the object of his affections. This urge is poetically expressed by the psalmist: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God" (Ps. 42:1, 2).

An interest in and turning to God's Word. "Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart," wrote Jeremiah (Jer. 15:16). To the born-again person—"the Word of God, which was dull and uninteresting, is now chosen as his study, the man of his counsel. It is as a letter written to him from God, bearing the inscription of the Eternal. His thoughts, his words, and his deeds are brought to this rule and tested. He trembles at the commands and threatenings which it contains, while he firmly grasps its promises and strengthens his soul by appropriating them to himself."—The Faith I Live By, p. 139.

A growing sensitivity to sin. "While we were spiritually dead in our disobedience he [God] brought us to life with Christ" (Eph. 2:5, T.E.V.).‡

As many can testify, the question "What's wrong with it?" is often solved for the questioner when the Holy Spirit is able to awaken the slumbering conscience and help us see what is indeed wrong with it.

It is like a beam of sunlight shining through a tiny hole in a closed blind into a darkened room. In the beam are seen hundreds of dust motes floating in the air that were not seen before. So it is that when the Sun of Righteousness shines in our lives we see sins we were not aware of before.

An attitude of willing obedience to God. The exclamation, "I delight to do thy will, O my God" (Ps. 40:8) can be the words of the born-again person only (cf. Jer. 31:33). The unregenerate heart "is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:7). In the new-birth experience the heart is brought into harmony with God and love is manifested in obedience.

This attitude of obedience will be not only toward those requirements that are easy and convenient but also to ward those that demand self-denial and self-sacrifice.

An impulse to witness to others. Jesus' final word to His disciples was the promise of the Holy Spirit. When He should be received, then, said Jesus, "you shall be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8, R.S.V.). David, in beseeching God for forgiveness and restoration to His favor —to the "joy of thy salvation"—continued, "Then I will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will return to thee" (Ps. 51:12, 13, R.S.V.).

As soon as a person is really converted there springs up in his heart an earnest desire to go and tell friends and neighbors what Christ has come to mean to him.

In his deeply spiritual book God's Way of Holiness, Horatius Bonar be gins one chapter thus:

"Before I can live a Christian life, I must be a Christian man. Am I such? I ought to know this. Do I know it, and in knowing it, know whose I am, and whom I serve? Or is my title to the name still questionable, still a matter of anxious debate and search?

"If I am to live as a son of God, I must be a son, and I must know it; otherwise my life will be an artificial imitation, a piece of barren mechanism, performing certain excellent movements, but destitute of vital heat and force. Here many fail. They try to live like sons, in order to make themselves sons, forgetting God's simple plan for attaining sonship at once, 'As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God' (John 1:12)." —Page 57.

Sons and daughters have certain characteristics of their fathers. Do I have the characteristics of my heavenly Father?