Never Forget that Nothing is so Important as Your Soul

Posted on July 17, 2014 by bjdavisson33

Your soul is eternal. It will live forever. The world and all that it contains will pass away–firm, solid, beautiful, well-ordered as it is, the world will come to an end. “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (2 Peter 3:10). The works of statesmen, writers, painters, architects, are all short lived: your soul will outlive them all. The angel’s voice shall proclaim one day, that “There will be no more delay!” (Revelation 10:6). Try, I beg you, to realize the fact, that your soul is the one thing worth living for. It is the part of you which ought always be considered first. No place, no employment is good for you, which injures your soul. No friend, no companion deserves your confidence, who makes light of your soul’s concerns. The man who hurts you, your property, your character, only does you temporary harm. Your true enemy is the one who plots to damage your soul.

Think for a moment why you were born into the world. Not merely to eat and drink, and JC Ryleindulge the desires of the flesh, not merely to dress up your body, and follow its lusts wherever they may lead you, not merely to work, and sleep, and laugh, and talk, and enjoy yourselves, and think of nothing but time. No! you were meant for something higher and better than this. You were placed here to train for eternity. Your body was only intended to be a house for your immortal spirit. It is flying in the face of God’s purposes to do as many do–to make the soul a servant to the body, and not the body a servant to the soul.

Young men, God does not show favoritism or respects the honors bestowed by men. He rewards no man’s heritage, or wealth, or rank, or position. He does not see with man’s eyes. The poorest saint that ever died in a ghetto is nobler in His sight than the richest sinner that ever died in a palace. God does not look at riches, titles, education, beauty, or anything of the kind. There is only one thing that God does look at, and that is the immortal soul. He measures all men by one standard, one measure, one test, one criterion, and that is the state of their souls.

Do not forget this. Keep it in view, morning, noon, and night, the interests of your soul. Rise up each day desiring that your soul may excel, lie down each evening, inquiring of yourself whether you soul has really grown. Remember Zeuxis, the great painter of old. When men asked him why he labored so intensely, and took such extreme pains with every picture, his simple answer was, “I paint for eternity.” Do not be ashamed to be like him. Set your immortal soul before your mind’s eye, and when men ask you why you live as you do, answer them in his spirit, “I live for my soul.” Believe me, the day is fast coming when the soul will be the one thing men will think of, and the only question of importance will be this, “Is my soul lost or saved?”

J.C. Ryle  “Thoughts for Young Men”  See the entire article here.                                       1816 – 1900

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Sleepless Nights

Posted on July 13, 2014 by bjdavisson33

Have you had any sleepless nights lately? Do you struggle to lay peacefully in bed because something, or someone, is consuming your thoughts?

Maybe it’s a looming deadline and you’re putting all the pressure on yourself to make that big project a success. Maybe it’s a life-altering decision you need to make on behalf of your family and you just don’t know what option is best.Paul Tripp

Maybe it’s an act of betrayal and deceit and the good thing you had been working towards is now destroyed by the corruption of another. Maybe it’s news from your doctor about a new physical affliction that’s going to drastically impact your life.

We all struggle to sleep at night, and to be fair, life in a fallen world is harsh and unpredictable. There are many outside factors that make life difficult and provide reason for restless nights.

But I’m deeply persuaded that in the midst of trial, we often abandon our theology. We quit believing that the Bible has the answers for life and we try to take the reins. With the weight of the world now on our self-appointed shoulders, we struggle to get a good night of sleep.

GET A BETTER NIGHT OF SLEEP

When you’re facing the harsh and unpredictable realities of life in fallen world, what should you do? Here are four actions that find their roots in the Word of God, but it’s important to recognize that these actions are not one-time quick fixes. As long as you’re facing difficulty, you’ll need to continually preach the gospel to yourself as you fall asleep.

1. Accept the Confusion

If you haven’t recognized it already, you have very little control over your life. You didn’t choose where you would be born or how your parents would raise you. You didn’t choose the color of your skin, the language you spoke, or how wealthy your family was.

The reality is that you have a miniscule amount of control in gargantuan universe. Add to that the sin and brokenness you face at every turn, and life gets overwhelming.

If you believe a false gospel of self-sovereignty and personal control, you’ll be kept awake when life doesn’t go according to plan. The first step in falling asleep is to accept that you don’t have much reason to sleep peacefully!

2. Evict the Imposters

When the waves of pain and difficulty come crashing down, you need to seek shelter. Sadly, so many of us seek shelter in all the wrong places.

Some pick up a bottle of alcohol or painkillers to physically numb their bodies; others drown out the pain with television and food. Others yet take a credit card to purchase items they don’t need, in the hope that material things will provide comfort for their soul.

If you buy into the false gospel of earth-bound treasures, you won’t have many restful nights of sleep. Evict the imposters and invite the Messiah to commune with your soul once again.

3. Pursue the Disciplines

In the midst of trial, it’ll be very tempting to abandon the spiritual disciplines of your faith: prayer, fasting, meditation/memorization of Scripture, and attendance at worship services/small groups.

When you abandon these disciplines, whether you intentionally mean to or not, you’re saying, “I don’t need God or His church – I can make it on my own!” That’s never a good idea; your heart is corrupt, and you need help to see yourself and your situation with accuracy.

If you believe a false gospel of self-sustainment, you’ll struggle to wake up each morning with energy. You weren’t created to live independently, even in a sinless world. Live with God – His Spirit, His Word, and His body of believers.

4. Trust the Author

All these other actions – Accept, Evict, and Pursue – make no sense unless one thing is true: God is the good and wise author of your story:

  • Because God is the author of your story, you can accept the confusion and find rest, knowing that everything in the universe is managed with complete and specific authority.
  • Because God is the author of all that is good, you can evict the imposters and find comfort in communion with Him, even in the midst of physical trial.
  • Because God is the author of life, you can pursue the spiritual disciplines and find peace, knowing that God’s wisdom for your life is far better than pursuing it on your own.

You and I don’t have to crumble when we don’t understand; we don’t have to be paralyzed with fear because our plans have blown up in our face. We don’t have to dread what the next day will bring.

You and I can sleep because God is wise, loving, and powerful. He is in moment-by-moment control of every detail of our lives.

Paul Tripp  “Sleepless Nights”  July 8, 2014

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Trust Christ, Not Your Feelings

Posted on July 9, 2014 by bjdavisson33

Avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch on your feelings. Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central. Now I am never tired of repeating this because I find so frequently that this is a cause of stumbling. Feelings are never meant to take the first place, they are never meant to be central. If you put them there you are of necessity doomed to be unhappy, because you are not following the order that God himself has ordained. Feelings are always the result of something else, and how anyone who has ever lloyd-jones_martynread the Bible can fall into that particular error passes my comprehension. The Psalmist put it in the 34th Psalm. He says, ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good.’ You will never see until you have tasted; you will not know it, you will not feel it until you have tried it. ‘Taste and see’, it follows as the night the day. Seeing before tasting is impossible. That is something that is constantly emphasized everywhere in the Scriptures.

After all, what we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not emotional stimulus, it is not something primarily concerned to give us a joyful experience. It is primarily Truth, and Truth is addressed to the mind, God’s supreme gift to man; and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow. I must never ask myself in the first instance: What do I feel about this? The first question is, Do I believe it? Do I accept it, has it gripped me? Very well, that is what I regard as perhaps the most important rule of all, that we must not concentrate overmuch upon our feelings. Do not spend too much time feeling your own pulse taking your own spiritual temperature, do not spend too much time analyzing your feelings. This is the high road to morbidity. . .

Your business and mine is not to stir up our feelings, it is to believe. We are never told anywhere in Scripture that we are saved by our feelings; we are told that we are saved by believing. ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’ Never once are feelings put into the primary position. Now this is something we can do. I cannot make myself happy, but I can remind myself of my belief. I can exhort myself to believe. I can address my soul as the Psalmist did in Psalm 42: ‘Why art thou cast down O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me?  Hope thou’ … believe thou, trust thou.  This is the way.  And then our feelings will look after themselves.  Do not worry about them. Talk to yourself, and though the devil will suggest that because you do not feel, you are not a Christian, say:  ‘No, I do not feel anything, but whether I feel or not, I believe the Scriptures. I believe God’s Word is true and I will stay my soul on it.  I will believe in it come what may’.  Put belief in the first place, hold on to it.  Yes, J.C. Philpot was right at that point, the child of the light is sometimes found walking in darkness, but he goes on walking.  He does not sit down and commiserate with himself – that is the thing – the child of light walking in darkness.  He does not see the face of the Lord at this point, but he knows that He is there; so he goes on.

. . .Let me put it in this way: ‘Do you want to know supreme joy, do you want to experience a happiness that eludes description? There is only one thing to do, really seek Him, seek Him Himself, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. If you find that your feelings are depressed do not sit down and commiserate with yourself, do not try to work something up but — this is the simple essence of it — go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him.

If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find him there is no need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory, Who so loved you that He went to the Cross and bore the punishment and the shame of your sins and died for you.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones  “Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure” 1965.

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Preach the Gospel, If Necessary Use Words?

Posted on July 7, 2014 by bjdavisson33

One of the many issues in Christianity today is a lack of discernment.  We hear sermons, quotes, and read books that might sound nice initially, but when you hold them against Scripture they completely break down.  Here is a video pointing out exactly one of those instances.

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The Danger of Coasting

Posted on July 5, 2014 by bjdavisson33

I don’t know how much I’ve driven in the twenty years since I got my license, but I do know it’s a lot, what with all those drives down to the South to visit my family. Here is one Tim-Challiesthing that has never varied across the hundreds of thousands of miles: When I take my foot off the pedal, the car does not speed up. It doesn’t even maintain the same speed. Instead, from the very moment I take my foot off the accelerator, the car begins to slow. Allowing the car to coast is inviting the car to stop. It may take some time, but left on its own, it will stop eventually. It is inevitable.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because I see in my own life a tendency to coast—to coast in my relationships, to coast in my pursuit of godliness, to coast in my pursuit of God himself. And here are some things I’ve observed:

I do not coast toward godliness, but selfishness.

I do not coast toward self-control, but rashness.

I do not coast toward a love for others, but agitation.

I do not coast toward patience, but irritability.

I do not coast toward purity, but lust.

I do not coast toward self-denial, but self-obsession.

I do not coast toward the gospel, but self-sufficiency.

In short, I do not coast toward Christ, but toward self. When I stop caring, when I stop expending effort, when I allow myself to coast, I inevitably coast away from God and godliness. And this is exactly why I am so deeply dependent upon those ordinary means of grace, those oh-so-ordinary ways of growing in godliness—Scripture and prayer, preaching and fellowship, worship and sacrament. The moment those sweet means no longer appeal is the moment I begin to slow.

Tim Challies  July 02, 2014                                                                                                           see more at challies.com

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The true secret of spiritual prosperity!

Posted on June 30, 2014 by bjdavisson33

In Christ alone, there is a full supply of all that we require for the needs of our souls. Of ourselves we are all poor, empty creatures . . .
empty of righteousness and peace, JC Ryle
empty of strength and comfort,
empty of courage and patience,
empty of power to persevere in the way of holiness,
or make progress in this evil world.

It is in Christ alone, that all these things are to be found–grace, peace, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. It is just in proportion as we live upon Him, that we are strong Christians.

It is only when self is nothing and Christ is all our confidence–that are we armed for the battle of life, and shall overcome. Only then are we prepared for the journey of life, and shall move forward.

To live on Christ,
to draw all from Christ,
to do all in the strength of Christ,
to be ever looking to Christ–
this is the true secret of spiritual prosperity!

J.C. Ryle  “Thoughts for Young Men”  See the entire article here.                                       1816 – 1900

 

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Evangelical Religion

Posted on June 22, 2014 by bjdavisson33

JC RyleIII. It only remains for me to say a few words on the last question I propose to consider:—“ What is it that makes much religion appear to us not Evangelical? ”

This is no doubt a delicate point, but a very serious and important one. I repeat here what I have remarked before. We do not say that men who are not professedly Evangelical ignore and disbelieve the leading doctrines of the Evangelical creed. We say nothing of the kind. But we do say confidently, that there are many ways in which the faith of Christ may be marred and spoiled, without being positively denied. And here we venture to think is the very reason that so much religion called Christian, is not truly Evangelical. The Gospel in fact is a most curiously and delicately compounded medicine, and a medicine that is very easily spoiled.

You may spoil the Gospel by substitution . You have only to withdraw from the eyes of the sinner the grand object which the Bible proposes to faith,—Jesus Christ; and to substitute another object in His place,—the Church, the Ministry, the Confessional, Baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, and the mischief is done. Substitute anything for Christ, and the Gospel is totally spoiled! Do this, either directly or indirectly, and your religion ceases to be Evangelical.

You may spoil the Gospel by addition . You have only to add to Christ, the grand object of faith, some other objects as equally worthy of honour, and the mischief is done. Add anything to Christ, and the Gospel ceases to be a pure Gospel! Do this, either directly or indirectly, and your religion ceases to be Evangelical.

You may spoil the Gospel by interposition . You have only to push something between Christ and the eye of the soul, to draw away the sinner’s attention from the Saviour, and the mischief is done. Interpose anything between man and Christ, and man will neglect Christ for the thing interposed! Do this, either directly or indirectly, and your religion ceases to be Evangelical.

You may spoil the Gospel by disproportion . You have only to attach an exaggerated importance to the secondary things of Christianity, and a diminished importance to the first things, and the mischief is done. Once alter the proportion of the parts of truth, and truth soon becomes downright error! Do this, either directly or indirectly, and your religion ceases to be Evangelical.

Lastly, but not least, you may completely spoil the Gospel by confused and contradictory directions . Complicated and obscure statements about faith, baptism, Church privileges, and the benefits of the Lord’s Supper, all jumbled together, and thrown down without order before hearers, make the Gospel no Gospel at all! Confused and disorderly statements of Christianity are almost as bad as no statement at all! Religion of this sort is not Evangelical.

J.C. Ryle  “Evangelical Religion”  1877                                                                                         see the full tract here.

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12 Questions to Ask Before You Watch ‘Game of Thrones’

Posted on June 20, 2014 by bjdavisson33

The closer I get to death and meeting Jesus personally face to face, and giving an account for my life and for the careless words that I have spoken (Matthew 12:36), the more sure I am of my resolve never intentionally to look at a television show or a movie or a website or a magazine where I know I will see photos or films of nudity. Never. That is my resolve. And the closer I get to death, the better I feel about that, and the more committed I become.

Frankly, I want to invite all Christians to join me in this pursuit of greater purity of heart and mind. In our day, when entertainment media is virtually the lingua franca [common language] of the world, this is an invitation to be an alien. And I believe with all my heart that what the world needs is radically bold, sacrificially loving, God-besotted, “freaks” and aliens. In other words, I am inviting you to say no to the world for the sake of the world.

The world does not need more cool, hip, culturally savvy, irrelevant copies of itself. That is a hoax that has duped thousands of young Christians. They think they have to be hip, cool, savvy, culturally aware, watching everything in ordernot to be freakish. And that is undoing them morally and undoing their witness.

So here are 12 questions to think about, or 12 reasons why I am committed to a radical abstention from anything I know is going to present me with nudity.

1. Am I Recrucifying Christ?

Christ died to purify his people. It is an absolute travesty of the cross to treat it as though Jesus died only to forgive us for the sin of watching nudity, and not to purify us for the power not to watch it.

He has blood-bought power in his cross. He died to make us pure. He “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14). If we choose to endorse or embrace or enjoy or pursue impurity, we take a spear and ram it into Jesus’s side every time we do. He suffered to set us free from impurity.

2. Does It Express or Advance My Holiness?

In the Bible, from beginning to end, there is a radical call for holiness — holiness of mind and heart and life. “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). Or 2 Corinthians 7:1, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” Nudity in movies and photos is not holy and does not advance our holiness. It is unholy and impure.

3. When Will I Tear Out My Eye, If Not Now?

Jesus said everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away (Matthew 5:28–29). Seeing naked women — or seeing naked men — causes a man or woman to sin with their minds and their desires, and often with their bodies. If Jesus told us to guard our hearts by gouging out our eyes to prevent lust, how much more would he say: “Don’t watch it!”

4. Is It Not Satisfying to Think on What Is Honorable?

Life in Christ is not mainly the avoidance of evil, but mainly the passionate pursuit of good. Remember Philippians 4:8, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

My life is not a constrained life. It is a free life. “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).

5. Am I Longing to See God?

I want to see and know God as fully as possible in this life and the next. Watching nudity is a huge hindrance to that pursuit. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). The defilement of the mind and heart by watching nudity dulls the heart’s ability to see and enjoy God. I dare anyone to watch nudity and turn straight to God and give him thanks and enjoy him more because of what you just experienced.

6. Do I Care About the Souls of the Nudes?

God calls women to adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control (1 Timothy 2:9). When we pursue or receive or embrace nudity in our entertainment, we are implicitly endorsing the sin of the women who sell themselves to this way and are, therefore, uncaring about their souls. They disobey 1 Timothy 2:9, and we say that’s okay.

7. Would I Be Glad If My Daughter Played This Role?

Most Christians are hypocrites in watching nudity because, on the one hand they say by their watching that this is okay, and on the other hand they know deep down they would not want their daughter or their wife or their girlfriend to be playing this role. That is hypocrisy.

8. Am I Assuming Nudity Can Be Faked?

Nudity is not like murder and violence on the screen. Violence on a screen is make-believe; nobody really gets killed. But nudity is not make-believe. These actresses are really naked in front of the camera, doing exactly what the director says to do with their legs and their hands and their breasts. And they are naked in front of millions of people to see.

9. Am I Compromising the Beauty of Sex?

Sexual relations is a beautiful thing. God created it and pronounced it “good” (1 Timothy 4:3). But it is not a spectator sport. It is a holy joy that is sacred in its secure place of tender love. Men and women who want to be watched in their nudity are in the category with exhibitionists who pull down their pants at the top of escalators.

10. Am I Assuming Nudity Is Necessary for Good Art?

There is no great film or television series that needs nudity to add to its greatness. No. There isn’t. There are creative ways to be true to reality without turning sex into a spectator’s sport and without putting actors and actresses in morally compromised situations on the set.

It is not artistic integrity that is driving nudity on the screen. Underneath all of this is male sexual appetite driving this business, and following from that is peer pressure in the industry and the desire for ratings that sell. It is not art that puts nudity in film, it’s the appeal of prurience. It sells.

11. Am I Craving Acceptance?

Christians do not watch nudity with a view to maximizing holiness. That is not what keeps them coming back to the shows. They know deep down that these television shows or these movies are shot through with the commendation and exaltation of attitudes and actions that are utterly out of step with the death to self and out of step with exaltation of Christ.

No, what keeps those Christians coming back is the fear that if they take Christ at his word and make holiness as serious as I am saying it is, they would have to stop seeing so many television shows and so many movies, and they would be viewed as freakish. And that today is the worst evil of all. To be seen as freakishis a much greater evil than to be unholy.

12. Am I Free from Doubt?

There is one biblical guideline that makes life very simple: “But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:32). My paraphrase: If you doubt, don’t. That would alter the viewing habits of millions, and oh how sweetly they would sleep with their conscience.

So I say it again. Join me in the pursuit of the kind of purity that sees God, and knows the fullness of joy in his presence and the everlasting pleasure at his right hand.

John Piper, Desiring God, June 20, 2014

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Unanswered Prayer

Posted on June 15, 2014 by bjdavisson33

Last night I sat with a group of men from our church and talked about prayer. And, as usually happens, our thoughts turned toward unanswered prayer or prayer that is answered very differently than we had asked or hoped. Why are there times when God seems not to answer? If a good Father would never give his children a stone in place of bread, why does it seem like God sometimes does this very thing?

The best way I know how to answer is to point to the cross. God’s people wanted deliverance from oppression. They wanted a Messiah. They wanted a Savior. Then that Messiah came. That Messiah told them that he was there to deliver them. That Messiah triumphantly entered Jerusalem as the prophecies had foretold. And then that Messiah was brutally murdered.

What happened? What did it all mean? Was this the answer to their prayers?

I think of Jesus’ disciples in the aftermath of the crucifixion, as the sun rose on the Sabbath day and their conquering Messiah lay cold and dead in the grave. They must have been perplexed. They must have wondered. They must have been confused and overwhelmed. Or maybe underwhelmed. Was this the answer to their prayers? What had happened to the promise of victory? When would they receive the deliverance they had been promised.

The Sabbath day came and went. And then they came to the first day of the week and an angelic messenger telling them, “He is not here, but has risen.” The fog began to lift.

What Jesus would accomplish made little sense to them when he described it in advance; what he was accomplishing made little sense while he endured it; what he had accomplished became clear only when they could look back on it. They just needed to wait. It all became clear in time.

And we often find ourselves in the same place. When we pray, and pray earnestly, and praying desiring God’s glory and fame, we know that he will answer and will give what we desire most. But we need to be patient. Like the disciples, we need to look to past, present and future with eyes of faith, trusting that in time everything will become clear.\

Tim Challies, June 05, 2014   challies.com

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The Character and Dignity of Christians

Posted on June 5, 2014 by bjdavisson33

“You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God!” 1 Peter 1:23

1. That this change is not of a human character. It is not effected by human means alone. “It is not by might.” No one is born a Christian. No one comes into the world with a pure heart, by which regeneration is rendered unnecessary. However great the piety and purity of parents, the child can never resemble them without a Divine change. Piety flows not in the blood, etc. “Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God!” John 1:13.

2. This change is not ceremonial. It is not effected by baptism; yet some have wickedly declared that we are regenerated by baptism, made children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of Heaven. A person may be baptized in infancy, or in riper years — and yet, like Simon Magus, remain “in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” Acts 8:23

3. This change is not merely external, nor does it consist in mere formal service. Some people have been so preserved from immoralities, yet they too must be born again.

It is possible for a person to become “another man,” like Saul, and yet not be a new man. Ahab humbled himself, and yet he was not truly humble; and Jehu drove on furiously, but not towards Heaven. A man may perform a multitude of religious duties, and yet have an unholy heart. He may be honest and fair in his dealings, and yet be an enemy to God. He may be of a generous, and yet not of a gracious disposition. He may go through the routine of all religion, and yet have no saving religion. He may be able to say with the young ruler, “All these things have I kept from my youth up,” and yet lack the one thing needful.

4. It does not mean any kind of impressions or new revelations; any succession of terrors and consolations; or any whisper, as it were, from God to the heart — concerning his secret love, choice, or purpose, to save a man. Many such experiences have been declared by those who continued slaves to their sins. Satan, transformed into an angel of light, has done immense mischief in this way.

5. It is not merely a profession of faith. Many give themselves to the Church, without first giving themselves to the Lord. 2 Corinthians 8:5. Not all who profess Christ, possess Him.

But, to treat this subject in a, positive manner, the birth of God’s children is a change wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit in the understanding, will, and affections of a sinner, which is the commencement of a new kind of life, and which gives another direction to his judgment, desires, pursuits, and conduct. This new birth therefore is . . .

1. A divine change. This is stated John 1:13; James 1:18; Ephesians 2:1; 2 Corinthians 4:6; 5:5. Thus he who gave man his physical being at first, can alone create him in Christ Jesus unto good works. He alone can enstamp his own image, and make us partakers of a Divine nature. In the spiritual world, it is God who brings to the birth. To give life to the dead, and to bring a clean thing out of an unclean, is the work of Omnipotence, and the effect of sovereign grace! “Who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God!” John 1:13

2. It is an inward and invisible change.
The understanding is enlightened,
the judgment is informed,
the affections and desires are purified,
the will is subdued, and subjected to the will of God,
the soul is turned from the love of the world and the creature, to the great Creator and his service.

This birth is not fictitious, but real; it is the existence of truth in “the inward parts.” See Ezekiel 36:26, 27.

Regeneration cleanses the corrupt fountain of the heart, and demolishes the strongholds of Satan. It is a change . . .
from heart wickedness — to heart goodness,
from enmity to God — to love to God,
from the image of Satan — to the image of God.

3. This change is universal, extending to the heart and life. Man is “created after God in righteousness and true holiness.” Not only the mind — but the man is renewed. The mind is not only renewed, but there is also a new life and course of action. The former is called “newness of spirit,” the latter, “newness of life.” The tree is made good, and its fruit is good. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!” 2 Corinthians 5:17

4. It is a change of which the subject of it is conscious. The subject has felt himself guilty, condemned, impure. He has been brought to the cross; believed in Christ; and found peace and joy. He hates the principles and practices which he formerly loved — and he loves the holy doctrines and commandments which he once abhorred. He now loves to associate with the people of God. He has “the witness in himself.”

5. He who is born again, gives evidence that he has passed from death to life. It is visible in his conduct — the observer of him perceives the change. How different now from what he once was!

The following are the principal evidences:

(1) Hatred to sin.                                                                                                                             (2) Victory over the world.                                                                                                             (3) Brotherly love.                                                                                                                           (4) Delight in spiritual duties.                                                                                                         (5) Exemplary conduct; a life of holiness.                                                                                     (6) Self-loathing, and constant faith in the sacrifice of Christ.                                                     (7) Sincere love to Christ.

William Nicholson “The Character and Dignity of Christians”  1862

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