Transformative Power of Being Born of the Spirit

To be born of the spirit means to be born again, to be born from above, to become a partaker of the divine nature. And what our Lord is telling that great man, that great teacher of the Jews, Nicodemus, at this point is that this is the thing that really differentiates the Christian message. [00:46:31]

The Christian is aware of this Inner Man within him. Nobody else is. The life of the man who's not a Christian is in one sense just of One Piece. He's just one man, and that's the same man whether you outward or inward. Indeed, the whole tragedy of the man who has not received this new life is that, as I say, he's not aware of this inner life. [04:57:36]

The moment a man becomes a Christian, a new man comes into being, an inner man, the spiritual man. Now, this is the man, of course, that is concerned about this knowledge of God. The Christianism, and again to use the language of the Apostle Paul in The Second Epistle to the Corinthians and in chapter 4, he says, though our outward man perish, the inward man is renewed day by day. [06:40:56]

The great characteristic of this man is that he desires this personal knowledge of God. As I said last Sunday, that's the thing he's most interested in, more interested than he is in religious duties, more interested than he is in theology, more interested than even in blessings. This is the chief end of Salvation. [07:36:16]

The Christian is a man who realizes that this is possible in this life, that the knowledge of God is not something postponed until the life after death. It starts here. It is possible in this life. I've quoted in times past one of the old Puritans of over 300 years ago who left this as his dying statement, something that he wanted to bequeath to all his relatives and all who knew him. [08:25:48]

This is something which is regarded by this new man as the highest privilege in his life, and it therefore becomes, of course, the chief object of his life. We all know what it is to desire to have more and more of the company of certain people, the desire to talk to people, mix with people who were in exalted and high positions and things like that. [09:59:44]

The god of the theologian may very well be a dead God. That's the whole danger of a purely intellectual approach. The god of the philosophers is certainly a dead God. He's an abstraction, the absolute, the ultimate. The very terms they use about him display the fact that they don't know the Living God. [11:05:52]

When he had this experience of the Living God, well, he's overwhelmed, and he knows that he's having the experience, the kind of experience that had been vouchsafed to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. He knew his Old Testament, and he knew how God had appeared to these men. God had appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and they knew they'd been in contact with the Living God. [12:46:48]

The moment he meets with his other, he forgets all about his goods and possessions and everything else. Nothing matters but this. All I'm trying to say is this: that one of the tests always of the possession of this life is that it does become the Supreme thing. It's bigger than everything else in our lives. [16:19:00]

This is something that God's people have gone on experiencing throughout the centuries, and it's not confined to any particular type. The psychologists will tell you, oh yes, of course, that's all right. We like to read about these things. There is that mystical type of person, but we're not all like that, you know. [17:17:36]

This man is a man, this inner man, this inward man, is one who finds in himself an increasing interest in the three blessed persons of the Holy Trinity in and of themselves and for their own sake. Now, I'm developing the point which I mentioned last Sunday morning when I said that this man is more concerned about this personal knowledge even than he is of receiving blessings. [20:15:00]

The man of God, the saint, likes to dwell upon and to meditate upon the very Glory of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He meditates about this. He thinks about him. He likes to think of him in his eternal and everlasting Glory with the father before time. He likes to read these descriptions of him that are given in the scriptures. [24:16:00]